User:SpencerC

=Bio=

My name is Spencer Cornwell. I am attending the Art Institute here in Seattle for a degree in Game art and Design. I love to read, and play video games, so i thought i'd do something i loved doing for a living.

=Assignments=

Midterm
My name is Spencer Cornwell, and i have lived in the puget sound area all my life. Yet even being so close to a cultural center such as Seattle, I have never been a conisseur of the arts. When i went up to the sculpture park, i had no idea what to expect, and there for i was very surprised when i ended up liking almost everything in the park. A lot of the peices were very interesting to look at, even though many of them were very simple. However, i didn't enjoy one peice the first time i saw it. The sculpture "Eagle" by Alexander Calder frustrated me in many different ways. First, the name "eagle" seemed to have no bearing on the sculpture, and second, it seemed to by nothing more than a few peices of curved steel put to gether and painted orange. The sculpture bothered me for the rest of the day, and i couldn't stop disliking it.

The name "Eagle", to me, seemed in no way descriptive about anything on or about the sculpture. The orange color of the sculture didn't make me think of an eagle, and in fact it irritated me to see a bunch of steel painted a bright orange. The sculptures height also annoyed me in that it was one of the largest peices of work in the park, which made it seem very austentatious. It also seemed to me to have a decicive lack of effort or thought put into the overall work of the peice. All in all, when i looked at the sculpture I did not like it, and i couldn't make myself able to like it that first day that i saw it.

However, like the old saying goes, time heals all wounds, and indeed the sculpture had wounded me mentally as i tried to wrap my mind around it. After leaving the park i basically forgot about the sculpture and whether or not i liked or disliked it. A couple days later i was at home and i was thinking about the sculpture again and i decided to look it and its creator up. The first picture of the sculpture i saw was from an angle that i hadn't seen the sculpture from, and when i saw it that way, something clicked and suddenly I thought it didn't look bad at all. Something about that angle really did bring out an eagle-like image to the eye, and while talking to my mom she mentioned that perhaps because of it's height, "Eagle" fit as a title because it 'soared over all the others'. I thought this was corny at first, but the more i thought the more i seemed to accept it.

After finding out that i liked the sculpture i looked up the artist who'd created it, and i found out many interesting things. Alexander Calder was a world famous sculpture who worked a lot with steel and forming it into somewhat abstract shapes. He even has a foundation devoted to his work. Even though he is long dead, Alexander Calder's work is spread throughout the world, many different cities around the world feature sculptures of his in plazas and other such areas. He was born of a family of highly celebrated artists and was proclaimed one of the most influential artists of our time. I was also surprised to learn that he was inventor of the hanging mobile that is a more than common fixture in nursiries and childrens rooms.

After learning so much i had a new respect for the man, and found that i did in fact enjoy his art. When i took a closer look at his work later in the week i found many things that i had ignored before that i now saw as very elegant and impressive. His displayed peice, "Eagle" was made entirely out of steel, and though i had recognized this fact before, i had failed to acknowledge just how impressive it was. Each piece of steel had been bent and curved almost perfectly, without any hard angles or bumps in the curve, which amazed me when i thought of what he must have gone through to do that to such a large beam of steel. The name mo longer bothered me, because the sculpture did indeed hold its own form of beauty and majest and soaring freedom not unlike an Eagle. Overall I'm glad i ended up enjoying the peice of work, because I feel it's helped me open up my mind to at least a few new things, and to me, that's worth it.

Final
By the end of this quarter i want to: Expand upon, and possibly finish writing a book.

The research component of this goal is to: Find out what it takes to get a book published.

Week 2: Expand, spell check, and edit first half of existing chapters.

Week 3: Finish expanding, editing and spell checking existing chapters.

Week 4: finish writing chapter 6

Week 5: Write chapters 7+

Week 6: write more chapters

Week 7: write more chapters

Week 8: attempt to finish the book if near the ending

=Reflective=