The above is the link to my final video last semester. I plan to expand on this idea of using still photographs to animate a video in more of a non-linear narrative direction. Someone asked me last semester 'how long is your final going to be' and my answer was, and still is, that I will let the story structure and editing dictate the length. I don't want to try and force duration on the piece to satisfy some expectation set on myself.
My goal is to finalize my script in the next few weeks and them shoot during class and Saturday afternoons. If anyone knows any serious minded actors, preferably with some movement training - that have similar availability I would love to get in contact with them.
Since the color photography class I took during the Spring 2007 semester I have been creating photographs with special emphasis on the use of colored light. With the peculiar desire to create images that I might find in an issue of Vanity Fair (although I do not read this publication nor do I think I could succeed in one try to make images up to their standards) I thought about what I should do about this image that I had had floating in my head for about a year. Fashion and celebrity are the bread and butter of the magazine, so I knew that I must attempt a fashion photography aesthetic, but I wanted to manipulate the model's face with only colored light and shadows--no make up or facial movements. However, I knew nothing of lighting nor the science of light and its properties, so the first series of photographs happened because I could not get the different lights to give off their opposite shadows, and I therefore gave up on my "fashion spread" and went for multiple exposure shots (though still using colored light). They were not what I had wanted but I still liked what I made; they are strangely apocalyptic yet alluring. The softness of each exposure made for easy blending, so each image looks as if it were a single shot. Scale is important to me when it comes to these and the proceeding images; they all could benefit from being larger. They could also benefit from large format or digital camera use as large 35mm prints are grainy. I feel in this situation that graininess can take away from the experience. The next project was close to what I had pictured in my mind. I received a very brief orientation in colored light and working with its shadows, allowing me enough knowledge to shoot some rolls. Using a styrofoam cosmetology head and a variety of exotic false eyelashes I made several images, the best of which I am showing. These were supposed to be "test shots" so that I could see how I did, then use a friend as a model, but the mannequin images held something special, like the mannequin was trying to speak to us. Everyone preferred them over a human model, despite the fact that I have yet to make any with a human figure. The fashion aesthetic (not just the human shape of the face) brought a human quality out, which I like. I fell that images like these--with human models--could be found in a magazine. The intense colors suspend human communication. This could perhaps be seen as a failure of the work but I actually enjoy the intrigue. The last images were done in last semester's view camera class and were therefore taken with a view camera in the student lighting studio. Oddly, it was much harder to use the studio and the professional lights and gels than to stay at home in my makeshift studio with colored "party" bulbs in steel work lamps. I tried to combine the magical first project with the second mannequin project: colored lights and multiple exposures. I like the composition for some. I wish I had lit some areas better. Those that used colored gels produced images in which I couldn't tell if there was a color cast or not. I need to do this shoot over again, really, and become more familiar with the equipment in my unique lighting situations. I think it shows in the images. My project for this semester will consist of expounding on the ideas and themes from the previous three projects. I am old fashioned in some ways and prefer analog to digital methods. However, with such time constraints and a desire to print on a grand scale, I may try to work digitally. Working in this manner, I feel, may benefit me in that I would have to learn to work digitally, which can only help job prospects (since most people are using digital means to get their work out). But, I may continue to use analog cameras while scanning the negative to print digitally; I still haven't decided yet. The issues I will explore will not be so "scientific." I use that word because I was thinking more about the science of light and how I could make it appear on a form than about the psycho- or sociological elements one may see in them. I am limited by the absence of a any body form below the neck, but I would like to try to form a sort of narrative within the series. I believe this may help bring more humanity to it. Also, because the communication is stalled, so to speak, this may help get it going again, but not necessarily diminishing the challenge.
My focus this semester will be on a narrative developed using both video and animation techniques. Specifically my palette will include traditional 2D hand drawn animation style with the help of after effects, I also intend on using found footage I will record off network television. The theme of my narrative will be how the mass media (Television) affects people. I want to represent concepts presented by mass media including control, distraction, trickery and deception and how these concepts destroy personal identity and the relationship people have with their immediate environment. The story is about the life and development of a young boy who like everyone else in this age of communication is attached to T.V. at the hip. The story will timeline this boy’s life and his eventual mutation into a sort of couch potato monster. However, eventually there will be a point at which the protagonist will transcend the media monster and come to some sort of realization. My goal is to make people pay attention to the power of mass media and the possible effects it has on the mind and body, and in a grander perspective, how mass media affects everyone. There will be a constant discussion between the real and fake within the boy’s immediate environment and his intense tunnel vision perspective on the boob tube. These ideas are important to me because I feel that as an artist I need to comment on this idea of mass communication and the ultimate medium and outlet for communication which is television. I am a visual person and my work is mostly in moving images so I feel that T.V. pertains to me greatly and that I should really understand what I am getting myself into in terms of expressing ideas via moving images and T.V. I want to explore these ideas of control, trickery and distraction and maybe if I master them I will be able to use it in a constructive…or destructive way.
In the past 3 years, I explored the oppressive roles of women, Latin American culture, and gender issues by painting portraits and text, drawing and printing, and installation. The problem may be my worry of not being “credible” to speak for my heritage culture. I am an American of Mexican descent and I don’t speak Spanish. I think what may be successful is finding a way to be an ally to my heritage through art. And it goes a little something like this: I am an American of Mexican descent. I don’t speak Spanish, but I speak Art. I plan to interview an immigrant male, mapping his journey, converting factual miles to inches using a threaded charcoal/pastel line. I will visualize setbacks in his journey as a man falling on his face using an aquatinted copperplate with simple line. I have to pay a lab fee for using the printshop. On an adjacent wall will be prose, or a painting of a setting related to this particular situation, which may or may not include a dead Mexican whore on a black cross. I do know it will be just one painting and its going to be large. I am addressing the perseverance and endurance of major relocation, and myth that there are always choices. Seriously, I choose to die of starvation and disregard my protection of environmental elements by not paying the rent- instead of sexing you up. It is important for me to acknowledge how women are expendable in certain circumstances, and the extremes of society that test human nature. I can be an ally (in my own way) to the Latin American men and women and this work will satisfy my conceptual and aesthetic concerns.
My plan for this semester is turning my studio space into a service center. I plan on making posts on craigslist, as well as the newspaper, flyers, and through word of mouth, luring people to my studio for different services. I haven’t decided the range of the services, but I would like it to be fairly open. I have been planning on offering portraits (drawn or photographed), haircuts, tutoring, piano lessons, babysitter, etc. I also haven’t worked out my wages, but I think $15 an hour plus supplies would be suitable. What this is dealing with, for me, is the purpose and/or relevance of a ‘studio’ setting. While is seems obvious to need space to work, and helpful to have a peers around to interact with, I can’t help but find fault in forcing a ‘creative’ atmosphere. I also like the irony of making money off the school that I pay so much to go to despite how minimal the income may be. Also, asking the same underlying question as all my work does, “what is art?“, while at the same time, pushing myself through confrontations as well as restrictions to better understand what I have to offer.
