Project 3 - Artist Statement

Relief Cabinet

(view with lights off)

I struggle with anxiety, as do many others. Over the years, I have found several things that help me cope and deal with my anxiety. Inside of this magical little cabinet, you will find each one that I hold near and dear to my heart. These are things that I do not want to lose, things that I want to hold on to. We put things inside jars to keep and preserve them. We open them when we need them.

The cabinet itself brings about mystery. You have to open this strange, glowing box. The outside design is a paisley like design that I love and feel it is a self-portrait in a way. When you open the magnet box, the lights from the back of the box illuminate the jars and make them mysterious and intriguing.

With the lights off and the music of a very playful, mystifying, and slightly creepy music box, you can have a very intimate experience with this piece. You must use the light from the box to read the labels and look at it's contents. You can remove the jars and examine each, learning a little about me and the contents with each label's description.


Much like a medicine cabinet, "Relief Cabinet" helps me cope with illness. It is an individual experience.



The music is the instrumental "Once Upon A December" from Anastasia.

Here is a link to view the video: Relief Cabinet

Note: (My phone's video camera does not capture the glow in the dark detailing on the outside of the box, but it was my attempt to show the experience. It's much cooler in person! [And you can actually see everything in person, the video doesn't do it justice.] Sorry, I just feel like crap today. I didn't want to spread anything!)

Project 3 - part 3

Making the box for these to go in was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I went through several ideas of how to make them fit inside a box I found, but it came down to me having to make them out of foam core.

I put the lights inside the box and covered it with a piece of silver tissue paper. I wanted it to seem magical and intriguing. The lights really set this off.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do on the outside of the box. I really loved the design it had on it, so I didn't want to paint over it. I was going to put paper over it and put a design on it in glow-in-the-dark paint, but I decided I really just loved the outside of the box by itself.

(Sorry for the janky order of pictures on this post. I'm not sure why I can't seem to get them to do what I want, haha.)

The box without shelves and without
tissue paper!

I ended up putting the glow paint
on the outside design. (lights off)

The struggle!!

The outside was just too pretty!
I love paisley too! (with lights on)

The inside of the box with the lights, tissue paper,
and the shelves. (Main light off)

Project 3 - part 2

After I decided to make things that I wanted to keep in the jars, I thought about the things that I go to during my anxiety. The first and foremost is my fiance, Erick. He helps me so much. (Unless, of course, I'm anxious because of him, haha.) Another safehaven is making art, specifically wheel throwing or using clay in general. It has helped me so much over the past year and I feel like the ceramics world is where I belong. A silly thing I love, as I'm young at heart, is glitter in water. It's not only pretty, but it's just so cool to look at! Glitter jars make me happy and help me breathe. The main reason I'm young at heart is because of Disney; it reminds me of a time in my life where I didn't have all the anxieties that I do as a young adult. And last, but not least, the ocean makes me lose all sadness and worry I've ever had. I love the ocean, the water, everything aquatic or water related.

So there were my jar ideas: Erick, art, glitter jar, Disney, and the ocean.

I collected a few things for each jar to represent them.

The glitter jar after it settles.
The back of it's label says, "Shake."

Ceramics jar. Full of broken ceramic
pieces from my ceramics 1 class.

My dearest Erick. Inside this jar are our tickets
to our first date, a few different rose petals that
have fallen off the ones I have kept,
and a photo roll of us in a photobooth
from our friends wedding.

The ocean. It has sand and some shells
that aren't from a beach. It also has a crab
carcass and a sea shell covered in barnacles
that I got off Whidbey Island, WA.

Disney! This jar has an autograph I got
from Ariel in Disney World,
Ariel's dress, and Flounder.

Project 3 - part 1

For weeks I struggled with ideas for this project. I was having what seemed to be a constant anxiety attack. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't sleep well. I was struggling with more than just school.

I had a few ideas go in and out of my head about projects about anxiety. I thought about possible ideas using a fish bowl, putting things inside that bowl as they were trapped and we stared at it like it was a piece in a gallery. (Which, hypothetically, it is...)

After a few weeks of hating my ideas and feeling really lost, I decided to start with putting things in jars instead of a fish bowl, putting multiple things inside a jar. I thought about putting them inside some sort of cabinet, something that opens up to reveal it is much more than what it appears.

As the week went by, I collected a few things at a time. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was going to even use them, but I thought they'd be cool somehow. I got 6 jars, some labels on strings, and some small stringed lights. I decided that instead of putting bad things inside the jars, to keep good things inside them as to preserve them, things that I didn't want to let get away from me.

This picture is actually upside down for some reason,
but it shows the idea I had to put them inside something.

This picture shows my anxiety word map, the idea for the label, the jars and I had thought about a suitcase or brief case like box.

Project 2: Artist Statement

I have been a tea drinker for a while now. It started back during my senior year of high school; I have several teas that "taste" like a chilly day of 2012. My tea love followed me into college and my mum recently bought me a tea pot that was a "tea for one" pot where everything was boiled and steeped in the same pot and the bottom of the pot was also a tea cup. This, along with my many other tea pots at my house (I seriously have 3 and I live alone, haha), inspired this project.
I made the model for the casting by throwing it on the wheel in separate parts: the round body, the spout and the lid. Afterwards I made a little lid. However for the casting, I cut that pot in half.
I projected a 15 second stop motion animation of water boiling over a gas fire burner with the water turning into steam and then creating a small heart shape before evaporating.
I was surprised with how well it all turned out in the end considering I didn't have much time prior to critique to actually experiment with the projection. The distance between the casting and the wall created a shadow and a depth that was surprisingly nice.
I'm happier with the end result more so than I expected. I do enjoy stop motion animation, but I think the whole "steam" aspect was a bit overly ambitious and I was unaware of how difficult it would actually be.
I learned a lot about materials in stop motion during this project and I hope to put those skills to use as we continue this class!

Project 2: part 2

Here's a snap shot of my janky set up for filming (arial view). (Ignore my onesie pants and my fuzzy socks...)

After I made my casting of the tea pot, I traced an outline of it on white card stock. After I cut that out, I taped it onto my background. I used black fabric to create the "stove" where the "flames" would be. I used some canvas pieces to create water inside the tea pot and then used light colored tulle for the beginning stages of steam and then some doll stuffing (no I didn't take it out of an actual doll..) for the later stages of steam. I used (get this) painted pieces of a ripped Kroger bag for the flames and them took some clear tape and taped it around so that there was a long side of the tape at the bottom that I used to move in and out in every frame.
When filming, my iPad would be sitting on the edge of the chair. My bucket is there because I put a lamp on top of it to add light. The fabric was being held by some fabric weights.
I chose the red patterned fabric to create a warm, Saturday morning feeling during the cold months. I found Christmas fabric to be too distracting although the tulle did show up well against some of the darker colors. I ended up choosing the red fabric because it looked winter-y without yelling winter or Christmas. It reminded me of pajamas or a blanket you'd be curled up in while drinking the tea brewing in the pot.

Project 2: Finale

Unedited footage

Unfortunately, my computer doesn't want me to upload my edited video right now, but I will upload it when it will. For now, enjoy my rough draft. I'm surprisingly happy with the turnout once it was projected onto my casting. It gave it a lot more depth.
Also, I don't have a picture of it because I forgot my phone at home the day of critique.