Project 2: Mark Making

Meaningful quotes


 1.  Rules are made to be broken

 2.  A joke is a very serious thing

 3.  Imagination is more important than knowledge

 4.  Everything you can imagine is real

 5.  I can resist everything except temptation

 6.  Her tears like diamonds on the floor

 7.  My mind's racing from chasing pirates

 8.  Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers

 9.  Art is either plagiarism or revolution

10. Without music, life would be a mistake


The two quotes I have chosen are:

 1.  Her tears like diamonds on the floor

 2.  My mind's racing from chasing pirates

Menil Collection

A Wet Whirlwind Tour

The walk through the red trench warmed us up before we sprinted through the Menil and surrounding buildings.  The variation of works was very impressive.  I felt like a time traveler.  Our mission to sketch twelve works was a bit daunting since I haven't drawn in a couple of years, but I found it came back quickly.  The most exciting works for me were the Rothkos.  I have seen his darker paintings but always wanted to see his color period.  Great day in spite of the rain.

September 3, 2010 Lecture and Reading

Living With Art, Rita Gilbert and Lecture


The Role of the Artist

Art is an avenue for communication of our history, the tangible, the intangible, and new perspectives on seeing the world.  Recording history allows for a conversation between people of the past and the present as in Horace Pippin's John Brown Going to His Hanging.  Pippin records an event in history that was passed down through his family about slavery and abolitionists.  In Andre Derain's The Turning Road, l'Estaque, he uses color to put a new twist on the landscape.

According to Gilbert, artists have dedicated themselves to the visual expression of creativity and have certain attributes that assist them such as sensitivity, flexibility, originality, and fluency to name a few.  The other side of this communication equation involves the observer and the considerations of the work's physical characteristics, the artist's intentions, and what it all means. To truly appreciate the visual expression, the observer must be informed and develop their viewing muscles.

Gilbert also discusses, "What is Art?"  In our lecture we discussed, "What is art to you?" and there were so many answers.  Is it art if there has been a lot of effort expended to create it?  Are photographs, nature, or artifacts art?  How about architecture, computer animation, or creating a new breed of animal?  Art is subjective and an individual's emotional response depends on their life experiences.  The impulse to create has always been because humans have always had the need to interact with their environment for survival by making tools for hunting, protection, farming, etc.  We also needed to communicate with each other and to connect for the survival of our species.  There are so many different ways to connect depending on what needs to be communicated, such as collaborative, organized systems for transportation or the need for clarity in advertising.

In this communication, artists can create non-representational art, which is not based on the real world, or representational art, which stands for the real thing.  In representational art there are four different styles of communication:

• Naturalistic - as in nature
• Realistic - true to life
• Stylized - simplified to emphasis important details
• Abstract - highly stylized and may not be recognizable

Every representation contains the specific details the artist chooses to include.  The process of Piet Mondrian's move from representation to complete abstraction was fascinating.  He began to be more interested in networks, relationships and the way shapes related rather than their natural representation.  The exercise that followed this lecture and reading was to choose two pieces of artwork and observe, interpret and support the interpretation with specific ideas.  This gave the class the opportunity to practice using these skills.

Think Like A Dot

The Human Element - Part 4

This collaborative project included Cara Wakefield, Milah Moes, Josh Berrios, Josh Chriswell, Lauren Martin, and myself.  It started with our planning session and the lists we created for negative space, the human element, and documentation options.  We decided to use dots and collectively chose the two best options from each of our compositions.   



 

We decided that the ground would be a white sheet and we would be the objects.  I brought the sheet and camera, Lauren brought the black nail polish, several brought black hats, and we all dressed in black to transform our bodies into dots.  We began preparing for the photo shoot by painting our fingernails black.  Even Josh let Cara paint his nails. He was totally freaked out by this process and didn't appreciate the documentation but was a good sport. 

 

We weren't sure how all this was going to come together and had several failed attempts.  After we had exhausted all our ideas we asked Bill for some inspiration.  He removed our blocks by making a few suggestions and we were off to the races.  These are my photographic choices.

All this contorting and maneuvering was a bit tiring and we had to take a few breaks and have some fun.



                                                                 





The Exquisite Corpse II

For terrible tiger dances the hypocritical car.

As I walked, I really thought about my sentence and said the words over and over. The part of the sentence that stood out the most was "terrible tiger".  I was prepared to walk all over the neighborhood but I shot this pic in my front yard.  It expresses the feeling that I get when I think of  the words.  The fierce looking teeth, the orange color, and even the garishness of the flash, make me feel the tiger.

Pine Cone Progress

THE BLOCKED ZONE

September 10, 2010 Lecture

Loved this lecture!  Breaking down the creative process into its attributes like sensitivity, organization, fluency, originality, productivity, and flexibility gave a deeper understanding of  how artists put their entire being into their craft.  I am in the blocked zone and understanding the psychological reasons for being in this space creates the awareness of how to get out of it.  What it all boils down to is fear.  Stresses like safety and security, emotional, intellectual, and cultural stresses can block the
the intuitive mind and keep the mechanical mind in charge.

To break out of the blocked zone make lists, take a walk, play silly games, let the mind wander.  In attacking a project, first you must understand the problem, subproblems/rules and second you must devise a plan. What language will you use, could you put idea to another use, could you adapt it by modifying, magnifying, rearranging, combining, or reversing? 

