“for my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” —Vincent Van Gogh

The artist that inspires me the most is Vincent Van Gogh. Even though I am a sculpture major and he was a painter, I use a lot of the color palettes from his paintings. He struggled to have his art accepted but he never gave up as an artist. During his lifetime he was only able to sell one painting. Now his art is appreciated and his contributions to art are recognized.

The last project that we had to do for my 3D design class was a found objects project. In a sense it’s almost like a recycling project if not the same thing. For my project I decided to make an oversized hairbrush made out of left over wood, plastic utensils, and broken CDs. The finished product turned out well but I didn’t feel confident in that piece. The teacher for that class said that if we had time left over we should make something else.

In the wood shop there were already cut pieces of wood that no one was using. The pieces that I picked out were cut like blocks that were stuck together at different levels. I also found a wooden door knob that I thought was cool. When I went home the weekend before I found a string of white Christmas lights and an old glass bottle in the basement. The Christmas lights that I found gave me the idea of a functioning piece of art.

This piece serves as a sort of lamp/ night light. I used Van Gogh’s The Starry Night to paint the bottle. Instead of the field and village at the bottom of his painting I painted the blocks to look like city buildings. I did this because I wanted to unite the past with the present to make something new. The lights in the bottle represent the stars from the painting but also the lights of a city at night. That’s why I felt that giving this piece the name “The City Light” was appropriate. Even though this was a last minute project assigned by my teacher, it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces.