This is my bottle cap poster that I took a picture of today. It has been hanging up in the halls of SLA for a few weeks now. Someone decided to add $5,000 at the left hand corner, I did not put that there. I hope that the students of SLA saw my poster and then remembered to bring in bottle caps to school because that is the purpose of this poster. Bottle caps were being collected from everyone in school so we could recycle them. I wanted my poster to be unique and clever so I figured that the plastic bottle caps were really wanted in the art room that I would make sort of like a warrent for Mr. Bottle Cap. I knew people would understand why we needed the bottle caps if wrote that the bottle caps were needed for art use.

 well i was going to do many different project when it came to thinking of this recycling theme. but i could never think of the exact right one for me to do. so in the beginning i was kind trying out different thing at home. i would start to paint but throw it away. i could figure out what i wanted to do for the longest time in this theme of using recycled things and expressing why we need to recycle so bad. so what i had my grandmother do was get a recycled canvas.

 i had the canvas at my house for a while because i didn't know what or how i was going to do this art project as i said in the beginning. but i finally brought it to school. i painted the canvas white all over again to make it cover the background. at first i was going to us the background that was already on the canvas but then i wanted to us all different colors so i just painted it white all over again. i wasn't exactly sure what i was going to do to this canvas after i painted it white, so i just got some paint and i just started painting the canvas with every color i could find. in doing this i came up with an abstract painting that i called The Nothing.

 okay so i came back one time when i was mad to paint because i paint when i am upset and i forgot to take a picture of what it looked like before. so i painted over it and took a picture of what i did then. then i took another picture of what i did the next time of course. im still working on this one painting because i feel as though it isn't done yet. i just feel like there is always something else i can add to it.

With the idea of portraying an art project made out of bottle caps and showing what we as humans do with our trash was hard to come up with as an idea. First I started to draw in my sketchbook trying to figure out how I can make a three divisional art piece show all the factors that I want. I was then able to start the project by using only recycled materials.

            The way I start is different from most people. I like to have an idea then sketch it out once. Then start making different pieces of it and whatever piece turns out the best I work with and build the art piece from it. As I started to work I chose only the recyclable materials. Any thing I had access to that I felt would be of some use I incorporated it in to my project. Along with the things I remembered I made a bottle cap poster. To help collect them so they cold are used in the project, so I found a way to include them.

            My idea came to when me when I first received this project. I automatically thought about the ocean we destroy by all the trash that it encounters over an extensive period of time. Whenever I go places I love to look at the water it’s one of my favorite things to do. I find it to be very pretty and extremely relaxing. So I decided to show people what we’re doing to the water slowly but surely.

 

I created a sculpture that was inspired by using sustainable materials. I took an idea that was close to me and put the idea in effect using things that were recycled. By using materials that were already created put this type of art into perspective. 

For me, I make decisions about my work by planning. I am a natural planner, often over-thinking, so most of my ideas were hashed out before I started creating the sculpture. I selected materials that were relevant to the project. Recycled bottle caps, cardboard and paper were the focal point. In another way, I chose things that are not normally used in art outside of arts-and-crafts projects. Though I knew what I was building, the type of materials were selected and used as I began making it. 

The idea was started when I wanted to share something about my life. I chose something relatively new to my life. I found out I had a thyroid disorder at the beginning of ninth grade. It's something of a side story in my life. It's not a focal point and that's why I chose to focus on it. My work was about my personal experience with thyroid disease as well as general information about it and how it can affect a person. 

Sketches

With the aluminum sculpture I'm making, I hope to have an influence in our universe's environment. My goal for this sculpture is for it to have some kind of influence that can maybe prevent people from wanting to throw trash into space. I enjoy astronomy and love the feeling of the untouched world out there. This is the reason why I was motivated to make such art like this.

The reason why this certain sculpture could have a tiny influence, is it's design. I chose a comet because it's one of the few things that could represent space. Choosing the material isn't hard. The Aluminum represents the current trash that is in space now, unused satellites, launched by different companies. It's shiny metallic texture gives it that industrial feel to it. The "tail" of the comet is have a unique design. They look like feathers, because in most comets I've see, the tail looks similar to a feather. I tried to avoid using a streak-like design for the tail. The comet looks like its coming down and can look like it's picking up trash as it passes Earth. But it really depends on the perspective of the person looking at the sculpture.


The reason I am making this sculpture is because I don't only care about the Earth's environment, but I care for the universe's environment too. I was influenced into doing this by my ILP (Individual Learning Plan) at the Franklin Institute's Observatory. While doing this ILP, I'm learning things about the Sun, but I also remind myself of other wonderful things out there in the universe. I'm also reminded of how beautiful and pure the rest of the universe compared to our planet.

Sketch 1 - How I could use a can

Sketch 2 - with a description

Sketch 3 - with a basic idea

Sketch 4 - What I wanted it to look like

The cut-up can aluminum I was using.

At the start of building

The "Tail" of the comet

The Aluminum Comet sculpture