Video Responses: Through the Eyes of A Sculptor and Glass & Ceramics

Through the Eyes of A Sculptor and Glass & Ceramics

1. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.

2. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

3. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the topics: Sculpture, Installation, and Craft?

1. While watching Through the Eyes of A Sculptor, I learned a lot of new concepts. Emanuelle Fillion is a restoration artist, which is a sculptor who works on specific areas of a piece of art like hands, arms, or feet, rarely the whole body. He worked in a carving shop underground tunnel where the temperature is always 12 degrees Celsius. Every stone in the underground tunnel has a different smell. For example, limestone ( a sedimentary rock at oceans bottom) has it's own unique smell. I also learned that stone carvers have specific instructions to carve life back into structures. Eva Steiner, from the video, began sculpting in her mid-life and sculpts nude women for a living. Marble sculpting is popular in Italy. Many sculptors take on the position that they want the sculpture to be, to help make it as accurate as possible.

In the Glass and Ceramics video, I learned that these are some of the oldest used man-made materials. Using a rod called a marver, helps shape the newly formed glass. It hardens as it cools and it is molded until it is the desired shape. Another technique to make glass artwork consists of using a propane torch to bend and shape glass without breaking it. Glass can also be molded into shapes when it is cold using hydrofluoric acid. Laminated glass is often used in school windows and car windshields as a safety feature to prevent the glass from shattering if it got hit. For plates, crafters use the glassing technique to give plates their shine and aesthetic value. Glass is used as the style of choice in most architectural work. Ceramics is used in many household appliances such as stoves. It is made using crystalline and a heating agent helps the crafter mold their creation.

2. The videos compliment the text by showing real life examples of how artists who make sculptures do their work. The text explains how sculpting came to be and it's history. The video shows hows artists have to know who they are (most successfully by living in another country for awhile) to create their best artwork. The glass and ceramics video also gives good footage of how each material is made and the different processes they go through. For example, people can blow into the rods to help shape the glass being made which is a practice that has been used for many years now.

3. I thought the videos were interesting and added depth and understanding to the topics: sculptures, installation, and craft. I think both videos provide insight and prospective into the world of sculptures and glass and ceramics. It provided details about each craft, but I think it did not include aesthetics as much as it showed the actual processes to creating the artwork.