Lindsay Stassen

Casting Project

Pedestal Project (John Bartell)

Made from fast food boxes that NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE DONATED TO HUAAARGHAH

I intended this project to parody the stereotypical college student diet.  I included packaging for Pizza, pop, pizza, red bull, pizza, juice, juice, chips, and pepto bismol.  Not exactly a healthy diet.  That was pretty much it.  Not much else here save for some glue and wood for holding it together.  Fairly simple project for the finale.

But hey, what can you do?  It's not as though have the most used parking lot on campus -and, by extension, your car - being a lot farther away from most of the buildings than Atwood memorial center, where food is available for purchase on-hand, has anything to do with it.

I wanted to make fake game boy games.  >:(

Object Project (John Bartell)

Description:

One cannot truly say that there is a spool of string just like this one.   From a single throw and disruption of the string itself, the string is arranged in such a way that can never be recreated.  Every cut, knot, or tear in the string is done on individual braids.   “Was the original torn on braid number 495?” “Was that knot on braid 5,022 or 6,379?”  .  No matter how hard one might try, emulating its composition is a truly impossible task. 

Not Description:

The hardest part was the box itself.  I'm surprised it came out as well as it did.

I literally just took whatever I could get my hands on first when I remembered I had the choice due the next day and went with it.  Originally meant to be used for the casting project, I decided to use it.

I remembered some stuff from my old critical frameworks course - of several ideologies used to critique art, and then something one of my classmates said in passing: They're all bullshit.

So I went with some BS on the individuality on the strings of a small spool and how they can't be replicated.  One could also argue no one would care.

Casting Sculpture (John Bartell)

You may notice that I've uploaded a different version of the sculpture onto the blog.  I did a little revision on it after the critique and went back to work on it to fix some of my glaring errors.

I wanted the piece to sort of simplify the painter's workplace, so I used a lot of the acrylic that I had been using on the weekly sculptures on this project.  Maybe it looks at least a little like a 3-D painting?  I hope it at least looks nice.

The process of creating the rubber latex base didn't go too badly.  It was easy to apply the layers, and I managed to keep the brush free of enough dried latex to at least be useable for painting as well.  I was thorough, I supposed.  I recall I did have a lot of trouble getting the casting right, as well as not breaking the plaster when it dried.  And boy, did it dry quickly...

I recall Horochowski saying my plaster base was the least stable she had ever seen.  Let's just put that behind us, shall we?...

Tree of Broken Dreams (John Bartell)

Well, I was a little upset when this piece of mine didn't make it into this year's student show. >:(

I made this sculpture to vent my feelings out a little.  I just made the tree out of my still largely unused roll of aluminum foil and cut up the pieces of my failed entry and scattered them around for the effect of abandonment.

My pent-up feelings were a bit unjustified, though.  My other entry made it in. So I'm sort of neutral now, I supposed.  :/

Painting Puzzle (John Bartell)

Something that actually looks like it could be displayed. :D

You probably recognize this as the board I used as a stand in a lot of my weekly sculptures.  Since I didn't have any plans to use it in the future, I decided to give it a decent send-off... and cut it into pieces.  How generous of me!

After cutting the board up and rounding the edges, I found it was hard to put it back together simply from the paintings on both sides.  So I didn't - I found I could rearrange it into a number of ways that would look appealing to my eye.  I liked that adaptive aspect of the sculpture.

With that in mind, I probably shouldn't have tried gluing it together afterwards. :(

Clip Dragon (John Bartell)

I still had a bag of clips I had purchased earlier in the semester, and hadn't yet used it.  What to do?...

I used about two-thirds of the bag to create what was going to be a path. Didn't like that, so I experimented a bit.  Then I looked at the broken pieces of plaster from the casting project...

I just used the pedestal (which was actually dried plaster left at the bottom of a bucket) which I painted and split it into pieces.  It was at that point I saw a Dragon that could be made.  And I did.

Sort of lazy in my opinion, but which of my sculptures aren't?

Yet another joke piece (John Bartell)

I actually used the cup handed out for the casting project and painted a warning on it.  But what could be under a cup that's so dangerous, the audience thinks?

If you look at the above picture, you'll see what I mean.

Made up cup, acrylic, and notebook paper.

Waves (John Bartell)

Another experiment with aluminum foil and acrylic.  Though this time I tried to anticipate the shifting of the foil to create negative space, this still didn't turn out as intended.  An overhang of the wave itself was impossible, and overlaying sheets didn't stick to one another.  However, I did like the metallic sheen of the aluminum underneath, so I kept that in.

