Hedonistic Life

Maybe life doesn't need to have some sort of grand meaning. Maybe looking at the eternal life is an easy solution to the uneasy feeling we get when thinking about our purpose in the 80 or so years we are alive. Maybe it is not about the house in the suburbs with the two kids and a cat.

Maybe life is just an accumulation of daily experiences, the good and the bad kind, which come together, not necessarily in a grand and meaningful way, but surely in a beautiful way: a symphony of all the different types of notes.

Perhaps the beauty lies not in the purpose of the piece but simply in the experience it provides. Maybe life is supposed to be an experience, a treat or vacation and we're just over-thinking it.

Or is this an attempt to sugarcoat the difficulties faced in life? Or maybe it is justification for laziness and condonation of a hedonistic lifestyle?

CRC Ratification

There are certain unalienable rights and protections that all human beings should be granted. One such protection should be given to children- a right to freedom, and privacy, especially in terms of governmental oppression and surveillance. However, since the UN proposed a treaty on the rights of children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989, three countries have failed to ratify this treaty, which include the Somalia, South Sudan, and yes, the United States of America, the "land of the free."

Some of the reasons given against ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child treaty in the US were that we want parents to be able to homeschool their kids (even if the kid wants to go to public school) and make sure they never learn about other religions or evolution and can't get an abortion without parental consent. Is it just me or are willing to infringe on children's rights for the sake of conservative christian religious ideals? Last time I checked, there is supposed to be a separation of Church and State.

Side note, Vatican City was one of the first ones to ratify! What is going on?

Thought for today

To be able to understand inequities even in terms of unalienable rights and not get angry takes unimaginable patience and optimism (which I seem to somewhat lack) and deserves respect. Bravo to compassionate activists who are calm in temperament!

Powerful quote: "It is precisely the role of human rights to identify the workings of power that keep unacceptable things as they are, and to challenge that power with a different vision of human well-being. The challenge does not have to be confrontational or angry; it can proceed softly, through dialogue and consensus. But it will always be daring because it requires us to dare to imagine a different reality, and to have the courage to call, each in his or her own voice and with his or her own means, for the rearrangements of power necessary to change the unacceptable."

All Asians are Smart Vent

If I might complain for just a second: I really despise this crazy American notion that all Asians are just naturally smart. There are two things very wrong with that statement.
First, I have worked really hard for my education, and the circumstances in my life have become motivators for me.
Second, I am sorry but I seriously don't have anything in common with Chinese or Japanese or Korean or Malaysian or Arab people. We do not share a common ethnicity, nor a common race or culture or language or food or preferences. I know next to nothing about these cultures and I have a long journey ahead of me trying to familiarize myself to these different and beautiful cultures. Physical proximity to these countries does not provide me with any advantage in terms of knowledge or understanding.

Okay that's all.

Reality Through Books

Excerpt from an essay I was writing: 

"I grew up in an underprivileged community in Karachi, Pakistan. The patriarchal values of the society suggest that the main purpose in a woman’s life is to become a good housewife- know how to cook food, clean to perfection, and be obedient. If I remained in Pakistan and did not get educated, I would probably be getting ready for marriage. 

I then moved to a relatively low income neighborhood in Houston, Texas. Around me, I witnessed kids carrying guns, displaying and painting gang signs, and getting brutally murdered in drive-by shootings. I do not know that I would have joined gangs by being in that environment, because not all kids who witness such frightening activities take part in them. But when living in such an environment, it is very difficult to recognize that life does not have to be so formidable. 

Living life is parallel to playing a game without the rulebook. We are brought into earth without the slightest idea about our purpose, our self-identity, ethics, or society. So the easiest solution is to learn the answers by what we perceive around us. The environment around us penetrates our psyche, and it guides who we become. What we see occurring around us seems like the correct way, and often the only way of being. The fact is, there is no rulebook to life, and there is no one-way of being. Education is the tool that empowers us to realize our self-potential and awakens us into the understanding of complexity in society beyond what we are familiar with. It is the instrument that helps us understand our immediate society and life along with broader society and ethics. 

