Final Art Project

Friday, December 10, 2010

Good Morning!

Sorry I'm skipping Food Friday this week, I just finished up my final art project for my Native Art Studio class and I really wanted to share it. Our final assignment was to find a piece of art by a contemporary First Nations, Metis, or Inuit artist and create our own piece of art inspired by/interpreted from the original piece. I was totally stumped a few days before it was due, so I asked my sister, Tara, for some help because she is endlessly creative. She gave me two suggestions, I fell in love with the first one right away. This is the original piece I based my project on:


This is the write up on the artist, Leah Dorion's website:

Seven Generations, 2007
This painting shares the First Nation concept of the seventh generation principle which encourages us to make decisions that consider the effects upon seven generations.  This principle causes one to deeply consider the consequence of our actions for the future generations.  In today’s world this type of thinking is necessary if we are to pass on a healthy and sustainable earth system to our grandchildren.

Tara suggested recreating part or all of this piece using garbage/scrap material and that's exactly what I did. So thank you, Tara, for the awesome suggestion! Also thank you to Mason who helped me come up with items for and glue on some of the rows of colour. 


And, in case you're interested, here's all the stuff I used (from the top):

Top blue corners: blue jello powder (Mason's idea and creation)
Pink: little roles of scrap cardstock (Mason's idea and creation)
White: toilet paper with light blue paint dabbed on top
Orange: felt scraps
Dark Red: strips on an old t-shirt
Blue: fabric scraps
Next Blue: felt scraps
Red: pieces of coke cans, pieces of coke bottle labels, pieces of paper from magazine ads
Orange: pieces of text from magazines, painted orange
Pink: scraps of pink cardstock
Yellow: paint
Medicine wheel: toilet paper, felt scraps, magazine ad pieces, coffee grounds
Purple Lady: fabric from old clothes, felt, fabric paint, 
All Hair: black felt scraps
Blue Girls: fabric scraps & paper from magazine ads
Orange Girls: felt scraps, embroidery thread
Ground: pieces of the school newspaper, painted orange, dark spots are used coffee grounds
Turtles: pieces of yogurt containers
Swirls: pieces of magazine ads
Black dots (going up the centre): pieces of a cereal box, painted black
White Squiggly Lines (between colour rows): strips of an old t-shirt
All other details are painted.

And even though I don't use it very often, I really love the fact that I have this amazing easel to use for projects like this. It's very special to me because my dad made it for me!

 

4 wonderful comments:

Balancing Lisa said...

wow! That turned out great!

Erica @ Acire Adventures said...

Thanks, Lisa. I'm really happy with it :)

Anna K. said...

This is so cool!
It's just beautiful...
Where will it be displayed?

Erica @ Acire Adventures said...

Thanks! For now it will be displayed in the Native American Studies department, on a wall right in the entry, but my prof sounded like she was going to keep them for a while and try to put them up in the art department (a place where more people will see them). :)