For five dollars, I bought this amazing Italian milk pot on sale. Now I can steam my own milk properly and make my own cappuccinos. That saves my three dollars a day for the rest of my life!!!
Yes, I realize its backwards. I’m sorry. Computers are silly sometimes.
These four 2-d wood floor sculptures were done with a group, twenty random pieces of scrap wood, and several minutes per sculpture. Viewed from the top, each of these sculptures has a theme. If I remember correctly, the first is done without any negative space, the second in any order of our choice (we did from darkest to lightest), the third with lots of negative space, and for the fourth sculpture I think we were supposed to be able to remove one piece and replace it in another spot (in the same shape). It was interesting to work under such pressure for a 2-d wood sculpture. We had very little time to create each sculpture with our group under rules and clashing ideas. I think the concept of this project seems like one only noticeable when you do it in the project, but in reality, I’m sure we make 2-d sculptures with constraints and spacial relations in our minds all day long.
For this project I worked with my partner from the Diebenkown drawing. We had to draw out a checker board and play checkers by drawing out our pieces with charcoals and erasing and redrawing them whenever we made our move. This was my first time playing checker and I have to say, it put me off checkers for a while.
I think this project was assigned in order to help ready ourselves for the intense charcoal we later used for the Diebenkorn drawings.
Continuing the study of Richard Diebenkorn, my partner and I did a large charcoal copy of one of Diebenkorn’s paintings. It was interesting working with a partner on this. At times, it was difficult because you would have to go back and redo certain sections depending on how one person did what. Other times, it was entirely convenient because whenever certain parts got to be unporportional, one person would stand up and judge it while the other could mark the corrections that needed to be made. Overall I think we did a good copy. The charcoal was a bit much for the entire paper, but hey, you just have to dive right in. I think it would be interesting to try this with oil as well.
We did this project in class in groups. We had four different colors of paper, four Plexiglas rectangles, exacto knives, twenty minutes, and vague directions. This is my groups spontaneous composition. We didn’t have any purposeful form, except to be able to see through to the bottom. The layering is evident, and some of it even transcends the Plexiglas (original to the project).
For this project I did an audio drawing of a non-lyrical music composition. The entire process was very difficult for me. At first I couldn’t decide on a song. Some of my favorites were “Come Back” by Dario Marianelli, “Your Hand In Mine” by Explosions In the Sky, “Horn Intro” by Modest Mouse, “Soulful Strut” by Young-Holt Unlimited, and “Ghost Rider” by RJD2. I did sketches for almost each song, but my strongest was for a song that I definitely did not anticipate doing: “The Only Moment We Were Alone” by Explosions in the Sky. Here are some of my sketches (the final is one for the song I chose):
The song I chose (“The Only Moment We Were Alone” by Explosions in the Sky) is ten minutes long, and for our presentation we were only allowed to play 3-4 minutes. I didn’t want to attempt do the entire ten minutes, just because I felt that such a big art work would take away from the simplistic element of the song. The first forty seconds is very stark yet complex (a good representation of the entire composition), so I decided to model my art work after the first forty seconds only. Here is the final outcome:
It is composed of a thick paper covered in graphite, ink wash, and a mylar overlay on the sides. When the song begins, there is a very static and reverbertating sound made, followed by a repetitve beat until a loud drum thump comes in (I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about music except that I love it and love working with it, but I cannot identify which instrument is making each sound. I would guess guitar then drums, but I’m no expert). The black bars on the bottom resemble the static and the smear on either side resembles the reverberation. There is an ink wash over the entire piece underneath the mylar which resembles the reverberation that continues in your ears even after the song has moved on. Then the repetitive beat comes in, as shown by the graphite blocks. They continue until the end of the song, like a procession. Still proceeding, a heavy drum thump/beat comes in on top of the beat, as seen in the large black ink splotches. There are four drum thumps, therefore four ink blobs. The ink runs out of the circle because you still hear and sense the drums even after they have ended. Finally, I covered the sides in mylar and left the center open because the entire song sounds very centered and solid to me (once again, like a processional). You can just barely see the reverberations through the mylar, which is intended, since you still hear the reverberations, but only so faintly. I love this piece. I’m glad I only decided to do forty seconds of the song because it allowed me to devote more attention and more detail to this one part. Even though it is short, I feel there is so much more going on than you are fully aware of. It is an amazing song and an amazing band that you should definitely check out (remember: Explosions in the Sky). All of their music is very thought provoking and while relaxing, it keeps you on the edge of your seat. I believe the audience develops a personal connection with the music, and even my representation of it. As my audience was experiencing the compostion, I think they tenses up as they anticipated the drum beat entrance.
