Formal Site Specific Sculpture

For our Formal Site Sculpture I chose to mimic the triangular shape formed by the ramps railing.  I used these solid wood sides for each layer to play off of the solid wall formed on one side of this railing.  My sculpture has the exact same shape going from largest at the bottom and subtly gets smaller towards the top. I chose to do this and slightly twist the sculpture to play off of the wrapping ramp that surrounds the sculpture and also to give the illusion of steps, since the stairs are straight ahead of this site. I used wood as my material to blend in with the wood pillars surrounding my area.

2 Languages

The University of Washing – Tacoma is made up of historic buildings, all with colorful histories, dating back to the 1800’s.  In order to preserve some of our cities historic feel, the university has left much of our historic buildings outer features alone, including, their original brick architecture and left over ghost writing.  For our third project, two languages, I am going to use the Mattress Factory to draw a piece of history from and build off.  Currently the Mattress Factory houses UWT’s Admissions office and most of the student services and student involvement offices, as well as some classrooms. It still has much of its historic look on the outside, including ghost writing left on the side of the building from previous businesses, although the inside is completely renovated. 

       At the time the Mattress Factory was built, Tacoma was in the midst of huge economic developments. Several buildings were being built and business being started, most building still existing today.  The Mattress Factory was originally built in 1890 and was first used as the Lindstrom-Berg Cabinet Factory. According to UWT it was the largest cabinet company in the city. In 1907 the building was burnt down by a fire, “Curiously, the alley between this building and the wagon works was the point of origin for the district’s only two large fires: the first destroyed the cabinet works in October of 1907, and the second gutted the wagon works” (Anderson). Only 3 months later, the building was rebuilt in brick, which is the same structure we have on campus today.  The Lindstrom-Berg Cabinet Factory went out of business in 1928 and was used for several different businesses after including, a creamery, grocery wholesaler, and manufacturers.

For our project I am going to focus on the historic fire in 1907 to build off.

Although I cannot find the cause of the fire it is known that no one was hurt and the cabinet factory was able to continue running 3 months after the fire occurred. I am going to represent the fire in my piece by almost, literally, recreating a fire. To do this I am going to use red, yellow, and orange cello paper and cut flames out at different lengths. These flames will be attached to a silver/metal box fan. When the fan is turned on the flames will flicker and flow in its breeze. There will be a spot light on the flames, causing the colors and shapes to project on the wall, giving the illusion of the flames engulfing the wall.  This fire is being tied to my chosen site by blending my shape and material (metal) in with the square vents coming down from the ceiling. I will have the fan being held up about 4 feet off the ground by metal poles that look as if they are being extended from part of the venting fixtures. I will repeat this design with 2-3 vents in my area.

Bibliography

Anderson, Elizabeth. "Tacoma's Union Station Historic District." Tacoma Culture. City of Tacoma Economic Development Department, n.d. Web. 25 Oct 2012. <http://www.tacomaculture.org/historic/resource/Union Station Dist Walk.pdf?>.

 "Mattress Factory (MAT)." University of Washingtong | Tacoma. University of Washington. Web. 25 Oct 2012. <http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/campus-map/buildings/mattress-factory-mat>.

Integrating Self

For this project I choose to integrate myself in with the UWT Campus. I choose to middle of campus for my site and to represent myself as a tree to show how I have rooted myself here (represented by the nails at the end of my "roots") and am now "branching" out because of  all the new opperunities becoming available to me . A tree can be made into so many different things and as it gets older it grows more branches, much like myself. As I get older and am getting ready to graduate I am beginning to branch out and so many opportunities for me to become something else are becoming available with my experiences .

Floor To Ceiling

Our group consisted of 3 people and our goal was to connect the floor to the ceiling. We were to consider the physical and conceptual ways of doing this.  Our group decided to physically connect the floor to the ceiling by using translucent fishing line to connect to the ceiling which then connected to each of us and then attached back to the floor.

We decided to take this project in this direction to represent how we are all connected to this place (UW) and therefore we all have a connection to each other. The translucent fishing line represents that even though we don't always feel connected to one another, our connection to UW brings us together. In our display, even though you can't clearly see the fishing line attached to the ceiling, which attached to each one of us, which then attached back to floor, it is still there connecting each of us together.

We each had the role of figuring out how to attach ourselves to one another while all being attached to a string going from the ceiling to the floor. We did this by having another string go from one members head, to my heart, to the other members hand, which then connected back to the first members head. We did this to represent how big of a role using your head, heart, and hands are in creating art.

The elements and principles of design that pertain to our project are:
Lines: They are translucent and represent the bond or goal we all share that brought us together here at UW, even though we can't always see or feel how we're connected.

Shape: Is geometric, each set of lines create different triangles representing each bond created with each other and our site (UW).

Direction: We have lines going vertically, connecting us to our site. We also have horizontal lines connecting us to each other.

Color: We Used translucent fishing line to represent the bond we share that we don't always necessarily feel. We also all dressed in black to show us as being unified.