Mixed Media
Title: 12/25/16
Medium: Light Installation
Size: 3m x 3.5m
Date: 1/30/17
Medium: Light Installation
Size: 3m x 3.5m
Date: 1/30/17
12/25 is known, to me, as one of the worst days of the year. Or, at least, it was.
Meaning
Stay away from me at the holidays.
There's no joy in the snow falling through the path of the street lights, resting on your shoulders and carrying cold to nip at the exposed skin. No rosy cheeks pulled up with a smile, no Christmas lights twinkling in the reflection of your eyes, no children making snowmen or squealing as their best friends dump snow down their jackets. Most of all, as mid-western America wakes up to presents and stays in all day with the family, my family doesn't occupy the spaces on the couch like they used to, the presents are late and I reject them because no, we need money more than I need the gifts, my parents continue to resent each other, and I have no other feelings but bitterness. Why even wake up at all on Christmas?
This year my dad took custody of me. I moved in to a house that's cleaned regularly, that I'm not ashamed to bring my friends to, where I don't spend all my time locked into my room. There's an air of financial stability, there's food in the fridge to cook meals, there's two dogs and a family that listens to what each other have to say. A functional household is somewhat foreign to me, especially when it comes to the concept of holidays.
As Christmas neared this year I was just as grumpy as every one before. I constantly expressed how it was a mindless holiday with murky roots, how I hated giving presents (because I could never get something worth the person) and receiving them (I was worthless). Then the day came and- it wasn't bad. It was an honest to god nice time and I have to wonder, what have I missed all these years? How many Christmases has it been since I had people who loved me there, making an effort to tell me they cared? The new world, the new beauty I was shown of this holiday, was what I wanted to talk about with this piece. Stepping into an ordinary space lit up with Christmas lights, absolutely changing your perspective on it, was what I wanted with this. A place you could step into and explore, to be transported somewhere new, someplace honest to god nice.
There's no joy in the snow falling through the path of the street lights, resting on your shoulders and carrying cold to nip at the exposed skin. No rosy cheeks pulled up with a smile, no Christmas lights twinkling in the reflection of your eyes, no children making snowmen or squealing as their best friends dump snow down their jackets. Most of all, as mid-western America wakes up to presents and stays in all day with the family, my family doesn't occupy the spaces on the couch like they used to, the presents are late and I reject them because no, we need money more than I need the gifts, my parents continue to resent each other, and I have no other feelings but bitterness. Why even wake up at all on Christmas?
This year my dad took custody of me. I moved in to a house that's cleaned regularly, that I'm not ashamed to bring my friends to, where I don't spend all my time locked into my room. There's an air of financial stability, there's food in the fridge to cook meals, there's two dogs and a family that listens to what each other have to say. A functional household is somewhat foreign to me, especially when it comes to the concept of holidays.
As Christmas neared this year I was just as grumpy as every one before. I constantly expressed how it was a mindless holiday with murky roots, how I hated giving presents (because I could never get something worth the person) and receiving them (I was worthless). Then the day came and- it wasn't bad. It was an honest to god nice time and I have to wonder, what have I missed all these years? How many Christmases has it been since I had people who loved me there, making an effort to tell me they cared? The new world, the new beauty I was shown of this holiday, was what I wanted to talk about with this piece. Stepping into an ordinary space lit up with Christmas lights, absolutely changing your perspective on it, was what I wanted with this. A place you could step into and explore, to be transported somewhere new, someplace honest to god nice.
Planning
Going through the options, the first idea was a sculptural piece made of plastic spoons as a commentary of queer relationships. The last option on the list jumped out to me the most: installation. The space available to me was obvious, as my bedroom. When thinking about the space I identified the lights that were in my bedroom and my plans to hang more, and thought, what would that be like, to have a room full of Christmas lights? What affect would that have with the lighting? What significance would that have? I fell in love with this idea immediately.
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Process
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Before photos- what my room would generally look like. All of this needed to be moved into boxes and out of my room over the course of a week.
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First all of the smaller objects I owned needed to be packed up. Then everything was taken out of my room and plastic was put down on the floor, the holes were filled, and primer was put on the wall. After that the paint was put up. The day after, letting it dry and air out for the night, planning began. I used clear command strips to stick along the first string of lights around the room. This continued around the room, filling in holes and trying to space out the lights that I had somewhat evenly. The first lights to go across the ceiling were the ones that wrapped around the fan, all others after used the fan as support to get to the other side.