For those curious (and remember: curiousity killed the cat), this is the composition without the mylar siding:
(even better with the mylar, I know!)
I checked out five books from the library, ones with titles as interesting as I could find. With those books I created a postcard/note on the backs of old call cards to go inside each book that someone will hopefully one day stumble upon. The found cards are inspired in some way by the book and resemble the books they came from in some way; some notes may be a representation of the title while others may repeat a single sentence from the center of the book. Once I finished making the notes, I hid them inside their respective book and returned the books to the library for someone to someday discover. It was a very interesting assignment working in such a small space. I’ve always been fond of lots of detail and this was a situation where you could put so much detail into one card. Something so small could be an entire art piece on its own. As a sort of independent, surprise art, I really enjoyed this. I also tried to use elements and techniques I had learned from previous design projects and lessons in each card, maybe through the actual drawing or the material (like in one I incorporated mylar, something I never used before this class). Here is the example I tried in class:
“The Magic If”
The final postcards:
“The Progress of Romance”
front/back
For this book I tried to resemble the progress of romance on the card. Often, romance can begin with a physical attraction or lust, so the background image of the card is of a woman’s chest. However, when your feelings go further than mere physical attraction, you notice little details about the person that you learn to love (the progression of the relationship). In the space on the woman’s chest, I wrote a short poem by Stephen Crane called “Ah, God, the way your little finger moved.” It goes as follows:
Ah, God, the way your little finger moved
as you thrust a bare arm backward
And made play with your hair
And a comb a silly gilt comb
Ah, God – that I should suffer
Because of the way a little finger moved.
I believe that sometimes, love that has not yet been admitted survives inside of people when they begin to notice such details as this. Ah, the progress of romance. How refreshing.
Also, there are six of the best romance poets listed on the back of the card for whoever finds the card. Maybe some lovely poetry and prose will do some good, turn some hearts gold, you know the sweet stuff.
“Cut Loose your Stammering Tongue”
I modeled the majority of my book inserts after just the titles of the books, including this one. I drew a mouth out of graphite, colored pencil, and Prismacolor markers with sharp pointed triangles of newspaper coming out around it. Hanging from the bottom of the open mouth is a piece of newspaper cut in the shape of a tie. On the tie, the letters from the title of the book are highlighted (not visible from the scan). Modeled after the title, I meant for this card to sort of represent armies of people and the media saying so much and so little at the same time. The tie resembles the armies of people. For some reason, I imagined rows and rows and rows of men in business suits marching just blabbering away. There is so much said these days that has little to no significance, that words don’t even matter sometimes. Obviously, that is not good, so my card is supposed to represent how people should just cut loose their stammering tongue and stop blabbing about the insignificant things. The card was kind of misinterpreted in the class presentation of it; the tongue was portrayed as cut and bloodied by the shards of newspaper, and the highlighted letters on the tie had no meaning. I am not a morbid person and do not have a morbid alter ego when I make art, so that was not my intention. But hey, to each their own. It’s always interesting to hear someone else’s interpretation. Hopefully the person who finds this card doesn’t think it is morbid as well. I don’t think they would quite get my advanced metaphor for the media in the card either, though.
“Divine Rhetoric”
When I think of something as “divine”, I either think it is supremely tacky, like the famous transvestite Divine, or so beautiful that words cannot even describe it (polar opposite ideas, I know). I think of the written language and the way it is used (rhetoric) as something amazing, hence “divine rhetoric.” I took this photograph a long time ago driving up US-17 N back from my grandparent’s beach house. Since rhetoric is so divine and something so sacred (at least to me), and clouds are so beautiful, I thought that they would go nicely together. I centered “rhetoric” in the cloud opening, with the sun rays shining our from it. It is so beautiful, it takes all the rhetoric in the world, and none at all, to describe it.
“Jesus in Disneyland”
I thought this card was funny. I did a sketch of Jesus with a Mickey Mouse hat on (the most popular tourist souvenir in Disneyland). I think I like this one so much because its so ironic-when would you see Jesus in a Mickey Mouse hat on? Can you just see him, walking around the parks with his long robes and crown of thorns, munching some cotton candy? I didn’t think so. Hopefully the person who finds this card thinks it is just as ironic and humorous and not like super offended for some reason related to religion. I guess from a religious perspective you could always say that this resemble how Christ is always with you, even in Disneyland, but that is not at all what I was going for. I worked to resemble the title, not the context of the book.
