Kylie Sandt - Thesis Paper

In the beginning of this course I had initially expected to work mostly in illustrating Greek mythological stories. However, as I thought more about myself as an artist at the time when I was writing my proposal, I realized just how bored I would be simply painting out specific scenes. So I had come up with the idea to create a Science Fiction/Fantasy world installation. Right from the beginning I started to move away from the ideas in my proposal. My first piece was a sculpture made of mud and I received some great feedback on my materials. I kept saying that I was done with mud, but I ended up turning to sculpture, using mud as my primary medium. With each mud piece I got better at making the mud solid and sturdy. When I did my Navajo piece I experimented with bees wax and really liked the result. From there I knew I wanted to use bees wax in my future work. As I thought about the possibilities of bees wax a vision for my final piece began to develop. Unfortunately, by the time I started the project I no longer had the bees wax available to me and decided to turn back to a mud-like material, clay, which is now a major part of my final piece.

“Laying Low” is the pile of mud with the eye balls staring out. It is meant to be my self portrait for my first piece for the course. I struggled a lot with the construction and the base and I feel that both the presentation of the concept and construction were not very successful. “Human Pentagram” I did for the personal belief project. It is an abstracted pentagram into a shape that resembles a human-like shape. For my “Navajo Inspired Self Portrait” I tried some new materials, slate and bees wax. I feel confident in the way the piece turned out, and it was an interesting experiment that made way for my later passion for the honey bee. “Poured From the Earth” is the piece I did for the “hand picked” show at Mercantile Home Gallery. I made a lot of progress with the stability of this piece in that the mud did not crumble away. I also used broken glass that I had found by creeks and rivers. I think the piece was meant to represent the our dependence on the earth. “Legend of the Bee” is the installation for our class show. I painted a few scenes from myths about the bee and hung them on a giant honey comb made out of clay that I gathered myself. The bee is an important part in the survival of human beings. Without them there would not be enough fruits and vegetables to feed ourselves and other animals. Since ancient times people have known this and cherished, even worshiped, the bee. With my love of mythology I wanted to illustrate some of the stories I found about the honey bee and honey. I liked the final result, but I wish I could have had a little more time to work on it when I was relaxed. I feel like it should have been grander than it was, but I was missing the time and the resources to make it happen. “What Have We Done?” is the installation I did for Media Art though it is not for this class I feel that it was an important project. It included a sculpture of a screaming mud man facing a projection of a scene of the earth being destroyed. The project got me working with video which is a medium totally different from anything I had formally done before. I stuck with my original medium of mud for the sculpture and I was really happy with the way it came out.

Throughout the semester I have worked with mud, bees wax, and clay. All three materials were new to me in the way I was using them. My first material was mud. It took me a while to figure out what to do to make it solid. I started with pure soil and stones from my back yard, when that didn't work I tried adding acrylic medium to it which worked a little better but it still crumbled, it was also very heavy. For “Poured From the Earth” I used window screen to create the shape and I poured my mud over it, adding more medium than before. This made it stronger and on top of that I put matte medium over that to keep it sealed a little better. This worked very well. Clay was another thing I ran into problems with. I had gathered it from a creek and wanted all of the stones and organic matter out of it. So I mixed it with water so all the stones would sink and all the plants would float, then separated them and let it sit. I wanted it to settle and become moldable again but it took far too long so I had to figure out another way to get it into honey comb shapes. I ended up cutting the shapes out of foam board and using the clay almost like a paint. Using these material has made me realize just how important earth is to me. And how much I like playing in the dirt.

If people had not been interested in my use of mud I probably would not have continued using it. At times I was frustrated with it and wanted to draw or paint instead because it was an obvious way to get the assignment done. I did not expect that Don Voisine would like my mud, but it turned out he was really interested in it. Peoples enthusiasm for my materials and my dislike for painting kept me with it.

The classic paintings of Greek/Roman mythology are always an inspiration to me, as well as mythology of all kinds. I researched all kinds of honey bee mythology for my installation. Andy Goldsworthy is one of my favorite artists, he is also a big inspiration to me. His closeness to the earth is far deeper than mine and it makes me feel bad that I had to use acrylic medium in my mud, but it's all part of finding my own place and my own style of art.

Our trips to visit art professionals this semester has just opened my eyes to the art world all together. Before this I did not really care about the art world let alone know what it was about. Meeting people who make or show art for a living opened my eyes to a much wider array of careers in the art field. I think Emil Lukas made the biggest impression on me. He's a local artist who lives rather close to me. I now believe that in the end I don't have to live in the city, but I do have to get out there and see as many places as I can. Don Voisine was another artist that left an impression. I think meeting professional artists personally was a lot more interesting because there were more connections that could be made instead of a very formal setting where they are giving a non-personal presentation or speech. However, I think the people how made the biggest impression on me were my classmates. Working so closely with people who were in the same position as me and seeing what kind of things they were doing gave me an insight into who I am as an artist and a person.

Artist Statement: Everything in the world is held in place by earth. It is that in combination with water that provides a foundation for all living things. It nurtures and provides for us. The honey bee is another very important factor in our survival. People throughout history have known this and told tales of the honey bee and the importance of that which it gives to us. I am fascinated by the connections between earth, man, and the bee. In my work I combine natural materials that I find around me with a “traditional” medium and create my own connection between them.