Final Texture Wall Piece and critiques

This, my friends, is so far the final piece. Third time is the charm eh? I'm still debating on certain items to add to make it pop more so this blog will most likely be updated

(sorry I have no picture of the second piece yet!)

This is what I had the first time around. I quite liked it with all the crumpled paper and the funky words. But I see what Bill and Kathy said about the piece relying too much on the words than the small dots which I unfortunately didn't make big enough. So, that being said i redid the piece with a different texture. It didn't make a home run :[ The texture in the background didn't work with the dots at all and conflicted. And! the dots were too small again. Dang. After all the tearing at my designs, I became motivated to make something that worked! Hopefully once I'm finished, my piece will attract attention and keep it.

Quotes

 All of these are some lyrics I love listening too. I couldn't put all of them on here, but this is a lot.

She lives in a fairy tale

Forgotten the taste and smell

The wolf’s gonna blow it down

I’m just one of those ghosts

Our broken hearts and twisted minds

And still they echo me

He broke his own heart

She would never let herself forget

I’d never sing of love

You are the only exception

I climb, I slip, I fall

Because I’m starving for you here

This road is all you’ll ever have

It’s obvious that you’re dying

If only time flew like a dove

There’s a shadow hanging over me

Look at all the lonely people

And I say it’s alright

Muahahahahaha!

GRRRRrrrrrr! :D

i debated for a while over what I wanted to do for the uncomfortable video. I didn't know whether or not staring into the camera was uncomfortable enough or not, but after a couple days of me not thinking of anything, I decided to go ahead with it.

To add the effect to this video, i put on the creepiest makeup and hair that i could think of on the spot. I didn't want it to be too planned out seeing how I'm supposed to be a crazed loon. The make-up is black and green tones, with dark eyeliner dripping down. The crazed hair added with the intensity and dirtiness of putting in hairspray made the effect. That and me licking my lips...weird.

But, I have to admit... Even though I have total stage freight and HATE being on camera, this project was fun. I do worry though if this video is almost too freaky and weird in places that it takes over the awkwardness, but the weirdness brings back how uncomfortable it can make you feel.

You might not see me the same way again lol!

Human Composition critique

Sometimes, glancing through the photos of our human squares, I wish the project wasn't so messy. I loved that part of it but in the end, it distracted from the squares in some places. The icing was too difficult to mess with but overall I'm glad we attempted and had ambition to accomplish our project with hard to work items. It makes it different.
The different ways that people worked this project was interesting. I love how every group was different. Some were simple which might be good in some cases ( less places to mess up) and some were more complex and had  more areas where things could go wrong. Yet in the end my favorite part was the difficulty and the messiness. And we ended up getting some great pictures of our human squares!

Human Compositions and Brainstormings!

Translated into human compositions via flour and cake icing! :D

BAM!

All who contributed: Danielle, Bryttani, PJ, Carlee, Rachel, Amber, Juston, and myself!


Before we decided we LOVED the idea of getting messy, my group came up with a few different ideas with a little push and a shove.

-use furniture cover for white space
-white wall
-lay in patch of white flowers
-paint gravestones
-sky
-powdersugar
-white background light
-paint traffic signs
-white and black cakes
-wear black boxes
-paint squares on fingers
-black paper bags
-dark flowers
-make holes in clouds
-paint side of building white
-use windows as black squares
-tattoos!
-cardboard squares over faces
-flour and cake icing

8 Text As Textures!

Post Modernism lecture 9/17/10

It's hard to come up with a summary of this lecture, mostly because it is just relaying facts about what went on in history.

I'm going to start from the sort of middle about Modernism before going into Post Modernism.

MODERNISM
Modernism was a huge shock of new styles in art and progressed rapidly, started in 1979
 -transgressive:opposition to mainstream society
It was a rejection of the past; decline of what was ordinary. Artists started painting everyday life and focusing on color.

Art became progressive as ideas changed and wasn't focused on expressing emotion.

Post Modernism and Post Impressionism
 "Art consists of inventing, not copying" -Ferdinand Leger

-pluralism of viewpoints

-shifted from dialogue taking place in person to a mediated dialogue through art forms

 

Basically the journey through Modernism and Post Modernism is all about change obviously and bringing in the new world through a new vision.

