Many have asked this question in striving for happiness. And there are many, many answers; each as unique to the person who asks as to the person who answers. One thought is to find balance in one’s life. This at least is the answer the artist has come to herself and set out to portray balance in a piece of artwork.
A full view of the sculpture, including the specialized lighting.
Over time Built to Grow has developed from one idea to the next, always with balance in mind. In its final form, of paper, wire, and light, it grapples with the larger question of natural versus man made.
An image of the join between rings and the flowing quality of the design.
A drawing of the other 23 Teaching Fellows, the Operations Coordinator, and myself at Breakthough, a summer program providing opportunities for underserved students.
Some new crafts and drawings from the summer of 2019 finished! Check out the Drawing or Craft pages to see more!
A shadow displaying the interweaving of the wire and planets.
In a final editing of the filmed live performance, the video production of “Our World is Burning” is now available to be viewed via the following link to the film production.
Our World is Burning is an artwork, half performance and half film production, about the impacts of deforestation. The tree structure represents the support each tree provides our world. The forests are carbon sinks, soaking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and producing the oxygen we breath to live. The vines of paper strips convey facts that are woven into the very nature of the Earth and our unsustainable life style; what deforestation impacts, what forests and regions are being lost, what animals are going extinct, and even more facts.
A fraction of the facts around our forests and deforestation, taken as a video still.
In the performance, white gas is poured on the structure. Our dependency on oil and its byproducts is only speeding up the destruction of our planet by adding more carbon dioxide while the forests that soak up this poisonous gas are cut down. Or more accurately burned down.
It is undeniable that deforestation is terrible for our world but controversies remain. Agriculture, the biggest industry destroying the trees, continues to roll onwards as farmers the world over struggle between two choices, to starve or to burn. Their livelihood depends on farming the poor soil of the tropical forests. And to succeed, to make space for the crops and give the soil the nutrients needed for growing, the farms burn sections of the forest every few years when the old farmland stops producing.
A video still near the end of the artwork in full blaze.
Given the choice to starve or to burn, people will always chose survival and thus to burn the forests down for their livelihoods. Deforestation, bad as it is, is not as simple an issue to be solved over night. The cause of deforestation, poverty, must be addressed if the land, animals, and peoples are to thrive together.
This next project looks into the effects of deforestation. The plan is to create the representation of a tree upon which a model of the world sits. Ribbons of paper trail up the tree to the world with the history of deforestation, its effects, the reasons for it, and other facts of the subject.
The final product is projected to be a film of the burning sculpture.
UPDATE:
An angled view of the basic structure.A photo of the tree-styled frame wrapped with the paper fuses.A detail of the paper fuses and one of the affected forests, the Amazon.
The news is in and the sculpture, Of Individuals, won one of the 37 slots for the 7th National Collegiate Paper Triennial Contest! It will be on display in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Atlanta over the next year and a half beginning this September.
