So I decided my piece was going to be a branch covered in a smooth rainbow of leaves, very much inspired by Goldsworthy’s perfect paint-like leaf coverings on natural objects. (Similar to the image below)

It was really quite fun to do but I failed at using all natural materials. Andy used water and moss as adhesives but I used hot glue… I wish I didn’t. It came out pretty well though; someone walked into my room and thought I painted the rainbow on! The process of collecting the leaves was also fun because I had to climb trees to get to the fresh green leaves that hadn’t fallen yet. I think the people in my dorm who saw me think I’m weird. I was definitely out in nature a lot though for this project, very Goldsworthyish. He also tries to show a natural flow in his pieces which I think I successfully did with the changing colors of the leaves, just like they would change and die naturally.  The critique was really fun because there were such a wide variety of pieces, from colorful popup comic art to black and white impressionist paintings. It was really fun to try and match up the inspirational artist and the project piece. I really liked the pieces that were only subtly inspired by the artist but mostly original like Rachel’s painting of her family. Altogether it was a really fun project J

                The reading and discussion for today was kind of odd. One thing the reading stated was that we couldn’t really see genitals objectively which I personally disagree with. I’ve grown up with a mindset that the body is beautiful so it didn’t really frighten me or make me uncomfortable when we were shown a naked female body in class, unlike most who turned their heads away. However I did agree with the idea that we can’t objectively look at images of death. The feeling of looking at an image of a bullet going through someone’s brain would definitely bring up different emotions than actually seeing it in real life. We are so conditioned to seeing images of death in movies nowadays that it almost makes all images of death seem like some sort of mundane horror fiction. The popcorn movie we watched was also very weird… I still don’t understand how it can just go from a kernel to popcorn without a middle transition stage, which the narrator compares to death…, very fascinating comparison. 

My plan for my project was to gather a bunch of thick tall sticks, tie them together geometrically, and install them in one of the bodies of water on campus. BUT. When gathering sticks I realized that there aren't many perfectly straight sticks from the dead trees around here. So instead I walked around campus and started thinking of a project I could do with leaves. I was thinking of making a rainbow of leaves going up the trunk of a tree but I'm still unsure which project I'll end up doing. I'm going to go outside now and figure it out!