Artist Reflection
When originally trying to dye fabric at the beginning of my semester, my project ended up getting burnt. This was because our project got left on the heat by accident. This inspired us to create a project that demonstrated the chaos and unpredictability in both Chemistry and Art. We also knew we wanted to involve natural dye, as a homage to our original attempt.
We wanted to create something we could individualize, so we decided to go with a collage style project. We originally wanted six canvases so we could each do two. However, we were unable to find six canvases and decided to go with four. We settled on creating a cat. This was because we wanted our teacher to like the project as well as ourselves, and our chemistry teacher liked cats so that was the direction we decided to go in. Once we got the canvases we had the best drawer draw out the cat. Then painted our respective canvas. The next day we created the dye and the day after we dyed our fabric. We then put the canvases on the wall and glued our fabric on (for some reason we put the fabric on while the canvases were hanging). Finally, we did our presentation in the exhibition.
The hardest part of this project was the research. We were given minimal background knowledge and set free to figure the chemistry out for ourselves. This was difficult because with English or math, we’ve been doing that for years and have a better grasp of the vocabulary. However, with Chemistry, we have not been doing that for our entire schooling and did not know the language as well. This meant we had to research and decode at the same time, which is harder than painting a canvas, or dyeing fabric. One thing my group did really well was collaborating. We knew what we needed to do, how we were going to do it, and in what order things needed to be done. This was able to happen because we kept a constant open line of communication. When we realized we had forgotten something, like figuring out how much vinegar we needed to create the dye, we stayed calm. We worked together to find the answer and didn’t get frustrated when we had forgotten something.
We wanted to create something we could individualize, so we decided to go with a collage style project. We originally wanted six canvases so we could each do two. However, we were unable to find six canvases and decided to go with four. We settled on creating a cat. This was because we wanted our teacher to like the project as well as ourselves, and our chemistry teacher liked cats so that was the direction we decided to go in. Once we got the canvases we had the best drawer draw out the cat. Then painted our respective canvas. The next day we created the dye and the day after we dyed our fabric. We then put the canvases on the wall and glued our fabric on (for some reason we put the fabric on while the canvases were hanging). Finally, we did our presentation in the exhibition.
The hardest part of this project was the research. We were given minimal background knowledge and set free to figure the chemistry out for ourselves. This was difficult because with English or math, we’ve been doing that for years and have a better grasp of the vocabulary. However, with Chemistry, we have not been doing that for our entire schooling and did not know the language as well. This meant we had to research and decode at the same time, which is harder than painting a canvas, or dyeing fabric. One thing my group did really well was collaborating. We knew what we needed to do, how we were going to do it, and in what order things needed to be done. This was able to happen because we kept a constant open line of communication. When we realized we had forgotten something, like figuring out how much vinegar we needed to create the dye, we stayed calm. We worked together to find the answer and didn’t get frustrated when we had forgotten something.