Changing reality with art

I am working on a project for 2D design using photography, making the ordinary extrordinary with photography. I have not used Photoshop for more than "camera raw" to improve the look of my photos although it has sat on my laptop for sometime. While snapping over 450 photos (and only having a handful of usable shots) I thought about our photography lecture and how these artists expressed their view of the world through a camera lens. As I began playing with Photoshop however, I found that that view can be enhanced, skewed, or even fabricated.

I took a picture of my kids at Keaton Beach. It was a beautiful evening, perfect weather, but look what I was able to do with Photoshop! I took a benign event and made it dramatic! I have found this to be another tool in my arsenal for making beautiful art, real or fictional!

Unique style and fingerprint

Last week I asked my son to begin teaching his brother the drums, and to help his sister fine tune her guitar skills. He is so incredibly gifted in music that it makes adult musicians jealous. He is now scoring independent films for a student in Jacksonville, so one would think he would be secure in himself to teach, right? Well, not quite. He was resistant and agitated about the idea, fearful that they would become better than he is. We got into a conversation about understanding that no two artists are alike and every artist handles the same subject matter in different ways with different styles.

To test this idea, I gave each of my kids a 12”x12” canvas and gave them the topic “The Lion King” (this was after many other ideas that were scoffed at). I asked each of them to paint their depiction of an element in the movie, in their own style. Matthew, my 10 year old was determined to do an “impressionistic style” landscape, his favorite style, with “Scar”. Mike and Jacqui painted“Timone”, and Ashley used mixed medium for “Scar” (paint and gum wrappers). The differences are obvious in their work, not just in different characters, but in the style of their brush strokes, choice of medium, and color. All I have to say is point proven!

Photography...capturing amazing moments in time and dressing up reality

Today I took my family to Keaton Beach to take bunches of photos for an upcoming 2D project. I went just before sunset and shot about 350 pictures. I captured some really cool pictures of my kids by asking them to move around and goof off while I experimented with my camera settings....

While getting some awesome footage of my kids, I also learned of how the camera can fool someone into thinking a location is really beautiful. If you aren't familiar with Keaton Beach, it's off the coast of Perry. It is where the water meets the land...that's about it. There is a sign that warns people not to swim in the water because the environmental conditions are hazardous to human health. You would never know the "beach" here is sub par after viewing the pictures I took:

Now I fully relate to the old saying, "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

Ok people,
What do you think when you see these pictures? How many of you are thinking "I really need to get out there and exercise"? How many of you are thinking "They must really work hard to look like that"?

How many of you are saying "How dare they wear that!!! I am offended!"?
Sounds like a crazy question, huh? Tomorrow I will be 38 years old. I feel like I am in the best shape of my life, and I work VERY hard at it. I recently did a blog on my body as the medium for sculpture and I am very proud of that. In a time where everyone is blogging or Facebooking about losing weight and the need to be healthy, I feel like I am so often penalized for it. Back to my question, how many of you judge these women down for wearing a sports bra to run and not some frumpy t-shirt or sweats?

A few days ago I went to pick my husband up from work to run. He works at the hospital in Perry and I brought him his clothes so we could hit the track at the Sports Complex. Today he tells me that I am not allowed to pick him up in "inappropriate clothing", women in the business office complained to administration! I was wearing what the first pic portrayed, capris and a sports bra...we went to run outdoors in 87 degree weather! At first I was flattered, they are that jealous to take the time to complain. Then I was hurt and offended. Why would they go out of their way to complain? I get the same attitude when I run at the track. Women walk that track with hand-weights wearing baggy t-shirts and long baggy shorts. They pass with a scoff as I run by them. I smile as I pass, but they have already passed judgement. Hello? Everything I read says wear cool clothing that breaths, dri-fit fabrics preferably and to prevent injury WEAR A SPORTS BRA TO RUN! I know I shouldn't care, but it still bothers me. The ironic thing is I was asked to come speak to the hospital's wellness committee to help staff get into shape, and they asked me to donate art for an event!

I used this to vent, but I feel like I needed to. To tie it all in, this week is Vernacular Art. These artists used their art to express themselves, to deal with things. How on earth do so many artists produce works that are sure to offend and yet do it proudly? These artists have critics stand and applaud. Just once, I wish I had critics that would stand and applaud me for my efforts rather than mumble "Hussy" while passing judgement :(

Here's a picture of what I wear when I run, I am holding a 3D Foundations project...

