Design from Without

When looking at artists who design from without, or find inspiration from the world around them, it is fascinating to see the kinds of things they come up with.  In class, we learned about Andy Goldsworthy and Lisa Hoke, who both found inspiration from the world around them.  Andy Goldsworthy was able to create ephemeral art that he knew would eventually disappear, by looking at nature and the world around him.  Lisa Hoke was able to create an art piece through finding ideas from plastic cups that she found online.
Referring back to our Stone Soup experience, it was interesting to see how, as a group, we were able to find inspiration from the world around us and from the things that we had collected for the purpose of creating.  Because we saw trees, we decided to try to use the materials we brought and the nature around us to create our own tree.  We, like Andy Goldsworthy and Lisa Hoke, were able to find our inspiration in our surroundings and the items we had.

I have also found inspiration from the world, and been able to design from without.  In high school, I designed and made a dress for my friend.  I found myself inspired by the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  I also found inspiration from my friend and what I saw of her style and tastes.  I combined my inspiration from the world around me, the things I had seen, with design from within.  In thinking of what I had seen and discovered, I then thought of how I could personally use the information I had gathered to create something for here that would embody her as a person, with influence from me.  From this, I created a seemingly plain, black, open backed dress with white ribbon trim around the bottom and in the back.