Week 12 (11/21/2010 - 11/27/2010)

   Yet another short and interesting week for us in Life Drawing I. Since Thursday was Thanksgiving, our only "class" was on Tuesday, which consisted of a field trip to visit the Walker Art Center and then the Bell Museum of Natural History. After waiting over an hour past the time our bus was supposed to leave, we were sent another bus and were finally on our way.

   Because of this little delay, our stay at the Walker was a short one, although, I didn't exactly mind. I didn't realize before getting there that the Walker was home to mostly conceptual art pieces meant to represent or convey an idea, thought, or feeling. The results, in my opinion, were underwhelming. We were charged with finding a piece that we enjoyed within the Walker and then writing about it in this very blog post, a task which took me a considerable amount of time given how uninterested I was in most of the museum's interior stock.
 In the end, I found a photograph by Alec Soth almost tucked away in a corner down in the main lobby. Its name was a series of numbers and I honestly couldn't find it anywhere online, but it definitely caught my interest, and I remember it well- it was a photo taken somewhere in the American Southwest. The subject was an under-construction home that was being built right into the side of a red rock formation. I mean, someone was literally building a house within a ground-level, excavated portion of a rockface, with the interior walls of the cave acting as the walls and ceiling of the house itself! Having spent a lot of time in Arizona during my teenage years, I used to look at the red mountains of Sedona and imagine dwellings similar to this one, which is why this photo abducted my interest so immediately. Now that I know they actually exist, I'd love to eventually find one of these tunnel/cave houses and venture inside.

   Now, the Bell museum, on the other hand, with its taxidermy dioramas, various bones, and actual living creatures, was definitely more up my alley of interest. Our assignment here was to pick one of the aforementioned subjects and draw it as we would usually draw a model in class. There were so many choices and so much cool stuff to look at that I ended up spending a majority of the time walking around. When it was about an hour to 30 minutes before we had to go, I figured it would best to get started, so I looked for a good bird with its wings open and happened upon a diorama of several sandhill cranes with one such bird exhibited.
 I had more trouble with the feathers than I thought I was going to, but they actually turned out a lot better than I thought they were going to. Overall, I'd give it a 6/10, maybe a 7. Take a peek for yourself...