Final

I was very curious what the final would be for this class.  We had worked with so many different things this semester I did not know what it would be.  When I found out we were going to work with food I was both excited and concerned.  I had a bunch of ideas, but was wary of which would work.  The one I settled with was using fruit candy to try and make larger representations of the fruit they were flavored like.  People always seem to be making food that mimics other food, or to look like something else, cakes that look like other food, "dessert nachos", "dessert pizza"...the world of sweets is fun, but not always the most creative.  I thought it would be interesting to go with that idea and make a lemon out of lemon candy, a green apple out of green apple candy, etc....food that looks and tastes like what it is supposed to be, but is still not exactly it.

Unfortunately, the candy was not malleable in the slightest sense of the word, and even when I got it workable it was unbelievably sticky.  Soon I had given up on my idea, and turned to music.  Then it occurred to me that music (popular or otherwise) faces the same tests of time that food does.  Bands and song may be well known in their time, but soon their popularity decays, just like food, and in a much more morbid sense, the people that listen to it.  So I thought of a couple bands that I could still use my fruit idea with and make my point about music...I made a Wild Cherry ("Play That Funky White Boy") and Strawberry Alarm Clock ("Incense Peppermint").

Oddly enough, my Strawberry Alarm Clock also can relate to time in that it ended up looking like a clock....

Looking Away and Seeing Too Much

   "Vision is not a simple act of volition."

   James Elkin's "Looking Away and Seeing Too Much" artfully describes the problems artists face every time they go to create something.  I think his best description of the situation is actually in the second paragraph,"My world is full of holes, and there are probably more holes than there are objects."  I thought it was interesting that he thought of 'not seeing' things as almost a relief...as it would almost be too much to see everything...trying to look at everything leads us to assume that some things are--certain blurs and shapes and colors may coordinate with what we may think are leaves or grasses, etc.  This made me think of things I have actually been reading for my seminar (Science and Religion). In short lots of religious sightings and what not are simply results of the fact that we as humans are pattern seeking animals.  If we are not really looking at something in great detail but I coincides enough with an image we do associate in our minds with a certain object or idea, we are led to assume what we are "seeing" is that object.  
    Not only is it difficult to make art of what we haven't really "seen", but art and what we can physically see vary from each other as well....I found the comparison between photography (crisp and definite) and what the human eye sees (blurred edges, the rim of the nose, etc.) particularly interesting.  I also like how these thoughts led into the point that few think about things that cannot be seen--not fantastical things, but things that cannot be seen.  This point kind of made me think of the guest speaker Heather Harvey.  The idea of people not thinking about that which can not be seen really made me think of Ms. Harvey's points about trying to capture the fuzzy backgrounds we don't think about, the quantum physics of our world, etc.  The images were hard to make-out, but the idea of sequential images affecting how each image itself is seen apart from the group and as a whole is still affective.  The way sequences affect our emotions/thoughts/sight fit in with how "forbidden" images may deflect or draw our vision towards them.  I found the last paragraph summed up his points very well, "We want to see, but we cannot; we try not to see, and we see in spite of ourselves; we try to see everything , and we see next to nothing.  Seeing is not easy; it is not easy to do, it is not easy to control, and it is certainly not easy to understand."  I guess this all gives no meaning to 'I can't believe my eyes'.
    I am not really sure how to "respond" to the critique, having never done so before...I appreciated hearing how others saw my project--the color (or lack there of for the most part) seemed to have the desired affect...I did not take into account how the background would push or draw the eye away from the subject, so I'm really glad that was brought to my attention...ultimately I was pleased with how my project came out, in that it was what I had in mind, but I can definitely see room to improve, not based solely on the critique, but also to attempt matching my vision a little more closely.