Education empowered me to realize not only that the environments I was raised in was unacceptable, but that I am of much more value to this world; that I have plenty of talent to share with the world. This broader understanding of life through education is very liberating but also comes with great difficulty. Similar to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," education has enabled me to view reality outside of the cave's shadows. And when a philosopher becomes aware of reality, it becomes difficult to live in chains under the same assumptions of a false and limited reality. That part is liberating. The difficult and frustrating but essential part is coming to grasp reality and realizing that you were so limited due to society’s restrictions for so long. Education is vital to unraveling reality and it has been crucial in who I am today..."

But what is a puzzling fact is that I was not the only one with the access to education. American kids are very privileged in that they have access to a free quality education. I want to emphasize that yes, I have done my homework, and there are huge disparities in education quality based on socioeconomic class in the US. However, I have also seen government schools in Pakistan, where basic conversations, such as "Hello, my name is ____, and today is tuesday..." were being taught to fifth graders. The gap in education quality in developing countries is significantly higher than that in the US. 
But even then, I am gripped by the reality that most of the peers from middle school probably did not end up attending college. So what is so special about me? 
Well first, I went to school in Pakistan for several years and I recognized how financially burdening it was for my parents to provide me with a good education so I would not have  to attend a subpar government school. And then I came to the US and realized that I could just get educated for free- and the resources provided to me for free were astounding: libraries with endless books to check out, great colored textbooks, qualified teachers and computer technologies. 
But I think more important than any other influencer in my life were my parents' emphasis on attaining a top class education. I am indebted to my parents more than anything for their emphasis on education. Even if I was denied other luxuries that other kids might have access to, if I ever needed anything for my education, that was given first priority. Nothing was as important as learning. 

It was always emphasized to me that my parents left their lives for a better quality education for me and my sister. This reality, although quite burdening, is also a great motivator as well. 

Large Scale Disaster?

Okay, so I have spent like 17 hours on one project, and one would assume that effort is related to result. In my case, I think it went backwards, and what I have now is a project that really looks ugly and doesn't really make much sense. I am not sure.

What I was trying to do is make a large scale structure of my small water bottle sculpture. I made it a personal challenge to not use any wires or glue to hold up my bottles. So my entire project is made with just water bottles supporting themselves. It is supposed to look like a tree. The point is to create an "organic" structure from water bottles to remind people that, hey, water is beautiful and pure, and we need to remember that. It may be in a disposable container and we may have control over this element, but without water, we cannot survive and we are still dependent.

The mini model is in the right corner. I should quit art projects from now on. What was I thinking? ;) 

This piece actually reminds me of Dan Ariely's recent TEDtalk, "What makes us feel good about our work." (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work.html) Ariely argues that we are more prone to liking a project of ours and finding value and beauty in it because of the fact that we made it. He reasons that that is why parents parents find their children to be the most beautiful and wonderful, and why we value IKEA's complex furnitures. When we put effort into something, we find beauty in it. So although I am telling you that I dislike this piece, a part of me wants to say the exact opposite, and I know that it would hurt my feelings if someone agreed with me. 

Man's Alterations of Nature

As I mentioned before in a prior blogpost, we have been working on a contemporary art piece involving LEDs in my sculpture class, and I said I would make something that would explore the four elements of nature, fire, earth, water and wind, and how they exist in our daily lives.

The final product is a sculpture made of used water bottles. I used forest wire, and painted seashells, which not only hold the structure together, but also look like vines and flowers. I hoped for the water bottle structure to look like a mini tree with branches, and the seashells to look like little flowers sprouting from this tree. I basically spent about five entire hours trying to get LEDs to work inside my structure, which was absolutely a failure. On the bright side, I got to use christmas lights which kind of look like little lit up vines in the tree. I used blue cloth pieces to symbolize beautiful and clean water flowing. Altogether, I used modern objects, basically junk, that exist all around us, and I arranged them in a manner to create a beautiful (or at least I think it's beautiful) structure. I hoped that the structure would remind the audience that the elements of nature are all around us, hidden in their modern shells.

