Class Project #3

Sketching

Planning (crocheted practice piece)

Finished (front)

Finished (side)

Finished (back)

My basic idea for this piece was to illustrate how our movement is often taken for granted. As an artist, it is important to have full control over not just the medium you are handling, but your limbs as well. By creating a harness that essentially restrained your limbs and joints so that they had a certain limit, I believe I communicated this idea. I wanted the viewer to focus on the stiffness of the motions that I had to do in order to do a simple task and in this way, be more aware of the freedom that they had to move. 

In order to get the viewer to see the feeling of being restricted, I made the rope have a limit to how far it would stretch. For example, in order to straighten one arm out fully, the other had to bend close to the body. This showed the give and take of the piece. By using brown yarn and buttons, the idea of comfort (like in a knitted sweater) was given to the viewer. This was in turn contrasted by the actual purpose of the piece, which was to limit and restrain you. The knotting of the yarn was again meant to give the idea of a knitted sweater, a vision of comfort, which was then forgotten when it was used instead as a sort of binding device. The masking tape that I used was kept all one color so as not to distract from the work. Connecting the different ropes of yarn to the hips made certain that limb movement was limited. The yarn connecting the hands was threaded through the piece in the back to make certain that it would not simply slip off the back and ruin the idea of constraint. 

In the making of this piece, I learned how time consuming crocheting can be. My initial idea of crocheting the yarn pieces was tossed once I discovered that it took two hours to complete five inches of the restrains. I went instead for the knotting process because it could be finished quicker, required less yarn, and didn't stretch as much as the crocheted piece did. If I were to do this project again, I would make certain that I measured out more yarn than I thought I would need for a piece. I had to restart a few parts of the project due to running out of yarn to knot. Despite the difficulties I endured and the soreness in my fingers from braiding the yarn together, I'm happy with the piece and I think it turned out exactly as I wanted.