Final Cardboard Critique

Just to start off, I completely agree with everything that Bill and my peers said about my project. It was great, yet not quite amazing.
Overall.. you could pretty much tell my sculpture was of a conch shell.. but it was missing one HUGE characteristic that would seal the deal and not make it a torch :]. Poor me couldn't get the cardboard to bed the correct way so the bottom half doesn't look like it flows into the top half, which is basically what makes a shell; its all one spiraly piece. (is spiraly a word? Meh..).
I absolutely love how huge my project is! I didn't mean to make it so bit int he beginning, but it just kind of developed that way. Though I have to say making it larger definitely helped it succeed as much as it did. It catches attention and makes it humorous, as Bill said. Which is completely fine by me. not the intended purpose, but I like it.

The Exquiste Corpse Two

 He the bored sunny swam the beauty

I didn't end up taking a walk for this one :] Which I'm particularly happy about because it rained in Sugar Land all weekend. It's kind of sad considering I wanted some sun in my picture, but beggars can't be choosers? I caught this picture in my backyard a few hours before I was leaving to return to Huntsville. I wouldn't say that a lot blocked me because I didn't think about getting a picture every hour of the day. I assumed that I would know when something represented my sentence, and I was right. Just had to wait and play with the doggies as i stared out my kitchen window.

Final Squares critique

(This might sound a little out of it, and I do apologize. I'm still sick unfortunately. I should have posted earlier...but me and my procrastination and sickness... they don't mix well. )

During the critique, I couldn't get my mind off of all the flaws I could see in my project. But while my group kept giving me feedback, I started to see less and less of the flaws, but more of the overall picture. Even though it is obvious to tell which is playful and which is periodic, they both have their own uniqueness. I love what PJ said, that my periodic image reminded him of frog eyes. Looking at it a certain way I have to agree. That or a chameleon. its neat what you can pick out to see in just a couple of black and white squares.

When i was coloring the periodic, I accidentally colored in a couple different squares that were supposed to be beside the white ones. I looked at it and thought, hmm this looks interesting, so I left it. When I brought them to class and looked at every ones work, I think I became self conscious that mine weren't anything out of the ordinary or something no one would think of off the bat. But when my group was critiquing, I slowly started to feel better about my pieces. They work in different ways and still clearly represent what needed to be represented.

Also what makes them a lot better is the craftsmanship I put into cutting the outer edge. I took a lot more care this time. It's not like I didn't care last time, I just didn't realize that the edges were wavy at all until it was pointed out to me.
The one out of six that was chosen for me to continue on with was my continuance circles. I had to disagree at first because i really liked my periodic squares and thought it would be interesting to make them 3D. After talking with Mr. Davenport about which one to use, I leaned towards the proximity circles. They were stronger than I had first thought and all the empty space left me tons to work with. I instantly knew they were the ones I wanted to use because I started coming up with multiple ideas on what to do with the textures. I'm excited to see how the textures are going to turn out and I've got ideas in mind on what to do with the 3D project. Cant wait!

SAFETY TIPS 101

Along with the new building for WASH, I seemed to have become more accident prone than I have ever been in my life. I stumble occasionally and bust my knees, but I have to say that the WASH building is the first place that I have gotten electrocuted, burned and almost cut my hand in one place within a week.
That being said I have decided to put up a safety blog! Feel free to comment with any tips that you want put up.

Now, on with the show...

First, I wanted to put a few do's and don'ts of working with hot glue. Yeah, yeah  I know we're all adults here, but lets be honest, hot glue is so much fun to play with.
1. Most obviously, don't let it touch your skin. This includes all areas. And I mean all. Ever wonder why a chainsaw has a warning label that says do not use on genitalia? That's cause someone and their brilliant self had an accident. Don't be that person :]

(Example one of what not to do. The hot glue dripped from the gun to my leg. Hurt like hell I have to say.)

2.Please do not place your hand on the paper slicer and then become distracted (Amber :]). It may result in needing a makeshift bandage from napkins and masking tape because you can't find the first aid kit.

3. This is my bracelet that is now melted/deformed thanks to my delirious mind. Gotta love it.
When dealing with electrical equipment, try not to wear dangling metal bracelets. They tend to land on the metal part that plugs into sockets. When that happens, sparks fly, but they aren't the sparks you want. They like to jump around and burn whats in their path. And at the time that happened to be my wrist.

(Yay for feeling the sparks of love. They hurt...)


More to be added as accidents progress in the WASH building.