Detail:
“It All Started With Eve”
This one might just be my favorite. The book, “It All Started With Eve”, was composed of illustrated short histories of some of the most incredible and influential women of all time, from Cleopatra to Joan of Arc. When I started, I wanted to draw a hand holding an apple on the bottom corner, similar to Albrecht Durer’s famous Eve:
(hers is the hand I would have drawn)
From the apple, I was going to have the heads of some of the most important women in history evolve and eventually end with the head of Michelle Obama (the most recent important woman). This idea can be seen in my preliminary sketch for this project. Instead, I decided to have a hand holding an apple, symbolic for Eve, the woman who started it all. The apple would be mylar and removable from the card. Underneath the apple I had the world, as if Eve held the world or the future in her hands. For the background of the card I listed some of the most significant women in history, from Indira Ghandi to Queen Elizabeth I, and ended with Michelle Obama. I used colored pencil, graphite, and Prismacolor markers on the back of an old library call card.
Here are my preliminary sketches:
I loved this project (as I do many). It reminded me the website “Found“, where people send in notes or receipts or little things they find by someone else to this website and there is a new one posted every day. I love this project because its like you leave something personal behind. Each student divested so much into each card and then left it for a complete stranger to stumble upon and hopefully appreciate. In my ideal world, the stranger would open one of these books and find a card, smile, and take the card back and pin it to their bulletin board. They might not understand the card or even guess that it was purposeful, but each day, that person would be reminded how their day had been improved by that simple card, left by a stranger, who selflessly worked to improve someone else’s day. From that pleasant day on, each day would be wonderful because of the card on their bulletin board to remind them. Maybe they would even do the same thing, kind of like paying it forward.
For this project I had to use candy to create a sculpture in real space and photograph each outcome. I chose to use gummy lifesavers (original flavors, of course-more color variety) because they have more flexibility and elasticity when sculpting. This project reminded me of when you see high fashion editorials in magazines with models in very stiff situations (like in couture gowns) with a realistic element, like a piece of candy corn on their tongue. I couldn’t find a good example but here are some similar:
I like contrasting certain elements, such as the fan or the chop sticks with the lifesavers. Also, I liked layering and sculpting the lifesavers on the images. I liked my photographs a lot because you don’t usually see gummy lifesavers interacting with real life (at least I don’t). Here, they are so bright and colorful and unexpected that somehow, they fit in perfectly. I might not be sculpting a lot with candy in the future, but I did love this project.
To begin this project I chose one of my Diebenkorn photographs and mapped out the negative space in the photo. This is the photo I chose:
What I believe to be the negative space in this photo is the black bar/shadow on the far left and the slightly glaring, shadowed triangle just to the right of the center. These spaces ended up being the only spaces I could draw on for my Google image mylar drawing. In those spaces, I had to trace over the Google images from my Google image search “from xanadu to kublai khan.” Using all fifteen images, I had to completely fill those spaces by layering the images and tracing them through the mylar. This is the first time I used mylar and I really liked the combination of mylar and graphite together for the project. Here is the final piece:
Here are more detailed close-ups:
I absolutely loved this project. First of all I think my variety of images was great; layering the photos created a sort of dream-world of clouds and temples with larger than life daisies and bumblebees (and Olivia Newton John’s head floating somewhere in the clouds). I just kept layering the photos over and over, sometimes turning them on their side or upside down to create new shapes within old shapes. For the clouds I didn’t just use the images of sunsets, but upside down waves and air from women’s heads. There are four empty silhouettes in the bottom left corner; I like to imagine them looking up into one part of this world, which then extends out into the mylar and keeps going as far as the clouds stray. My only qualm is with the mylar because the graphite smears so easily on it. I didn’t really have a problem with the smearing while I was working on it, but it has been rubbed against other works which has left some smudges on the blank spaces. This is something I would definitely do again, and it also opened up my interest with mylar. I have been able to use the material twice since succeeding with this project (which I love). I think this project was a turning point for me in this class; I really began to enjoy and divulge myself into the projects and have cherished each project since.
These are the photos I chose from the Google image search “from Xanadu to Kublai Khan” for my Google image mylar drawing. I knew we were going to eventually do something with the photos, so I chose a versatile mix, from photos of Kublai Khan to movie stills from the spectacular Olivia Newton John movie Xanadu.
