My Book Review of Unexpected Art
Favorite Sculptures and Installations:
-Pgs 12-13, Habibi by Adel Abdessemed. I love the idea of making sculptures out of bones, so making an installation with a skeleton is great. I also like how it looks like the skeleton is flying on account of the airplane engine turbine.
-Pgs 60-61, 700 Delaware by Hense. I'm a fan of architecture as well as a lot of color, so the two mixed together for me is fantastic. I love when a fresh coat of paint can transform an object or house into something new. I also like how they did the painting and adding designs in layers.
-Pgs 64-67, Rubber Duck. I mean, how can you not love giant rubber ducks? Very fun, silly, and awesome.
-Pgs 68-71, Rituals by Hottea. I love NYC, especially Manhattan and Brooklyn, so the Williamsburg Bridge is awesome. Again, I like the concept of working with yarn to make a regular object look cooler. And I love all the colors used in this installation.
-Pgs 82-83, Cloudscapes by Tetsuo Kondo Architects. Not sure how you make DIY clouds, but this is such a cool concept to be able to walk through a cloud and feel what it's like. Definitely want to see this in real life.
-Pgs 110-111, Afterglow by Rowena Martinich. I love to paint and I like how you can use canvases and paint and a room and some creativity and call it an installation. This installation is very colorful and gives off a certain energetic vibe. I like how it looks like some parts of the installation are clean and just have a canvas hanging up, while others are paint splattered and completely messy.
-Pgs 152-155, Private Moon by Leonid Tishkov. I love the opening line to the description of this piece, "Private Moon is a visual poem telling the story of a man who met the Moon and stayed with her for the rest of his life." First off, who wouldn't want to meet the moon? One of my dreams when I was younger was to go to the moon. Thanks to certain children's books, I wanted to either take a rocket ship there or climb a ladder all the way to the moon. This piece, even though very different from an installation or sculpture, is my favorite in the whole book. Each photo taken with the man and the moon is very whimsical and eye catching. If only this was real...
Dislikes:
-Pgs 32-33, La Maitresse de la Tour Eiffel by Michel De Broin. I think it's a really cool idea, but all it is to me is a huge disco ball hanging off of a crane. Not something I'm interested in doing.
-Pgs 54-57, the event of a thread by Ann Hamilton. Not sure if I exactly know what's going on or understand this installation. It seems a little weird to me and out of place in this book.
-Pgs 96-99, the works of Myoung Ho Lee. I think it's cool that the artist takes pictures of trees with white canvas behind them to isolate the trees from the outside world. However, I'm not sure this is much of an installation. It's a cool concept to use for photography though.
What Inspired Me:
-Pgs 14-15, Kasthall Shag Curves by Tanya Aguiniga. I think it's a cool idea to wrap yarn around an object and have different shades of the yarn fade into others. Something that I would possibly want to try, but maybe to a functional object. Like I could wrap a trash can or laundry bin in yarn and it would be nicer to look at.
- Pgs 38-41, Washed Up by Alejandro Duran. I would love to make art that gets people thinking about environmental issues or maybe LGBTQIA+ issues. Duran's work addresses the issue of plastic pollution and has the potential to raise awareness about waste and how we should be properly managing it. I hope to make an installation or sculpture at some point in my life that could possibly raise awareness of an issue as well.
-Pgs 92-93, Solarium by William Lamson. Not only did he make a greenhouse that looks kind of like stained glass, but he made what looks to be glass out of sugar! Talk about the use of unconventional materials. I would 100% pay for a greenhouse made out of sugar. I would also 100% love to do something like this. It would be so cool to use different edible materials and melt them down in order to make a house. Alright, I probably wouldn't be able to do something on this scale, but maybe I could make a little terrarium for my cacti.
-Pgs 118-121, the works of Mihoko Ogaki. These human forms remind me of a quote that says something about how humans are made up of galaxies and stars. I could imagine doing something like this myself, but maybe instead of creating 3D forms, I could create 2D forms by using huge sheets of paper and sticking holes in them strategically. The holes would line up to create certain shapes which would by illuminated if light was put behind the paper...whether artificial or the paper was hung up on a window.
-Pgs 144-147, Falling Garden by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger. This installation reminded me of the time back when I was a freshmen and there were bouquets of flowers hanging from the ceiling for people to draw. I thought that was cool then and I still think it's cool now. I've always loved having things hang from my ceiling. In my current room, the ceiling is empty, but in my old room, I had tons of glass balls and ornaments and crystal necklaces and dream catchers hanging up. It created a very interesting vibe to my room. It would be cool to take a space in Harley and have different things hanging from the ceiling and have it create a cool atmosphere.