In the last year I have been interested in addressing the relationship between the material, subject, and repetition of a situation. The situation that is created in my past work is a tree cut harshly to allow power lines to pass through safely. What is successful in this work is that the tree no longer looked natural. It became a contrived shape, formed by man, to permit a contour line to run straight. However, what is problematic of this work is how it should be displayed and how this effects the number of times it is repeated. During this semester I intend to create both small and large scale works using materials such as newspaper, mylar, clear acetate, acrylic, and water color paints. In my work, I will be dealing with new images of trees but intend to use the same process from my past project. I plan on layering sheets of mylar over different types of paper to create either one combined image or multiple separate pieces. This is important in discovering the meaning of the work as a whole and when the separate pieces are laying on different planes next to each other. The main issue that is addressed in my work is the trees being shaped by man. I think this issue is important because there are many situations where trees are cut or formed by man and appear unnatural. However, these situations go unnoticed through the everyday life. Hopefully my work will make the viewer more aware of their surroundings. Also, to raise the question are trees a hazard to mans everyday life or is man a hazard to nature?
After concentrating in moving image for the past year, I intend to return to previous photographic work involving the photogram process. My previous series of photograms were created in the color lab, and many involved the use of three-dimensional objects with multiple angles of illumination from a hand-held source. Other pieces incorporated a photogram backdrop created from advertising flyers or collage, with a mingling of different layers of images and text, including reversed layers. Most successful were areas of color bleeding where the backdrop seemed to have a direct interaction with the object silhouette, the two layers working together. Most problematic was the lack of control over the results of the hand-held illumination (due to the difficulty of working in total darkness), though this element of randomness was able to be tamed somewhat by gradual familiarity with the technique.
For my thesis project, I intend to create a series of 8-12 portrait-like works inspired by the late Isabella Blow, a well known figure in the fashion industry who was editor for various publications, and who had a reputation for sourcing new talent, including her discovery of designers Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy. I’m starting with the concept of “making something out of nothing” and the approach taken by unauthorized biographies in which the creator doesn’t have access to their subject. My works will attempt to render a portrait of someone I never met, based on what I know only from media sources, addressing both my own interest in her life story and the way she presented herself to the world with her unconventional dress (including the sculptural hats by Treacy) she often wore) and her unorthodox view of the world. I’m also thinking of the fashion industry’s tendency to recycle imagery and ideas, and how people’s perceptions of celebrities are influenced by a third agency.
I’ll be focusing on the photogram process in the color lab, but will also include techniques of photomontage and collage. I’m partially inspired by the method Ray Johnson used for portraits in which he copied a person’s silhouette in pencil, then created a dense collage following that line, resulting in what was technically a portrait of the person, but also an independent work. I will expand upon the illuminating techniques used before, using gel filters to create a wider range of colors, and tubings to limit the physical area exposed by the light. Overall there will be the emphasis of a physical interaction with, and manipulation of, the materials, rather than the use of digital technology to alter images.
I also plan to create an experimental video portrait, utilizing objects, found footage, still images, and new footage to achieve an impressionistic, but postmodern, portrait. Sources of inspiration include “The James Dean Story” from 1957, co-directed by Robert Altman, which relied heavily on the use of still images and “The Garden”, a posthumous video portrait of Isabella Blow by artist Haluk Akakce. The latter has only come to my attention in the last few days, and involves digital manipulation, but the visual result is reminiscent of black-and-white photograms.
For the last four years, I have been exploring many of my interests and habits. My thesis thus far, has been an exploration of memory and a variety of objects to create subtle and non-figural portraits.Yet despite an ambivalent journey of subject matters, I've become aware of a consistency:
Throughout the past year I have begun working on a series of photographs that focus on the function of objects that have been re-integrated within a home (inherited, moved, etc.).
The work does have the ability to draw focus to particular object relationships, but photographing one’s particular history while broadening the focus within the frame has proven itself to be a difficult task. This semester, I plan on continuing this exploration of re-integrated objects through a series of medium and large format photographs, printed in color. I will be working on ways to frame these objects in a way that allows a viewer to both identify the relationship between the object and its environment and identify some suggestion of it’s past purpose/environment. Object-human relationships are ones that we read constantly but I don’t feel are often consciously acknowledged. Furthermore, I see a particular transition of function when something is re-integrated that adds dimension to our histories and comments on our basic ownership practices. I will begin shooting in spaces whose histories are familiar and available to me, but would ultimately like to be able to penetrate an unfamiliar space. I am uncertain whether or not familiarity of a space to me is important to this project. Working through this will help me narrow down variables and come closer to reaching a solid concept and shooting practice.
Thesis Proposal I am constructing a space for the audience to become effected by my work both psychically and physically. I want to learn about audience and their reactions to images and sound. For a point of reference I am looking at artists who have elicited a similar reaction from my own experience, David Lynch, Brian Eno and James Turrell are a few examples. At times my work has successfully communicated my intentions to the audience, delivering a message or soliciting a dialogue that I find important. However, more often than not, my pieces have been off target in some aspect or another, falling short from the intended goal. For my thesis project, I will be using video, video projectors and a multi-channel sound system to create an experiential environment. I am investigating both psychological and physiological experience in the audience. I have been most effected by art which has created space and time that engages me in the moment. When I am made aware of the physical relationship in that place, there is a feeling that impacts my experiences as an art viewer more than any other sort of work. I anticipate using video of my creation projected onto multiple walls that will cooperate with sounds of my creation within a space designed for an individual or small group experience. This project will inform my practice to the reaction my images and sound have on an audience, opening up more dialogue as to the success and failure my work has in its attempts on interaction with people.
"Light Describing Itself" This is a film installation. A projector running in a smoke filled room squeezes its light through each rapidly moving frame of film to give the illusion of animation. The idea is to make an animation that attempts to make light a more tangible object. It is heavily influenced by recent scientific studies involving the deceleration of light, and Anthony McCalls' "Line describing a Cone" and I want this film to be firmly in that genre (which might be called 'expanded cinema'). Initially starting as a horizontal white line, it will shift through large scaled wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum which are visible to the human eye. The smokey atmosphere in the room will reflect the light all along its path towards a wall, making it a three dimensional object that stretches from the projector to the wall. My goal is to make a space that allows people to think about the idea of visible light in a way that considers the physical presence of the energy while maintaining an exciting space to experiment/play within. I am still considering various ways to help augment the project, possible with alternate extra light elements, or sounds. I am also still considering duration based on the time constraints of the class.
I am also still trying to develop two scripts which I want to simplify into an animated short. Its hard and I am leery about saying to much since things change a lot, but its got mythology and themes like addiction and trees. It might have some gunslinging too.
