feed your soul : workshop two

War of the Worlds

Philip Brou teaches this assignment to his students enrolled in the BFA program at MECA.

Project #1, Step One: Objects, Spaces, and Places

This project is an in-depth examination of the idea of place through an examination of objects and spaces.  We will combine the genres of landscape and still-life painting.

More specifically, as a class we will construct a town and then generate work that responds to this location. 

You will be responsible for constructing a home for the figurines you are given in class.  The basic theme for these homes is suburbia.

You should be focused on detail, technical precision, and successfully working within the scale of your figurine.  The best thing about model making is that, with some ingenuity, you can come up with interesting effects with very cheap materials.  Therefore, you are urged to keep it simple and cheap. 

Getting Started

We will begin by researching houses.  Over the weekend, collect at least 10 images of basic suburban houses that are interesting to you. 

Supplies to Bring:

• Cardboard. I will bring in a bunch, bring some in if you have it.

• Chip-board. This is the kind of cardboard used to make shoeboxes, the backs of writing pads, etc.

• Drawing board, pencil, and paper

• Glue: craft glue, rubber cement, super glue

• Masking tape

• Exacto knife or utility knife

• Ruler

• Camera (disposable, digital, or standard). You will not need this until we have finished constructing our town.

Optional supplies:

Various modeling supplies such as balsa wood or bass wood.

Project #1, Step Two: Constructing Our Town: Order of Operations

1. Make drawings loosely sketching out your idea of a suburban home based on your collected images of homes. Pay attention to your environment. Remember past environments. Also keep in mind that we are working with external features of suburban neighborhoods.  Therefore, building the insides of your houses is unnecessary.

2. Calculate measurements for your home paying close attention to scale.

3. Use these measurements to cut pieces of cardboard/balsa/chipboard.

4. Assemble your home.

5. Paint and faux-finish the structure using the "wash" and "drybrush" techniques shown in class

Additional things neighborhoods have

Playground, fences, landscaping, sidewalks with cracks, stop signs, power lines, automobiles, above-ground pools, street lights.

Some Hints:

Work from very general, geometric forms to specific details.  Get the big decisions correct before you worry about the little things.

The most incredible effects in modeling are usually very inexpensive; all you need is ingenuity, focus, and patience. So look at all of that detritus lying around your home carefully, more than likely it could be something remarkable in our miniature world.

Pay close attention to the scale of your construction.  Make sure that it is the same scale as your figurines.  This may require you to re-examine how your own body relates to the scale of your environment i.e. how tall are you in relation to a door, how big is your hand in relation to a brick, how many strips of vinyl siding does it take to equal the height of one floor.

Focus on technical precision.  You will have a chance to be more interpretive with the next portion of this assignment but for now buckle down. Remember all of the great lessons from your design classes and work with the skill of a brain surgeon!

Artists to look at:  Amy Bennett, Edward Hopper, Jules De Balincourt, Hilary Harkness, Thomas Demand, Mark Dion, Brian Alfred, August Crabtree

Films to watch:  Beetlejuice, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman Returns,  The Boy Who Could Fly, The Godzilla Movies (the original series)

Project #1, Step Three: Painting

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps a lmost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days.”

                            -H.G. Wells, from "War of the Worlds"

We have created an imaginary town that acts as an object, space, and place.  Your job is to now generate work that responds to our constructed environment.  The concrete requirements for the project are to create 2 works dealing with the idea of place on acceptable surfaces that are at least 2’x2. 5’.  We will begin by exploring the environment through photography and drawing.

One of the paintings will be made from the town. You may work directly from a photo, from direct observation, or a combination of the two.  Pay close attention to what most interests you about our place and then use this interest to begin your painting.

You may take a more self-directed approach to the second painting.  You should still use our town as a starting point, but the requirements are more open-ended. This does not in any way rule out the possibility of creating two works that follow the description written above for your first painting.

Both paintings must be worked on simultaneously. Get them both going and let them inform one another, do not work until you finish one and then move on to the next.

Instrctor: Philip Brou, Painting Faculty at Maine College of Art

MFA, Ohio State University; BFA, Ohio State University

Grants/Fellowships: Greater Columbus Arts Council's Individual Artist's Grant, 2006; Edith Fergus Gilmore Project Grant, Ohio State University, 2004; Presidential Fellowship, Ohio State University, 2002; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT.

Recent exhibitions include: Plane Text, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA; Bad Drawing: mistaken, misbehaving, malevolent, and just plain awful, University Galleries on Sycamore, Cincinnati, OH; 7 Ohio Artists, Richard M. Ross Museum, Delaware, OH; Made in Ohio, The Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH; Unruled, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts Gallery, New York, NY; Close Encounters, BLD Gallery, Columbus, OH; Crossing Borders, York University Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada; Rising Visions, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA. Philip has previously taught painting and drawing as a visiting lecturer at Ohio State University.