Creativity Lecture 9/10/10

This week was probably one of my favorites mostly because it addressed a few things I've always been confused about. Before, I had no idea whatsoever how to describe creativity. One time in my art class about sophomore year, my friend looked me in the eye and said, " How did you get so creative?". To be honest i never thought that I was. If you gave me an image i could drawing almost exact, but I can't come up with an image in my mind to draw. Very bluntly I told her. " I'm not creative at all. I basically copy." I wasn't ever sure if being able to draw an image from a page was creative, but I knew it was talent. Going through the list of characteristics of someone creative, I kept going through my mind thinking, is that me? Is that my personality of attributes? I wouldn't say all of  them, but most are. Its a little mind boggling that one who is creative can be summed up in these words. Makes me think that my friends and family were seeing something that I wasn't about myself. But then again you never really know yourself until someone points it out to you.

We got a list/diagram of the characteristics, and it was a bit difficult to decipher but I managed to get the gist.
I'm going to give a picture of my notes instead of typing. They seem to make more sense on paper than on a computer screen for some reason.

These are just a list of the attributes and kind of describes how it works with one who is creative. The one that stood out the most to me was ORIGINALITY. The stereotypical artist is someone who hates the man and doesn't want to conform to society. That's the basis of what people have in their minds as who is an 'artist'. And i have to say going over how originality works with being creative, I can see where the stereotype comes from. There's nothing wrong with being alike, was my first thought, but my mind said screw it, you know normality is boring as hell. Well said mind.

With one you must have the other, so we moved on to what can keep you from being creative. That's right people, its all about blocks. Mental, emotional and everything in between. Just to be honest, I hate, almost despise, not being able to think of ideas or sitting there, tapping my chin and going. "Uhhh..."
It sucks. Quite literally. And I'm sure that most of you can agree that you feel incompetent when you sit there and cant think. I  used to do the whole Pooh Bear thing and tap my forehead saying think over and over again. Ms.Kelley you were right, I can't ever think of anything like that. But i did find a simple way of over coming mental and emotional blocks. Just step away. I don't think about things for a while and leave them there until i come up with good motivation and good ideas for them. Like one time I needed to paint my best friend a picture for her birthday. I knew what she wanted, but i couldn't get it to work in the medium i was using. So, literally (and i mean it), I tossed the canvas out in our backyard.  I had a spazz moment, I wont lie, but it was so frustrating. After dusting the canvas off and putting it away, I went onto youtube to distract my mind. Lo and behold one of my subscriptions posted a video of her painting with water colors. Needless to say my brain clicked into action and i spent hours painting my friends picture because I was so excited.
To get past cultural blocks... I kind of have a f*ck it attitude towards most society taboos. You would understand if you've seen my family, they are not the norm. And I love them for it! The best way to get over something that's not a conflict inside yourself ( this works for me at least) is to not give a rats ass. It's liberating once you master it. Of course there is a difference between
These are ways that I've learned over the years on how to get over blocks. They're not perfect, and I still stumble and get stopped in my tracks, but a few new ideas that was given to us in the lesson was pretty interesting. I think that i have the worst habit of assuming boundaries. Like to the extreme. It sucks and I try to get past it, but for the activity with the pipe and ping pong ball.. I couldn't think of a thing. Kind of pitiful, but that's the truth. After this lesson, I gave myself a goal: Stop assuming. Pretty simple, I think I can handle it... maybe.

The Exquiste Corpse

On Friday, we had an interesting lecture. Towards the end everyone received a...not so coherrent sentence. Unfortunately I got a little sidetracked while exploring :] and ended up arriving late. Sooo, I stole one of my group members sentence. The first time I read it, it made NO sense to me whatsoever. " This is horrible language", I thought. Yet after reading it over a few times, I sort of got an image in my head of what it could be.

This marvelous sentence is: He the bored sunny swam the beauty. Or basically something like that. The words were on the front and back of the paper so it was hard to tell which one came before which. But I figured this was an interesting enough sentence to find an image to go with. Although in the back of my mind I kept saying there was no way that I'm ever going to find a freaking picture. You have to be kidding me. But I kept my mouth shut and decided to deal with it later.

The same day after class ended, and I actually left the WASH building a few hours later, I got SO bored in my dorm. I swear I cannot sit in it for long periods of time or I'd go nuts. Since I was getting antsy, I decided to go out and walk the campus. Lucky for me! Because while I was walking I saw a crosswalk sign and noticed someone had stuck wings on it. I thought,  " Woah, i never noticed that, its so cool, Imma take a picture!" So I did.

Something must have clicked in my subconscious to make me realize the sign and want to take a picture of it because once I did, I automatically thought; holy crap! This mirrors my sentence perfectly.