When I begin a project I think about how nature will play a part in my work. When I speak of nature I am referring to plant life and it’s landscape, these plants can be found outside or under the protective glass of a conservatory. I love nature I enjoy the ever-changing beauty and the tranquility it brings me. Although I do not stray from nature photography I try and approach each new plant as a fresh new subject. When an audience views my work I would like them to see a beautiful and intriguing subject, not a mundane plant. When I am in a conservatory I am surrounded by nothing but vegetation, and something else that is rare in the city, silence. I am completely alone no bustling people or blaring car horns around to disturb my thoughts. This place becomes a cocoon, a perfect space of peace. I want to create environments of peace and relaxation in my work. When I first began this project I chose to create photograms that focused on the texture of the material using a different array of textured papers and layering. I applied different pressures on certain parts of the image to record different impressions of the paper. The color scheme is monochromatic blue submerged in a black background. Blue supposedly represents the idea of tranquility but does the viewer still experience this when the black of the background is fighting with the foreground color? When a series has turned out well for me it means that I have pushed my idea as far as possible without overpowering the viewer. This did not happen for this project, the formula for creating these images is never-ending and I never found a way to pull everything together in the end. This semester I would like to revisit this series of photograms, not to recreate them but to use them as a starting point into the exploration or color, texture and form.
My most recent work involves the creation of locations and objects linked to spaces I have personally never visited and have little knowledge of. These spaces often include naturalistic elements and interactions between these elements and the viewer. The work generally develops into the form of sculpture and mixed media installations although this vein of work has diverged at times and resulted in an extended series of photographs. I develop my work through a complicated collection process of stories from friends and strangers, tall tales and online snippets from sites referencing various recurring themes present in my work. I reconstruct the these elements using audio recordings, video, and sculpture practices including vacuum forming, woodworking, metalworking, small motors, and complicated painting techniques to create seemingly authentic natural objects and installations with a conceptual twist. My work addresses the truth in experience, the fragility of nature, authenticity, evolution, storytelling, survival and the universal experience and familiarity of spaces despite their ambiguity.
Horseshoe Crabs, for example, is a work that directly references and embraces this method of developing work. The vacuum formed horseshoe crabs range in size from 10" to 24" from head to tail and are independently driven by vibration sensitive "bump and go" motors and painted with individual character and detail. When last exhibited the installation was contained within an enclosure approximately 8' x 8' although the work has been shown without an enclosure when gallery space permits a different range of horseshoe crab motion.
I had never seen a horseshoe crab nor the ocean while working on this piece and relied heavily on the descriptions of others to guide me as to the shapes and sizes of these creatures. An audio component containing some of these interviews and ocean experiences accompanies the installation. Horseshoe crabs is truly about bringing a universal associative ocean experience to a viewer, the work is referential to their unique experiences and is about no one specific experience. It is an amalgamation of many stories and tales, a lie of sorts, presented as fact with the ability to stimulate a specific experience from thin air.
This is the means and subject matter which I wish to continue to develop and employ in my future work
Artist statement: Currently my work has focused on issues of constructed identity that encompass how one relates to themselves through media- orientated stereotypes and also through the nature and physicality of one’s own body, specifically dealing with issues of gender, race, and sexuality.
Proposal 1 This semester, I plan to investigate bodily fluids and why they are taboo in society, if this is a natural process exhausted by everyone. From birth to adolescence to adulthood and death, I will ask what kind of associations does body excrement have with each of these stages of life? Potty training is innocent and an achievement but how does that get distorted into degradation or implied sexual acts? How is urination ritualistic and or social/not social? Are there issues of femininity and masculinity associated with urination and power relationships? Why is it embarrassing, revealing, and vulnerable?
I propose to create a series of photographs that reveal people in these vulnerable states border lining on voyeurism and or implied sexual fantasies. I am also planning to collect urine samples from volunteers and perform urinalyses. What does the contents of someone’s urine expose about them? Would this be embarrassing or disclose private information? I plan to document this information through a combination of installation, documents, and photography. To further identity through urine, I would like to paint the volunteers figurative portraits with either a palette of the colors revealed in a dipstick evaluation of their urine or just the concentration or specific gravity of their urine. Artist statement: I believe that relating to the body and observations of our physical reality are important in determining our own identity and relating to others by distinction of differences or alikeness. By exposing bodily fluids in amore public setting, this may allow for a breakdown of cultural walls and constructed identities.
I have three main production goals for this semester. The first is to continue and build upon pieces produced last semester that dealt with the psychological effects of self censorship. In addition, I intend to create a piece to ‘counter’ the past project. As opposed to the inability to act and negativity one feels when censored, the new piece will be about opening up one’s heart to others. This will be achieved through a series of correspondence letters to people who I have lost contact over the years and who I wish to express gratitude to or to just let them know that I remember them. The main piece will be a collaboration with school aged children. I wish to provide urban minority children with the opportunity to express themselves through art. I hope to be able to work with local community centers and/ or after-school programs as a site for art making. The children will create paintings on canvas or paper based around the theme of “CommUNITY”. I am very interested in how children view their community and the issues that are most relevant to them. I believe in giving the next generation a sense of empowerment that will serve to help them in making changes in the future. The artwork will be shown at UIC at the Thesis Show, with the intention that they will be donated to the local community center.
BTW: If any of you are interested in helping out (material donations, helping out at the site, networking info/ ideas, etc.) please let me know! Drop by my studio space on the 4th floor or email me at NKaye1@uic.edu
For my thesis project, I want make a video. I plan on dealing with the issue of guilt. It will not be a personal issue I will be dealing with but I will use my own experiences with guilt as inspiration. I will use the novel Crime and Punishment as inspiration. It will not be an adaptation of any sort either; but the novel will perhaps be used to develop characters and enhance the plot. The movie will be set in present. I plan on making the movie roughly 15 to 20 minutes long. I also plan on having an animated introduction and ending credits. I plan acting as the main character and using a small amount of actors in the movie. Regardless of weather constraints, I will be shooting mostly indoors with few scenes on location. I want to construct a set in the garage, where I have made, which I consider, sufficient space. I plan on shooting in DV because I am very comfortable with the format. As an interesting aspect to the movie, I plan on having all foley sounds. The actors will dub their own voices, however, I want to shoot all the scenes first, do a rough edit of the movie and have the actors watch and voice act to what there are watching. For starters, I plan on writing a script. From there I plan on casting actors and once that’s done they will be informed of how I plan on shooting the video. The breakdown of production will be: 1 week of writing the script, then another of editing the script while casting actors. Then building a set in the space I have while at home while working on the title sequence in my work space, again the process while take about a week. After the set up I plan on shooting for about 3 to weeks then 1 week for a rough edit, and then voice recording after that. Finally, after the voice recording is complete, I will begin and continue to edit for the rest of the semester until the deadline.
In the last 2-3 years I’ve been making Paintings and Sculpture/Paintings that address the formation of a personal psychology/mythology as it relates to the built environment.
The work is rich in its physicality and associations. However, it’s been criticized for looking dated and having too much in common with art of the 70’s and 80’s. (According to Julia Fish). This concerns me, but, part of the work is about a connection to the past, in other words, it is intentional.
This semester I intend to create a new sculpture utilizing the wood structure that I’ve been working with, and incorporate carved forms that I might cover with sweater material. The idea for this developed out of a project I did last year about form/space--> territory/insulation. For this new piece, I was reading about Beuys’ process-oriented sculpture that involved the interplay between the “fixed and the fluid” and thinking about an electrical sub-station that gathers and directs energies. This work will be a development of the previous sculptures I’ve been making.