  My research and two questions go hand in hand this week:
>Is it better to exploit the pattern seeking default of humans when creating art, or to create a piece that is compelling enough that it is "exempt" in a way from being examined for patterns?
>How do optical illusions and our pattern seeking habits relate to one and other.

http://de-conversion.com/2007/05/26/humans-a-pattern-seeking-species/http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/43622

Mid-Semester Summary

The first part of the Semester has been very interesting.  As I am sure I have said before, I had no idea what to expect from this class from the initial description we received over the portal.  However, we have not done one thing that I haven't enjoyed.  The underlying theme/topic of time is one I can not say I ever devoted a lot of thought to, but it is very engaging and very easy to spend a lot of, well, time thinking about.  I won't summarize everything we did (that would make the entries prior to this one on this blog a bit pointless) however, sifting back through what we have done so far, some of the things I would like to highlight include:

• Actually creating this blog- I thought keeping a blog for the class was silly at first, but documenting what we do every week is actually kind of fun now.  It is also proves very helpful when it comes to a task such as this one- a faulty memory will have no hand in hurting this entry.  I also liked changing the design of the blog, the CSS involved to change the settings was not too difficult and I had fun coordinating the colors to match the background I made, etc.

•  Speaking of a faulty memory- I particularly liked the "first memory" sketch and the topic of memory in general...not more than time in general, but thinking about how one's memory might in turn affect numerous other aspects of their lives is a little mind boggling... 
   
• I've really enjoyed all of the projects we have had so far, in and out of our sketchbooks!

As far as more topics that I would like to "integrate" into my work, I figure I will just go with what comes to me when I make something...I like planning a bit ahead, but not that far ahead.  This probably sounds lazy, but I really don't like committing too far in advance, especially if doing so is not necessary.  I'd rather just let the ideas happen :)

On a completely different subject-I've uploaded some of the pictures I took on the way to mailing our postcards.  I didn't go through to edit any after-wards, I just changed some of the settings on my digital camera as we walked.

 

3 Artists to Research...

3 ARTISTS:
Of all the artists in the world it seems a little daunting to choose just three to eventually narrow down to just one to do a research project on.  However, having essentially no limits on the selection also makes this a very easy task at the same time...I would be interested in researching:
(I have simply listed them in the order in which I decided to use them, not preference or otherwise--the names are also links to a website with information about each artist)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 

I am interested in researching Renoir, not because he is well known, but simply because I've always liked his paintings.  For as long as I can remember we've had a copy of Girl With A Blue Ribbon(pictured above)  in the upstairs hallway outside of my room and I've always loved it.  A few summers ago my family and I actually saw an all Renoir exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada (Musée des beaux-arts du Canada) - it was great to see some of his less famous pieces right next to well-known ones.  I suppose I would research Renoir to learn more about the person behind some of the paintings I "know and love so well".

Robert Silvers

I actually know very little about the next artist (besides what is on his website).  About the extent of my knowledge of Robert Silvers is that I am fascinated by the kind of art he makes (photo mosaics-see blog post "Time Flies!...When you throw your clock away.") 

Again, curiosity is the strongest force behind this decision, but I suppose there could always be worse motivators.

and

Augustin Pajou

The third artist I chose to consider is Augustin Pajou. From out of left-field I know - a French Neoclassical Sculptor from the 1700s.  I have always had the greatest respect for sculpture, and sculptors.  The idea of carving something from a solid block in particular always takes my breath away.  The reason Pajou comes to my mind in particular is that last year we were assigned to go to any museum that contained art in D.C. to choose some pieces to write about for AP Literature.  I love going to museums, and it was really easy when I didn't live two hours from D.C. as I do now...that project however made me realize that when I used to look through museums I would usually forget to look for an artists name, so even if I remembered the title of the piece I would have to look for the work through Google Images to i.d. the piece in particular that I had seen/liked in the case that multiple artists named something the same.  One statue that grabbed my attention was Pajou's "Calliope".  I had to remember the artists name as well as the pieces name for the assignment and when I went online to find an image of the sculpture I found many of Pajou's other works beautiful as well.  I really can't get over the look of her flowing garb, I mean that's MARBLE! 

  
(Sorry about the spacing on the last part, it won't readjust for anything right now :S)

Heather Harvey!