Inspiration for Art

Last week I had a lecture on collecting. The thing that fascinated me was not the collections themselves, but how they were displayed. Some of the pieces seemed to be nothing without the creative way in which they were displayed. I showed my 10 year old son a piece that displayed toys such as cars and planes on a painted scene. He is so sentimental and was so inspired by the piece that he asked to use my paints and make his own. Then he placed his favorite toys on the painting. I am so excited to see kids get excited and inspired to produce their own art. Here's Matthew's piece:

Fun with Conspiracies

I remember growing up in the late 70's and early 80's, legend was Kennedy was not killed by a "lone gunman" and Lee Harvey Oswald was definitly framed. The more documentaries I saw, the more I was convinced as well, but who did kill JFK? Popular concensus was our own government (which I am also leaning toward), but what do you do? Many adults said they were going to stay alive long enough to read the classified info on the case once it was declassified (50 years). The suspicous thing was that once the time came for the docs to be declassified, there was a mysterious fire and the documents were gone....y-eah, sure.

So what do we do when we feel we have been taken for a ride by a government concocted BS story? We make a game out of it! I recently acquired Adobe Photoshop and need to learn how to use it. I thought it would be fun to experiment with some Clue game cards and make a Clue "Who killed JFK" game. I have worked on a few cards...what do you think? These aren't the killers, they are the possible conspirators (except poor Oswald), after all, anyone who wanted JFK dead was too important to do the job themselves, right?

Self-generated assignment...unconventional art, myself as the medium

In two weeks I will be 38 years old. I have always used my body as an outlet for my creativity. I do not have tattoos( I have too short an attention span for art and get tired of things quickly, tattoos are too permanent) but I use my makeup and hair as an excuse to express myself artistically. This is not a new concept that I am expressing, but I have realized a way that I have used my skills as an artist to sculpt my body. When I hit 20, my body was in bad shape, I put on 20+ pounds and my metabolism had slowed tremendously. I had four kids after that and my energy level went downhill, along with my self esteem. I decided when I hit my mid 30's to do something about it - it was now or never! I began to run and bike, not much happened, I lost a little weight and felt a little better, but I thought I could do more. I realized that as an artist, I could shape my body ANYWAY I wanted to! So, I did and I am continuing to. It is a slow process compared to sculpting clay, but the rewards are well worth the patience.

Using weights and varying the repetitions and heaviness of the weight, I have been able to cut my size of my legs, bulk my shoulders, cut and shape my arms (which was my worst feature), and slim my waist and hips. I have literally made myself the sculpture. I have posted pictures above, one of me two years ago at a size 11, and one of me now in a size 3!

Assignment #10...Collecting

I was looking over the list of blog assignments to see what I would take on this week, what would be relevant to my life that I could express passionately. Let's face it, no one wants to read or even view a blog that is dry, and impersonal, right? The one assignment that jumped out at me was "Collecting". Unfortunately I will not be including art so I will attempt to create a visual image through my witty use of metaphors and colorful language.

After getting over my anxiety of realizing that I hold on to everything and should be nominated for a reality TV show, I realized that I do indeed have a beautiful collection, one that I was unaware I was collecting. As a mother, I collect the obvious photos and artwork from my kids over the years, and I looked at it in that very way...obvious mother's collection. When I began going through the handmade cards and letters I stashed in my top drawer of my dresser, however I saw an evolution of my children formed on paper.

I watched the crayon drawn pictures and scribbles turn into letters of appreciation and requests for motherly guidance from my kids. My creations were making creations for me, and here is a record of their maturing and growing. This of course led to me going through the umteenmillion photos I have, both in paper (waiting to be scanned) and on my hard drive. I became teary-eyed at the soundless 11 sec. clips that we saved from our 1st digital camera back in the mid-nineties. My precious collection I had been overlooking and taking for granted was being dusted off and pulled out of the dark recesses of my cluttered life into the light of my awareness through an assignment. Yes I have a collection, and now I will begin to make it intentional, after I get over my procrastination and deal with thinning the clutter of my life and home, I will find a way to preserve and showcase this treasure.

Assignment #11 Perceptual Cramp...cont.

Ok, I have completed my painting, overcome my fear, and explored something new! How do I overcome "artist block, or perceptional cramp"? I try something new accepting possible failure because I haven't tried it before. What better way to jumpstart an artistic streak than to have new tools, mediums, or methods to try!

