Final Version

Character Forming

Character Forming

That is a brilliant idea. I really like to write. I'm not particularly good at finishing the stories... but to flesh out your characters in real life, and to experience some of the same problems your characters would be facing, would be an incredible aid to writing more realistically as well as mentally developing the characters themselves.

Undulations

---The visit to the Art Gallery of Hamilton was really interesting. I had never gone to the second floor of the museum before. But on that floor, there was an exhibition called Carnival: Scenes from a Spectacle. It included a piece called Undulations by Joseph Calleja. It was made of painted steel and a motor in 1978.

---This sculpture first caught my eye because of its seeming simplicity. It is comprised of thin but strong metal sheets in three bold colours; the primary colours of blue, yellow, and red. The blue sheet is the background: rectangular, vertical, and flat. The yellow was neatly cut into small curved, almost-rectangles. They are jointed together by tiny bolts in the shap of what could be a serpent. Through the use of a motor, they slowly curve up and down in circular motions. The other end disappears underneath a torn sheet of red metal on the right that is a few inches taller than the background and covers mabye a fifth of it. All of this is set on a sturdy black rectangle of metal that is not quite as wide as the blue backing sheet.

---As mentioned, I like this piece because it is clean, simple, and it works. I have recently gained a special appreciation for things that move smoothly without being rickety or wobbling. I also thought it was interesting that the other end of the serpent was left up to your imagination. When I was there, I stealthily looked behind it, but it only ended abruptly, just out of sight from the front.

Snow Cake

---Snow Cake (2007) is a Toronto Film Festival film directed by Mark Evans. It contains the well known actors/actresses Alan Rickman (Harry Potter...) as the main character, Sigourney Weaver (Alien) as an autistic mother, and Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) as her neighbor next door. The visual characteristics of this film are centered around the characters.

---Rickman plays Alex Hughes, a troubled and lonely man driving to Winnepeg to meet with "an old friend". On his way, he stops by a diner and the daughter of the autistic woman plops herself in front of him, begging for a ride. Despite her dark makeup and gothic clothes, Vivienne is surprisingly bright. She cheerfully announces to him that she is planning to write a book on one of the darkest horrors of humanity... only she hasn't decided which. Vivienne dies in the next scene, but her character continues to live on as Alex tracks down her mother and learns more and more about them both.

---It is a crisp cold winter outside the autistic woman's (Linda's) impeccibly clean home. Snow globes litter the shelves, one with Vivienne's picture in it. The colours are clean and well defined in every scene throughout the movie. The scenes transition smoothly from one to the next. As both of them, as well as Vivienne's grandparents (who mostly raised her), prepare for the funeral, the movie slowly reveals little things about each character through short, simple scenes. For example, the truck driver that hit Alex's car and killed Vivienne comes to Linda's door and meets Alex. At the end of this scene, Alex runs away. About ten or fifteen minutes later in the movie, this is all explained.

---There's a neat scene at the very end, where a section of the kitchen counter, labelled "Alex's Space" is cleaned off. It merely shows each item disappering without anyone moving them.

---One of the main characteristics in this movie, is the unique way in how it shows Linda's grief. I don't want to give anything away, but despite first appearances, she does grieve for he daughter deeply.

Progress

---Like everyone else, I have a midterm this week, so I've been trying to do as much as I can over this weekend.

---My first stop was Home Depot to pick up scrap wood for the base. Then I needed to figure out what I could use for a hand crank, and what I could use for the 'globe' to rotate on top of. The only cranks at Home Depot turned out to be window openers. So I hopped onto the internet.

---After a few hours of searching, I finally found the perfect crank while I was scouring the Canadian Tire website. An ice fishing reel.

---We went on Saturday. The one that I was after wasn't set out yet, and they couldn't find it in the back, but there was another, slightly more expensive one that would work just as well. I still needed something that I could put a spool of twine around. Something that had two parts, one that could spin, and one that would stay still. At first I was thinking a hollow pipe with a rod inside it that I could somehow attach to my base, but they didn't have anything that would work. I had the fleeting idea of a toilet paper dispenser, but that either wouldn't have been able to turn, or wouldn't be able to support itself.

