Kaleigh Brann

Human’s Cycle of Natural and Man-Created Items (18 January 2018)

For my thesis project, I want to study how artistic mediums such as glass, metal, paper, textiles, etc. begin in a natural state and are created into useful or useless items by humans. I hope to then take the medium and return it back to an origin by weaving it in as if it belongs in nature. My forms will be land art and then photographed for display.

One question I have been asking myself is how I can relate this to conservation. As of now, I know all these resources can be reused and recycled and like with metal, sometimes at great value. Conservation and natural landscapes have been and interest of mine since the fourth grade when I went to a lecture on the greatness of a curly light bulb. Before then, I had no idea the Earth was in trouble. I believe having all the knowledge you can about conservation is also important.

For my research, I intend on using the library and internet. I plan on researching land artist to create plans such as Christo and Jeanne Claude, and Robert Smithson. Books would be beneficially for studying the land art movement in detail. I also am planning on using the internet to study about the cycles we have today.

I experimented with this process last semester in warm glass. I traced the knots of a tree, created molds and placed frit in the molds. This was just an experiment that was successful. In my thesis project though, I would placed the material into where it originated from. (Trees and glass do not have a natural relationship.)