Progress on Thesis Artwork

2/26/2010 Progress on thesis Artwork


After constructing the glass vessel, I began layering in the contents. Multiple layers of newspapers were laid in a horizontal fashion a sheet at a time. This would be similar to the mountain streams carrying sediments downstream from the peaks to the spring pond.


On the sloping beds of the pond the sediments settle. When the pond dries during the summer the dried sediments will form a new layer, to be covered by the next years spring thaw of mountain snow.

Some years there are greater snow accumulation of winter snow and more sediments are laid down in the dried up pond. After millions of years and thousands of feet of sediments accumulating, the heat and pressure of the earth above and below compress the sediments into

sedimentary rocks. The layering effects of seasonal accumulation of sediments will remain in the sedimentary rocks. Only in the superficial layers will there be loose soil to trap the organic matter and be able to support surface vegetation.

We hope to have grass grow on top to represent the meadow that has arisen from the dried out pond.

2/19/2010 Critique Group 2A

The critique was held at the Livingston Art Building. This was done for the benefit of the sculpture students, including me. From the previous critique I concentrated on this one artwork first. The layering of the newspapers was started. I thought that the addition of dirt interlaced between multiple layers of newspaper made a clearer statement of the effect I wanted. The group agreed. We will need to see if the grass will grow on the surface.

I am thinking of creating another piece to complement the one that I am currently working on. Several ideas were discussed with the group. I could make a similar container or I could make something quite different but with a consistent message.

First Week Group 2A Critique

Group 2A Critique

January 29, 2010

I have been thinking about my thesis since last summer. I have since then been collecting newspapers and soda cans to recycle for the basis of my work. From our first group meeting I had gotten a lot of positive feedback on the idea for my recycled newspaper project. The concepts of earth, tree growth, newspaper production, communication, and change were well received. However, there was much discussion about the project of recycled soda cans. I believe further needs to be given to it before I can formalized a well defined project.

Victor suggested concentrating on one aspect of my thesis at a time. He recommended on focusing on the newspaper portion of the project. He feels that the newspaper project is interesting and he would like to see more works done with newspapers.

I am very excited to work on my thesis "the good earth" which incorporates artworks using newspapers as its founddation.

1-30-2010 Arthur Ross Gallery

Miler Lagos at the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania




This is part of Philagrafika 2010. Philagrafika 2010 is Philadelphia's international festival celebrating print in contemporary art. Its mission is to promote and sustain printmaking as a vital and valued art form. Many local institutions are planning and implementing a wide range of exhibitions, public programs and events, resulting in a citywide collective effort to promote printmaking. this reflects the collaborative nature of printmaking itself.





I visited the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, which presents a site-specific installation by artist-in-residence, Miler Lagos. Miler Lagos is a renowned Columbian contemporary artist. In order to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals, contemporary artists, like Miler Lagos, have drawn from inherent characteristics of the print. Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as physically printed forms are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. In the most simple sense, here Miler Lagos is turning paper back into a tree. He has taken a ton of regional newspapers and rolled them, one page at a time, into what seems to be a large section of a tree. This repetitive action of rolling 58 kilometers of recycled newspaper establishes for me the cycle of seasonal rings one sees on cross-sections of the tree trunk. So, this sculpture looks like a few hundred year old tree to me.

Just as the rings of a tree trunk comprise as environmental record, the rings of this paper tree are made of thousands of daily stories, compressed into newsprint.

The Columbian artist calls the sculpture Silence Dogood, the pen name used by Benjamin Franklin when he was a teenager. Benjamin Franklin is also one of the founders of the University of Pennsylvania and he was also a printer. Here at the University of Pennsylvania, the sculpture sits at the site of the college founded by the originator of the name, Silence Dogood.