My hope was to convey to the audience that respect should be paid to these elements that make up our world. In the past, these elements were worshiped because we humans could not exist without them, and we were at their mercy. In modern society, these elements are at our disposal, and they have become commodities that lay in the the backseats of our cars, and get thrown away. However, it is important to be reminded of just how dependent we are on these four elements, and that what we have and need in our daily lives could not exist without these basic elements. Electricity, paper, Coca-Cola, study tables, and basically everything around us in modern forms, are man's alterations of nature. 

Alcohol Worship

We have been learning in sculpture my sculpture class that contemporary sculpture is about meaning created, and about provoking  thought, or even anger. So I decided to make an art piece representative of contemporary art.  

Background stuff my mind has been debating: 

I remember my teacher mentioning The Art Guys, who are brothers in Houston who apparently married a plant in 2009. They made this marriage into a big deal where they got all dressed up in suits, had family and friends over, and did the whole ceremony in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Their point was to create conversation about the relationship between humans and nature but instead it led lots of controversy over gay marriage. As I have already discussed in prior blogposts, I am wary of what gets labeled as art in contemporary society. It seems that contemporary art is about taking an ordinary object and giving it attention and meaning. This plant, just like Duchamp's Fountain (basically a urinal), was simply removed from how we are generally perceive plants, and was presented as something more, and therefore labeled as art by attaching a special meaning to it. This  extraordinary meaning attached to ordinary objects seems to be the new "in" thing in Art. 

Rothko's art was considered revolutionary because he emphasized the importance of the impact of individual colors on human emotions, and therefore his paintings were simple, one or two color paintings. If someone was to paint something that looked similar to a Rothko today, I doubt anyone would shell out a million dollars for it. I feel that in the future (and I am hoping the near future because I am not a fan of this type of art), people will feel that same way about the presentation of simple things as art. I mean, seriously, where is the actual art in this, except perhaps in the mind? But of course, the obvious question that follows is, isn't all art basically a sensation created by the mind through a presentation of objects or pigments? 

I know I have spent quite a while criticizing contemporary art, but if I was to point out perhaps why the contemporary movement makes sense, it is because attention needs to be paid about our surroundings. Contemporary art seems to be taking ordinary objects and "forcing" the observer to think about what is surrounding us in our society, the art around us that we often do not seem to notice in our mundane lives. Contemporary art urges us to ponder about the meaning that is held in every single object. Too often, we forget how each object around us has an purpose it plays, a comfortable location and orientation where we expect it, and also where we are comfortable with its existence. If that object is removed from that location and placed in another setting, it is offsetting for us because it challenges our comfort zones. If one day, I find my shoes in hangers and my clothes on the floor, that would disorient me, and if would perhaps make me wonder about why my shoes and clothes are organized in the manner they are organized. 

But we realize just how much meaning some people place on certain objects and the locations and treatments of these objects, particularly when just reorganizing location can create violence and death. And we have all seen this come up in the media where people are willing to kill and more importantly, to die, when someone burns a flag or flushes a religious book. In an objective sense, that is cloth and paper, but we have chosen to place an important meaning on the final product, and therefore involved our emotions with inanimate things, giving them a high status. 

But where does the line lie between what is art and what is sacrilege when removing things from their regular and comfortable settings? I mean seriously, isn't marrying a tree really crossing some sort of line? 

And finally, about my actual project: 

I decided to bring attention to the western obsession over alcohol. I think I am more prone to observing this obsession than others because I have been brought up in a culture where alcohol is not present at all. 

If someone was to offer me something that would alter my thinking and my sense of judgment and make me act unlike myself, and could potentially get me sick to the point of death and blackouts, I think my choice would be obvious. This is why I am surprised to see the ever presence of alcohol in American culture (and I am guessing in other Western cultures as well). The positives that I have heard of alcohol is that it provides courage and helps people become more free and relaxed. But seriously, if we need a drug to induce courage and relaxation, then I think we need to take a serious look the kind of humans we are producing in our society. If I wish to improve myself, I tell myself to try harder and to work towards improvement, I do not pop a pill or induce a drug. 