Perceptual Cramp

So many times I walk around with my sketchbook in hand ready to create, but the lack of ideas or a starting point creates a black mental void. Life throws many distractions my way to assist me in staying in this creative void...kids, household responsibilities & decisions, so how do I overcome this? The easiest way is assignments in school. If there is an assignment I can converge on, a looming deadline, and a starting point, I am good to go! Sometimes, however, the assignment is so vague that I still do not have that starting point.

"Art is not a thing, it is a way", thank you Elbert Hubbard. It is a way, it is a way through that black void, not a thing to rescue me. I should not sit looking for the ladder of art to just come to me and allow me to get out of my stagnant hole, but press through the mass. For this assignment I will be presenting a couple of blogs covering my progress. I have two things I am working on: my 2D assignment and a personal challenge.

The 2D assignment is a series of "perceptual cramps" the first was my idea...I had to come up with this on my own and having Mary Stewart for my instructor will not allow me to succumb to mediocrity. I brainstormed for my "True Lies" project to find a contrasting element to design my project. I came up with "real life" celebrities and a 3D mock "Rear Window" set I would create (too ambitious, not enough time), a JFK clue game where the rooms are replaced with locations the assassination was devised at, and game characters would be the masterminds behind it (this will actually be my capstone project), and finally the choice I went with: a 3D panoramic of prohibition and speakeasies. I will blog on my progress with this as I progress with it. This does present another perceptual cramp: how do I build this lit box with a panoramic inside. The idea is cool enough, there will be a door design with a sliding "peep hole". The viewer will look into this box through the hole and see a lit panoramic of speakeasies and home-made distilleries. The outside of the box will be a facade of the enforcement and supporting propaganda for prohibition. What a metaphorical statement...the facade on the box representing the facade of prohibition. Lets face it, many of the speakeasy regulars were cops!

My personal challenge to overcome my perceptual cramp, which should also cover another assignment of a self-portraiture, I am going to attempt something I have not done before - a chiaroscuro monochromatic painting on a black canvas. I have painted several of these in the past, that I have included pics of at the top this blog, but I have never started with a black canvas and paint myself, chiaroscuro style on it in white. As I mentioned, I have completed many of these but I have always started with a white canvas, painted a black background around my subject and built my subject with black and white paint. I am going to attempt something new, something I am not quite sure I can pull off. What is a perceptual cramp for me anyway? It is not having a "safe" idea in which I know I can complete. There are many ideas out there that are way too ambitious so they are discarded out of fear and perfectionism. Today I am choosing to overcome this by taking on this project, by doing another blog assignment in an unsure manner...taking a risk that may not pan out.

Assignment # 8: Found materials

Ah, right up my alley...free tools to create with! Er, uh, but not really the results I desired.
The materials I chose to use were tissue paper that I received when I purchased a mug this weekend, and some feathers my daughter found in the yard:

I decided to try acrylic paint and watercolors for medium and use the feather quill for the acrylic and the feather for the watercolor. Although not the smoothest application, it does work. Tissue paper, however was a bad choice (obviously), but it was a found material so I decided to press on...

Not my best work, by far, but it does work to create an image!

I decided to try watercolor on bristol paper to see if it was just the tissue paper and not the feathers being difficult.

The feathers made a very interesting image with watercolors, and again....Blogger does strange things to pictures when I try to upload them (such as flipping the image vertically).

Assignment # 7: Two hand drawing

I really thought this assignment would yield different results than it did. I tried to draw a face with both hands drawing simutanously. My hypothesis was that the right hand would be spectacular while the left would be hardly noticable as a face. Surprisingly, I found that as I was unable to devote my senses to my right hand, both sides were almost equal in composition. I utilized a skill that I learned through blind contour drawing. I focused more on the lines than on my drawing. This helps with the left hand, but the right was not what it should have been, by far!

Blogger does not have a rotate option so the picture is defaulted to portrait, I apologize for this, but you can turn your laptop to see it in its intended landscape position. I intend on creating some more of these to see if my results are similar.

Assignment # 6: 3" x 3" collages

Ooooh, another cool assignment that I really did not look forward to doing, but I had allot of fun making it. This came out phenominal! I drew out 3--3" x 3" boxes and filled them with colorful scraps pf paper left over from my last project. Each one is deliberate in its composition and draws the eye to different areas of the compositions while unifying them all in color.

