Self Portrait as a _________.

This project made you utilize two different parts of your brain, the part that is creative and makes ideas, and the one that isn't afraid to get messy and goes through with the project. You had to use your hands to form shapes with the clay, but you also had to get a creative idea, then execute it. I decided to choose a butterfly on a puzzle board. I am very much like a butterfly because I am a free spirit who likes to flutter around and be adventurous and colorful while I fly all over the place, creating memories. I chose a puzzle board because while the can be messy to begin with, but the end result is always a clean cut picture with no depth, which is VERY unlike me. I am too all over the place to be a puzzle but I am just like a butterfly. In the past, I was no fan of clay after one particularly rowdy experience where my hair got stuck in the wheel... you can imagine the rest! Also clay is very sticky and dry and gets into your pores and under your nails and yuck, not my thing, I like being clean. I made myself as in intricate butterfly with many different textures on the wings. I chose to make patterns because it shows all the loose ends and differences about me and my life. I discovered that it is very hard to put clay together and get it to stick and you MUST slip and score a lot.

Me-scape: A reductive Block Print

At the beginning of the print making project, I was pretty confident with my ability to make a good print. I somehow ended up carving away the wrong sections of my block so my end result was not exactly what I intended it to be...anyhow, I did struggle with this project. It was very hard to work backwards, meaning carving away what you want to stay first, then printing, then repeating the process various times. Starting with a project that is difficult to begin with then making it harder by having to work backwards, conceptually made my brain go WHOAAA! If I were to do this project over again, I would really focus on where I was supposed to be carving away that way my end result ended up being more of what I wanted it to be.

Thinking about the use of light in art.

Light is an eager concept. Light is a noun, light is an adjective, and light is a verb. Tricky tricky. Light is usually portrayed as having a higher meaning, sort of like an angel or heaven shining down the white "light." Light is everywhere, you just have to look for it if it isn't obvious. I mean if you go outside and the sun is shining there is going to be light, but light doesn't have to be as simple as that. Light can be an illusion that makes you truly believe that something is light but really is heavy, or is really dark. Songs that talk about death normally refer to a some sort of light a lot of the time. Light can be misplaced, or it can be found but again, you have to know how to find it. Without the sun, the world would not be able to continue, so in some ways, light is the center of the universe. Without the sun no produce could grow and it is clinically proven that without sunlight people become very depressed. For example places like Alaska where the light never shines, have the highest suicide rates. See the connection between light and life? I do. In musicals, plays, and concerts, lights are used to represent things that are not actually there or to give emphasis or color to certain things that want to be emphasized. I know at concerts there are many bright colorful lights shining on the audience and mainly the artist performing to get you to notice them. In very dramatic scenes in life or in a movie, light shines so that the moment is captured, like a snapshot of a photo; you need just the right amount of light to show what you are trying to tell through the photo. This may sound really corny, but a long time ago I recall watching an episode of a very bad show called, "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide." In this specific episode, Ned's best friend Moze wants a date with the foreign exchange student. So Ned and his friends decide to make the perfect moment for the guy to ask Moze out. They go into a classroom and set it dark except for a backdrop of a tropical island. The chorus is brought in to sing high "aaaaaaaah," like you always hear in movies when someone see's the 'light.' Then there were doves flying around and a wind maker so Moze's hair is blowing in the wind. The last part was a bright light shining down on Moze, singling her out, so when the exchange student walked in he was drawn to her and asked her out. It is not very hard to guess what the light was trying to represent in this situation, that Moze is 'beautiful' and that the guy should ask her out. Light has the potential to do this because it draws you in, its just captivating. Then you have to look at it, especially for people like me because anything shiny holds interest to my eyes.

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.

Why do people make art?

Let's put it this way, art is a very loose term, especially these days. From those arbitrary modern pieces we see in museums such as the ICA, which do not cater to everyone as art, to the famous more typical pictures we see in museums everywhere, such as the MFA or the Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa. Art can be anything. Art can be your old trash which when the light hits it, looks like people in the dark. Art can be your car pieces taken apart to rebuild a car again, or something completely different. People make art for so many different, intricate reasons. From the people who make darker art, to express their darker sides, to the people who take pretty pictures of flowers, just because they are pleasing to the eye. Art means something different to everyone; it is very open to interpretation because it speaks to everyone in a different way. I could see something as vague and you could see it as structured and meaningful. People make art to express different feelings they are having, such as anger, or euphoria. People make art to show people things that may be hidden about them or about what they are experiencing. Everyone goes through something different during their life and they all find different ways to deal with it. Some ways are more unhealthy than other, some are healthier. Among the healthier choices lies making art. Art is a way to let all your emotions flow freely without having to control them. It is such freedom it is utter jubilation. You can just let it all out to your paintbrush and watercolors, letting the paint seep into the threads of the paper, staining it for life. Of course these things can be altered, but your first creation is something hard to part with. In the end, people make art for so many different reasons. Whether it is to let out what you are thinking, or to relax and de-stress, the end result will always release unwanted tension.