Kim Jonsson: March 2011

After being severely traumatised by the first class I was determined to give it another go.

Task 1. Collage of Four Canapés.

A collage of images, cut up and used as a chef would use ingredients to make canapés. The four themes for the canapés were, meat, seafood, vegetarian and dessert. The images I chose were a variety of sea creatures, corals and seaweed. These have played a big party in my work over the last two years. I love their vibrancy of colours, textures and patterns. These images instantly make me feel peaceful. The secretive underwater world is a beautiful quiet place, never crowded. It never ceases to amaze me.

Having never done collage before this was quite foreign and I found it hard to grasps the concept.

Dessert

Seafood

Vegetarian

Meat

Task 2. Construct Six Canapés.

Using found objects, construct six canapés with the collages as the point of inspiration. Building objects came a little easier however I still found making random objects difficult.

So...... first class in Small Object Ideation and I froze like Bambi in the headlights.

Task 1. Poetry Beast
It all started fairly simply. Write down descriptive words, (sure no problem), cut out words and place in hat (yep so far so good), now draw out 5 words and arrange to form descriptive term for a mythical beast and draw it; and that's where it all went down hill.

I drew my 5 words and instantly wanted to ask for a do over. "glowing", "woven", "hard", "fragile" & "flat". Maybe it was first day jitters, maybe it was performance anxiety but I had nothing, not one idea how to incorporate these descriptions into anything let alone a beast. I sat staring at my words desperate for inspiration to descend upon me. Glancing around the room I see everyone else getting on with it with no hint of the sheer terror I was feeling. Then there's the time limit to complete the exercise. Nothing makes my mind go blank faster than telling me there's a time limit.

Desperately trying not to entertain thoughts like "what am I doing here!, everyone can do this except me" and "I have the artistic ability of an amoeba", all I could come up with was some webby like thing; woven, flat and fragile, a strong material ("strong, kind of like "hard" right?) but how the hell was I going to draw glowing! Time running out I resorted to the fluro highlighter in an attempt to represent glowing.

Time was up and I looked at my drawing. What a piece of crap! God how I hated those five words. In one way it did look like a beast to me, albeit an abstract one. A badly drawn webby thing spiralling down to a little black singularity, like a black hole from which nothing could escape from, not light or gravity, not even the hope that my drawing had anything going for it.

Task 2. Paper Strip 3D Models.
Take strips of paper and impose the characteristics to embody the words used in Poetry Beast then make a series of 3D models.

"Flat" - all I could think of was colouring in a flat grey colour, "Hard" - I thought of a battle ship with steel rivets, "Woven" - a woven pattern, "Fragile"- I torn the paper, a bit like an orange peel so it was still barely connected in one long piece, and "Glowing" - no clue how to represent this so I resorted to the old highlighter again.

The 3D modelling unfortunately didn't get much better. While some people managed to whip up mini Taj Mahals, mine were more representational of a cauliflower, a cow pat, a deep sea flat worm and a ones of those bits that fall off something but you're not sure what it is or where it came from.