My perception about the ethics of alcohol are irrelevant, however, to my art piece. I did not wish to create an art about the dangers of alcohol because consumers of alcohol are perhaps the most aware. I only wanted to show and perhaps remind the audience that alcohol is omnipresent in American culture, and arouse conversation about the status of alcohol in the culture by altering the way in which alcohol is generally seen. 

My piece is a diya (an oil lamp used for worship in hindu culture) containing a beer bottle where the bottle is adorned with beautiful blue cloth that kind of looks like vapors pouring out slowly. The bottle is also adorned with LEDs that were supposed to work (although I am terrible at making LEDs work so they are merely serving as decoration beads). I was afraid that an American audience would not catch on to what a diya was, but I thought my diya looked like a broken egg as well, so I covered the diya with some feathers, symbolizing birth. I wanted to juxtapose birth and religion with drinking, to perhaps get the audience to wonder about the meaning and status of alcohol in daily society. 

The picture of the final piece is below, and yes, I am aware that it looks like trash. I think the first day of class, the instructor mentioned that there is a shared skill between those who view art and those who make art, where if you view art often and are passionate about art, odds are, you are able to make great art yourself. I think I would have to disagree with that. I love art, and I love thinking about art, but making the art is not my forte. I think my teacher was correct in saying that a kindergardener could have made my piece. Although, I would be intimidated by that kindergardener if he/she could come up with the same meaning and purpose that I came up with. :)

I have LED on my mind

We are doing this project in sculpture with LEDs, and we are exploring contemporary sculpture. Honestly, contemporary sculpture is just confusing! It seems like you need a radical idea that takes somewhat minimal effort to create, but at the same time, it is supposed to provoke thought and be deep, while at the same time, because it's art, it doesn't really need to have a meaning.

I was walking by the Museum of Fine Arts a couple of days ago, and they have their red sculpture, which has been there for several years, and I am very doubtful that that sculpture piece can provoke any long and meaningful conversation. So I decided, I was going to put some wire together that looked pretty, and then decorate it with some feathers and beads. As you can probably guess, my piece was not  received as well by the teacher, and he asked me to start over. Although I hate to admit it, I think he was right. It looked kind of like a bird's nest, but a bit worse.

Okay, I know this is definitely controversial, but if I was to give advice about contemporary sculpture, this is what I would say: Basically, if you are a beginner, then you have to either make your art piece really large that it captures attention or you have to attach a hidden meaning that can create conversation and controversy. However, if you are recognized already, I think people will pretty much buy your work, unless its just something stupid. Then again, if some guy can bring his own poop in a container and sell that as art (which is actually a famous piece, although I can't seem to recall a name), then I guess anything is possible.


So for my piece, I am doing combining the four natural elements, but in a modern way, but making a water bottle sculpture with tissue paper and LED lights. I think it can provoke conversation. I am just not sure about my skill as an artist to bring this about.

Plaster Representation of Plastic Surgery. Cliche?

I am in mental turmoil about cliched topics. I do not know when a topic become cliched. When does one decide that a topic is too cliched?

I am very interested in exploring modern culture's aspirations towards beauty in terms of physical looks. My personal belief is that the human body is absolutely beautiful. I mean, we start, literally, with a sperm and an egg, which create a zygote, and then very quickly, the zygote splits more and more, and then the stem cells begin to specialize, and you get a unique human, with a beating heart and a brain and a kidney and two eyes and toe nails. The best part is that even with so many similarities, no two humans are exactly the same- no mass production here to ruin the mystery of each product. That process itself, I believe, is proof enough of a God's existence! So to me, it is very upsetting when people are not able to recognize the beauty of their uniqueness and their existence. We have become a culture which aims to mass produce barbie humans through the processes of subtle make-up, plastic surgery and weight-loss diets and surgeries.

With my newly learned plaster mold-making skills, I want to explore this topic of plastic surgery. My plan currently is to make molds that look like very large syringes (made from an air pump for a fitness ball), and then breaking them randomly, and putting them together randomly to create a giant collage of broken syringe pieces. I am thinking about painting the molds to make them look like a syringe, and then writing with red, "broken" everywhere on the collage. I am currently also debating about whether I should write, "Are You" in large letters on the collage.

