It's taken me way too long to post about these but here is my work from this past semester in "The Lab". For my product, I wanted something simple with a tiny bit of story behind it. I wanted something meaningful but without any solid images previously associated with the concept so that I could create it in my own image completely originally. In my
Arts of Native America class, we learned a little bit about "Animism". Animism is a religious belief that every object, including inanimate objects, contain souls. So there was my concept. My original plan was to make simplistic masks that were decorated with natural materials like feathers and twigs but that was a poor idea for an art market. Instead, I chose to break down my idea by making tiny masks that would act as decoration for something else. So I accented the tiny masks (which I later called "Ani-mini-isms") with rosettes and made barrettes and brooches out of them. As Art Market got closer I decided I wanted to try something a little different. I sculpted tiny figures out of super sculpey, painted them in primary colors with tiny patterns, clued a tiny mask on their face, stuck a feather in their head and called them Spirit Babies.
On the first day of Art Market, I sold almost every spirit baby, but since I had made them last minute as an experiment, I only had eight of them to sell. In the first couple days only three of my brooches and barrettes had sold and my spirit babies were gone. However, by the end of the fourth and final day, all but three of my Ani-mini-isms had sold as well.
It was a very good learning experience and I'm excited to say that I'll be participating in next year's Art Market as well. However, what I'll be making has yet to be decided.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of my Spirit Babies, but a few decent ones of my Ani-mini-isms, including the wonderful tags I made with them.
