Started working on some new stuff this week for the first project of the year. It is a bit simplistic for this project, doing a lot of work with gradients and contrasting colors.
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My favorite part of this reading was probably the bit near the end of the Guerrilla Girls article about converting the viewer. Nowadays, there are a lot of extremely biased programs running on public television as a result of our political parties becoming increasingly divided. This divide alone could cause future protests, but what was interesting to me was that the guerrilla girls took a different approach than most of the modern media is doing. Channels like CBS and FOX news show effectively black and white versions of the same events, when in reality those events should be considered in shades of grey. Those news channels force their information on the viewer, expecting them to agree and if not, to change the channel. I think this shows a lack of creativity; what is the point of talking with people that share the same exact view and agree with everything you say anyways? Converting the people not to one side or another but rather to better citizens overall should be the goal of the media and especially the public news channels that are free and open to anyone with a tv. Seeing this form of thoughtful conversion coming from a group who is against the media is a bit of a scary juxtaposition, it seems that the most logical people are the ones who are going against the media that feeds the majority of our nation which does not bode well for our future. This quote from the reading sums up what they said about this topic, “We try to be different from the kind of political art that is angry and points to something and says ‘This is bad.’ That’s preaching to the converted. We want to be subversive, to transform our audience, to confront them with some disarming statements, backed up by facts — and great visuals — and hopefully convert them.”
My least favorite thing from the readings was the great importance that the first article gives to physical objects for protesting. Yes, physical objects are sometimes necessary to identify who it is that is protesting or to get the word out for a certain cause, but I see a protest as more about a group of people with an idea backing them instead of a bunch of shiny balloons. I feel that a good protest is more about sharing information to inform the masses than it is about physically making something that will stop the police from killing you, although that may be a necessity depending on how riotous the protest must get. Where in the second article we get information that can change people’s minds, in the first we get a bunch of seemingly random objects that can’t convey the message as well as an actually well educated person. I don’t think this article really conveys anything important except for the awareness that some artists focus more time on physical protest objects, but I suppose we will debate this later next week. Spreading a message seems to get difficult when that message goes against general beliefs. Then comes the question, “Should we just throw the information at them and hope that it sticks?” or “Should we masquerade our protest materials as normal things and have smart people find significance in them?” or maybe even ,”Should we actually attempt to educate the citizens so that they will join us in our push for [insert freedom here]?” I think all of these could be useful questions depending on the protest itself, and maybe someday I’ll be asking them to a group of rebels living in a North-Korea-infested version of the United States. Actually let’s hope that doesn’t happen. In the best terms, my figure drawing skills at the beginning of this year were abysmal. My first figure drawing in Art 3, the one in the art skills inventory, had no shading, was tiny, and wasn't even completed in any sense of the word. Yet I think it was here that I had the most growth; in the past few figure drawings we have been tasked with drawing large and I have come to like filling the page, no matter how large the page is. Furthermore, my skills with value have increased as I have learned to let loose and draw shadows how I see them in the way that comes naturally. Now I try to do a contour line drawing as accurately as possible and then loosely fill in the shadows; I feel like this gives some character to the drawing or at least makes it less boring. I still need to work on my shading skills and on some proportion issues, but overall my progress has been quite astounding.
While this is true, and I have come a long way, I still lack serious confidence in my work when it comes to figure drawing which is something I should work on. I also need to learn to use color more effectively as my few attempts thus far have fallen flat. Nonetheless, it has been a great year and the progress I have made satisfies me. Going into next year, I hope not only to utilize my new skills in the figure drawing fridays that we have, but also to apply these skills to my other digital and encaustic endeavors however I can. This week I finished the structure and properly mounted my figure to it, yet the motors don't work and thus the viewer would need to physically pull the structure apart to see it in full effect. Nonetheless, the slice down the middle conveys a message similar to what I wanted, and I am happy with the outcome of the project being that it was my first endeavor into this size of sculpture.
I spent this week at home on spring break. Over the break I tried to assemble a construct that would be able to support my sculpture and also pull it apart and let it retract. The motors that I was able to acquire (without spending excessive amounts of money) could not actually pull my figure apart, but the piece should work out anyways.
This week we began the actual process of constructing our pieces, hence I went to the cafeteria and found a willing model and tape-casted his entire body (basically). The rest of the week was spent trying to attach these pieces to one another and make the missing parts (hands, feet, head, pelvis).
This week we just came up with our ideas and drafted ways to actually create them. My idea is loss of self through desire of outside things. My original idea was some sort of drawing and quartering of the figure from all directions but I have simplified it down to go side-to-side.
As before, I found this piece while listening to some music on soundcloud, and was struck by its’ similarities to my previous pieces. My piece “epiphany” has the same type of text-based emotion used in a kind of ironic way, but Crusader took a similar design and used it with 3d art. It is kind of where I see my work going, a combination of what I have already done with the 3d work that I have practiced and intend to continue practicing once some time constraints let up. I particularly like this work because of the blend of 2d and 3d elements, but I also like the blend of organic and geometric shapes. It feels to me like a finished piece more than most pieces do.
A lot of the art that I see regularly comes from the cover art on the music that I listen to on soundcloud. I listen to a ton of electronic music, a genre defined by the sort of new and fresh sounds that artists create with analog and digital synthesizers. As such, a lot of the art dealing with electronic music is really new and fresh looking, as you see here with Chadwickmak. What I like about his art is how weird the stuff is, there is a golden or silver skull in almost every piece, and they are usually in strange orientations or having strange things done to them. The way that this might actually influence my work is in its’ strange orientations; I usually stick with formal or symmetrical designs, and I need to change it up.
On April 14th, a group consisting of an architect, an interior designer, and (I believe) a city planner came to visit us. This was an important visit for me because I am interested in architecture and am currently deciding whether I want to spend my time in college studying architecture or engineering. One is almost solely artistic and one almost solely mathematic, I enjoy both and therein lies my dilemma. Yet, this visit was nothing but helpful; they provided some great information on upcoming buildings in our area while also talking about where they went to school and the different types of degrees that exist for people in their respective fields. One thing that I was left wondering was, what is a typical day like in the life of an architect? I know that they make it out to sound fun and exciting by showing us all of the new buildings, but how much of the time does the architect actually spend sculpting this building with a pen and paper or on computer software? These were some fundamental questions that went unanswered, yet from their demeanor I could assume that they were happy with their jobs; in other words they all seemed happy, and that’s all I want.
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