Process Journal Experiments

Every week you will have one experiement to complete - and document in your process journal, on your artist-Instagram account or on your portfolio website. Please label each one clearly so that I know what I am looking at!

​Many challenges we play with are courtesy of Sarah Urist Green and the brilliant minds at The Art Assignment.

Measuring Histories

While investigating the works of Theaster Gates, Sonya Clark and Brian Jungen, we are studying materiality and the meaning that objects can hold. Students were challenged to think about an aspect of their personal or cultural history that is hard to imagine, and then find a material to quantify, actualize, or measure that history. 
Kunvar chose to represent piece represents the battle of Saragarhi, a battle between 21 Sikh soldiers and about 10,000 Afghan tribals.

In this battle, the Sikh soldiers had to delay the Afghans so that they couldn’t capture the nearby forts before sunset and the other forts can get ready for the attack.

He says, "The reason I chose this story is because it shows the bravery and courage of the Sikhs and is an important part of my history. But sadly this battle is not known by a lot of people. So, I wanted to spread the word and make sure their deaths are remembered."

Kunvar's project was made by joining strips of squares, each square with dimensions of 2x2 cm. The 21 Sikh soldiers are represented by one square and that square has a religious symbol on it, The Afghans are represented by joining 476 plain white squares. I kept both of these strips side by side to show the size comparison between the two forces and to show that even though the Sikhs knew that were outnumbered and going to die, they still fought and didn’t leave their post.
Ibukun created a collection of threaded yarn that totals 17 strands, and mimics a hairstyle. It is a visual representation of how long the Yoruba People have existed: 1700 years.

Each strand represents 100 years of history. The Yoruba People are known to be extremely creative groups, famous for sculpting, creative writing, drawing, painting, elaborate hairstyles and more.

​Hairstyles are key in the Yoruba Tribe, and Ibukun chose to thread the yarn into a hairstyle called kiko.
Josh, a cellist, asked the question: "How many notes would an accomplished composer have composed in his life?" He calculated averages, using only large scale musical pieces. It ends up that an average of 1 313 120 notes would be a (respectable) composer's life's work. In total it would take 23 pages of whole note tremolos repeated each line, in order to reach that amount. Here are the pages where Josh quantified his potential "life's work".
Competitive swimming has been a very big part of Hannah's life since age 6... she has been swimming 6 days a week for about 8 years.. She had never really thought about the distance she has covered in her training sessions at the pool, so for her Measured HIstories project she decided to consider the number of metres swam per month, using yarn.

Each strand of yarn she measured was 10 cm and represents 2000m swam. She swims about 6500m per practice, for 9 practices a week, which totals 58,500m per week, and 234,000m per month. 234,000 divided by 2000 makes 117. Hannah cut 117 lengths of yarn at 10 cm each, and made this yarn ball.

It is a balled up representation of energy, captured.
Ayushi thought about how 
Bisola's project represents the time and effort that it takes to maintain and braid / twist Black hair, She timed her hairstylist braiding her hair - 34 braids. Bisola's hair was 27 inches long and it took 3 hours to braid. 
Ayushi measured her own personal history by considering her physical body and counting time.

She used her menstrual cycles, from the date she got her first period, to today (four years in total).

First she researched how much blood (on average) a woman loses per month, and then calculated how much blood loss that would be over the four years: 108 cups.

She used food colouring to tint the water that she measured out into her bathtub.
Maria realized soon after coming to Canada that her family's stockpile of onions was not a common sight in Canadian homes. In her Russian family, bulk bags of onions were commonplace; they are a staple food in Russian diets.

​"We add fried onion to eggs, potatoes, soups, stews, casseroles, and just about any savory dish you can imagine.

I came to realize that not everyone does this, and thus it became part of my identity as a Russian immigrant. My close friends now make jokes about my onion obsession on a regular basis.

This is a flipbook made of onion shells. This is the approximate amount of onion shells you would expect to see after one day of cooking in our house. One onion used at breakfast, another two for lunch, and another two for dinner. They are sewn together in a book as a reference to documentation of history. By looking at this book you can see into a part of my family's daily life."
Hooda chose to bring in a rope to work with.

"Over 80 years ago, Libya became an independent country when Omar Mukhtar was hung. He was a symbol for a united, free Libya and his resilience and determination could not be silenced with a rope."

Object Empathy

We are learning about materiality and how objects can seem to hold or represent emotions and feelings. Students were asked to find an object they feel sorry for. It might be broken, used, pathetic or ugly. Then they were challenged to fix it in their own style, allowing the "repairs" to remain visible.

​Clockwise from top left: 
🔹Sarah's torn leaf las been stitched up with thread and staples.
🔹Scott sewed up this discarded banana peel and painted it bright yellow to cover the brown spots,
🔹Bronwyn created mini casts for her stuffed crab's torn claws, and asked all his "friends" to sign them.

Constructed Landscapes

We are learning about materiality and the ways that objects can change meaning when they are re-contextualized. Students were asked to gather materials to make a constructed landscape of their choosing, by combining natural elements with things that reference natural landscapes.
Here is Payton's work.
Here is David's work.
Here is Shuchen's work.
Here is Chlista's work.