Alison's Photography Blog

I went to Arthur Gansen’s artist talk on his sculptural machines on December 5, 2019. During the artist talk, Gansen showed us a lot of his work, and the progression of his work developing over the years. He explained that ever since he was a kid, he was always interested in the way things moved, which continued onto his adult years as he kept making these beautiful moving sculptures.  I liked a lot of his sculptures, and I was particularly drawn to the one where it looks like this one tiny wishbone is slowly carrying the large complicated machine behind it. It really made me think about what was powering what and how it was actually moving. There were wheels on the bottom but I didn’t see any motors or anything attached to it. It made me think that the whole thing needed both the giant machine in the back and the tiny wishbone in the front to move forward properly I was also interested in his sculpture where the chair exploded, went to the depths of space, and came back togethe

My final project is a self portrait through paper. I wanted these photos to represent the parts of myself that I try to hide and conceal from the world. The first three photos are meant to show my messy unorganized thoughts that are clamoring to come out that I try to restrain. I can't actually yell at someone to "stop kicking me" so I write it down angrily and hold it inside. The paper stars are represent my obsessiveness, where I get overly fixated on one specific thing and let it consume my thoughts. The last couple of photos show my general frustration with school work, but they also show the random urges I get to do strange things that don't make any sense. Where I feel like I always have to restrain myself from doing things like putting paper in my mouth even if I know I shouldn't.