I also plan on making at least a few paintings, possibly, they will be about declarations of identity that are half serious, half absurd. My hope is that these will expand my aesthetic beyond the distressed, historic object “look” into something more contemporary. Also, I want to make a painting about a mirror/frame, and one about a shadow because these also address the nature of identity in its various forms and constructions.
In the last six months, I have created work which addressed the issue of temporary care facilities, and how children respond to this kind of environment. I produced a series of photographs which I felt gave the viewer a glimpse into the lives of these children and the make-shift homes created for them. I feel that this work was problematic because I was not able to accurately portray all of the complexities of living in this sort of environment.
For my project this semester, I intend to create a series of photographs dealing with the subject of body image, focusing on women and how many equate how they look with their sense of self-worth. This subject matter is important to me because of the negative imagery I am bombarded with on a daily basis by the media. I plan to research the effects of this negative imagery and create photographs that reflect the absurdity of women trying to fit into the mold popular culture has created for them. This work will give me a chance to take a definite stance on how I feel about my subject matter, instead of trying to remain neutral, as I did in my work last semester.
In the past few months I have been taking a close look at the scrap yards in Pilsen and those who depend on them for income and economic support. In doing this I hope to raise awareness about the precious recyclable metals that one can find in almost any common household item and their importance to our environment and economy. I’ve done a series of photographs of these older and younger scrap peddlers in my neighborhood, some are teenagers, collecting recyclable metals and preparing them for a profit. I spent some time with each individual photographed talking with them about what they do, why they decided to do it, and what difference their work makes in a city and from a global view. One aspect that I’ve struggled with is deciding how to present their thoughts and words with the photographs.
With my new work I would like to continue addressing the same subject but broaden it and address more directly the role of these scrap yards in our city, our environment, and economy. One specific topic I’d like to address is the problem of e-waste. Many electronic products contain harmful substances that can harm our environment and people in a variety of ways if not properly disposed of. Moore’s Law is very important to address here as well. Basically, it states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially; meaning, electronic devices are becoming exponentially faster and more quickly replacing old technology. In order to safely keep up with the management of the increasing e-waste we must look for safer ways of retrieving of metals and other valuable items from this waste. This is important to me because of its effect on the environment and the dangers to people who scrap this stuff in unsafe methods due to the lack of options to safely dispose of these materials.
Lorna Simpson combines photography and text to address issues of identity, race, and gender in our society. Simpson explores the ways people, especially black women, are identified, classified, and judged based on their physical attributes and personal styles. In my work I want to do some of the same things but I would like to take this idea a bit further and have people explore and experience black women's physical attributes, personal styles, and interests up close and personal.
Simpson says: "in my work," says Simpson, "I try to get viewers to realize... that it is all a matter of surfaces and facades.” I want to relate the dynamics of a situation, both how that situation occurs and how it affects people’s lives. In another sense, the work is not answer-oriented. It’s intentionally left open-ended. There’s not a resolution that just solves everything. – Lorna Simpson
I think that Simpson has the right idea that there this is not one resolution that will just solve everything. I want my art to exist in space so that the public can experience black female perspectives and relate them to the dynamics of their everyday. I want black women to become an experience that has to be dealt with in the public everyday.
one other reference…
David Hammons effectively takes black objects and uses them either to describe a function that effects the everyday state of black in America in some way.
I want to effectively do the same with black contemporary female astetic.
this semester
I want to take black women’s objects and enlarge them to exaggerated proportions in order to inform and interject black women’s everyday into the public everyday. I would describe my art and educational entertainment from an under cited source. Objects like earrings pendants and and other objects that affect and effect the black contemporary women’s everyday. Portraits of and under cited source in American.
We want and need to be cited.
my intention
Inserting black women into everyone’s everyday. I want to challenge the divides given and force new standards into the status quo. Introduce something black into your everyday. I will question the position of the contemporary black women, how we relate to society, with attention to racial and class material differences. Instead of using text and photography I am using materials and placing them in space. I want to create positive learning experience about the African American experience that relates strongly to African American women and the black aesthetic. I want to find creativity in my black everyday and share that positive darkness with the audience.
In the past year I have been juxtaposing one-word phrases, comprised of Black vernacular, to stripe iconography. I want to emphasize the relationship between color and dialect. I have also made work that focused on flow carts, in my efforts to categorize hair politics i.e. hair products, style, texture ect.
I had a sort of mini breakthrough in my work last semester when I began to use my own hair products as my point of departure in painting. Although the hair grease never dried on the canvas I felt it was a positive move towards figuring out my relationship to the history of painting. My work on the other hand, needs to move beyond conventional usage. This semester I hope to expand my work and move beyond the size and dimensions of the canvas and try out wall drawings, a short documentary video, and two canvas paintings. Proposal • During this semester I intend to complete 3-4 projects • I plan on completing two painting, one figurative, and one Stripe/text painting • Video piece: in this piece I want to move beyond the concept of object making and explore the idea of documenting ethnographic exploration of whiteness.I am going to walk around Chicago and touch white peoples hair. • wall drawing where I would expand my hair flow charts into a larger geographical mapping of hair products and production and its relationship to location and consumption • My work is informed by artist like Mark Lombardi, Ad Reinhardt, Daniel Buren, geometric abstractionist, Mark Rothko, color field artists, Adrian Piper, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Kay Rosen, Nina Simone Recently I’ve been most Inspired by artist and writers like Bell Hooks and James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry
I am mainly interested in notions of blackness and womanhood as it relates to identity, invisibility and expendability. My experience as a young, lower class, collage educated black urban woman has shaped my perception of the world, and drives me to create artwork that renders the black cultural existence in ways I see fit. Re-representation in reference to black vernacular, slang, body politics, issues of transparency and color interaction are my concerns.
23 comments:
Is there a way to attach files to a comment?
http://lamewebdesign.com/home/joe/homeless/sojournweb.html
The above is the link to my final video last semester. I plan to expand on this idea of using still photographs to animate a video in more of a non-linear narrative direction. Someone asked me last semester 'how long is your final going to be' and my answer was, and still is, that I will let the story structure and editing dictate the length. I don't want to try and force duration on the piece to satisfy some expectation set on myself.
My goal is to finalize my script in the next few weeks and them shoot during class and Saturday afternoons. If anyone knows any serious minded actors, preferably with some movement training - that have similar availability I would love to get in contact with them.
joe_baldwin@hotmail.com
Elizabeth Ramirez
AD463
1/2008
Thesis Project Proposal
Since the color photography class I took during the Spring 2007 semester I have been creating photographs with special emphasis on the use of colored light. With the peculiar desire to create images that I might find in an issue of Vanity Fair (although I do not read this publication nor do I think I could succeed in one try to make images up to their standards) I thought about what I should do about this image that I had had floating in my head for about a year. Fashion and celebrity are the bread and butter of the magazine, so I knew that I must attempt a fashion photography aesthetic, but I wanted to manipulate the model's face with only colored light and shadows--no make up or facial movements. However, I knew nothing of lighting nor the science of light and its properties, so the first series of photographs happened because I could not get the different lights to give off their opposite shadows, and I therefore gave up on my "fashion spread" and went for multiple exposure shots (though still using colored light). They were not what I had wanted but I still liked what I made; they are strangely apocalyptic yet alluring. The softness of each exposure made for easy blending, so each image looks as if it were a single shot. Scale is important to me when it comes to these and the proceeding images; they all could benefit from being larger. They could also benefit from large format or digital camera use as large 35mm prints are grainy. I feel in this situation that graininess can take away from the experience.
