Art Soulmates

For this project, the class was asked to go out and find 2-d readymades. Once we did so, we were then asked to bring our readymades in and find their soulmate somewhere inside the Weatherspoon Art Gallery. I had originally brought in two different readymades… one being a plastic pipe, and the other a flag I found on the side of the road. I was successful in finding both of their readymades but only mentioned one of them in the class presentations we did  inside the Weatherspoon. The first item in the picture in the upper left hand corner is the plastic pipe that I found. It’s soulmate was the art piece called “Figure Eights” composed by Deborah Oropallo. I hooked these two items up because of the similarity between the texture of the black pipe, and the rope painted onto the canvas of the Figure Eights piece. The second readymade had chemistry with the melted plastic mass that was constructed by Ian Dawson. The flag was found ripped by the elements and also had the same melted look and feel that the Melted plastic mass did.

Book Drawings

For this assignment, we randomly selected 3 books from the Jackson Library based on book titles that were appealing to us. 

The first book I grabbed was called Appaloosa, to be honest I had no idea what it was about and my only reason for selecting it was because it was a fun word to say haha. After going online and doing some research, I came to find that Appaloosa is a type of horse. They are known for their spots. Some horses only have spots on their hindquarters, while others have spots all over. I was wondering why the librarian asked if I liked horses….

The second book I grabbed off the shelf is called The Glory of the Page. This book is about medieval art. In old medieval books they have vines and small pictures along the sides of the pages to decorate the page. What I was not aware of until I did a little bit of research, was that the animals and plants in the pictures along the sides of the page each represent or depict something. And for my picture, every time I thought about the word GLORY I kept thinking about the movie 300 and the Spartans going into battle…

The last book was called the Master’s of Light, and the subtitle mentioned that it was an art history book referring to the dutch painters of the golden age. In the book there were often 3 images of the same scene, or act. 2 of the 3 were usually in black and white, while the 3rd was in color. So for my picture I chose an outdoor theme, and selected 2 black and white images and a similar image in color. I drew the lamp and light switch to symbolize the light. I also wrote LAAT DAAR ZIJN which is dutch for “let there be”, then in the colored image I wrote the word light in english in white colored pencil, which in this picture is difficult to read. it can only be seen when the image is held up into the light.

Green Bean Flyer

 

This was out last project for the class. It was the visual form of a summary for our green bean audio recordings.

I had a few difficulties with producing this piece…. I wasn’t familiar with the school’s art program on the computer, and didn’t grant myself with enough time to learn the program that I downloaded. Then when I drove for 45 minutes to print my flyer at fed ex kinko’s I didn’t find out til I got there that my flyer was in the wrong format and I had to drive back home to change 3 letters on the format, and then go back to Fed ex. 

Anywho…. i had several images in my head for the final project including just composing a collage of all of the objects mentioned in my audio, and another idea that sounded good in my head until I actually put it on paper. It was hard to think of a single image that would capture people’s attention’s and still sum up my audio. 

Then I thought about the whirlwind of bubbles mentioned in my audio and thought about how the ironic statement played well into my own interpretation of the flyer. After that i kept thinking of ways to manifest an image that illustrated audio. And the first thing to come to mind was the ipod commercials where the black silhouettes are dancing around. While the dancing image tied well with the harmonious cyclone comment, i thought it was also a good audio visual.

Green Bean Finale

I now have greater respect for actors and comedians who make a living by sharing their perceptions and observations to others. For instance, while working on this project i noticed how crazy I had become watching and criticizing everything going around me, just like Lewis Black (minus the cussing and really good sense of humor).

However, I will honestly come out and say that I did not enjoy this project, but that was mostly due to the fact that the site of our audio was on average 30 minutes away from my house, and was rather inconvenient for me. Other than that I thought it was a decent project, and would possibly like to try another one similar to it sometime in the future…

30 minutes at Tate

Our most recent assignment was yet another observation. However, this one was only 30 minutes long, and we had to observe from Tate Street. For my observation I sat down at the first table on the right as you walk into the Subway on Tate Street. (It was the last clear table left, when I arrived.) If you are familiar with that specific Subway you will realize that where I sat there are a couple large stickers on the window in front of the table that limits the visibility to the outside world. So for my observation, I recorded everything that went on inside the subway, and some things that were visible to me through the window on the other side of the Subway. Also, I recorded my observations on a separate piece of paper, because I know how observant I am and how my notes tend to vary in size when I’m having to write fast, and I didn’t want to run out of room on my assignment paper, so I just used my own notebook paper.

