Final Project

Relax. Art Needs No Justification.

Environmentalist Statement 1.

Artistic Statement:

I will begin by discussing the first composition. In setting out to create my final originally based off of the concept of breath, I found it difficult to focus my ideas into a composition. To break through this stagnation I essentially took a deep breath and reminded myself that art doesn't need to be justified. It doesn't need and shouldn't be something. Working with modified concept in mind (breath and the idea that my art doesn't need to be anything specific) I wanted to use myself in the piece, getting over the awkward sensation of seeing yourself within the medium your creating with. I also wanted to depict a sense that taking a breath should help a person relax but wanted to complicated this traditional theory by adding in additional, non-relaxing components. I try to counter relaxation with randomized movement of scanned in tea bags, because tea is often used to relax. I also inserted a spinning brick background as apposed to the typically stationary bricks seen in reality and attempted to make the words breathe and relax aggravating by alternating their colors.

The second composition is based of off a different concept. The other day my friend and I picked up garbage from the street and threw it away in our apartment. While doing this we discussed the fact that removing debris from the street does little to solve the problem of pollution. Trash inevitably ends up in giant piles or in our oceans. Do to the relation that humans are consuming at an alarmingly, uncontrollable rate I wanted to make a composition that created awareness of this problem for the audience. To intensify the issue at hand, I inserted space or the universe into the background. This also attempts to comment on the magnitude of the problem.  I used scanned in plastic bags to create forms and a sense of movement and used striking pictures of pollution to stir the audience's emotion.

Project 9: Self-Imposed Concept GIF

PEOPLE BREAK UP (gif)

PEOPLE BREAK UP (gif plus audio in video format)

PEOPLE BREAK UP (original version- gif and audio)

ARTISTIC STATEMENT:

This assignment asked us to create a gif based upon our own concept. I choose to make as abstract of a piece as possible. I typically use forms and cartoonish figures in my art so I wanted to make something formless that utilized colors and shapes to create an emotion. Within my concept I also wanted to focus on human relationships, specifically romantic relationships. So my shape constantly breaks apart symbolizing a break up. At the same time that break ups are continuously occurring, simulating many of our loves lives, three other figues come into the composition and could be described as symbols of non-romantic relationships. In the end, even these symbols fade away. 

The colors coming together throughout the composition represent the birth of new relationships. So do the new colored shapes that appear behind the old.

Another component of this project was that I played with designing and adding audio to the gif. The goal was to make an audio track that at least minutely resembled the theme of the piece, creating a nice accompaniment. I couldn't figure out how to save a gif with audio files so I rendered the audio and gif compositions down to video.

PROJECT 8: GIF

Artist Statement:

 In constructing my gif I wanted to make a longer piece that had multiple shapes, images, and almost contain a visual narrative. The goal of the piece was to illustrate the minds process of forgetting childhood memories and how often we fight against this loss. Usually such resistance takes the form of an individual elaborating on stories their parents told them about their youth, stretching details they've been told into a pseudo-reality in the hopes of unknowingly substituting this for a lost memory.

Within the gif the profile of the older male  represents an older person losing a memory as the childhood (cowboys) try to ride away with his thoughts.  He resists the lose of his memory by using his tongue to pull back the memory from outside his head. 

I created a background of flashing squares in different patterns to simulate the memory games I played throughout elementary school. Specifically, I riffed on the memory game that involves flipping over cards in an attempt to make pairs. The squares and different patterns are designed to make you try to find a pattern (or pair) which is never satisfied within the composition. There are also various images of these squares that have a lag time or remain on screen longer then the others. This hopefully creates the experience of discomfort as the pattern doesn't stick to the same progression it did in the first several seconds of the gif. This should play a "trick" on the memory by not fulfilling expectations.

A reflection that I had after completing this gif is that i was to long. The longer form that I choose to use detracted from the effectiveness of the gif format. By placing in several different images that seem to take a literal meaning the intellect is engaged more then the emotions. I feel that my composition failed in its original purpose of creating a feeling in the observer. In my next gif I will make a  more abstract piece that has a less available meaning and can therefore provide longer observation and inquiry.

None-the-less, I do like the radioactive brain and the cowboy patterns.

