Kamingle Does Art: June 2013

Artist Statement - Camille

Artist Statement

Andy Goldsworthy’s documentary we watched about his art and the process of making his pieces inspired me to make pieces similar to that myself. I took the opportunity presented to us and created art inspired by his work and the nature surrounding us. His work inspired by the rivers and tides gave me the idea to do the same type of work giving back to nature and the Earth. Although my art is much smaller and not as complex or elaborate as Goldsworthy’s, we came up with ideas making sketches, trying and failing, and producing art truly satisfactory.

Our first piece was a nest type thing. We used sticks and twigs weaving them around the tree and its branches. Although it proved difficult in the beginning, once there was a base, the nest finally came together. Using different sized sticks was helpful, balancing out the weight to different parts of the nest somewhat equally. Smaller twigs often broke or fell off the nest while bigger sticks occasionally weighed the nest down too much causing it to mildly fall apart. Once the weight was spread out fairly evenly, the nest stayed in tack pretty well. Then we added a few leaves to make our nest look a little more natural.

Our second piece looked a little bit like a target or a bulls-eye. There were rings around the bottom of the tree in the shape of circles. First we sketched a design for our piece and then we began. After deciding what the best and most effective material would be to make this piece of art was, we gathered the materials. We used the stems or the bottom of dandelions. Most of the flowers had already fallen off the top of the stems. Once a fair amount of them were gathered, we laid them out and picked the best ones. Then, we started laying them out around the base of the tree to create rings. Capturing the whole process, we put the stems end to end in ring shapes. To top it off, we lined dandelion tops right around the tree at the top of our first ring. Our inspiration for this piece was the rings inside of the tree used to determine the age of the tree. We tried to bring the inside of the tree to the outside.

Our inspiration was nature and life. We tried to give back to the earth. Nests are places where more creatures and organisms come to life. Birds and other animals bring their offspring to life in nests. To me, nests symbolize life. Using art, we wanted to give back to the earth with nature. The “Ring Around the Rosy” piece was also inspired by life. The rings inside of the tree are used to tell how old the tree is. They also tell a story of the tree’s life, the conditions it lived through with weather. We wanted to bring the tree’s story to life and show it for the world to see. The rings we made in our piece were symbolic of the rings inside the tree.

Artist Statement- Kira

My work is inspired by Andy Goldsworthy's genius work. His work with rivers and

tides truly made a mark in my mind. While my art isn't on a large scale as his, the essence is stronger than ever. The journey on the path to create my work, from the ideas, to the sketches, and final product was what fulfilled my satisfaction of accomplishment. There was ohs and aws in the formation of ideas that filled me with excitement and motivation to do my very best, even if it didn't turn out as planned. It is the journey, or in this case, the process that counts. Ideas motivated me to pour my heart and soul into a little masterpiece.

In Nesting Kamingles, the materials used was twigs and leaves. I used my hands to place each stick in place, balancing them atop each other. Using each previous stick to continue the rest of the piece was key. Truly, it was a game of stacking and hoping it wouldn't fall. Luckily, it didn't. The tree branches was a base and supported the additional nest shape.

In Ring Around the Rosy, the materials used was dandelion stems and flower. Using my hands, I lined the steams around the tree trunk in rings with varying distances separating each rings. The farther the rings got from the tree, the larger they became.

My art is writing the next chapter in nature. Nests are symbolic of new life, since eggs are hatched there. Those little birds will grow up and continue the forever lasting story of nature. The story of nature is everything. From a wild fire in Alaska to the cycle of an egg to a butterfly. Anything and everything that occurs in nature is part of Nature's story. When I sawed down a tree for Christmas, I noticed rings in the wood. These rings tell a story of the tree's life and al the hardships it went through. I wrote the next chapter in the story using the dandelion rings around the trunks. The larger spaces between rings represents a good year with lots of rain and wonderful and pleasant conditions. The small, tighter, and more compact spaces is the hardships, the droughts, and storms the tree faced. All of it tells a story and that story is Nature.