Papercraft Object: Final Revision

The template used to cut out the thyroid.

Unfolding the pieces and adding triangular tabs

Render 1 of the thyroid

Render 2 of the thyroid

As mentioned in the previous post, I have had cancer that was not only rare but also spread to other parts of my body. It made me realize the fragile nature of life. Within a moment, life can be changed forever from an illness. The life you knew before is now more.
This piece represents the thyroid I no longer have and cancer that changed my life forever. What is a Thyroid, is something I was asked by a classmate when we were discussing our work. Your thyroid is a multifaceted organ. It is in your neck in the middle under Adam's apple which in medical terms is called the thyroid cartilage. Your thyroid is an essential gland it controls the following: your metabolism weight, mood, heart rate, body temperature, ability to concentrate and focus, fertility, hormones, energy level, and hair growth. The thyroid is a vital organ, one I no longer have. Receiving thyroid replacement therapy occurs when there are malfunctions in the thyroid gland. 

Having had cancer that destroyed my thyroid, it was removed due to the entire thing being cancerous. The tumors I had in the rest of my neck/chest were removed, six and half hours of surgery, muscle, and 24 positive tumors were removed. I was left missing a vital gland, one in which most with lack of knowledge of anatomy wouldn't know where it is or what it does. Cancer changed my life, and I am not afraid of it even though two different types did try to snuff me out.

The project I chose to do was my thyroid, when I share what I have been through, only a fraction, of course, it seems to shock people or shut them up. Cancer is my inspiration for this piece to show it in with paper quilling and a 3D object in real life. To bring about awareness for rare cancer that generally affects the elderly. 
The feedback I received was generally the same, questions of what a thyroid was and that the idea was morbid or perhaps depressing. As a survivor, the story may sound sad or depressing. Do not take pity on me, for genuinely, I'm not too fond of it. I survived and am a cancer survivor that indeed should be more of a reflection of hope within a dark world of disease.

I cut various strips and cut out the pieces similar to the prototype I used. The quilling took many hours. The paper cut lace-like is more rectangular shape then something fancy mostly to make it not look glamorous. I decided to use bright colors to make people want to look at it so one could see the different depths and perhaps convey slight emotion. The project went relatively well for me; it did, however, have mishaps, and things needed to be redone. I did find it odd even though my wash my hands vigorously and frequently gluing still had different places where it appeared dirty. The dirtiness bothered; after remaking the piece a few times, I just accepted the imperfections. After all, a disease isn't pretty and is generally grungy and creepy.

Papercraft Object: Phase I Prototype

I decided to do an object I lost. It’s not a typical object it is actually a organ I lost almost thirteen years ago. I was diagnosed with a rare form of thyroid cancer. I almost died. I had 24 positive tumours removed, muscle, lymph nodes, and my thyroid. I have a foot long scar on my neck.
I wanted to do this object with various techniques and if I have time I would like to do a similar idea to that if Raya. Her pieces like the Olympic athletes gave me an idea for stacking up the thyroid and building it that way. Should I have time to do so I would like to do another piece in this way.
My prototype is far from refined. I am thinking the quilling I will do on the final paper piece will be more detailed and I will take my time to crest detail in the piece. I also want to add paper lace, my own cut paper to make it look lace like.  Ideally to put this over top sections and have the quilling almost look like it’s exploding out of the piece. The shape of the thyroid isn’t exactly accurate because when someone has cancer the tumours create an irregular boarder around the piece. Cancer is not symmetrical it is a asymmetrical mess of masses. Perhaps I am taking a risk going against the grain of the norm for this assignment but I would like to get the point of my object apart as it isn't something that is perfectly square, or round, cancer is less geometrical and more sporadic. 

Papercraft Objects: Digital Samples

Object 1.
This piece is a frog. I did this by stitching together the shapes. I used to make origami paper frogs so that is where I drew my inspiration from.

Object 2.

This bird is simplistic it has one side at the back that is open so that it would be able to be suspended in the air but also move should air travel into it. The inspiration for this piece came from "M" birds the ones used to depict birds far away the viewer. 

Object 3.
This piece is a starting place for my papercraft idea of the thing I lost. It will however have more shapes added onto and perhaps within it. This one being the starting place for an organ I no longer have.

Object 4.

Originally I was thinking of sun dial when I created this. I however ended up adding larger triangles
 to this and thus made it a confusing sun dial, one in which no one would be able to tell the time.

Object 5.

This piece is a skull, I just started stitching pieces together and removing pieces and this what I was left with. This eye less, nose less skull represents the blindness of society to the ableist views breed into it.

Object 6.

