I am lively, centered and me.

I am not entirely sure which aspects of my story came through the most because my portrait isn't really a typical story. It really is just a jumble of things that make me, me, coming together as one. My artistic choices that came through the most is where I placed things. I have me centered to show that the portrait is about me, and then if you still couldn't tell, I put the lower and middle halves of my body in tinfoil so they shine. Then I have something else in each corner of the paper. The right hand corner on the top is a heart in hand. This corner was my favorite to do because it showed that I put a lot of heart into everything I do. The bottom right hand corner is the earth and since I am depicted sort of floating above it, that represents that my head is sometimes in the clouds. Before I even started pasting things on to my paper, I gave the placement of my items a good thought so that whatever my story was, could come through in whatever way the person looking at it made of it.

Artist-in-Residence: Alexander DeMaria

In Alex's newer pieces found on the web, they are all found in black and white and involve intricate things that look like part of a fantasy world. I have always been a fan of the musical Suesical which involves the Horton Hears a Who bit. That has a speck of dust in it on which a complex society resides on. This picture, involving a bunch of houses on this floating knoll reminded me a lot of the speck of dust in Suesical. The picture has a bit of white space but it adds to the effect of the intricate drawings shown. It struck me as part of comical that the knoll was floating there on the branch of a tree. Since this reminded me of Horton Hears a Who, it really stuck to me.

A question I have for Mr. DeMaria is where he makes his work, what materials he uses, and where he gets his inspiration from.

Reflecting on self-portrait progress

Today we discussed our self portraits that we have been working on. We discussed in a group and I shared about how I got the ideas for my project and why the items I chose to put in it represented me in an abstract way. My group members asked me questions about my project as to why I used certain things on my paper. They wanted to see the unclear things from my project and be able to understand them. They told me that I should fill up white space on my paper and maybe outline my figure so it is more clear. I need to color in white space for sure and maybe add one more symbol of me to take up more room. I'm not sure exactly how many more classes I will need but however many I can use would be good. I need to brainstorm about what to add in because at the moment I am not entirely sure.