The next project was close to what I had pictured in my mind. I received a very brief orientation in colored light and working with its shadows, allowing me enough knowledge to shoot some rolls. Using a styrofoam cosmetology head and a variety of exotic false eyelashes I made several images, the best of which I am showing. These were supposed to be "test shots" so that I could see how I did, then use a friend as a model, but the mannequin images held something special, like the mannequin was trying to speak to us. Everyone preferred them over a human model, despite the fact that I have yet to make any with a human figure. The fashion aesthetic (not just the human shape of the face) brought a human quality out, which I like. I fell that images like these--with human models--could be found in a magazine. The intense colors suspend human communication. This could perhaps be seen as a failure of the work but I actually enjoy the intrigue.
The last images were done in last semester's view camera class and were therefore taken with a view camera in the student lighting studio. Oddly, it was much harder to use the studio and the professional lights and gels than to stay at home in my makeshift studio with colored "party" bulbs in steel work lamps. I tried to combine the magical first project with the second mannequin project: colored lights and multiple exposures. I like the composition for some. I wish I had lit some areas better. Those that used colored gels produced images in which I couldn't tell if there was a color cast or not. I need to do this shoot over again, really, and become more familiar with the equipment in my unique lighting situations. I think it shows in the images.
My project for this semester will consist of expounding on the ideas and themes from the previous three projects. I am old fashioned in some ways and prefer analog to digital methods. However, with such time constraints and a desire to print on a grand scale, I may try to work digitally. Working in this manner, I feel, may benefit me in that I would have to learn to work digitally, which can only help job prospects (since most people are using digital means to get their work out). But, I may continue to use analog cameras while scanning the negative to print digitally; I still haven't decided yet.
The issues I will explore will not be so "scientific." I use that word because I was thinking more about the science of light and how I could make it appear on a form than about the psycho- or sociological elements one may see in them. I am limited by the absence of a any body form below the neck, but I would like to try to form a sort of narrative within the series. I believe this may help bring more humanity to it. Also, because the communication is stalled, so to speak, this may help get it going again, but not necessarily diminishing the challenge.
Nick Sgarioto
Spring Thesis
T.V. World
My focus this semester will be on a narrative developed using both video and animation techniques. Specifically my palette will include traditional 2D hand drawn animation style with the help of after effects, I also intend on using found footage I will record off network television. The theme of my narrative will be how the mass media (Television) affects people. I want to represent concepts presented by mass media including control, distraction, trickery and deception and how these concepts destroy personal identity and the relationship people have with their immediate environment.
The story is about the life and development of a young boy who like everyone else in this age of communication is attached to T.V. at the hip. The story will timeline this boy’s life and his eventual mutation into a sort of couch potato monster. However, eventually there will be a point at which the protagonist will transcend the media monster and come to some sort of realization. My goal is to make people pay attention to the power of mass media and the possible effects it has on the mind and body, and in a grander perspective, how mass media affects everyone. There will be a constant discussion between the real and fake within the boy’s immediate environment and his intense tunnel vision perspective on the boob tube.
These ideas are important to me because I feel that as an artist I need to comment on this idea of mass communication and the ultimate medium and outlet for communication which is television. I am a visual person and my work is mostly in moving images so I feel that T.V. pertains to me greatly and that I should really understand what I am getting myself into in terms of expressing ideas via moving images and T.V. I want to explore these ideas of control, trickery and distraction and maybe if I master them I will be able to use it in a constructive…or destructive way.
In the past 3 years, I explored the oppressive roles of women, Latin American culture, and gender issues by painting portraits and text, drawing and printing, and installation.
The problem may be my worry of not being “credible” to speak for my heritage culture. I am an American of Mexican descent and I don’t speak Spanish. I think what may be successful is finding a way to be an ally to my heritage through art. And it goes a little something like this: I am an American of Mexican descent. I don’t speak Spanish, but I speak Art.
I plan to interview an immigrant male, mapping his journey, converting factual miles to inches using a threaded charcoal/pastel line. I will visualize setbacks in his journey as a man falling on his face using an aquatinted copperplate with simple line. I have to pay a lab fee for using the printshop. On an adjacent wall will be prose, or a painting of a setting related to this particular situation, which may or may not include a dead Mexican whore on a black cross. I do know it will be just one painting and its going to be large.
I am addressing the perseverance and endurance of major relocation, and myth that there are always choices. Seriously, I choose to die of starvation and disregard my protection of environmental elements by not paying the rent- instead of sexing you up.
It is important for me to acknowledge how women are expendable in certain circumstances, and the extremes of society that test human nature.
I can be an ally (in my own way) to the Latin American men and women and this work will satisfy my conceptual and aesthetic concerns.
My plan for this semester is turning my studio space into a service center. I plan on making posts on craigslist, as well as the newspaper, flyers, and through word of mouth, luring people to my studio for different services. I haven’t decided the range of the services, but I would like it to be fairly open. I have been planning on offering portraits (drawn or photographed), haircuts, tutoring, piano lessons, babysitter, etc. I also haven’t worked out my wages, but I think $15 an hour plus supplies would be suitable. What this is dealing with, for me, is the purpose and/or relevance of a ‘studio’ setting. While is seems obvious to need space to work, and helpful to have a peers around to interact with, I can’t help but find fault in forcing a ‘creative’ atmosphere. I also like the irony of making money off the school that I pay so much to go to despite how minimal the income may be. Also, asking the same underlying question as all my work does, “what is art?“, while at the same time, pushing myself through confrontations as well as restrictions to better understand what I have to offer.
In the last year I have been interested in addressing the relationship between the material, subject, and repetition of a situation. The situation that is created in my past work is a tree cut harshly to allow power lines to pass through safely. What is successful in this work is that the tree no longer looked natural. It became a contrived shape, formed by man, to permit a contour line to run straight. However, what is problematic of this work is how it should be displayed and how this effects the number of times it is repeated.
During this semester I intend to create both small and large scale works using materials such as newspaper, mylar, clear acetate, acrylic, and water color paints. In my work, I will be dealing with new images of trees but intend to use the same process from my past project. I plan on layering sheets of mylar over different types of paper to create either one combined image or multiple separate pieces. This is important in discovering the meaning of the work as a whole and when the separate pieces are laying on different planes next to each other.