---So I was on my way back to the plumbing section for another look when I passed a bunch of kitchen utensils. And there it was. A corkscrew. It solved the problem of attaching it to the wood and it spun beautifully. The only thing wrong with it was that my new spool of twine wouldn't fit around it, so I hacked apart a toilet paper roll and attached it to the corkscrew with black electrical tape.

---The next part was fun. I wrapped the twine around the toilet paper roll while watching a couple of movies.

---Next, I started to put things together. I nailed the base and screwed in the corkscrew until its little metal arms were partially upraised (hopefully they'll be used later to support the globe). I also used two screws to attach the fishing reel to the wood (it's a nice reel, I want to be able to take it off and use it for other projects).

---Lacking popsicle sticks, I built a reasonably durable tower of toilet paper rolls that I might use to attach to the corkscrew handle and it would support the wire that comes out of the top of the globe and hold the paper airplane (which, in theory, should stay still while the globe is turning).

---The globe itself I began to make by covering a beach ball with paper mache and letting it dry. I managed to take the beach ball out safely through a hole, but I think I'll have to cut the globe in half anyways to make sure the parts are built stable enough in the middle.

Time

---This assignment is going to be fun.

---At first, I wanted to do this HUGE painting (I had already bought the frame-and really, it IS huge) of a girl sitting in front of her computer with piles of homework to do and all sorts of light sources... but then I had a reality check. If this is due next week, there's no way I would be able to finish that on time. I could do a detailed drawing on a smaller scale, but unless I did in coloured pencil or chalk pastel, I wouldn't be able to get the subtle colours I wanted.

---So.

---Since I've been reading all sorts of science-y books lately, I would like to try something different. I want to make a sculpture. I want to do a paper (or some other material) globe attatched to a hand crank, and it turns in one direction, and a paper airplane that either stays still, or goes in the other direction. It's an idea that's related to the speed of light. If an airplane goes in a certain direction around the earth (I think it's W to E), it will have experienced less time than if it had gone the exact same distance in the other direction.

Articles

---I love Madeleine L'engle. She's awesome.

---...Wow. I just looked up L'engle's name to make sure I spelled it right, and they're announcing a memorial of her on her website. She died on September 6th, 2007. 88 years old and having written sixty books in her lifetime. My Dad used to read me and my siblings "A wrinkle in Time" before bed when we were little.

---I've read her books all my life, but this article was especially interesting to read this because I've been slowly making my way through "The Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen Hawking. So I've been reading about the 'beginning' of time, and singularities, and different theories of time and space. It's really interesting.

---I really liked her point that really, we should never get bored. Since we have the ability for "high creativity" and all. I should have reminded myself of that last night, instead I watched three hours of HG-TV. Very, very sad.


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A Photo Aday Keeps the Mundane Away

---This has always been an idea that interested me. A photo a day. A small sketch a day. A tiny, quick painting a day. I've never actually managed it. But it's a nice idea. I've seen some "movies" on YouTube of people who took their own pictures, every day, in the same spot. It's somehow fascinating to watch their hair grow, and their clothes flip between summer short-sleeves and winter scarves, their expressions change.

---But Jeff Harris's idea would be even more intriguing. Where other people take his picture every day, doing normal things. Just what he does. It would be a nice reminder of however much of a pedestal we might like to stick people on. In some ways, we're all the same.

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Deadpan Intensity & Art That Demands and Rewards

---I usually don't like minimalist art, so I would have to agree with the author of ATD&R; three bricks and a twig laying on the ground has no appeal and even less meaning. But minimalist mirrors that show pictures when you breathe on them is pretty sweet. I had never heard of the work of Oscar Munoz before, but that is a unique way of remembering those who have disappeared in Columbia.

---Making art that slowly disintigrates, disappears, ect. after you spend all this time to put it together, has never really occurred to me. It almost seems to defy one of the purposes of art. But at the same time, it heightens the experience of art, because it won't be there for long, so you might pay attention and appreciate it more.