Our second project is another skill builder exercise using the Othermill. Our goal was to get some experience using an Othermill to mill a piece of plywood. I created this simple object:

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Our next assignment was to use what we learned in the first two classes to design and build a fun toy. I created a human face with moving eyes and mouth. The eyes can move side to side and the mouth can smile and sulk.

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Laura Owens is a contemporary American painter. Sometimes criticized for being overly cheerful[2], her large and colorful paintings combining multiple techniques do seem whimsical at first but upon closer reflection communicate a deeper thoughtfulness and emotion.

One of Owen’s works that struck me as particularly intriguing is her untitled piece derived from old newspaper plates she found under the shingle siding of her home[1,3]. The piece looks like a collage that started with the front page of a Sunday newspaper, and was actually made with Adobe Photoshop along with oil paint and screen printing. Owens made several similar pieces and one of them was on display at the Whitney.

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Carolee Schneemann is a provocative and influential artist whose work challenged the art establishment and our society’s perception of art. Her career has spanned many decades and her artwork took on many forms, and throughout all of it she fought against sexism and bias against female artists.

Schneemann was the first woman from her family to attend college, getting a scholarship to study art at Bard College. At school she would pose nude for paintings by other students, but when she painted self-portraits the paintings would be stolen by male students. Eventually, she was expelled from the school for “moral turpitude.” This was not fully explained to her but she attributed it to the paintings she had been making of herself.

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In our first class we learned about basic paper engineering and pop-ups. Our assignment was to make a paper bug using a template. Here is the result:

I used scissors and an exacto knife to cut the paper. All of the paper is attached using one-sided artist tape except for the bug's arms, which are attached with two-sided tape. I found the bone folder to be very useful for making good folds.

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My first project is a skill builder exercise using a hand router to cut a particular shape out of a piece of wood. Ben said we could make any shape we wanted, but I elected to replicate the shape outlined in the exercise description.

Here is the end result:

I encountered some problems making this that I will describe below.

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