This past week in my Sculpture II course, our professor wanted to familiarize the students with the process of installation sculpture pieces. Also, it was a fun way to kick off the beginning of some good studio work. I have always found the concept of installation art interesting and had seen installations at work but I had never created one myself so I was ready to tackle this project.

There were only two instructions that we had to follow for this assignment; 1) document the installation and 2) it has to be made from paper bags. You know, the paper bags you would have your name written on and your lunch in back in grade school. Yes, those are your next material to make art out of. I was partially excited and the cheap expense of this material but still had to do some major brainstorming to go from brown paper bag to installed artwork.

After playing around with this material I realized that it could be rolled and viewed from a different perspective. As in, instead of viewing a shaped paper bag by frontal view, but by a side view in which the linear aspect of the bags shape would be something to pay attention to. I ended up making organic shape with somewhat of a floral element. Playing on the different viewpoint even further, I installed them onto a stairwell, suspended, in order for the only way to view the paper back shapes completely was by standing under the piece and looking up. The length of suspension and spacing in the pieces differed to add variety.

I enjoyed this introduction to instillation assignment and playing around with a daily material. I also enjoyed the process of installing the piece aside from my fear of heights and choosing to use suspension as my technique of installment. I was also able to experience the challenging aspect of documenting an installment. Documenting the process is part of what makes an installation a unique concept because of the fact that your work is installed in a place that it is not being viewed at. Therefore the experience through documentation can be a completely different from experience the work in person. Still, although installation has its challenges, its this art process’ differences that makes this experience all the more important to experiment with.

Who knew what can come out of a brown paper bag?