Sculpture final critique
So I had my sculpture final critique today. It was supposed to be at 1:30 and you bring everything you've done all semester in and sit down one-on-one with the teacher and go over it. I started loading my car at 12:45 so I could get there early--it takes 10-15 minutes to drive to the school. So I load the two cat sculptures into a box in the car (the box is so they don't bump into stuff)...
Then I go back in and get the heads and carry them out to the back seat.
Just as I'm standing back up, the head in the middle falls off. HOLY CRAP! It's been glued down since yesterday with the lie that is Liquid Nails, but the glue is still squishy. Worse, it's stringy. The gesso that gave the base texture wasn't 100% dry yet, so it gouged up some of that and rubbed off onto the chin of the head. I tried sticking it back on but it just fell right back over. It leans slightly (intentionally), so it's not well balanced. Well what the hell do I do now?! My critique is in less than 45 minutes and my biggest project just broke! I started to sweat--literally--and then I had an idea. I took the whole thing back inside and put it on the counter, hanging over. I got out the drill and drilled a hole up through the base into the head, and then put a screw in it from the bottom. You can't see the screw inside the head because the Barbie doll is there. Then for good measure I put a screw in the other head that is on a neck. (The third head, with the bunny inside, is still emerging and is supported by the cross-section of the face, not the cross-section of the neck, so there is no top-heaviness to make it fall over.)
I get some white acrylic paint--no time to get the gesso and have it dry--and use it to touch up the gouged gesso and to "reseal" the seam where the neck meets the base, which had obviously torn open when the head fell over. Then I got out the red paint and touched up the part of the face that had gesso on it, and a razor blade and scraped off a little gesso from another spot that couldn't be painted. Now, in the course of handling the head to put it back on, it had gotten fingerprints all over it (the surface is still slightly soft) so I sprayed some varnish on it to make it look glassy again.
Whew! It's fixed! Wet, but fixed! I race it out to the car and start for school. It's 1:20. I called Justin, who I thought would be at the school and thankfully he was. I told him what happened and asked him to tell my teacher that I'd be there in about 15 minutes, but that I was on my way. At 1:35 exactly I pulled my car up to the sculpture studio loading door.
My critique ended up being around 2ish, and thankfully she liked the way the heads came out. She said the base sucks, but I knew that. It isn't the base I wanted to make but I didn't have the tools or materials to make the base I wanted, and I needed *something* to attach them to--so I threw this one together at the last minute because it was what I could do. She agreed that making a real base for it can be a project I do in the fall for Sculpture II. Yay! She also said that I can develop some more elements into my chair piece next semester.
(My invisible chair with the invisible person sitting in it that I did for the "chair" assignment. Not sure if I've posted anything about that one before.)
Her critique notes were:
Course Grade: A
1. Effort
2. Strong intuitive design
3. Intuitive understanding of what makes art art
4. Unmatched learning curve
That last one is awesome. I feel like I learned pretty quickly this semester--I learned a LOT of stuff--and it's awesome to know that it isn't just my own opinion.
My sculpture teacher is awesome. I really feel like I've found a mentor with her. I'm taking Sculpture II in the fall and will take III next spring. She's also going to guide me with my painting, since she is also a painter. I think her feedback is a thousand times more valuable than what I ever got from my painting teacher.
Interestingly, she said that she thinks that my sculptural concepts are stronger than my painting ones (though my technique in painting is more developed) which another classmate agreed with. Of course, she is the sculpture teacher so she may be biased.
Anyway, I'm really happy with how the critique went, and my semester is officially OVER! *party* I hung out for an hour or so after the critique chatting with the other people in my class. We're planning a cookout at my house next weekend, which should be fun. Also, Justin is probably coming over tomorrow night to watch Galaxy Quest. Woohoo!
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
opalcat) wrote,