The main issue that is addressed in my work is the trees being shaped by man. I think this issue is important because there are many situations where trees are cut or formed by man and appear unnatural. However, these situations go unnoticed through the everyday life. Hopefully my work will make the viewer more aware of their surroundings. Also, to raise the question are trees a hazard to mans everyday life or is man a hazard to nature?
After concentrating in moving image for the past year, I intend to return to previous photographic work involving the photogram process. My previous series of photograms were created in the color lab, and many involved the use of three-dimensional objects with multiple angles of illumination from a hand-held source. Other pieces incorporated a photogram backdrop created from advertising flyers or collage, with a mingling of different layers of images and text, including reversed layers. Most successful were areas of color bleeding where the backdrop seemed to have a direct interaction with the object silhouette, the two layers working together. Most problematic was the lack of control over the results of the hand-held illumination (due to the difficulty of working in total darkness), though this element of randomness was able to be tamed somewhat by gradual familiarity with the technique.
For my thesis project, I intend to create a series of 8-12 portrait-like works inspired by the late Isabella Blow, a well known figure in the fashion industry who was editor for various publications, and who had a reputation for sourcing new talent, including her discovery of designers Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy. I’m starting with the concept of “making something out of nothing” and the approach taken by unauthorized biographies in which the creator doesn’t have access to their subject. My works will attempt to render a portrait of someone I never met, based on what I know only from media sources, addressing both my own interest in her life story and the way she presented herself to the world with her unconventional dress (including the sculptural hats by Treacy) she often wore) and her unorthodox view of the world. I’m also thinking of the fashion industry’s tendency to recycle imagery and ideas, and how people’s perceptions of celebrities are influenced by a third agency.
I’ll be focusing on the photogram process in the color lab, but will also include techniques of photomontage and collage. I’m partially inspired by the method Ray Johnson used for portraits in which he copied a person’s silhouette in pencil, then created a dense collage following that line, resulting in what was technically a portrait of the person, but also an independent work. I will expand upon the illuminating techniques used before, using gel filters to create a wider range of colors, and tubings to limit the physical area exposed by the light. Overall there will be the emphasis of a physical interaction with, and manipulation of, the materials, rather than the use of digital technology to alter images.
I also plan to create an experimental video portrait, utilizing objects, found footage, still images, and new footage to achieve an impressionistic, but postmodern, portrait. Sources of inspiration include “The James Dean Story” from 1957, co-directed by Robert Altman, which relied heavily on the use of still images and “The Garden”, a posthumous video portrait of Isabella Blow by artist Haluk Akakce. The latter has only come to my attention in the last few days, and involves digital manipulation, but the visual result is reminiscent of black-and-white photograms.
For the last four years, I have been
exploring many of my interests and
habits. My thesis thus far, has been an
exploration of memory and a
variety of objects to create subtle and
non-figural portraits.Yet despite an ambivalent journey of
subject matters, I've become aware of
a consistency:
an obsessiveness and sometimes
extreme physical involvement in the
creation of my works.Whatever the medium, I have been
continuously interested in the power
and force that is used to make the work. I have been successful in using my
body during the creation processes,
yet, I have been unsuccessful in
focusing on a specific subject matter. For the remainder of my time at UIC, I will be confronting and reaching the limits of my body. My
physical self, strength and abilities will be altered and expanded by the end of the course. I look
forward to making and breaking physical goals that I will set for myself in order to test the limits
of the human body. My work will be performance based but will further exist through photographic
and video documentation. I hope to encounter issues of success, hope, and failure through the
many physical endeavors. I am most concerned with the process and creation of the artworks, yet
the outcome of the performances may also display the physical effort and strength exerted. A
video of me chopping down a tree displays much more evidence of physicality than does the log
and the stump thereafter. I plan to learn how to do the splits, run a marathon, go without my glasses
for a week at a time. Eat as many bananas as I can, drop in on the biggest halfpipe I can find, and
stand in a large pit of fire. By experiencing and reaching my own physical limits, I will prove things
that I will otherwise not get the chance to prove. For instance: Gender issues, in regards to strength,
speed or ability can become a discussion. Personal issues, whether or not I can overcome my own
expectations and so on. Expanding and pushing
my physical limits is important to me because
each day I am alive, I am one day closer to death,
to decay, to the inabilities to ever accomplish
certain things. It is important to live life to the fullest,
however cliché that sounds. This work will change
how I feel about my body as a vehicle, or the human
body as a tool.
Throughout the past year I have begun working on a series of photographs that focus on the function of objects that have been re-integrated within a home (inherited, moved, etc.).
The work does have the ability to draw focus to particular object relationships, but photographing one’s particular history while broadening the focus within the frame has proven itself to be a difficult task.
This semester, I plan on continuing this exploration of re-integrated objects through a series of medium and large format photographs, printed in color. I will be working on ways to frame these objects in a way that allows a viewer to both identify the relationship between the object and its environment and identify some suggestion of it’s past purpose/environment.
Object-human relationships are ones that we read constantly but I don’t feel are often consciously acknowledged. Furthermore, I see a particular transition of function when something is re-integrated that adds dimension to our histories and comments on our basic ownership practices.
I will begin shooting in spaces whose histories are familiar and available to me, but would ultimately like to be able to penetrate an unfamiliar space. I am uncertain whether or not familiarity of a space to me is important to this project. Working through this will help me narrow down variables and come closer to reaching a solid concept and shooting practice.
Thesis Proposal
I am constructing a space for the audience to become effected by my work both psychically and physically. I want to learn about audience and their reactions to images and sound.
For a point of reference I am looking at artists who have elicited a similar reaction from my own experience, David Lynch, Brian Eno and James Turrell are a few examples.
At times my work has successfully communicated my intentions to the audience, delivering a message or soliciting a dialogue that I find important. However, more often than not, my pieces have been off target in some aspect or another, falling short from the intended goal.
For my thesis project, I will be using video, video projectors and a multi-channel sound system to create an experiential environment.
I am investigating both psychological and physiological experience in the audience. I have been most effected by art which has created space and time that engages me in the moment. When I am made aware of the physical relationship in that place, there is a feeling that impacts my experiences as an art viewer more than any other sort of work.
I anticipate using video of my creation projected onto multiple walls that will cooperate with sounds of my creation within a space designed for an individual or small group experience.
This project will inform my practice to the reaction my images and sound have on an audience, opening up more dialogue as to the success and failure my work has in its attempts on interaction with people.
Thesis Proposal
"Light Describing Itself"
This is a film installation. A projector running in a smoke filled room squeezes its light through each rapidly moving frame of film to give the illusion of animation.
The idea is to make an animation that attempts to make light a more tangible object. It is heavily influenced by recent scientific studies involving the deceleration of light, and Anthony McCalls' "Line describing a Cone" and I want this film to be firmly in that genre (which might be called 'expanded cinema').
Initially starting as a horizontal white line, it will shift through large scaled wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum which are visible to the human eye. The smokey atmosphere in the room will reflect the light all along its path towards a wall, making it a three dimensional object that stretches from the projector to the wall. My goal is to make a space that allows people to think about the idea of visible light in a way that considers the physical presence of the energy while maintaining an exciting space to experiment/play within. I am still considering various ways to help augment the project, possible with alternate extra light elements, or sounds. I am also still considering duration based on the time constraints of the class.
