Crystal Ball 

silicon, plaster, wood, paint

 Thinking back on the items that sat in the same place on the shelves, unmoved and 

unnoticed in my childhood home is what drove me to create this piece. A crystal spikey ball that sat in the same place for nineteen years of my upbringing, reflecting the light that would shine through the windows, and for some reason, felt like the most sentimental thing in the room. My dad had told me that he bought it for my mom as a gift when he couldn’t even afford it. 

I replicated this sentimental item by creating a mold out of silicon to create the ball that the spikes would lie atop of. I incorporated wood spikes to have a mixed-media feel. The bright pinks and oranges on the ball contrast the wood.

 

                                                    

                                                In progress
 

The inspiration behind this work stems from my curiosity witht forms that I had been puzzled by in nature. How is one form in nature able to look so organic and then another appears to be almost mechanical? There seems to be a pattern with design in nature where there are similar shapes in the trees, in the leaves, in the ground, through the water, everywhere. These lines, rings, and designs that I’ve seen in the wild, I wanted to connect with my idea of mechanics and intertwine them. To portray this I would use wood and lights and play with perspective so that viewers would have to look within. I began by taking pieces of wood and cutting them into squares, and then would slowly sand and make cuts into each piece. These pieces I would form into different circles, all with their own thickness, textures, colors, and circumference. I was interested in seeing how forming the pieces in different ways would look as if the wood would be moving.  Once I found a place where every wood piece seemed to connect together in a lifelike, but also mechanical way, I glued them in place. I then put lights within that would interact with the wood, the room itself, and the viewer. The lights illuminate the wood, orange tones peek through the thinner wood and through the cracks. The wood changes with the lighting and appears to be alive. This sparks curiosity in the viewer and will lead them to look inside to find the different edges and curves and how the light interacts with it.

 

Bony 

wood, acrylic, high gloss, magnet 

This sculpture was inspired by a fascination with the body and movement. I desired to play around with my idea of the spine and morph it into something that could spark curiosity as well as be interacted with. The concept of the spine is relatively simple appearing to many, though, the human body is complex and takes on emotional and physical turmoil unseen by the naked eye. To bring this concept forward with my piece, I would change wood through color, texture, and form. I used wood pieces, varying in length, with different curves and lines, to mimic the vertebrae. Once the wood was shaped to my liking, I used bright green paint and a high gloss that changed the appearance of the wood altogether. The shiny green is illuminated in light and contrasts the familiar anatomical colors that we have been conditioned to recognize as human. The shape of the wood and the color/shine on the surface work together to lead the viewer to recognizable territory but leave room for their own ideas to appear.  While the spine is vertical,  it still bends, can break, and is moveable. I used magnets attached to each end of every wood piece so viewers can come and connect, disconnect, and build their own spine structures. When The sculpture is connected together with magnets, it appears sturdy. Though when one comes to move the pieces how they desire, they will find that the magnets cannot always connect, there is a negative and positive end. This makes for a tricky and intriguing puzzle: a wrong move and the spine-like sculpture comes crashing down.