Tuesday afternoon I attended the talk given by Heather Harvey.  She started her talk with a disclaimer of sorts telling us how she is frequently asked what her work means.  She went into great detail about how she is interested in "the human condition", especially aspects of which remain "unresolved".  She told us that she wants her work to "overlap" a number of categories/ideas, and hopes to create works that allude to a "variety" of things and "suggest something larger".   She explained further, pulling her background and interests into play...she informed the audience that she has always been interested in how the world works. Well read, or at least 'well researched', Heather referenced many well known figures in her description of her thought process- at one point even (reluctantly quoting Einstein!).  She made/quoted one point in particular that really resonated with me.  Using video games as her analogy, she presented the world as a well designed place that looks as though it works, but when you zoom in(on places that are not intended to be seen close up, like backgrounds...) the system breaks. The world from a human level makes sense, but as soon as you change perspectives everything gets very confusing(you come up against quantum physic, etc.) She used this point to turn back to her interests.  She shared that she likes focusing on things in between what we consider "known" and the "unknown" parts of our world.  The pictures of her pieces that she had with her were from a recent show "Into the Honeyed Presence Strewn".  Heather described parts of the works as attempting to capture the "chaotic ways of memories", which resulted in forms pushing out from the walls, that proved both playful and almost threatening in appearance.  This also had to do with "unseen infrastructures" such as gravity, quantum physics, and even human emotions...Some of the last things she showed us were her "Hole Drawings" in which she drilled through walls, usually former displays revealing many layers and at the same time creating a design with the holes.  One that I found particularly interesting was one she created by overlapping two Smith Charts (electrical engineering tool).  Lastly she described how she makes some of her "dumb art".  The plaster and wax pieces, and the liquid plaster she pushed through burlap, all created things that looked so different than one might expect if the process was just described without a visual example of the result (a pleasant surprise nonetheless).  Assigning meaning to these last pieces was equally challenging, according to Heather, as were the wall works, however, she did say that they could be looked at as dealing with mortality, and how it is or is not contained in the human body, and how they could be perceived as both playful and morbid works-it ultimately depends on varying perspectives, which seems to be her big point.
I have trouble recalling any other artist in particular that Heather Harvey makes me think of...I cannot say I have ever heard any one admit that they do not always have a concrete idea/message behind a piece and they want it to be ambiguous, they want it to be open to interpretation, either.  However, I found that unbelievably refreshing!  This is as close as my ideas have ever come to "relating" to another artist's.  I loved hearing her talk about trying to capture the essence of things unseen, unproven, unquestionable...I am fascinated by those concepts, and trying to create these things is so "cool" in my mind!



(I'd also like to apologize for the overuse of exclamation points in my most recent blog titles...I just noticed today that I had used them in almost all of my titles.)

Time Flies!...When you throw your clock away.

Last week we continued a bit more with "futurism" watching parts of "Man With a Movie Camera".  (The website where people can upload "modern" equivalents to scenes from the movie was really neat!)  It was strange seeing such old film "move" so differently from what one is used to seeing...I can only imagine seeing the film when it was originally made- how strange that must have looked.  While we watched, we also started to make collages from magazine clippings and our model sketches.  When we finished them on Thursday (I thought) it was interesting to see how differently each one turned out, even though we technically started with the same materials.  
Between classes we also sketched more to our instrumental music, read an excerpt from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", and planned our postcards.

I had trouble choosing just one song to sketch to, but I eventually stuck with Heat by Apocalyptica.

 

The first few sketches I did, I found myself drawing objects that I thought of when I heard the music, mainly violins. So I set the song to repeat, and simply let it repeat for an hour...after a while I stopped noticing where it was in the song, as it started to blur together.  Then I sketched a few more pages (this time with colored pencils instead of oil pastels).  Not only was sketching with the pencils faster and easier, I stopped drawing objects, and found myself drawing lines that interacted with each other as the sounds did instead.  

The Scott McCloud excerpt was very different from our past reading assignments.  It was fun to read a coherent argument in comic form, that literally guided you (the reader) through the examples, talking about time in comics, by showing the narrator walking through different instances of time in comics.  I found it particularly interesting on page 108 (or 15/24) that the author had the narrator standing in front of representations of some well known futurist pieces. I also found it interesting that a line could become so stylized that it was almost universally associated with a particular action.