Not a spectacular failure like the last piece, but still a failure in my eyes. :P

Island cake (John Bartell)

This piece... did NOT go as intended.  A foray into using acrylic paint on aluminum foil (I still have a lot left as of this writing), my earlier technique of using the paint as a simultaneous glue wasn't working at all.  The foil continued to try to stay in it's preferred shape.  It didn't adhere to the recycled tissue paper under it either.

Though it is a personal failure, I did find it amusing how people interpreted the piece later.  I just rolled along with it.  Sometimes the best way to go is to allow people to create part of the work themselves.

By John (John Bartell (obviously))

At least the sculpture gives credit where it's due. :)

This sculpture started out alongside the other one so as not to waste aluminum foil I had already pulled out.  I intended for this piece to have a little irony in it - credit as the piece itself.

Aluminum foil is a lot harder to manipulate than you'd think! :(

"Sexy" aluminum girl (John Bartell)

For this sculpture, I just used what I had on hand and whatever I could think of.  I used aluminum foil, tissues, and the bottles from my earlier cityscape sculpture.  I made this with the intent of humor in mind - obviously one would have difficulty making something "sexy" in such a short time - why try?  I don't even think "she" is trying to look good.  Hopefully this was good for a laugh or two.

Most of the time, I don't create a sculpture with a background in mind.  Assume I mean it as a standalone piece unless I say otherwise.

Could you even tell it was supposed to be a woman without the description? XD

John Bartell, Sculpture 4

process, such as materials used, compositon decisions, placement on wall/floor

This piece was done on the moment in another class.  It was made with some sort of substance used to glue paper to the walls in the hallway and a tack.  The piece was less than a square inch in size, hopefully for some variety.  Intended to be placed on a table.

John Bartell, Sculpture 3

At this point, as I came in to work primarily on weekend, I started to recycle objects into my work more and more.  Here, while I used the same board as the last two projects, I used products from Atwood and painted over them with acrylic to create some sort of post-apocolyptic piece, I supposed.  It was originally going to be a city, but I suppose it can be interpreted differently.  Again, no specific place was intended for the pice to be placed.

John Bartell, sculpture 2
This sculpture was made using materials from my first sculpture, and followed a similar process.  Made from the same wood board, cardboard, aluminum scraps and acrylic paint, I decided to try to use the acrylic as glue as well, and tried to give the thing a color scheme I'd enjoy.  I didn't have a specific location in mind for the piece at the time.

Kristina (Simon) Jungels Casting Project

For the casting project, I created replicas of rocks I had. I was intrigued by the fact that I had a container full of rocks sitting in my house. Why did I feel like these rocks were so special I should take them home with me? What was I going to do with these rocks? Would others have picked up these rocks and thought they were special? These questions were what prompted me to create more of these same rocks that I had. I created these out of plaster castings and then used acrylic paints to paint them. 

Emily Hendrickson Vitrine Project

For my box construction project I decided to display a swedish fish.  I tried to take a comedic route.  The didactic reads as follows:

Sucrose Clupea

Period:

Cretaceous Period (circa 66 million years)

Region:

            Dalarna, Sweden

Belonging to the family Clupeidae, more commonly referred to as herrings, the Sucrose Clupea is a sugarwater fish.  Scale colors are most commonly reported to be red, but are sometimes seen in shades of yellow and green.  Their diet mainly consists of corn syrup, modified corn starch, citric acid, white mineral oil, carnauba wax, and  Red 40.

Credit line:

            Cadbury Adams

Emily Hendrickson Casting Project

The idea of my casting project was to take something that was homemade and one of a kind as well as being soft and make it mass produced and hard.  I decided to crochet a rabbit that I would use for the casting.  The reason for using a rabbit was because its an animal that is typically associated with multiplying quickly.  I painted some in pastel colors, one in silver, and one in gold.  I then arranged them in a diagonal line to simulate a convener belt feel. The gold and silver sat on the far end and the original crochet rabbit, in pieces, on the opposite, falling off .  The arrangement communicates the rejection of classic home made items and the welcoming of a line of mass produced products.

Tiffany Mueller Casting Project — Booty Pop

Latex molds filled with chocolate made these Booty Pops. It began with a Barbie body with enhanced booties and slowly morphed into packaged female parts directly critiquing society's view on female objectification and the marketing of.