Blog Post #4: "Sensational"

The name of our group for our Writing 340 group project is “Pamplemousse” which means grapefruit in French. There is no significance why we came up with this name except for that it is a really interesting and fun word to say! I was working with Alexis Kaneshiro who is a fine arts major emphasis in design and Carlie Stracka who is a fine arts major with an emphasis in sculpture, while my major is Biology. Not only is my major polar opposite to theirs, but my areas of interest in art are also completely different. Both of their artwork consisted mostly of sculptures, where as my main art form is music—piano, harmonium, and Indian traditional dancing.

Coming up with an idea was a challenging task for us because our areas of art were completely different. Even if both Carlie’s and Alexis’s focus was in sculptures, both of their styles were very different. This was really interesting for me because I do not have much knowledge in scupltures so I always associated all sculptors together. However, I did not know how different each sculptor’s approach is. Alexis uses more soft materials like felt and and cloth, while Carlie uses more hard materials like metal. So, it was difficult to think of a project, since we definitely did not want to compromise anyone’s art forms.

When we all met up, we brainstormed a lot of different ideas. One included a sculpture that we all would work on together set in a nature scene, while my piano music plays in the background. However, we did not LOVE the idea so we still tried thinking of different ideas. Our main concern was that we wanted to do something fun which incorporated all of our styles.

Because we wanted to create a light-hearted and enjoyable project, I chose one of my piano songs, “Sonata” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to represent the theme for the project. This song is a very happy and jovial song, representing the carefree childhood days in my opinion. So, Alexis and Carlie each used this song as inspiration in representing happiness and their childhood to create sculptures using their own style and materials of choice.


Alexis created a brightly covered cacti made out of felt, while Carlie created a metal flower, welded together from chain links, in order to represent happiness and thier childhood. It was interesting because both of them noticed the progression of scales in "Sonata" so they wanted to create a spiraling in their sculptures.
Carlie felt like flowers were very symbolic of happiness and childhood and here is a picture of her sculpture.

Alexis felt like the progression upward of the cacti represented happiness and a spiraling of emotions. Here is a picture of Alexis's sculpture.

Their sculptures really complemented my piano piece as well as the overall theme of the project. I thought their perspectives were really interesting and their artwork was really symbolic and beautiful

I wanted to also create something, but I knew I would be incapable in making a sculpture! So, because I am intrigued with culinary arts, I wanted to create art by cooking. Recently, I have become obsessed with shows like “Last Cake Standing” on Food Network, which create artistic masterpieces out of food. I think the art of cooking can be very symbolic and expressive, especially because the presentation and taste of food is very distinctive for different cultures. So, I also wanted to make decorative cookies, which symbolized happiness and good childhood memories. Also, cookies and sprinkles were a BIG part of my childhood so I thought this project would be incomplete with out them!
Here is a picture of the cookies I made.


Basically, this project used all of the senses: listening to the music with our ears, touching our respective arts with our hands, smelling the cooking with our nose, tasting the food with our tongue, and using sight to make our project with our eyes. Also, using our senses is so important in art, which is why I think the senses of artists are heightened because they pay the most attention to detail. This is why we entitled our project "Sensational."