My main conundrum is whether this topic is too cliched in our society to be discussed any longer. I wonder if everyone kind of acknowledges that we have become such a culture with these expectations of beauty from ourselves. I wonder whether we find it drab when someone brings this discussion up yet once again. I am so afraid of my art being labeled as "just another piece about plastic surgery." I mean right? How can I shock my audience with my piece? Will this be enough? I suppose we will have to see. I am hoping to finish tomorrow.

Two wax molds I made are shown below, just to give guys a general idea of how the "syringes" would look. Woah! Talk about variety in molds.

The picture below is of my final project. I would have liked to spend more time on it. However, the words on there are supposed to read "Are You Broken" and the word "broken" is on several other areas of the piece.

I'm Going to Spend Five Hours Making A Dysfunctional Light Bulb

My bulb may be dysfunctional, but it is still hands-down, the best looking light bulb I've ever seen.

I started with putting a layer of petroleum jelly on an actual light bulb, and then I basically spent about two hours making a wax mold by putting melted paraffin wax with a brush onto the bulb. This is actually a pain staking process. First of all, the wax is hot, and there is a chance you will get hot wax on your hands, on your face and in your hair, many times. Also, there is apparently a perfect balance of how to put the wax on the object. You have to put a layer of wax, wait for it to cool down enough to where the wax is not liquid or subsequent wax will not stay on the object and all the wax will become a bit of a gooey mess. It also cannot be too cooled otherwise the mold is likely to break off. So for artists with minimal tolerance, this project can really test your patience. I would literally sometimes get so frustrated that the wax took so long to cool, that I would take this melted wax bulb structure and walk outside the classroom like an idiot, playing hot potato, or rather hot bulb, by myself.

Basically this entire process takes so much patience that I bet some artists refuse to molds in their career. After you are done making your wax mold, you have to wait for it to be super cool down, and then you have to carve the structure to release the bulb. And then you have to put it back together- which by-the-way is a real pain, especially if you did not have the patience to let your mold cool enough, and now the mold is deforming in your hands as you try to put it together slowly with melted wax.

You need to make sure to cut a hole so you can pour your plaster of paris liquid through the hole. The problem with plaster of paris is that you have to have patience once again. You need to have patience when mixing the plaster powder with the water, where you have to sprinkle the powder in the water, slowly. However, you have to be mindful of time because after seven minutes, and sometimes, if the plaster hates you, maybe five minutes, the plaster starts to cure and harden. The problem with curing is not that it slowly becomes harder and harder. What I experienced, and of course I had the privilege to experience this, was that the mixture is fine until a certain point, where all of a sudden, it becomes like three times as viscous. I remember being super confused because I was pouring my mixture in my mold, and the structure was a third of the way filled when all of a sudden, my mixture decided to cure, and it would not pass through the hole at the top of my mold.

Either way, in the end, I made an awesome plaster of paris bulb, with lots of errors. So of course, the used the errors to my advantage by transforming the errors to make them look like vines and leaves. I will have to upload that picture later. That's all I have for now.

 The picture above is my wax mold

This picture is when I cut off half my wax mold to remove my plaster. Can you spot all the beautiful errors? 

Who Am I: An Attempt at Capturing Self Through Physical Objects

Who am I? How can you ask me that? There is no answer!

Or perhaps there is one, and it is that I do not know, and I probably never will, at least in the scope of this life. I have no idea who I am, or what I am supposed to be doing on this earth. I do not even know if who I think I am is really who I am, and if who I am is really what I show myself to be. We are all kind of thrown into this earth, and people around us often tell us what is the truth about this life, and they put upon us expectations, and generally, we ourselves also make also make up rules and expectations for ourselves, and we follow them. But the truth is, whether you would like to believe it or not, we, none of us, have a  clue about ourselves and about life. But we follow what makes sense, what appeals to our logic and our senses, and we act like what we think we should act like, and in the end, we "all, float on, okay, (modest mouse)." And I think I'm okay with that.