The collages we made led me to my research topic this week.  I was not sure
exactly what they were called, but after some searching I pin-pointed that
images made up of many smaller images (in my mind, like a super collage) are generally referred to as Photo Mosaics. Like this one for example:

 

(Close up)

 

I was also curious when they first became "big", for lack of better words.  Apparently in the 1970s,  "Leon Harmon of Bell Labs wrote article, entitled 'The Recognition of Faces', that appeared in Scientific American. To prove that very little detail was required for humans to recognize a face, he included a low resolution rendering of a grayscale Abraham Lincoln. This image of Abraham Lincoln was simply 252 tiles of varying shades of gray."  This grew into more complicated images that we see today, however,"Now, virtually all photo mosaics are made with computers, using advanced algorithms to place tile pictures in their preferred locations."  I think it would be fun to make one by hand some time, of course it would take a while.
 Resource 1  Resource 2  Resource 3  

I'm sorry if my questions this week seem rather simplistic...
-When making a collage: Can one simply throw things together, and later draw meaning from it--perhaps assuming that even though there was no initial driving idea that eventually one subconsciously chose particular things?
-In reference to the instrumental sketches:  How much of a difference does it make if one is hearing something for the very first time, or if they are familiar with it.  (In English) How differently might one react initially to something compared to someone that has positive/negative associations with a song, or sounds of the song (one may never had heard the song before, but if it sounds similar to another one...)-essentially, I suppose I am curious how much our experiences/emotions may affect how we "read" (react) something (or if there is even a way to "measure" such things.)

Back to the Futurists!

This week we worked more on sketching/switching sides of the brain, sketching a live model, and began discussing "Futurist Art".  Tuesday we experimented with different types of charcoal and paper as we also tried different techniques in sketching the model.  I think I liked the newsprint and charcoal, with quick sketches best.  It's not that I don't want to take my time, but I have found the longer I allow myself to work on something, the more mistakes I find, and the more I alter it--so for Tuesday's purposes I think the faster approach was best for me.  
Thursday we started by discussing "Futurist Art".  It was a bit of a challenge at first trying to pinpoint specific features of the works, in attempt to determine what was going on.  However, the more we looked at, the more they seemed to make sense (to me anyway)...by "make sense" I do not by any means, mean  that they looked more realistic....I mean that it was easier to approach the works to "guess" at the subject, and so on.  However, the car one kind of stumped me...it took me longer to see what was intended.
our reading from "Ways of Seeing".  The article as a whole was very interesting, but a couple parts in particular spoke to me.  I know we already talked about these points in class, but I suppose to "re-cap" my thoughts:  The points about photography not being as mechanic as we think, how the photographer's choice of subject, among other things, can alter how we see the scene, how market value can affect a pieces popularity, and reproductions can alter a piece --I found these aspects most compelling.  Again we also brought our questions up in the discussion, but I really liked the concept of how replicating a photo might differ from replicating a painting-how the quality/size may affect this, etc.   
Next we played a few of the instrumental pieces the class had brought in, and experimented with Wacom Bamboo Tablet©.  Listening and trying different colors and lines in Adobe Photoshop© we got used to drawing on a flat surface with a pen and it showing up on the screen...having never used one of tablets before, it took me a little while to get used to it, but once I did it was really cool to create on the computer without using a mouse.  
For my research this week, I was still curious about "futurism" in general.  My research took me across a variety of pieces, some of which we had seen in class.  One that particularly grabbed my attention was Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911) by Carlo Carrà.  This piece is described as Carrà's most famous work, and that it is a good example of futurism as it, "embodies Futurist ideals with its portrayal of dynamic action, power, and violence."

Resource 1 - Resource 2

I am not sure whether it is the use of reds, or the overlapping of shadows, but this piece just left me trying to follow all of the motions--however, every time I tried to move off of the center figure I was drawn back...the rest feels so chaotic, but this figure seems to stand out, while still blending in(colors are the same...).  Perhaps this is just me...I suppose I can always come back to looking at it after a break, and that might also change how I see it?
For my two questions, I suppose it would help to point out that these ideas were affected by the beginning parts of the article we read last week:
-If the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe, would it be ideal for everyone to know and believe the same things to "guarantee" in a sense a universal reaction to something?  Or could that be a dangerous thing to not have different interpretations?  (Not for everyone to think the same way, but to evoke the same emotional reactions....)
-The article also states, "Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen."  This made me think of little kids-'if I can't see you, you can't see me', and peek-a-boo, etc.  What if we never developed the sense of being seen? Again, this requires explanation...What if we understood that we can be seen, but never got the sense that we could...would that change how we looked at others?  I am not really sure if I can put this thought into very clear words...I will work on this one...