I am also still trying to develop two scripts which I want to simplify into an animated short. Its hard and I am leery about saying to much since things change a lot, but its got mythology and themes like addiction and trees. It might have some gunslinging too.
randsevilla.com/PROPOSAL
Sabrina Barnes
When I begin a project I think about how nature will play a part in my work. When I speak of nature I am referring to plant life and it’s landscape, these plants can be found outside or under the protective glass of a conservatory. I love nature I enjoy the ever-changing beauty and the tranquility it brings me. Although I do not stray from nature photography I try and approach each new plant as a fresh new subject. When an audience views my work I would like them to see a beautiful and intriguing subject, not a mundane plant. When I am in a conservatory I am surrounded by nothing but vegetation, and something else that is rare in the city, silence. I am completely alone no bustling people or blaring car horns around to disturb my thoughts. This place becomes a cocoon, a perfect space of peace.
I want to create environments of peace and relaxation in my work. When I first began this project I chose to create photograms that focused on the texture of the material using a different array of textured papers and layering. I applied different pressures on certain parts of the image to record different impressions of the paper. The color scheme is monochromatic blue submerged in a black background. Blue supposedly represents the idea of tranquility but does the viewer still experience this when the black of the background is fighting with the foreground color? When a series has turned out well for me it means that I have pushed my idea as far as possible without overpowering the viewer. This did not happen for this project, the formula for creating these images is never-ending and I never found a way to pull everything together in the end. This semester I would like to revisit this series of photograms, not to recreate them but to use them as a starting point into the exploration or color, texture and form.
to noisevelvet,
i don't think so.
Jim Zimpel
My most recent work involves the creation of locations and objects linked to spaces I have personally never visited and have little knowledge of. These spaces often include naturalistic elements and interactions between these elements and the viewer. The work generally develops into the form of sculpture and mixed media installations although this vein of work has diverged at times and resulted in an extended series of photographs. I develop my work through a complicated collection process of stories from friends and strangers, tall tales and online snippets from sites referencing various recurring themes present in my work. I reconstruct the these elements using audio recordings, video, and sculpture practices including vacuum forming, woodworking, metalworking, small motors, and complicated painting techniques to create seemingly authentic natural objects and installations with a conceptual twist. My work addresses the truth in experience, the fragility of nature, authenticity, evolution, storytelling, survival and the universal experience and familiarity of spaces despite their ambiguity.
Horseshoe Crabs, for example, is a work that directly references and embraces this method of developing work. The vacuum formed horseshoe crabs range in size from 10" to 24" from head to tail and are independently driven by vibration sensitive "bump and go" motors and painted with individual character and detail. When last exhibited the installation was contained within an enclosure approximately 8' x 8' although the work has been shown without an enclosure when gallery space permits a different range of horseshoe crab motion.
I had never seen a horseshoe crab nor the ocean while working on this piece and relied heavily on the descriptions of others to guide me as to the shapes and sizes of these creatures. An audio component containing some of these interviews and ocean experiences accompanies the installation. Horseshoe crabs is truly about bringing a universal associative ocean experience to a viewer, the work is referential to their unique experiences and is about no one specific experience. It is an amalgamation of many stories and tales, a lie of sorts, presented as fact with the ability to stimulate a specific experience from thin air.
This is the means and subject matter which I wish to continue to develop and employ in my future work
Artist statement:
Currently my work has focused on issues of constructed identity that encompass how one relates to themselves through media- orientated stereotypes and also through the nature and physicality of one’s own body, specifically dealing with issues of gender, race, and sexuality.
Proposal 1
This semester, I plan to investigate bodily fluids and why they are taboo in society, if this is a natural process exhausted by everyone. From birth to adolescence to adulthood and death, I will ask what kind of associations does body excrement have with each of these stages of life? Potty training is innocent and an achievement but how does that get distorted into degradation or implied sexual acts? How is urination ritualistic and or social/not social? Are there issues of femininity and masculinity associated with urination and power relationships? Why is it embarrassing, revealing, and vulnerable?
I propose to create a series of photographs that reveal people in these vulnerable states border lining on voyeurism and or implied sexual fantasies. I am also planning to collect urine samples from volunteers and perform urinalyses. What does the contents of someone’s urine expose about them? Would this be embarrassing or disclose private information? I plan to document this information through a combination of installation, documents, and photography. To further identity through urine, I would like to paint the volunteers figurative portraits with either a palette of the colors revealed in a dipstick evaluation of their urine or just the concentration or specific gravity of their urine.
Artist statement:
I believe that relating to the body and observations of our physical reality are important in determining our own identity and relating to others by distinction of differences or alikeness. By exposing bodily fluids in amore public setting, this may allow for a breakdown of cultural walls and constructed identities.
Nicole Kaye
Spring 2008 Thesis Proposal
I have three main production goals for this semester. The first is to continue and build upon pieces produced last semester that dealt with the psychological effects of self censorship. In addition, I intend to create a piece to ‘counter’ the past project. As opposed to the inability to act and negativity one feels when censored, the new piece will be about opening up one’s heart to others. This will be achieved through a series of correspondence letters to people who I have lost contact over the years and who I wish to express gratitude to or to just let them know that I remember them.
The main piece will be a collaboration with school aged children. I wish to provide urban minority children with the opportunity to express themselves through art. I hope to be able to work with local community centers and/ or after-school programs as a site for art making. The children will create paintings on canvas or paper based around the theme of “CommUNITY”. I am very interested in how children view their community and the issues that are most relevant to them. I believe in giving the next generation a sense of empowerment that will serve to help them in making changes in the future. The artwork will be shown at UIC at the Thesis Show, with the intention that they will be donated to the local community center.
BTW: If any of you are interested in helping out (material donations, helping out at the site, networking info/ ideas, etc.) please let me know! Drop by my studio space on the 4th floor or email me at NKaye1@uic.edu
For my thesis project, I want make a video. I plan on dealing with the issue of guilt. It will not be a personal issue I will be dealing with but I will use my own experiences with guilt as inspiration. I will use the novel Crime and Punishment as inspiration. It will not be an adaptation of any sort either; but the novel will perhaps be used to develop characters and enhance the plot. The movie will be set in present. I plan on making the movie roughly 15 to 20 minutes long. I also plan on having an animated introduction and ending credits. I plan acting as the main character and using a small amount of actors in the movie. Regardless of weather constraints, I will be shooting mostly indoors with few scenes on location. I want to construct a set in the garage, where I have made, which I consider, sufficient space. I plan on shooting in DV because I am very comfortable with the format. As an interesting aspect to the movie, I plan on having all foley sounds. The actors will dub their own voices, however, I want to shoot all the scenes first, do a rough edit of the movie and have the actors watch and voice act to what there are watching. For starters, I plan on writing a script. From there I plan on casting actors and once that’s done they will be informed of how I plan on shooting the video. The breakdown of production will be: 1 week of writing the script, then another of editing the script while casting actors. Then building a set in the space I have while at home while working on the title sequence in my work space, again the process while take about a week. After the set up I plan on shooting for about 3 to weeks then 1 week for a rough edit, and then voice recording after that. Finally, after the voice recording is complete, I will begin and continue to edit for the rest of the semester until the deadline.