But more to the point: How does one go about trying to make a self-portrait? How do you portray yourself, especially with inanimate objects. I mean, that not only takes some level of creativity and craziness, but also some level of courage, to be able to be open to others about who you think you are, and what you represent. See the key is that if you make a self portrait, for it to be good, you have to be honest about yourself, no nonsense b.s. about what you want others to think about you, who you want to be, how pretty you want it to look. You have to look deep within your heart, with courage, and be "real," with yourself, and then you need to make it and show it with confidence and even some pride.

Well, I am not sure if I captured it myself well in my self-portrait, but here is what it looks like.

Some cool facts:

• We made a toilet-paper doll in Special Needs several years ago, and it was absolutely my favorite activity. so the bottom of my sculpture is made of toilet paper rolled- which by-the-way, took me hours to do!
• I used laces from an old outfit of mine. 
• The orange button things were sent by my by awesome cousin to me from pakistan. 
• I made one good friend when several people left Afghanistan around 2000 and came to Pakistan, and many of them ended up living inside our religious center because they had no place to go. She taught me how to make that upside-down origami flower that makes up the top half of the dress on human looking sculpture thing. That is basically the only origami thing I have really ever known how to make. 

I tried to use items that were significant to me about my past, and gave the sculpture a human looking form, which represents kind of who I am today. I take a lot of pride in my culture, and I love my friends, including my special needs students.

I tried to make the head form clay of different colors, and I made it much smaller than a head should be on a body that size. I tried to show how molded and perhaps how confused my mind is, especially through the googly eyes. I was trying to show a contrast between the outside representation of something- the "cover of the book" analogy basically, and the content inside (the mind). The class did not exactly follow my logic there, and I guess I don't blame them. I do not think the point is very easily grasped through the physical rendering of my idea. On the bright side, I think my piece looks really pretty, and I like pretty art. :) 

Note: My P. Chem textbook is not part of the self-portrait. Although, I can probably make a case for why it fits in with it.



Below are other self-portraits from other members of the class. Clearly, there is no one way to represent self. I was pretty impressed!

Ciao for now. :) 

The Process of Preserving Evanescent Life

I think there is a taboo on criticizing art, particularly when the critic is a novice artist, who is not even considered an artist by anyone.

However, I think that everyone is an artist, you just need to have the courage to call yourself one. So here I am, an artist, sharing my thoughts on making still lives. 

The assignment was to create a replica of grapefruit and a banana organized on cloth. The basic questions that really became important at the beginning were: What the heck is the point? I mean, a banana is a banana is a banana. What is so special about making a copy of this banana or this grapefruit, when I can just buy it? Second, if I work extremely hard on making my still life, would it not look like everyone else's? Therefore, what is the point of the artist? It seems like the students making this still life are like out-dated 3D printers- basically the type of 3-D printers that really are incapable of making the copy look anything like the original. 

But as I continued with the still life, I learned a couple of philosophical things: 

• What I observed: What we visually see is often very different from how things actually are. I would look at the fruit and cloth structure from one angle, and I would try my best to re-create it with clay, and when I got done with one part of my art, I would stand up to compare the pieces, and actually, what I created was very different from what the structure looked like. This was not because I am a terrible artist who could not mold the clay properly, but rather because I made what I saw, and what I saw was different from what the object actually looked like. It was not until I got up from my seat, observed the piece from other angles that I could realize my mistakes. I would then attempt to fix them, and repeat the observation again, and then repeat the whole process maybe 20 more times. This was the case with all the students. Often times, the problem was that I could see that my still life did not look like the structure, but I had no idea about what was wrong- I could not tell. 
• What I learned: There is beautiful symbolism in this process, which revealed that angle and perspective matter, in so many aspects of life. What we think is accurate, whether it is about how a structure physically looks, or about how the world works, is not always what is accurate, and is not always the best perspective. We must realize the importance of taking a step back, recognizing mistakes, looking at multiple perspectives, realizing our errors and learning the courage to accept our flaws and the courage to remold our minds and our art pieces to be more accurate and more all-encompassing. 

