One of my discourses....

My discourse as an artist lies in the never-ending quest of filling the gap that remains between my two halves. Part of me wants to be an artist who is constantly creating, part of me wants to help those in need and have a social connection to the world, and in the middle lies a gap. In order for me to be the best artist that I can be, I must fill this gap. While I am always searching for a way to do this, I am constantly finding interest in the connections we make with what we are surrounded by, waste and wasting, industry and industrial materials, nature and natural materials, shapes, colors, purposeful and not so purposeful objects, and other ordinary things. The relations we have and the actions we take with all of these things are general representations of our society, whether problematic or not. By using these subjects and things in my art is how I strive to be socially conscious and relate to our society. I am striving to make work that sends a subtle message to its viewers. Whether that message is sent in the act of making the work of art or whether it is sent in the product will vary from creation to creation. Through being an artist in society, I want to make creative change that effectively bridges the gap between the two parts of myself and the two parts of the world today: its problems and their solutions.

Heather Mullins
My Discourse

As an artist in today’s society, I have realized it is impossible for me to choose only one discourse. In our ever-changing world with my own ever-changing and developing mind, the only way I can see being effective as an artist is by indulging in several discourses. Sculpture is what I have primarily studied for years and what my specific interest is in. However, through sculpture I will be and want to do many things.
I am a builder, constantly building physical contraptions, structures and environments. By this I do not mean that I build traditional sculpture that stands alone in galleries, I have almost no interest in work that is only meant to be looked at from afar. I am interested in what I call manual interaction. My work will not work for you unless you work for it. I am not interested in making kinetic or electronic sculptures if they interact with you when you give them nothing. So much of the technology today is absolutely incredible but it is slowly dumbifying our society. The simple fact that people don’t even memorize phone numbers anymore because of cell phones is one example of this. Therefore, I am always building something that requires interaction from the viewer: dispensers, structures to go inside of or climb up. Through the discourse of manual interaction I want my work to create a conversation of play. I want the viewer to have a physically engaging experience with my work or take a physical object away from my work. This could be as little as an apple or a piece of candy or as much as climbing in or up a structure. Play is something that has been a constant in my work for many years now. I want to create places of play for the public: Playgrounds and simple structures to interact with. These places of play lead me to discuss the discourse of materials. The materials I choose to use combined with my intuition are the driving force of what I make. By using what I consider to be politically smart materials, things that would otherwise be thrown away, to create playful environments or manually interactive objects, I can be effective as an artist in today’s world. By combining these discourses of sculpture, manual interaction, play, and materials, I can create engaging art used to facilitate social awareness and creative change for those surrounding me in each setting I may be in.

Here is some of my work at the time of my crit. I made an apple dispenser and ate lots of apples and resolved the tall house-like structure, it's not done yet but at a point of resolution.





I made it through my first semester of grad school. The thought of that sounds crazy to me because I feel like I only started yesterday. However, if I think of everything that I have learned and made it seems a lot longer. At first I was completely overwhelmed by all the intellectual people at the school and the fact that we were being forced by default to analyze and then verbalize what we were making. Now, it may still be overwhelming sometimes but I realized that I wasn't letting my process go free and that was why I was struggling so much. Every piece of successful art I have ever made is because I let my intuition run the process and my work becomes what it is because of what happens intuitively when I'm making it. So, I need to combine the intuition and free process with being a little more deliberate about why I choose the materials I use, what I make etc. but not allow myself to feel too controlled. This is the challenge.

I'm off the the mountains for a month...can't wait! Happy Holidays to anyone who reads this!

Here's my newest work and work in progress...enjoy...

Here are some pictures from Detroit. The sculpture dept. went to Detroit to see some community based projects and the new contemporary art museum there...
art

Things are going well here, still just focusing on making as much art as I can. Here are some photos of the past few weeks of my new friends here, our field trip to Detroit and halloween. We went on a field trip to Detroit and saw some amazing community projects and art and had a great time, although it was quite cold it was all worth it

Pillow made out of steel wool on wooden bed frame and a couple other pieces in progress...

Here are some pictures of my studio and work lately. The tall structure is the first project I started here and it is changing everyday into something else. The other piece, the palette. Well, that palette began as a normal shipping palette and I took it apart and rebuilt every piece of it using the original wood. I even polished the nails. It took me hours and hours and almost drove me insane but it was all about the process. The idea was "obsession with perfection". How much can you possibly work on something to make it perfect? and, in the end it will never be perfect anyway.

I feel like I'm finally letting myself create. The whole time I have been here there has been constant pressure to analyze, analyze, and analyze and I haven't been able to freely make anything. The mental game this school is playing on me is quite a challenge for me to figure out, although I can see that it is going somewhere positive. It is crazy being surrounding by such academia while trying to move forward as an artist but I can see how it's all related and will push my thinking forward. Here are some pictures of my studio and what I've been making lately......

millenium park sculptures at night....they're wonderful...

more pictures of my apartment...

Here are some pictures of my apartment. It is nice and cozy for me...when I am not in my studio.

I'm a city dweller now..

Well, almost two months ago I moved to the crazy city of Chicago. I named my blog like it is named just because it has always been my favorite quote of all and if I hadn't been laughing at all as I ran around with no idea what I was doing when I first moved here I think I would have gone crazy. I think it has now finally hit me that I actually live here. That when I look up at the sky I see buildings...not mountains. When I cross the street sometimes I feel like I'm going to be taken away into the sworm of people I'm walking towards but somehow I always end up okay on the other side of the street. I spend almost all of my time in my studio which is downtown in the basement of a building with lots of florescent lights (that sounds awful but really its a place for me to be artistically inspired and I like to spend time there). The great thing is though that the moment I walk out the door I have the choice of three parks to go to and just past one of them is Lake Michigan which seems like an ocean to me. My other favorite park is Millenium Park where there are great sculptures and even a small "stream" you can put your feet in in the middle of some gardens. That right there is my slice of wilderness....
As far as the fact that I am in grad school, I have definitely had my share of work. I am building some new sculptures but also spending lots of my time writing, reading and researching which is the hardest part of all. I am also beginning, well, hopefully, to learn how to speak about what I do. Why do I make what I make and what is the meaning of this game I call sculpture? Until next time...

Heather

just seeing if it works