The challenge for the second episode: create a three-dimensional sculpture using a found piece of discarded electronics.
The gang was taken by Simon (who, by the way, has to be the perfect host for a show like this) to the garage of artist Jon Kessler, where he has stock-piled a mountain of trashed televisions, computers, and video game consoles.
It was an inspiring pile of materials - I couldn't help but already start brainstorming my own ideas for how to turn these interesting objects into sculptures. (The best thing that I could come up with was probably taking the guts out of an old cathode-ray tube TV and then placing a smaller TV inside of it - not the most intersting thing out there, but hey, that's why I'm sitting here on my couch and not competing on the show... or wait, what about painting a picture onto the TV screen? Is that interesting? Too obvious? Will anyone else follow the same train of thought?)
Let's take a moment to check in with our art-testants. Miles is feeling groggy and complaining of sleep deprevation. We see him yawning in the studio. He also remarks that he is concerned about his obsessive compulsive behavior coming back to the surface. When he's shown the trash pile, he starts freaking out. I hope he can get it together and create as good a piece as he did last week. This is a good reminder, however, that most artists are not stable, well-adjusted people. Those types work for insurance companies; it's the unstable ones who usually become artists.
Erik is moping a bit over his near-elimination last episode. I hope he turns himself around. He does something very strange, though: he says that he wants to 'get his butt into gear' and then says he wants to 'really bust ass'. Why wouldn't he use either 'butt' or 'ass' both times?
Jamie-Lynn remarks that this challenge concerns her because it concerns sculpture, while she is trained as a painter. I didn't expect this problem to appear so early in the series - making the artists compete in a medium that is not their specialty. It had to happen sooner or later, and will probably happen in every episode going forward, since it would be impossible to judge the merits of different works created in different mediums. In a way, the art-testants should be happy that the critiques will focus on the piece itself and not the medium. I would be concerned about the judges having a bias towards one medium while holding a grudge against another, e.g. favoring oil painting over photography.
I'm curious to see how this format will play out, making each artist create a work that must incorporate certain elements. I took an elective writing class in high school, hoping to strengthen my writing chops and develop some original compositions, but instead every week we were given a specific genre to write in or had to write a story with common details. It might have been a good exercise, but it didn't teach me how to write, just how to craft a story around someone else's ideas. It didn't help that the only feedback I ever got from the teacher was, "good job! You can really write." I wanted to know what areas I needed to focus on to become a better fiction writer. Oh well.
I can't beleive how much time the artists are getting - a full day and a half. In a way, I think this puts even more pressure on them to come up with a piece that justifies some twelve or more hours of work. It can't be a clever idea that's quickly slapped together. All that time means that it has to be well planned out and executed to perfection.
Advice from Jon Kessler? "Don't play it safe, be courageous, don't get electricuted." Words to live by.
And then Miles went to sleep?! What?! Remember what I said about artists being a bit nuts?
I'm already picking favorites among the artists. I like some of them because I can already see their talent, but a few of the artists I like simply because they seem like the kind of people that I'd want as my friends.
I'm concerned over Ryan's aimlessness... you need to start out with a strong concept.
Abdi seems to have his head in the right place, and I bet he ends up in the top picks for this challenge.
Mark's idea of TV as an altar seems a bit obvious. I think he's going down the wrong path.
Peregrine is one of the artists who I immediately took a liking to. When I saw her bring her tiny TV back to life, I rejoiced along with her.
Erik talks about the brain damage he suffered from a motorcycle accident... scary stuff.
Nicole's cement-int-the-TV project looks awesome. Must have been fun to make.
I'm very turned off by Mile's 'cement assholes'. Gross.
The art-testants seem to talk a lot of smack about each other.
It looks like a day and a half wasn't quite enough time after all. Some of them are rushing to finish. I would hate having to show a piece of art that is unfinished.
Now that the pieces are finished, I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed in Abdi's work. It wasn't as impressive as the original idea he described. I like Nao's piece, and it's strange that we didn't get a glimpse of it until the gallery show. I guess there was just too much footage to squeeze into one hour of television programming to include everything. Jaclyn's piece is sure to be on the bottom of the judges' picks. Jamie-Lynn's was a bit of a let down too. When I saw her grab the vaccuum cleaner, I thought that she would do something much more interesting with it. I liked the painting that she did for the background and how it bled onto the lamp, but it seemed like she was resisting the challenge to make a sculpture and clinging to her identity as a painter. Erik's piece was creepy buy cool, and I really dig his style. Ryan's turned out to be not the major disaster I thought it was going to be, considering his lack of direction, but it just looked like one big tangled up mess.
So the judges started doing their thing, and their comments seemed to be spot-on. Things were playing out in a predictably fashion, and the judges gave Miles some much-deserved praise for his piece. Then they got to Trong's critique, and I noticed that the camera kept cutting back to Miles, who looked fidgety and uncomfortable. Then Miles raised his hand... and informed the artists and the judges that he found Trong's sculpture to be 'distractingly boring'. Whoa! Not cool, dude. No one asked for your opinion. Let the judges do their thing and let the other artists do their thing. I lost a lot of respect for Miles when he did that, embarrsing Trong like that. I agree with Miles's assessment, but it was uncalled for, and the fact that Miles had just received a load of praise from the judges, so much praise that it made his piece look like the favorite, made it a mean gesture.
So Miles won for the second time! It's a shame that I can't feel happy for him because of his nasty comment to Trong in front of the judges. I hope it was just due to a lack of sleep.
I was not surprised to see Judith in the bottom three again, even though I thought her sculpture was better than the other low-scorers, Trong and Jamie-Lynn. I like Jamie-Lynn and didn't want her to get sent home, but I was surprised to see Trong get sent home. He seemed to know a lot about art and have a clear idea of what he was after, but in the end, an artist is only as good as their last work.
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