For the Maya project, I want to make a throne out of cans.
I have to scrap my original idea for the actual can sculpture. I wanted to make a lizard/dragon-thing that would look like it was climbing the wall, but now I see that the laws of physics will not allow the creation of such a creature using only wire to hold cans together…
So new idea!
My roommate folded 1,000 (yes 1,000!!!) cranes – she started in high school, and finished this year because we wanted to hang them in our dorm room for good luck 
Since my space is good for a hanging sculpture, I’m planning to use these hanging good luck cranes as my inspiration. I also think it’s kind of cool that on my side of the room, I happen to also have hanging birds, but instead of coming from a East Asian tradition, my hanging birds are Indian!
They’re very different from the cranes…in a chicken-like way. The ornament (handmade in Rajasthan, India) is actually supposed to ward off evil, according to the tag. I guess similarly, the 1000 cranes by Japanese tradition also “ward off evil” in the sense that they bring good luck. Cool cross-cultural use of birds!
Today I attempted to make a crane out of a can.
I have an assortment of cans that allow me to have a slight spectrum effect of hanging birds (top=green, middle=blue, bottom=silver). I think next class I will try to make the Indian chicken-like bird using the can.
But I’m not sure that will be complex enough. I’m considering attempting to also make a tree for the birdies, similar to the one I made out of construction paper for my dorm room.
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I’ve changed my mind again because I don’t think the bird idea is solid nor interesting. I’m still incorporating the hanging ornaments idea, but in a different thematic context. I want to look at cross-cultural uses of decorative ornaments in superstitious ways, such as for good luck or for protection. Each hanging thread is going to represent a different culture. The first will represent hanging cranes, demonstrating the Japanese idea that 1000 cranes strung up brings good luck. The next will represent zhong guo jie, the traditional Chinese hanging ornamental knot made of one continous red string and a tassell hanging at the end, which is supposed to also bring good luck. The next string will represent hanging bells and animal figures like elephants and birds, representing an Indian tradition of warding off evil spirits. The next string will represent hanging garlic (to ward off evil), a tradition that I’ve been surprised to discover in numerous different cultures (Eastern European, Japanese, Belizean,Cuban, and more I’m sure). The last string will represent dream catchers from the Native American tradition. If I can think of more ornaments I can always add more strings.
I wanted have the strings arranged right to left in a way that corresponds to the East-West of where each country is located, but then the garlic string gives me problems because I can’t assign it to one particular country. Perhaps I’ll arbitrarily assign it to one.
Another key component of my sculpture will be the organization and color spectrum effect that spreads across all the strings, as if unifying them, so that from a distance the sculpture just looks like one big hanging ornament. I’m trying to touch on the fact that across all cultures, we can see this basic human need to believe in a “higher power/force” that offers protection and brings good luck, and this need manifests itself by assigning importance and powers to certain ornaments.
—-Update—-
I decided not to do a throne after I looked at what other people are doing for their maya projects. I really liked the animal can sculptures and was surprised by how well they turned out so I decided to do one myself! I tried to do a peacock butttt that got too frustrating so it ended up being a crane.
statement: I wanted to find a balance between the organic feeling of sculptures imitating life, and the structured, solid feel of sculptures imitating objects. My happy solution was to create a can sculpture of a paper crane, which is very angular like objects are, but without the rigid, lifeless feel of, say, furniture. I chose not to do a “live” bird because there would be many gaps between the cans in order to get the accurate curvature, and I did not want that many gaps in my work. I aimed to create a very solid, complete figure that seems very connected – thus creating a stoic and poised effect. The cool thing about creating an object “in between” live and inanimate is the viewer can decide if it’s a model of a live or a paper crane. I left the texture as the coke can because if I changed it (either to a solid paper color or to feathers), that would destroy the ambiguity.
As for my can sculpture, I ended up modifying it so that now it has only three strings. This is because each string has anywhere from 3-8 items on it and ended up taking hoursssssss longer than I expected. Now I’m down to the cranes string, the chinese knot string, and the dream catcher string. The theme is still the same and I did employ a spectrum effect! I’t was hard to take a picture so I will upload one after I have hung it up in my spot.
I would have like to have a more obvious green->blue->silver effect but accidentally didn’t make green on both sides of the first Chinese knot, so now in this picture it is facing away from the camera/viewer and you can’t see the green except in the tassle. Luckily, the way I constructed the hanging wire into segments allows each item to rotate with every breeze so hopefully it’ll move around.
I purposely left the wire as flimsy and wavy because I wanted it to look moreso like string than rigid wire. I could have straightened it out but I didn’t like that. It’s a hanging piece and should look more soft than angular.
Also, now that I’m able to see my piece hung up I realize that even though my third string was supposed to be dreamcatchers, they have a very distinct Asianic feel (possibly because the effect from the first two carry over and wash over it). I suppose it could be a good thing – instead of dreamcatchers I can say that the last string is a series of charms that are my own interpretation of Asian charms. They do resemble Asian calligraphy, in a way. The circular frame of the can allowed me to use the inside negative space to create lines with the wires that resemble Asian writings. So though it is very strange to create something for one reason and then change my mind and assign a different meaning to it, I think I’m going to say it’s a modern interpretation of Asian traditional lucky objects. Alas, I forgot to take a picture of each individual item and you can’t see it in this distant picture.
The middle string is my favorite because each charm is different (in color, shape, size) but has elements in common – they all have tassles, the Chinese character for luck in the center, and a frame around the character. I’m also very pleased with how my first string turned out – the original can crane I made was rather bulky and ugly. These cranes are much lighter, and look delicate like oragami cranes should.
statement: Ever since the beginning of civilization, mankind has looked to objects as sources of supernatural protection, a force of good luck which brought a sense of security back in a time when life was not as stable as it is for most of us today. I wanted to capture the essence of two traditions I am familiar with – the Japanese tradition of stringing 1,000 paper cranes for good luck, and the Chinese tradition of tying a long string into a beautiful, continuous knot (with a tassle at the end). Both ornaments are delicate, made of subtle details which take effort but do not capture attention but contribute to the piece as a whole. Both also are believed to bring good fortune to a household. The third string was supposed to be a series of dream catchers, to further show a cross-cultural use of inanimate objects as powerful sources of protection, but now I want to say they are my own interpretation of the first two strings, my own creation of an Asian supernatural good luck object. They highly resemble Asian characters and are also made of intricacies which contribute to the look of the whole ojbect. The wire is very flimsy and created in segements hanging off one another in order to get the true hanging effect of a piece which moves with the slightest breeze, just as luck seems to spread like the wind – you can’t see it, but you believe it’s there.
It took me a long time to figure out what dimensions (px) to use for my flash document and I still have no idea if I’m using a good size…I’m using 640 x 400 (for widescreen). Is that too large?? the vid I tried to upload was maybe 2-5 seconds…just my title scn..*sigh*
