Independent Art Project: Concept

After much contemplation and throwing around ideas, I have begun to find a common ground among my brainstorms. This year, I would like to explore the idea of authenticity and façade in regards to humanity.

For my in-class Adv Art concentration, I will focus on the "façade" aspect, creating work that touches on insecurities of people. I will probably be focusing on paint and collage as my primary mediums.

For my out-of-class project, I am going to to explore a variety of mediums including sculpture, film, and graphic design to convey "authenticity." 

Hopefully when viewers look at my projects, they will find some sort of relation to the work even (especially) if it makes them uncomfortable. 

Artists that have really excited my need to throw off but also indulge the viewer include, but are not limited to, Ellen Gallagher, Keith Haring, Jenny Saville, and Wayne White. 

Print: Reach

For my next linoleum print of the year, I took a compelling image of my friend and sketched it onto a piece of linoleum with my usual cross hatching style. I took my linoleum cutter and used it to cross hatch the spots untouched by my pen rather than carving out masses of light v dark. I used a larger cutter tip for her body to imply the perspective, but am not sure how much I like it. Nevertheless, I don't think it detracts TOO much from the overall print's impact

Forgetting to tell my art teacher that I planned on doing these prints over the weekend, I had no access to printing paper, so I used tracing paper and am not disappointed with the result. I am thinking of expanding this project to include some sort of layer or collage to utilize the transparency of the paper. 

Cat Prints

For my first independent art project I decided to venture back into printmaking after a summer of static. Not really having much of a grand inspiration, I just flipped through the photos in my phone in hopes of a glimmer of interest. I landed on a picture of my aunt's cat that I had bonded with over the summer and created a simple linoleum print from it. I spent one Saturday printing 106 of these cats in an array of color combinations from the blue, red, and black ink. How I was to display my cats was an extreme mystery to me until Ms. Slaughter showed me the space I had for display. I laid 100 of my prints on the ground and spend a while arranging them until I settled on two panels of 4 x 10 each, totaling 80 prints, moving in a gradient from corner to corner. I taped the backs of the prints together to create the grid.

I suppose to analyze this piece, I would comment on how it is a bit of a color study to remind myself how color interact and how they bring out the style of the piece in different ways, and the power of a repeated image can have on the viewer. (Final presentation image to come.)

My focus during my independent study will be in exploring relationships in structure of a piece and how the non-routine colors can add emphasis to a subject.