I think the way that the sun reflects off the sign creates the entire image. It bounces off in the right spot, giving off the 'sunny' part of the sentence. And the wings make me think that he is 'swimming' the skies. Doesn't always have to be water :]. It's almost like this guy was in my same position: bored and decided to take a walk. Then ended up swimming over the skies. The pointed up arrow adds a nice touch too. Like pointing out his destination.
I did take other pictures... but they don't hit me at the same level this photo does. I can't bring myself to put them on here unless I'm told to because I feel like they would take away from the beauty I see in this picture. Its beautiful mostly to me because it was such a simple, everyday sight and that with the right angle and a sticker, made it into something more.


Thank you to whoever slapped the wings onto this little guy! Lol, you definitely made my day.

Trash or Treasure??

I love when ever we do critiquing exercises. I get to learn what is prominent in my art and what is lacking. then after everything I get to fix it up and make it better!

Overall I agreed with any critiques my friends had. Basically my piece wasn't fully put together, yet you could still kind of tell what it was supposed to be from the separate pieces. I had one large rolled up piece that was the base of the shell (that looked sort of like a croissant according to the keen eye of Ms Kathryn Kelley :]), then little rolled up triangles to create the many spines that rotate around the shell. Those were the easiest to tell what they are supposed to be. The top of the shell needed some work, because i had no idea yet what to do.But once they finished critiquing and gave me some pointers, it finally occurred to me what I could do for the top! Picture shall be posted when completed.

Once the details are met, I can tell it'll look amazing! I'll be excited once it's finished for two reasons. One, it'll be done! Haha, and two, It'll look cool and I can keep it. Although I should find a space in my dorm...

Lecture/Readings 9/3/10

What Is Art?

The first thing that popped into my mind when asked this question was, " Can you really define art?"
I've never heard of anyone giving me a straight, by the book, definition. Quite honestly I don't think that it is even possible to define art into one simple term that agrees with everyone.

Going over everybody's perspective of art, I came to realize how different views are. Some people thought everything we looked at was art, others disagreed. Writing notes for this lecture started to become difficult because we didn't focus on one thing as art, but multiple views from the entire class, all of them bring correct to the person. Even thought it was difficult, it wasn't impossible.

Art, to me, is everything. Of course that comes from my religious perspective.
 I'm going to deviate a bit on why I believe everything is God's art and I swear I don't mean to be preachy at all. This is all just an experience and turning point I had a few years back and I think that it helps in my view of what is ART. When I was young I never had a religious background. After going to a christian camp ( Camp Ozark is the best!), I learned my faith, but it was never strong. One day I was at a concert at my dad's church around my middle school years. It was a nice little concert with the bands Jeff Deyo and Leeland. during a little "intermission" we went outside to have some good barbecue that my dad was making. While standing in line one of the members from Jeff Deyo stood behind me. I had no idea what his name was, or anything about him, nor him me,  but he said hello anyway. We exchanged small talk and after a minute of silence he starred at me. I was thinking, " OK, this guy is starting to freak me out" when suddenly he asked me if I painted or drew. I have to admit I was stunned. I never mentioned anything about my new found talent. A bit speechless I told him yes and he smiled.  " I could tell." He said and nodded. " God has wonderful things planned for a talent like yours." After that he walked away.
From that experience, it hit me that the Lord created everything and shaped them in his view. We are his art and nature is his art. Now paintings made by man are still art. You might not like it, but it holds value to others and surely the artist. When something is made, it is an artifact that can inspire emotion ( positive and negative), reflect on thought, or represent something.

All through history there is art. That is because people have an impulse to leave their mark. It became a visual language. Even the cave paintings from forever ago were communication and art! It was kind of mind boggling. I think that looking at the paintings from the B.C didn't look like any communication because in today's age, we all have different priorities than those of thousands of years ago.

Even though cave paintings are of a different era, it's easily recognizable what it is supposed to be. A bison.
We learned about different styles:

Naturalistic

Realistic

Stylized

Abstract

The cave painting is very realistic. As time has progressed, we have gone from naturalistic and realistic art, to very modern and abstract art. If we had a time machine i bet someone from the past would be terrified of the paintings today because of how different on the scale they are. Art today represent different things than art of a hundred years ago. Usually naturalistic and realistic paintings are representational. Meaning only the important things are left in the painting. Things non representational isn't based on the real world. It still means something but it doesn't represent something tangible.

Here is a picture of the representation scale we wrote in class based on pictures shown.