Creative Walk About

The Exquisite Corpse

My words were "for terrible tiger dances the hypocritical car."  Using the visual language of photographs, this is my take on the phrase.  I  googled "tiger dance" and found this awesome pic.  Then I took a pic of my nephew's toy car.  It's a wannabe race car.


            For terrible tiger dances are more authentic than

the hypocritical car

Squares and Form Interrelationship

It took me a while to disengage from the circles project and get the juices flowing for a new creative concept.  Kathy's drawing on the dry erase board helped eject me out of circles, circles, circles and into squares, squares, squares.  This project was more fun because the rules changed and created more possibilities by cropping, touching, overlapping, intersecting, interpenetrating, subtracting, coinciding, and union.

Playful

Periodic

                             

 

  

These are the two final sketches that I chose for playful and periodic because they clearly oppose each other.  The first sketch merges the form interrelationship of touching and the gestalt principle of continuance.  The objects come from outside and move across the frame.  There is tension because it feels like the small squares are about to topple.  The second sketch illustrates the interrelationship of interpenetration and also uses the gestalt principle of continuance.  The frame becomes part of the sketch and the motion recedes into the center.  Onward to part three!  

Playful and Periodic

Do You See What I See?

Critique of 16 and Final 4

Well...obviously we are all seeing dots in our sleep after this week.  The critique process was very helpful in fine tuning how to identify each gestalt principle.  The feed back in the beginning was different from the ending.  It took a little time to absorb the 16 frames (I did remove the extra 8.  I forgot how to count to 16 that day!).  At first my group (Cara, Milah, Josh, Ryan, and Lauren) saw lots of negative space with small dots.  After observing for a few minutes they decided that there was some variation in size but still leaned toward the small scale.  They also said the frames were neat in appearance with symmetry and no randomness.  There was a good balance between patterns and lines.

Group pick for final four

It was beneficial to look at the sketch and immediately say the first principle that came to mind.  This identified the strongest principle for each frame.  Some were very difficult to pin down the prominent idea and they came back to it at the end.  If it was ambiguous, they threw it out of contention for the final four.  In the end, they chose the four sketches at left that most clearly expressed closure, similarity, continuance, and proximity.  They also had some very good ideas for improvements on the four they picked.  The question mark for the closure frame needed to be smaller and closer to the right bottom corner to expose more negative space thus reinforcing the principle.  For the similarity and continuance frames the dots needed to be larger giving them more prominence.  I did make an executive decision to change the group pick for similarity.  In looking at the four as a whole, I felt that there was a need for more variation in size than I could incorporate even with enlarging the size of the dots for this particular principle.  

The Pine Cone Project

The First Week Of Creation


Texture, texture, texture!  That was the connection I made between the pine cone and the cardboard.  I want to create the feel and essence of the natural object.

First, I needed the underlying structure.  I thought about a pine cone after the squirrels have finished with it and it reminded me of a bare corn cob.  So I designed the bones to begin the construction. 

Second, I made various sizes of what I call petals.  I flattened the cardboard and glued the edges together.  While the glue was still damp, I manipulated the petal to look like the natural ones.

I think its going to work! Now to figure out how to mass produce pine cone petals.

Dots, Dots, Dots

Project 1:  Part 1

Hmmm.... how to attack this project.  I started by using dots that I cut out of black paper with a 6x6 frame to work through the different seqences that I might use.  Later I labeled them according to the four gestalt principles... not always an easy task. 

I also took photos of each to use as templates for the 6x6 sketches.  My window served as a light box to record these.

 

August 27, 2010 Lecture

Form and Content

Form is the synthesis of an object's physical characteristics: size, shape, color, texture, etc.  There is a relationship between the viewer and the object that the viewer translates according to his/her individual experiences.  Content is the meaning that these characteristics give a composition.  Form and content are often thought of as separate attributes but the two can not be clearly divided because they are parts of a whole.  Though the artist is the creator, it is the viewer that ultimately interprets the meaning.

Project 1 uses the concepts of form and content to recreate an object from nature in cardboard and glue.  The objective is to create a complete fusion between concept, technique and materials.  I will be creating an interpretation of a pine cone.  Stay tuned...

August 27, 2010 Lecture

Composition and Elements of Design

A composition is an organization of ideas as in music, writing, visual arts, theatre, etc.  To create meaning within a composition, elements such as point, line, shape/form, color, texture, space, and value are arranged to unify a concept.  In gestalt theory, the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.  John Bowers' Introduction to Two-Dimensional Design: Understanding Form and Function, describes good (regular) gestalt as having high organization and weak gestalt having weak organization.

There are clues within a composition that indicate meaning.  In music, for example, space creates rhythm and beat.  Other meanings such as harmony, discord, variation, and value can build suspense, curiosity, tension, emotion, or anticipation.  We experiment with composition in our life experiences through our senses and create shortcuts for processing information.  Artists can use this information to manipulate meaning within compositions.  Using the gestalt principles, proximity, closure, continuance, and similarity, meanings can be communicated such as tension, wholeness, motion, or harmony respectively.

To illustrate these concepts our group assignment was an exercise in creating a sound composition .  Lauren, Ryan, Josh, Milah, Cara, and myself enacted a demonstration of texture.  We made a sequence of different sounds (snapping, scuffing, clapping, cracking) to create a textural meaning.  We were successful!