Self-Portrait

Today, we started the final assignment for the semester. In this exercise, we are suppose to render the darkest darks and lightest lights in order to create a portrait of ourselves. This value exercise requires us to erase the dark to get light unlike the other that required us to shade to get dark and light. Intially, I thought this process would be much easier only to find out that the nose I started to draw is too small. Among other things, I have to focus on seeing my face in terms of light instead of its iconic qualities.

DAY 1

“Feeding Time”

When I was first assigned this project, I wanted to make a butterfly. My ideas were to use wire to make the foundation and also cover the wire with tissue paper in order to highlight the light weight and the beautiful colors of butterflies. After much contemplation, I decide that making the wings was what I was most interesting in doing for this project. I thought, What other animals have wings that I would like to create? I decided to make a bird. This idea popped into my head because my class mascot is a phoenix. After researching bird images, I identified the major characteristics of a bird. Bird-like features that I wanted to show in my piece were the beak, wings, and color.

Red Wings

  The next day when I began working on the piece I did not have a clear idea of how I wanted to create my bird. I, eventually, started with the wire but soon realized that the wire was too thin. Zama suggested that I intertwine  the wire to make the structure sturdy. The rest of my project developed in the same manner; I use trial and error to figure out what worked best. I also began to create the other peices as I imagined the storyline. The peice that I put the most thought into was the beaks of the birds in the nest. I wanted to take the most important feature of the bird and use it to represent the babies in the nest. I wanted my viewers to see the beaks and imagine the rest of the baby birds. The worm was actually the last part that I added because I felt like something was missing from my story. When I added the worm, I felt my story “Feeding Time” was complete. My art had a beginning and an end.

The materials that I used were also a result of trial and error. I looked through the supplies to see what worked for my work. I know that I wanted a red bird because I wanted it to be the same color as my class mascot, the phoeni but everything else sorta followed while I was working. My explanation of what I wanted to created, how I wanted to create it, and what materials I wanted to use all seem slightly haphazard. With this peice, I was simpily going with what felt right. Each peice that I added was like creating the next sentence, paragraph, or Chapter in my narrative “Feeding time”.

“Art and the City”: From DC to NY Spring Break style

 

As I walked throughout the major cities of Washington DC and NewYork City during spring break, I noticed that the city was decorated with many different forms of art. From the railways to the college campus, people have presented their art in a way that depicts the respective cities. These pictures also caught my attention and in some way has a connection to me and my life. I show this relationship by naming the art the first word or phrase that pops into my head.

Creating Words

For this project, we were told to make a visual representation of a word. We were to use different shapes to engage the space on the page in a way that portrays the word that we picked. While doing this project, we were to consider many different things. For example, lines are arrows because they point your eyes in particular directions. Also, depending on where the line is postioned on the page deteremines the relationship the line has with the page. Other concepts to think about were scale, style, value, and the composition of the peice.

This project was very different from the value exercise and had to be completed much quicker than any of the other assignments. Despite the short period, I decided that I would do my best to complete the project. I was given the word TROUBLED. It took me forever to decide how I could represent this world. Even discussing my ideas with a classmate wasn’t very helpful. I felt like I was not very creativity was not shown while  doing this project. I may be being harsh on my work but this was my least favorite peice that I produced in this class.

In order to represent the word troubled, I wanted to show that there was a continuous pattern. The continuous pattern would represent the contancy that one battles with when they are troubled. The part of the peice that represents the  uneasiness that occurs when one is troubled is the black space. The black spaces in the pattern are there to show how being troubled disturbs the things that are constant in life.

Marta Project

Marta Project Redo

When I started this project, I really wanted to take pictures of art within the Marta train station. While reporting my findings at the first class critique, I realized that some Marta stations had more art than others. I decided to take another approach to this project and take the route that I often  took when I was in high school. I rode the Marta bus #58 from my house to Westlake train station. I would continue this trip in two different ways. If I was going to my old high school, then I would go to Lindbergh train station and take the #48. But, if I was going to hang out with my friends, then I would take the train to Lenox train station and go to Lenox Mall. During my trip what I noticed was that there was not any art work  i.e.  murals, sculptures, or architecture at the West bound train stations, but as I rode toward the North bound and East bound train stations there was plenty of art. Before doing this project, I have not been on Marta in a very long time because I have a car. I did notice the changes that had occurred: the cost of Marta had increased, the entry gates had changed, and some stations had changed. The station that had changed was Lindbergh; it has been transformed into a place where people can eat, shop, go to night clubs. Most importantly for this project there was plenty of art work at the train station.

First Draft             

      I loved being assgined this project because I am from Atlanta but often encounter people that are afraid of Marta.  Marta became by friend when I entered high school. I used Marta to go to school and back home again. My friends and I often used Marta to go to the mall and to Underground Atlanta. While travelling on Marta ,I often noticed the murals and architecture of the different train stations. This is what I captured in my Marta project. I took pictures of a mural at Decatur and North ave train station, the architecture at Five Points, and the varsity advertisement at North ave station.  

P.S. I talked to Zama about my Marta project. I had three initial ideas and  they were to photograph each station and suggest whether or not the cleanliness of the station reflected the poverty or wealth of the neighbor, photograph loss change, and the other was the art that appears at different stations.