(sorry for the horrible handwriting :] )

Readings

Gestalt is fairly simple to understand once you know what it inhabits. It is the way the mind works when we look at something, say a piece of art.

As we went over in class, Gestalt has four principles: closure, continuance, proximity, and similarity. But that is just the basics. There are visual elements that help work our mind to put pieces together like position, direction, and space.  I learned about these in past art classes, but never knew that all of this combined was Gestalt. The way things are placed; how far apart, where and the spaces in the shapes make your mind jump to different conclusions. Along with all of the placement and distance, there’s also depth. Good old depth perception can help communicate a meaning to someone. It helps organize space and set the relationship to objects.

When symmetry and asymmetry come into the picture, things twist around more. They usually go hand in hand with placement and proximity. But all of these things add up together to become the whole. The work of art that you look at and instantly recognize as something.

Now, the piece of art that you’re looking at… what is it called? How does it make you feel? The name of a piece can drastically change what your mood is. That’s why artists use intense names sometime, to give a hint of what you should be feeling. It’s like they’re overemphasizing something.  It’s done in the work too. Something could be too big or too small. Just enough that we catch it. Now if the art made you upset or indifferent, I wonder if the artist cares? I’m positive most do, I mean they’re displaying their artwork for all to see.  Some might not. They created it for their own purposes, not anyone else’s.  “Design is not just ornamentation…design fills practical needs.”(Principles of Form and Design). The art you see probably isn’t useful in basic needs.

Design can be created without any knowledge of what makes it. What does make up Design? Well there are conceptual elements, visual elements, relational elements, and practical elements. When I read through this I thought, you’re kidding me, this all looks like geometry to me. But it creates something more than that.  Conceptual is the basic point, line, plane, and volume. Like the parts making the whole. Now visual comes after you put the lines together.  It holds shape, size, color, and texture.  It’s a bit obvious what each means.  Relation ties back with what we learned about Gestalt. Direction, position, space and gravity.  They all come together to represent something. Practical Elements are something you can slap on a canvas. When you look at something or use something with design, it has representation; almost like a metaphor; meaning, and function. Meaning if it conveys something to you and function is well… if it has use.

Let’s go back to space. Positive and Negative space create form and so on in a domino effect kind of. You can’t have all the others without one. The forms that are created from positive and negative space react with each other in relationships.

Detachment, touching, overlapping, interpenetration, union, subtraction, intersection, and coinciding.  Before taking WASH I knew that these all existed but never really thought about how the interactions were and how they were made with all of the principles and characteristics of how a piece of art is made. It can be a bit overwhelming. Every little detail comes together to make a fantastic composition.

Final 4: revised

Final Four Dots

Better than ever

Criticism

Criticism is a difficult “suggestion” for anybody to take, but I must say that I took it very well.  Not everybody wants to hear that their piece of work isn’t meeting up to anybody’s standards.  We want it to be perfect the first time around. Unfortunately that can’t really happen.  So, we rely on our good friends to give us helpful hints to push us in the better creative direction. 

                For me, personally, I recognized a lot of my own mistakes. You are your best critic (did not come up with that).  But thankfully my friends pointed out some.  Case in point;

1.       I have many oddly similar ones, even though they aren’t spaced in a normal way.

2.       My proximity and closure drawings were difficult for the team to differentiate between. I’m not sure if this is my amazing skills at messing with one’s mind (not really), or that I had the circles too big and didn’t understand proximity very well.

3.       On the category of proximity, all of them were generally the same. Spaced out, yet looking connected in some way like they lined up.

4.       Closure: basically the same as my proximity. They were randomly placed and not very noticeable if they were in fact closure or had strong characteristics of another.

5.       My continuance… I hate to pick on, it being my favorite characteristic out of the others, but I have to.  They’re all the same wavyish shape, trying to trick the eye to follow the pattern instead of grouping or distancing anything. I should fix up my style.

6.       Last but not least, similarity. It is in my opinion relatively simple, if you group the dots by size each time like I did. I didn’t think to group them any other way. If I placed them differently, wouldn’t it be proximity?  Truth is I’m not too sure yet, I plan on doing some experimenting.

Even though I’m experimenting with a few new dots, my final four that my friends picked are staying. I’ve grown attached to them. All that’s left is to refine their edges and mount them and make them pretty!

Project Update!

Here are a couple of images showing my progress. More to show soon

The beginning of my seashell, it's kicking my butt.

Dots dots and more dots.

I feel slightly like Cruela De Vile

 These are the final 16, about to be final 4.

They're magnificent!  Just wait until it goes 3D