Project 7: Mapping

Artist Statement:

            This project focused on creating compositions that utilized Google Earth and the conception of maps/mapping. A secondary component was to focus on where we are (first composition), where we’ve been (second composition) , and we’re we want to go (third composition). In the first composition I wanted to incorporate landmarks from the EWU campus as well as Spokane but to make indistinct.  I chose the brides downtown, an aerial view of downtown, as well as a chunk of Eastern’s square.  I also created a layered background of Northern Idaho, which had a lot of texture and seemed to capture a sense of the outdoors and rural living juxtaposed against the bridges and urban structures.

            In the second composition I wanted to create a ancient looking map so I used pale colors for the background and pixilated greens and blues that look warn. I also choose port towns that I had traveled to including Istanbul, NYC, and Venice. This fit my nautical theme and created an interesting experience of these foreign places being moved close together.

            The third piece focuses on Northern Idaho and my hopes of getting a cabin on Priest Lake sometime in the near future. I choose to play with exposure and different hues. These are found in the squares that focus on a close up of the lake itself. I chose to pair the natural background with the geometric shapes to try and get the viewer to e confused.

            He final two compositions involved combining different parts of the world together. In the 4 piece I wanted to play with size and proportion so I have the ocean in the background then  a stack of Antarctica, North America, and Africa. I also tried to create interesting colors using the hue/saturation filter. The last composition combined different aerial views of deserts from different parts of the world focusing on the textures that different geographical areas display through their finely crushed rocks. I also tried to pull clouds from Google Earth and make them look realistic.

Project 6: Fantasy

Artist Statement:

Creating fantasy compositions that could pass as being real was difficult. In my first composition I wanted to create a fantastic theater scene bringing in a dragon and knight. This focus quickly changed to a focus on light and textures. I learned how to individually manipulate each layer's brightness and contrast which allowed me to bring out the texture of its scales. I enjoyed the happy accident of creating a reflection of two dancers i the grand piano.
The last two compositions have more of an urban focus. In the second composition I focused on making the water ripple as if the fish had actually jumped out of the water. I also tried to make the water look as if it was naturally reacting to other items such as the pilings, etc. I used the smudge tool. In the last composition I primarily focused on shadow and the effect of light coming through the branches of the tree in the center.

Project Five: Landscape and Urban

Artistic Statement:

Part 1 (Top 3 compositions): While constructing the landscape pieces I was immediately drawn to water and wanted to incorporate the substance's ability to capture light and the textures that it creates. Not wanting to over use this element I also choose to use a mountain scene as well as a prairie environment. In these pieces I tried to create a sensation of vastness or depth so in the mountain landscape I tried to show the mountains vanishing off in the distance. I altered the size of the hay bales in the second composition to show that the prairie was expansive. I wanted to use a different focus of natural landscape for each piece so one focuses on minutia's, the other of openness of flat territory and the third focuses on water and the limited space of a canyon. 

Part 2 (Bottom 3 compositions): My first urban composition focused on making online photographs of different streets in NYC that were also taken from different angles work together. I played with the vanishing point within the piece moving it to different places to attempt to make a seamless cohesion. I also attempted to add my own graffiti and posters to the walls of the apartment buildings to create a more interesting environment.
In the second piece I wanted to incorporate as many people into the urban environment as possible and at the same time place these people in the most natural environment of a city, a park. The hope was to create awareness that even though people flock to the cities, a part of them wants to remain rooted in the country, etc. This composition was also a study on shadow and how to insert characters from different photographs into the composition and fit them in based off of light and dark shading. I choose to use the black and white filter because the colors of the shadows didn't work together as well as the black and white version. In the end I feel that the women feeding the pigeons is to dark, but this masks the other woman on the bench which I inserted into the piece and would also have to much contrast to the rest of the composition.

Project 4: TEXT

Artist Statement:

     Concerning the assignment of turning text into a surreal composition I choose to work with fonts scanned from a magazine in a couple of the pieces (2 and 3). The magazine I choose, ESQUIRE, has an interesting and bubbly font that I thought would translate into a cool look after being warped.

     In the compositions I attempted to stay out of the center of the piece with a focused item, etc. The goal of this was to use perspective and blur effects ignorer to create a sense of movement and to force the eye to move throughout the piece and not stay in one spot for to long. I also played with the concept of making some of the text unrecognizable as letters. This really added to the surreal effect but may have gone to far losing the impact of presenting the alphabet to the observer.

     Each composition was created separately and not intentionally built off any of the others. Even though this was the case I seemed to have primarily chosen lighter pastel influenced colors and the complimentary colors of red/green as well as purple and yellow. I like the combination and the colors probably aligned with my mood during the time of creation.