• What I observed: In the early stages of the process, and even as the day progressed, the still life created by each artist looked very different. Some students focused more on the specific details of the piece, starting at one area and working towards other areas, building the large piece by piece. Some students focused on the large aspects of the structure, making the overall structure first, and then working on the smaller specifics. Some students worked really hard to make the banana look perfect, while some worked hard on making the holes in the grapefruit look realistic, while others focused on making the curves of the cloth look realistic. 
• What I learned: We are all part of one species, and we look very similar, and generally have two eyes, one nose, two arms, very similar DNA, and yet, how we observe and how we interact with the world, what is most important to us, what our passion is and how we choose to prioritize our time according to what is expected of us is so varying- and therein lies the magic of human society- not the individuals capacity to shape this world and alter it, but rather in the collective effort of bringing our own perspectives and talents and passions, and together bringing this world into the future.

• What I observed: I wonder about when each student decided they were done. Was it when the time ran out? Why did some decide to come back later to work on the project more? Was it because they were ashamed of the outcome? Because they expected more from themselves? They want a higher grade? They love the smell of moist clay (that is probably why I spent like nine extra hours on my project)? It was a great way to procrastinate from other assignments? They really wanted to create an exact replica (I attempted, but definitely did not reach that goal)? What I noticed was that when we were reaching the time where the deadline was approaching, the students chose different ways to "finish" the assignment. I think everyone realized that the final project did not really look like the actual structure, but some tried to put finishing touches by making the structure look very smooth, even if the actual structure did not look like the copy. Some tried to poke quick holes into the grapefruit, hoping that the hole would make the still life look better, some kind of just simplified the cloth in their minds, and focused on the main curves, even if the proportions did not match. 
• What I learned: I am not so sure about the "philosophical" meaning of this, but I know that for me, this part was the hardest. How do I tell myself to stop working on something when I know that my still life did not look like the structure. I COULD NOT DO IT. And that was very frustrating to me. I remember coming and working on the piece for like six hours straight, and being frustrated because I could not get my still life to look like the structure. But I think at this point of just how beautiful nature can be. Each curve in the cloth, each dumb hole in the grapefruit, each "flaw" in the banana, were just natural beautiful occurrences, which make each banana special, and provided this structure with a special uniqueness that no other structure would probably ever have- I mean what is the probability of having a naturally grown banana look exactly like this one, and then have a grapefruit look exactly like this one, and then have the cloth folded this specific way with each curve and bent and dent? To quote Mauritius by Teresa Rebeck, "It's the errors that make 'em valuable." 

Well either way, I did not finish my piece before nature, with its evanescent quality, decayed, and I could not preserve it. 

The pictures of the process are below, along with my final, yet, unfinished product.

So now with some still life experience "under my belt," (honestly, what does that phrase even supposed to mean?) I think I woud finish by saying that I really loved making my still life, and I think I learned plenty, and I must say that I love my final product, even with its multitude of flaws. It means something to me because even though it is an attempt at replication, it came from me and from my efforts.

However, I still am not sure about whether to label my piece as art. It means something to me, and it attempts to preserve one combination of objects in a particular way- but can it mean something to someone else? I think that at most, it can bring me fond memories and can be fun to look at (and that might be a stretch), but can it move someone? Can it inspire someone? Does it represent me? I really am not sure. Unless I put something from my mind, onto this piece, unless I want to express something from within and show that in this still life, I am not sure this piece is of much value, at least in the contemporary culture of art, where the mind of the artist is valued much more than the specific quality of the piece.
I think good art has to be something that can move you. That doesn't mean that it has to mean something in particular, or that it has to be something beautiful or even something crappy or horrid looking. It just means that when you, the observer, observe this piece, that there is a romance between the art and the observer- a special and unique moment, where the artist and the observer speak through this medium. That is art. And I am just not sure that my piece has that potential, particularly because it is not anything from within me, just my observation and replication. And well, you can call the process of observation and replication of nature beautiful if you want, and you have a right to think that, I just am not sure this process is beautiful enough to be included into the wonderful label of art. Just an amateur artist's opinion.