Architecture

Architecture

Mural

Architecture

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Tiles

 

  

 

  

 

   

Dance as an Art Form

Tonight, I watched the Pre-Informal Conference performance in the dance studio. Tomorrow,  six Agnes Scott College students, Stephanie Cureton, Lathasia Collins, Victoria Guillory, Jaime Henry-White, Tia Huston and Havalyn Raeuber, will leave to compete at the American College Dance Festival. They will perform two peices called “Ok Computer” and “Falling off of porches”. The purpose of tonights event was to show the Agnes Scott community what they will perform at the conference. Both performance were modern dances and therefore was their own interpretation of  “Ok Computer” and “Falling off of porches”. What makes dance similar to visual art? Much like art, dance using movement  and color to communicate to its observers. For example, in the “Ok Computer” peice the student wore all white and wrapped a black cable around her whole body. This contrast in color and texture created activity before she even moved her body. When she begin to dancing, she used quick and very sharp movements which I interpreted as very industrial and electrial circuit-like. These two characteristics are indicative of computer technology. In the second peice “Falling of Porches”, the dancers blue flowing dress paired with soft,circular, and  flowing movements created beautiful imagery of what it would be like to fall off of the porch.

 

Fundred Dollar Bill

 The Fundred Dollar Bill was a project started by Mel Chin after Hurrincane Katrina. He begin this project because he was asked to go to New Orleans in order to give an artist perspective on how the city could be cleaned up. While there, he felt hopeless when looking at the massive amount of damage that Hurricane Katrina left behind but what he did notice was that their was already a huge problem in New Orleans before Katrina hit. Chin was alarmed because the the soil was filled with lead and was poisioning the youth within the city. The fundred website http://www.fundred.org/ reports that lead contaminates the soil in about 86,000 properties and effects about 30% of the cities youth. In order to deplete the soil of lead, Mel Chin combined his efforts with other scientist and devised a plan to prevent lead posioning. Mel Chin also wanted to get the children involved which is the more artistic part of his activism. He recruited children worldwide to make their own fundred dollar bill that will be sent to Congress. Mel Chin is lobbying Congress and asking them to match every fake 100 dollar bill that Congress receives with real money so that they can clean up the soil in many inner cities across the nation. This is a clever way to combine art, science, and political activism because by children making the fundred dollar bills Congress will more likely listen to the problem that is plagueing their city’s. It also gives the children agnecy in this problem because they are the one’s that are most affected by the lead ridden soil which often causes many disabilities and other health problems.

Charcoal, Conte, and Graphite…….Oh My!

At this point in the semester, I have experimented with many different mediums  when completing my art assignments. Our assignments included using soft charcoal to draw a chair on Strathmore paper, conte crayon to draw a geometric still life on Lenox paper, and a graphite crayon and pencil to draw a still life composed of fabric, tulles, and boxes. Despite my preference for some tools over others, I have come to understand the importance and limitations for using each one. The soft charcoal was one that I liked a lot because it was very easy to use. On the Strathmore paper, it glided across the page creating very smooth strokes and it was fairly easy to erase. Especially when I first began my journey in the art world, I liked that I could erase a lot partially because I was very uncertain about my work. In the same breath, not being able to erase was one of the main reasons that I did not like the conte crayon. Even in my final project you can easily see where I continuously corrected my lines and adjusted my angles.  I guess that was the purpose of using the conte crayon because Nell wanted us to “get messy” and not be afraid to make mistakes. Despite my slight dislike for conte crayon, it also had some very good qualities. The first being that it was red and created very bold and brilliant lines and the second being that when used on its side on the Lenox paper I could create many different textures compared to the other mediums. Last but not least was using the graphite crayon and pencil.  These were the most familiar and consequently the medium that I preferred the most. It was the best of both worlds creating bold and fine lines that were erasable and when flipped on the side the graphite would create the similar texture as the conte crayon. Ultimately, I now understand that depending on the paper and writing tool effects the how one can render  whatever that choose to draw.

Creating Tulle and Fabric

A few days ago I began  my tulles and fabric still life project. During our first studio session, it was very hard for me to began working. I started on the box because it was what I was most comfortable with doing mainly because that’s exactly what the class had been working on for the first couple of weeks of class. But I was forced to start when Nell suggested that I start on the shading of the fabric and the box would eventually come towards the end of the drawing. Even though I picked the spot that I wanted to draw, I still did not know where to start drawing. Also, even though I knew that shading would create depth, I still did not have faith that objects would start popping out. By the end of class, I had created a nice box, an outline for where my tulle would extend, and an outline of the cave-like structure. I didn’t feel like I had accomplished much so I decided to come back later that night. That night I began shading but soon realized that darkness created different shadows that were not there during the daylight.

“Creating depth and value”: Shades and Tints

Today, we were given a graphite pencil and a hard graphite crayon and instructed to shade from dark to light. We were to accomplish creating shades and tints  by smearing with our fingers, erasing, and creating texture with horizontal and vertical lines. This was an interesting assignment for me because I am very heavy handed when I write and draw; therefore, it was very difficult for me to create lighter shades of grey. I was also very excited about completing this project because I could now apply a technique that was very unfamiliar to me when finishing my chair. I could add depth and value to my next drawing which would provide a more realistic and dimensional drawing.