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Some lights were anchored with scotch tape, but this was to be avoided for the corners where the majority of weight in a chord was distributed because it was unreliable, ad it was mostly used to anchor mid points to a wall when needed. The doorway was outlined in lights by rotating the command strips to fit the bend required. Along the way it was realized that so many lights could not be sustained by one source of power, so the power was redistributed between two sockets. The majority of lights were used in one day; it took most of the day to fall into a good process and wait out the command strip's waiting times (it's recommended to wait an hour after application before use). The next day a new strand of white chords were hung, using a third socket and hung solely off of other lights. Th white lights brought up the light int he room.
Experimentation
One thing I didn't consider from the beginning of the project was how the power would look and that I couldn't have one outlet and one very long string of lights wrapping around a lot. Along the way I redistributed the power of the strings along three points, except for the small string that came out along the floor, which was from it's own power socket. Experimentation was also done throughout the project with the placement of the lights; there was never an exact plan. Eventually it came to filling in holes and minimizing the amount of empty space, which took experimenting with where the lights hung and moving things around.
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Research
A few of the Christmas light strands I had, of course, didn't work. In an attempt to fix them I research ways to fix Christmas lights and the reasons that entire strands wouldn't light up. One of the main reasons were blown fuses, which I attempted to change in two strands, but this did not resolve the problem. The article I read went on to describe other ways to fix lights (dealing mostly with individual lights), none of which worked.
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Inspiration
The inspiration for this piece was found in Felix Gonzalez-Torres. He was an artist in the 80s and 90s that worked in sculpture and photography. He studied poetry and photography before creating his art, which influenced the metaphorical value in his art. I analyzed his use of lights first; they applied rhythm visually and usually followed a metaphoric value relating to time, intimacy and death. I focused on the actual work and how it came together visually when developing my ideas and eventually creating the piece. Torres also does public participation pieces, which are given meaning by the audience interacting with it. He usually created pieces that involved passers by to take a piece with them to keep or to scatter. I was, and am, enamored with the idea of art being nothing without the audience and applied this concept to installation in terms of creating a piece that was art through the experience of walking through it, having people experience it, have their own interpretations of it, and take something away from it even if it isn't physical. The meaning behind Gonzales-Torres' work with lights had to do with life and death, mostly around the fragility of life as he lost friends and his partner to AIDs, a disease he lost his very own life to. Connections can be made here between my theme as ones relating to life.
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"Art and Poetry: Félix González-Torres." Jennifer Chadwick. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
"Art and Poetry: Félix González-Torres." Jennifer Chadwick. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
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Reflection
I'd say that this was a success. There were less lights than I had imagined for the piece, but these are all the lights I had and it still created a wonderful effect. The original design had some diagonal overlap of the lights but was mainly horizontal, wrapping the lights straight around the room. This was changed due to the lack of lights available, and so to fill in space there needed to be a more miss-matched design that could be viewed as messy or intricate. There is a slight disconnect between the viewer and the exact meaning of the piece, but that's some of the beauty of art, is that everyone sees it differently. I think there could have been more planning done before the project. Ideas happened during creation! Going back I also could have taken a video, because of it being an installation and presenting it to those who cannot experience would have been more well-documented with an all-around look of the room using a video.
Peer Review
the majority of this project + page had been done by the time the peer review was conducted, and so my partners had little to say I should change. The most feedback I received was about spelling errors. The feedback I gave was mostly about going into more details and formatting. For the future, I plan on finishing the last components of my page and then reviewing every part for spelling and grammar, then strengthening my writing.
ACT Response Questions
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.
As explained above the inspirations, being Christmas and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, show themselves quite clearly in both the meaning and execution of the piece. Both influenced the piece heavily from the very planning stages, even when independent choices were made differing from the initial inspiration.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
To analyze the artist, present information about specific piece and a biography strictly relating to influences on the artists' work.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Finding out the meaning behind the majority of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work, communicating the different art forms he explores and the influences form his life experiences that led him down those paths.
5) What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
As explained above the inspirations, being Christmas and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, show themselves quite clearly in both the meaning and execution of the piece. Both influenced the piece heavily from the very planning stages, even when independent choices were made differing from the initial inspiration.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
To analyze the artist, present information about specific piece and a biography strictly relating to influences on the artists' work.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Finding out the meaning behind the majority of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work, communicating the different art forms he explores and the influences form his life experiences that led him down those paths.
5) What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
Bibliography
"Art and Poetry: Félix González-Torres." Jennifer Chadwick. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Niu. "Fix Christmas Lights." WikiHow. WikiHow, 31 Jan. 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.
Niu. "Fix Christmas Lights." WikiHow. WikiHow, 31 Jan. 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.