Assignment #5 Art and Life

The fusion of art and life. I still laugh to myself whenever I think of a conversation I had with a friend who was a die hard economist. "It's totally understandable if FSU cuts the art program to fund other more important programs. The world can live without art, it cannot live without economics."

So, businesses can do just fine without art so long as it has economists on the job? Uh, no! Without art there would be no advertising, just a black screen with an actor speaking during those 5 min interruptions of those earth shattering reality shows (sarcastic tone). Yes boys and girls, art does make the earth go round, and if you think we can live without it, feel free to blindfold yourself for one day and recontemplate that idea.

Back from my rant, I chose to do a concept map for this project that shows how my artistic talent show up in my everyday life. My kids believe I can do anything. I make homemade pizza, cut and highlight the girls' hair, do my nails and my daughter's with acrylic, pretty much every project is an over-the-top artistic endeavor. Here is a linking of my art with my life and how it influences everything for me:

This may be very hard to see, so I will list what it says here:

Painter: Make-up, nail art, home decor

Colorist: matching contacts to my clothes, clothing (choices), home decor

Creator / Idea Generator: homeschool assignments, cook / recipe cracker, unique "artsy" holiday tablescapes, (over-the-top) halloween costumes

Sculpter: Doing my own acrylic nails, hairstylist for my family, weightlifting to sculpt my body.

Blog Assignment #4 Images in Media Affecting Women in America

This is really shaping up to be a "bash the media for destroying women's self-confidence" fest, which is not my intention (seriously...just following the assignment for this one). For this assignment, I am using collage for my medium, which I really did not look forward to. I am very surprised at how well it came out! There was such simplicity in finding material for my project, I mean what is more superficial and unrealistic in the world of real beauty than Vogue? I looked at the concept of body wars and how society puts pressure on women for the "perfect body", but that's one thing Vogue could not assist with. For all the models in the magazine, there was not a single breast! I would have put together an over the top, large breast tiny waist, curvy dipiction, but the material was not going to support that. Vogue would support the perfect teenage boy depiction since the models have no breasts or hips to speak of.
So, what I did do...

Societies dipiction of the perfect face, Photoshop style, and how we women can achieve this with the latest creams and beauty aides (even though they achieved it with the slide of a mouse and couple of clicks). How I see images in media and design drawing our attention to every line and wrinkle in attempt to send us straight to the nearest department store cosmetic counter for that instant fix....

"Uphill Battle - A Woman's Burden to Keep Up with Society's Standard of Beauty"

For my 1st project, Parameters, I chose to use non-traditional materials as an artistic sculptural piece. I was not thrilled with the idea of coming up with something for this. I am a very traditional artist, so outside of a canvas, or sketch pad is outside my comfort zone....good! I needed to be stretched artistically.

My piece "Uphill Battle" is a collection of items and pictures that depict the way that so many of us women try to compete with an airbrushed world of beauty. This reminded me of a documentary I watched last summer called "More Human than Human" it showed how we as society, throughout history, have improved on humanity by artistically altering the appearance of human subjects in artwork. Today's advertising agencies still follow this practice.

What does this mean to us, and how do I depict it it my piece? I started with a Barbie doll. Growing up, I wanted to look just like Barbie or a Disney princess, neither of which are feasable nor anatomically correct. Couple this with psychotic mothers who run the pageant circuit with their small children and you have a recipe for future low self esteem and a lifetime of eating disorders.

My piece moves upward from small girls dolled up and airbrushed, a barbie with eyelash adhesive in her lap, and various items young girls play with to look pretty. Moving up, I took pictures of models, again airbrushed, and surrounded them with cosmetics, a corset, and tanning creme. Notice the ridiculous picture of the teenager with cosmetic surgery notes scrawled with arrows. As you progress up, there are more pictures, this time of celebrities that have altered their appearance with cosmetic surgery. They do not even come close to the airbrushed models in the previous step. I replaced the cosmetics with needles, beauty creme, an oxygen tube, and a tube of polident. I intentionally haphazardly tore out the pictures to show the carelessness of the obsessive march upward.

Although I wear cosmetics and "doll myself up", I do so in an artistic expression. I admit that when Juviderm commercials aired and proclaimed that "parenthesis belonged on paper, not on your face", I looked in the mirror and gasped. I did not even realize it was an issue until they pointed it out! Now, I laugh at my reaction. I embrace my age (although I do not feel I look anywhere near it), I may not grow old gracefully, but I will not obsess my way toward plastic surgery!