DAY 17

Back in the studio after a nice weekend! I had time to clear my head, and really think about how I am going to use some of these new materials to convey these bodily characteristics that I am obsessed with.

This weeks material: yarn/string

Have you ever heard of the artist Chiharu Shiota? She is a Japanese installation artist that deals with memory and the idea of displacement in her work. I discovered her over the weekend, and am currently obsessed with the way she transforms space with material. She uses yarn, a symbolic material in Asian culture, representing life. A continuous strand of red string that weaves and twists throughout your life. After studying with performance artist and founding postmodernist Marina Abramovic, her art was transformed and really blossomed into what it is today. She was able to do some performance art that opened her mind in new ways and really allowed her to become part of her art fully. She suspends various materials in her weaving of yarn and creates these surreal environments that are ghostly memories of her life, and extremely relatable to the viewer. But her pieces now are just simply breathtaking....

"Uncertain Journey" 2016

"The Key in the Hand" 2015

"Sleeping is like Death" 2016- Performance piece

If her like her art, her website is chiharu-shiota.com. Her work is just incredible.

With that said, I played around with yarn and string today, and created this piece that suspends a latex molded red blood cell form in the air. The idea is to have the viewer involved with this piece, webbing in and out of the yarn, and this red blood cell-like object is simultaneously ingesting and creating this web of yarn. (Symbolic of the blood stream). When photographing these images I wanted to demonstrate the shadows the yarn creates, but I was a little hard at the time of day with the light. I hope you get the idea regardless.