In the last 2-3 years I’ve been making Paintings and Sculpture/Paintings that address the formation of a personal psychology/mythology as it relates to the built environment.
The work is rich in its physicality and associations. However, it’s been criticized for looking dated and having too much in common with art of the 70’s and 80’s. (According to Julia Fish). This concerns me, but, part of the work is about a connection to the past, in other words, it is intentional.
This semester I intend to create a new sculpture utilizing the wood structure that I’ve been working with, and incorporate carved forms that I might cover with sweater material. The idea for this developed out of a project I did last year about form/space--> territory/insulation. For this new piece, I was reading about Beuys’ process-oriented sculpture that involved the interplay between the “fixed and the fluid” and thinking about an electrical sub-station that gathers and directs energies. This work will be a development of the previous sculptures I’ve been making.
I also plan on making at least a few paintings, possibly, they will be about declarations of identity that are half serious, half absurd. My hope is that these will expand my aesthetic beyond the distressed, historic object “look” into something more contemporary. Also, I want to make a painting about a mirror/frame, and one about a shadow because these also address the nature of identity in its various forms and constructions.
In the last six months, I have created work which addressed the issue of temporary care facilities, and how children respond to this kind of environment. I produced a series of photographs which I felt gave the viewer a glimpse into the lives of these children and the make-shift homes created for them.
I feel that this work was problematic because I was not able to accurately portray all of the complexities of living in this sort of environment.
For my project this semester, I intend to create a series of photographs dealing with the subject of body image, focusing on women and how many equate how they look with their sense of self-worth.
This subject matter is important to me because of the negative imagery I am bombarded with on a daily basis by the media.
I plan to research the effects of this negative imagery and create photographs that reflect the absurdity of women trying to fit into the mold popular culture has created for them.
This work will give me a chance to take a definite stance on how I feel about my subject matter, instead of trying to remain neutral, as I did in my work last semester.
Joshua Clark
In the past few months I have been taking a close look at the scrap yards in Pilsen and those who depend on them for income and economic support. In doing this I hope to raise awareness about the precious recyclable metals that one can find in almost any common household item and their importance to our environment and economy. I’ve done a series of photographs of these older and younger scrap peddlers in my neighborhood, some are teenagers, collecting recyclable metals and preparing them for a profit. I spent some time with each individual photographed talking with them about what they do, why they decided to do it, and what difference their work makes in a city and from a global view. One aspect that I’ve struggled with is deciding how to present their thoughts and words with the photographs.
With my new work I would like to continue addressing the same subject but broaden it and address more directly the role of these scrap yards in our city, our environment, and economy. One specific topic I’d like to address is the problem of e-waste. Many electronic products contain harmful substances that can harm our environment and people in a variety of ways if not properly disposed of. Moore’s Law is very important to address here as well. Basically, it states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially; meaning, electronic devices are becoming exponentially faster and more quickly replacing old technology. In order to safely keep up with the management of the increasing e-waste we must look for safer ways of retrieving of metals and other valuable items from this waste. This is important to me because of its effect on the environment and the dangers to people who scrap this stuff in unsafe methods due to the lack of options to safely dispose of these materials.
black women in your space
I was inspired by Lorna Simpson….
Lorna Simpson combines photography and text to address issues of identity, race, and gender in our society. Simpson explores the ways people, especially black women, are identified, classified, and judged based on their physical attributes and personal styles. In my work I want to do some of the same things but I would like to take this idea a bit further and have people explore and experience black women's physical attributes, personal styles, and interests up close and personal.
Simpson says: "in my work," says Simpson, "I try to get viewers to realize... that it is all a matter of surfaces and facades.” I want to relate the dynamics of a situation, both how that situation occurs and how it affects people’s lives. In another sense, the work is not answer-oriented. It’s intentionally left open-ended. There’s not a resolution that just solves everything. – Lorna Simpson
I think that Simpson has the right idea that there this is not one resolution that will just solve everything. I want my art to exist in space so that the public can experience black female perspectives and relate them to the dynamics of their everyday. I want black women to become an experience that has to be dealt with in the public everyday.
one other reference…
David Hammons effectively takes black objects and uses them either to describe a function that effects the everyday state of black in America in some way.
I want to effectively do the same with black contemporary female astetic.
this semester
I want to take black women’s objects and enlarge them to exaggerated proportions in order to inform and interject black women’s everyday into the public everyday. I would describe my art and educational entertainment from an under cited source. Objects like earrings pendants and and other objects that affect and effect the black contemporary women’s everyday. Portraits of and under cited source in American.
We want and need to be cited.
my intention
Inserting black women into everyone’s everyday. I want to challenge the divides given and force new standards into the status quo. Introduce something black into your everyday. I will question the position of the contemporary black women, how we relate to society, with attention to racial and class material differences. Instead of using text and photography I am using materials and placing them in space. I want to create positive learning experience about the African American experience that relates strongly to African American women and the black aesthetic. I want to find creativity in my black everyday and share that positive darkness with the audience.
Current Artist Statement
In the past year I have been juxtaposing one-word phrases, comprised of Black vernacular, to stripe iconography. I want to emphasize the relationship between color and dialect. I have also made work that focused on flow carts, in my efforts to categorize hair politics i.e. hair products, style, texture ect.
I had a sort of mini breakthrough in my work last semester when I began to use my own hair products as my point of departure in painting. Although the hair grease never dried on the canvas I felt it was a positive move towards figuring out my relationship to the history of painting. My work on the other hand, needs to move beyond conventional usage. This semester I hope to expand my work and move beyond the size and dimensions of the canvas and try out wall drawings, a short documentary video, and two canvas paintings.
Proposal
• During this semester I intend to complete 3-4 projects
• I plan on completing two painting, one figurative, and one Stripe/text painting
• Video piece: in this piece I want to move beyond the concept of object making and explore the idea of documenting ethnographic exploration of whiteness.I am going to walk around Chicago and touch white peoples hair.
• wall drawing where I would expand my hair flow charts into a larger geographical mapping of hair products and production and its relationship to location and consumption
• My work is informed by artist like Mark Lombardi, Ad Reinhardt, Daniel Buren, geometric abstractionist, Mark Rothko, color field artists, Adrian Piper, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Kay Rosen, Nina Simone
Recently I’ve been most Inspired by artist and writers like Bell Hooks and James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry
I am mainly interested in notions of blackness and womanhood as it relates to identity, invisibility and expendability. My experience as a young, lower class, collage educated black urban woman has shaped my perception of the world, and drives me to create artwork that renders the black cultural existence in ways I see fit. Re-representation in reference to black vernacular, slang, body politics, issues of transparency and color interaction are my concerns.
Post a Comment