A shell less snail, as time passes and life moves forward things are lost. A snail who lost its shell would indeed be formless like its rolled out form. 

Object 7.
This piece was inspired by the folded paper game of chance where you make a paper pope hat. https://ourpastimes.com/how-to-make-a-paper-pope-hat-12543311.html 

Object 8.
For this piece I was aiming to create a dome like building with open glass windows, simplistic and aiming for a similar feel to the Amphitheater in Australia.

Object 9.
A sugar cube broken down into its simple form. Sugar cube are something I remember from childhood as my mother dropped them into her tea.

Object 10.

This shape is a pyramid, it does represent anything in particular but it did help me to learn the stitching aspect for the project. 

Failure piece...
There was for sure more then one of these pieces where I over stitched and perhaps didn't stitch right to the end. I found this project to be the most challenging and perhaps the most frustrating for me so far. I did want to do circular shapes since those are the shapes I like the most. Circular shapes would also be needed for my idea for paper craft. I do think I have a lot of learning to do still with rhino. Even when I stitched and stitched going around and creating what I thought was a closed area it would still leave a wire frame. This left me perplexed and confused. I am looking forward to learning more and hopefully figuring out how I keep running into the same issue. 

Papercraft Research

Paper sculpting, creating a 3D object out of flat paper, is an enticing concept. I looked through the list of the artists who create paper crafted items. I have to admit some of them seemed intricate; the overall attention to detail that Li Hongbo creates is breathtaking. I ended up finding my inspiration later down the list of artists. Raya Sader is a paper artist she has an Esty shop and is known for her minute plants crafted out of paper.

            Sader, created various little plants of paper. These pieces are tiny and cute, and all seem to have their personality. Sader attributes much of what she does as learned from architecture. "I think architecture has influenced everything I do, I feel like I apply in some way everything I learned, everything from color, composition and model making, to structure, architecture taught me to see the world differently (I love it so much) and I feel it's always present in what I do" https://www.brwnpaperbag.com/2018/08/08/raya-sader-bujana-paper-plants/

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/04/paper-olympians-raya-sader-bujana/ 

 
Sader also pays close attention to detail as she shares her Olympic paper sculpted humans. The piece I wish to create is an organic form, one in which may be seen as unconventional and far from a traditional design route. The attention to a tiny detail in the majority of her work made me want to do something similar. Is this achievable? Since I haven't ever crafted or sculpted out of paper, this will be an exciting project to tackle.

Sader's human forms are well-executed, she uses various layers of papers in varied shapes to create the depth of her piece. The people are devoid of facial features, but you still get the sense they are Olympic athletes because of their physicality. Ideally, I would like to create a piece that invokes questions or confusion. Since the object to me is something that I lost. The part of me that will forever be missing.

Mesh Mashup: HD Renders (Milestone Project 1)

             

             

As per usual, I again changed my image; I have a tendency to not do the same things the same way twice. Mostly because it is boring for me. I like challenges in general. I must push myself to learn to become a fully rounded artist. This week we used a new program called Rhino 6, it was an interesting learning curve.

This piece has really got me thinking of my over all practice and the reasons I create things. I always aim to create though provoking things, and many times with a political message. As we know this piece represents the unnecessary capture of Orca’s and the short lives they live within captivity. 

Third time is a charm perhaps. I decided to do less people on this one and have them staggered, perhaps a morbid thought for me to have to wish that the tourist numbers to these parks dwindle out. The orca’s I made bigger to make the cup look even smaller, that there is truly no room for them to live a comfortable life. I chose to do many things in this piece in a metallic feel, I find the reflective surfaces of metal to be fascinating and also to represent the hardnosed corporate monsters. Perhaps a feeling of disgust washes over others when they look at my pieces. Reality isn’t pretty. I chose a reflective surface instead of a bold shadow because the within the confines of the orca’s prison they see human faces and then their own. Reminded that they are unable escape, and must continue to do tricks for food. The people are staggered some in odd positions to show the naivety or drunkenness of society. Ignorance is not bliss it is a false sense of bliss, ignorance is ignoring the truth. These people are the ones being sucked into the corporate vacuum.

Changing the colour slightly, materials used and size gives my render an air of creepy realistic surrealism. I hope to change minds, provoke thoughts and encourage others to do their research.

My Thoughts; Reliant Objects + Ready Player 2

              “Reliant Objects,” is an exhibition about the objects in lives acting like a mirror for us to view ourselves in the exhibitions work, this is paraphrased from the write up on the wall displayed within the gallery. (Refer to the photographed below).