I kind of sorted my observation into the different senses; touch, smell, hearing, and sight, I did not taste any of the food however. So for my blog I will only list a few of the recordings.

         One of the first things I noticed when I first walked in was the overwhelming smells of the toasted bread, and meat, and when I sat down, i was able to distinguish the extra vinegar that the man behind me had ordered on his sub.

        Another observation, was the lack of business that Subway had, coincidently after I walked in, no one else had entered until I was 20 minutes into my observation. After she had walked in, someone else had came in every couple of minutes. 

        The table at which I sat at was really dirty…… crumbs laying every, spilled sauce on the opposite of the table from where I was seated. 

        The sounds emitting from inside were hard to pick up over the rumble of the fans, and refrigerated units that were in the back. The people behind me, were speaking just loud enough for me to hear them, but not be able to pick up what was actually being said. Also, the radio was playing on 102.1 jamz, and all of the employees were singing and dancing to one of the songs.

First page of observations

Horton hears a who?

We had to eavesdrop on people, which even though I didn’t mention it in class, I had a problem with. For me, it is like I don’t like people listening to my conservations so why would I do it to them!?!? Although I didn’t approve, I still participated with the project, and eavesdropped. While I was at a gas station, I over heard 2 teenagers who just walked into the gas station arguing about speeding. The guy told the girl (who was driving), “I know you were speeding, you even said you were.” Which is how I came up with the picture for my project. I thought Lee told us to keep it simple, so I assumed that he wanted us to do so, because for most of us it was only our second time printing. So I just cut out the outline of spedometer gauge that I drew. Like I said in my critique to the class, I was very disgusted with and annoyed with how horrible my image was compared to everyone else’s because of it’s simplicity. However, even though I didn’t like my project, I still wish to try printing some more on my own.

Shapes

This was the first shapes assignment, where we had to go out and find 32 different shapes. There had to be 8 shapes to go with each category, functional, non-functional, ephemeral, and impress, I think it was impress….. but anyways, after we did that we had to pick out 10, and cut them out the ink them up and print them. I apologize for not having a picture, the prints were taken out of the design room before I was able to come back the next class and take them up. And the other shapes were thrown away by my mother. So again I apologize for not having any shapes.

One hour endurance drawing

One hour……it’s only one hour right? Just 60 minutes of non-stop drawing, oh and did I mention it had to be organized. I broke the hour up into 4 15 minute sections, also breaking up the page into quarters. Each section I would draw for 15 minutes. I had no idea what I wanted to draw except that I wanted all the lines to continue off whether it looked like it continued off the page or into another quadrant. Even though, my sketch is as appealing as some of the other students, I’m actually content with this composition, and I plan on producing another one on my own, but in a different media.

Repetitive Activity Production (RAP)

For homework, Lee wanted us to choose an activity and try and “act” it onto the paper. My first idea was to tape the paper to the ceiling and hold a pencil like  a baseball and draw the throwing motion. I had to change plans when I realized I couldn’t reach the ceiling of my house though. So I chose to try the pool approach again. I tried taping the pencil to the end of the pool stick and played a game of pool, but the paper ripped, and the pencil broke countless times. So I ended up just holding the pencil like a cue stick and “motioned” the stroke onto the paper. The straight lines at just regular strokes. But due to my research and fascination with pool I had recently changed my “breaking” stroke and put a twist on it to generate more power, (which is all of the curvy lines on the paper).

More repetition

So for this assignment, we taped a pencil to our pointer finger, and basically scratched marks onto the paper. It was cool to observe the lines being made just from flicking your finger back and forth over a piece of paper. My lines showed me that I have a natural twist when I do the flicking motion.