              As I walked around the gallery, I found myself drawn to specific items. The chair seemed to hold some secrets of the past and whom sat there. It is in a way a mashup looking piece taking three chairs to make one.

The piece which resonated the most with me was a delicate looking piece of cloth. I found myself lost in its intricacy. The floral accents throughout the piece remind me of an odd shapped window or perhaps a flower bed.

The five vases in a row looked as though they could have been printed and modeled from a computer. It looks as though the far right one is an unrefined image, and the transition the pieces go through to get to their final refined process.

The vase with exploding something out of the top of it, or perhaps it is growth. I find it intriguing and I want to know more about this piece
and the artists thought process.

I do enjoy wandering through galleries before I read any other information as I like to form questions within my mind to later be answered by write ups I find. I didn’t however find many if any answers to the questions I have. 

              “Ready Player 2,” is an exhibit that took me back to the old days, playing on Nintendo with my brother. The arcade machines made me want to play on them, but I don’t generally touch anything in galleries so I admired it from a distance.

The set up of the table top game, old board games, reminded me of a simpler time. A time before tech took over our lives. Granted D&D is still a big thing in todays world and table top gaming is still going strong.

The video game like clouds within the gallery were a nice touch to the ambience of the room. The controllers on poster like paper reminded me of posters of games I play now and used to play. I found that this exhibition spoke to my inner child and brought me back to a simplistic head space. 

It was an overall enjoyable experience. I enjoyed how it felt for few moments I had the whole gallery to myself, I absorbed much imagery into my spongey artist brain. 

Mesh Mashup: Selection and Refinement

The object I decided to refine was something I heard was a neat idea, but didn’t seem to be the most popular among those I spoke with. I decided this design should be more realistic. I didn't go with the ideas that others were interested in, I was more interested in perfecting and honing my technique. The cup and the liquid for this piece were infuriating, and I honestly enjoyed pushing myself to get outside of my comfort level again.

People seemed interested in my creature, but as I am not going into character design and personally am not interested in working on something I lack passion in. Lack of passion for me translates to unrefined, and lazy work for myself. I found the shark monster, and the couch to be the easiest pieces for me to create so far.

I am a realist. Someone who believes in bringing the truth of reality to life. I refuse to stay quiet. I have been incorporating, corporate corrupting into my practice for some time. Instead of using the humpback whale I did previously I choose a dead and rotting Orca. This piece shows the disparity of a creature that is majestic, but has become a source of entertainment and profit for a company that says they are doing what they do in order to help sea life. Life isn't cut and dry, it’s not all fluffy clouds puppies and kitties. Life is raw, and thus my art is raw.

I changed the liquid spilling from the cup to make it representational of the lives taken by captive orcas like the trainers at SeaWorld. In addition to the lives of Orca's taken by living in a human made habitat. Don't get me wrong I know we are destroying our oceans, but logically why is keeping a large mammal in a tiny bath tub ok? How is it even ethical at this point? Animals of this size should be protected and live free. The people around the edge of the splash are the customers, those who go to these parks in hopes of glimpsing an Orca. Yes, they get to see a majestic creature up close that has been trained to jump through hoops. The consumer is at time not educated about what truly happens to these creatures. The size of the tanks alone is terrible, this is why the cup is floating. The only time these whales are truly free from captivity is when they die.

“The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.” – Oxford Dictionary. My concept ties into the juxtaposition category since it takes four things that don't go together. You would never see a whale in a cup of blood, nor people celebrating around whale carcasses.

"Remix culture is a society that allows and encourages derivative works by combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product. A remix culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holders. In his book Remix, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig presents this as a desirable idea."  https://www.definitions.net/definition/Remix%20culture . For the purpose of this assignment I have taken images from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:668841/  with the use of the images from this site I was able to create the work of art in mesh mixer. I edited and combined different images to make a new image. Thus, fitting within the definition of Remix Culture.

Is this piece one that fits into the read and write culture "Read and Write Culture, not just consuming is important but to create and to share that creativity is important." http://us.aving.net/news/view.php?articleId=17613 I believe my piece fits within the quote mentioned above. As I have said previously, I believe in creating art work that speaks to people when I am not around. Using this piece can help others to see a reality not always spoken of. The hard topics, the disruptive topics need to be documented and expressed through creativity.

Mash-up is “a mixture or fusion of disparate elements.” – Oxford Dictionary. I believe my piece fits into the mash-up category. I have mixed different images to combine them into one piece.

Over all I believe I have an understanding of the terms we have covered from mash-up, remix culture, read and write culture, and juxtaposition. I did my best to cover all of these points in my writing and within the work itself.