we're on the web

The site has been up for almost a week now. here is the link YouAreBeautiful

A wonderful day for photos

Today we got out and took all of the photos for our project. It went way better than any of us could have expected. Everyone chipped in and things went very smoothly. After we finished the shooting, Andrea took the photos home and did some digital touch-ups on the photos, then sent them to each of the group members to do our things with them. I took them and added them all to the web site, and the others went through our lists and emailed the photos along with a thank you and a link to our website and survey. Now all that's left to do is to write our paper.

Class review; March 9th

The "You Are Beautiful" project is well under way. We met in groups again today and discussed details of the project. Solidified the dates, clearly stated our objective (raise awareness about self esteem issues around body image and boost confidence by engaging people in photo shoots with positive enforcement in the form of a sign with the slogan "you are beautiful" and supported with the website). I worked all week on the web site and got it up and running with all of the information from the group I have received to date inserted.

http://youarebeautiful.x10.mx/

The class discussion today was centered around Buddhist truths. I do not have issue with the truths, I do however, think there are ethical problems with bringing religion into the classroom and disguising it as a discussion related to a larger theme. For this reason, I will not include details of these discussions in this journal.

Class review; March 2nd

Today began with an eco-art project. Went out, collected leaves and branches, returned to the room and wrote positive messages on the leaves with markers, painted the branches, and put it all outside for passers by to take notice.

Objectives for this could be to raise awareness, waste reduction, use found/natural materials, inspire or create good feelings. The objectives of a project should reflect the problem. the problem in this case could be deforestation, pollution or waste, etc

we received our mask and photograph grades today, I was given the opportunity to submit my full paper because I had not received Andrea's email in time, and she did not receive my email either. It was sent tonight.

For the rest of the class we worked on our group projects. Our group made the signs, delegated tasks, and I designed the layout and formatting for the web-site that will serve both as a component of our pubic art, as well as our presentation material.

Marcie: Advertisement, signs
Andrea: Release/permission/information form, "We Are Beautiful" "I Am Beautiful" signs
David: Questionnaire
Christina: Website content; "About Us & the Project", collection of resources relating to positive body image
Lance: Web site planning, construction
All: carrying out project on days planned, resource collection

We were also given the criteria for the paper that is to accompany the project and presentation. It is to include the following (direct from board)
-Creativity
-Activity
-Problem
-Objectives
-Materials
- Process and Reflection (Personal and Team) relating to Image Development (What was good, bad, would you change?)
-Presentation

-as for my personal work today, I designed a layout for the web site that will consist of a small number of pages (likely only 4-6) with a simple layout. However, because it requires some features that I am currently unfamiliar with using in web-site construction, it will require a fair amount of time to build as I need to learn how to use and/or create the features we want. I also need to find some way of taking our survey information and creating some way of making sense of all the collected data.

This is going to be a long project with countless hours spent off the streets and out of the public to complete; but I'm still looking forward to it. I think it will be a lot of fun. I am slightly worried about not being able to make the site work the way that is currently planned, but everything else should go smoothly as we work well together as a group.

the forcast for today was; classroom summary with periods of ranting.

What we did in class (straight out of the note book)
-media and social change/influence
-told the story about the monk who wrote "Call Me By My True Names". Story was about a girl who threw herself over the side of the boat after being raped by pirates. Could not blame the pirate because of the conditions he knew. Personally I think this is BS. It assumes that we are all victims of our circumstances and avoids the notion of universal truths or inherent "Right" and "Wrong".
-This got me thinking about psychological and sociological differences between someone who succumbs to the circumstances they were born into, and those who rise to the occasion and find a way to "fight" as it were. (this is assuming that the circumstances are of negative influence, though it could be applied in reverse).

-We then talked about right-brain communication which reminded me of this TED talk I once saw about a woman who experienced a stroke from a golf-ball sized clot on the left side of her brain, effectively shutting it down. Her experience living almost exclusively in her right hemisphere was astounding. (video posted below)



Following this we put out our masks along side the photos we had created and did a walk-around looking at them. This was great for saving time, but I would have like to have discussed this project. More than the other things we have done in class, this one angered a lot of people in the way that it was executed. It would have been good to hear how this delivery method of the assignment altered their creative process and resulted in the images that they made. I know in my own process it did not alter much as I always use visual research methods in developing my ideas and images, and one project more often than not, evolves into another project. What I did not like about this project was the short-notice for the additional requirements. As the email provided to the university for school related things is NOT my primary email address, I do not check it every day, expecting that if there are to be changes to an assignment, notification will be given several days before the assignment is due. Because of this I did not have the opportunity to complete all of the requirements for the written paper at the end. This was in part due to the fact that we were first told in class that there would be no written portion to this assignment, then in an email were told to do a brief rational as to why we chose to take the photo of our mask in the location that we did, and then in yet another email, were asked to add explanation of our process, symbolism, an added requirement of juxtaposition was thrown in the mix, etc. This was a terrible delivery method. All requirements of the assignment should have been made available to us from the beginning, or at least delivered in two parts, not several pieces strung together through a series of unclear email's.

After the all to brief gander at the masks around the room, we watched a video about Ben Shahn "Paintings for Social Activism". I could not find this video, but I did find another one about the artist and his art (posted below)



we also watched a video on "Park(ing) day" in SF. Many video's about park(ing) day can be found on youtube or with a simple google search.

-These lead to a discussion about Random Acts of Kindness and then into our group projects. It did not take long for our group to come up with a concept for our engage art project, outline what we were going to do, and develop a schedule. We have decided to do a project promoting positive body image called "You Are Beautiful" involving photographing of the public both on campus and down town, as well as setting up a gallery web site were people can view the photos and be provided with links to resources about positive body image. There are still some details to be worked out, but that will all come when next the group gets together.
The website is youarebeautiful.x10.mx
Shooting days are scheduled for the 16th (campus) and the 17th (inner harbor).
The group currently consists of myself, David, Andrea, and Marcie. We may be absorbing two other classmates who were absent at the time groups were formed.

The last thing done in class this day was to be assigned another paper. the requirements outlined are as follows:
-1500ww.
-12pt font
-dbl spaced
-due Mar 9th
-APA citation style
-the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of engaged art and knowledge of contemporary engage artists. It is to include both theory and personal inquiry. questions posed in class were: What is engage art? What is social art activism? What are examples of artists and projects? Provide an analysis of "that" work and your point of view (when asked what "that" work was, if it was a particular piece or a body of work, the answer was that it was up to us. This leaves it open and extremely broad and makes me wonder what the grading criteria will be).  Give your point of view on the art (whatever that may be), provide alternatives. What are future implications (im assuming this is in relation to future teaching and classroom application as well as for the aspect of society the project was intended to influence or change), Personal connections and professional connections.

Journal; "Endless hours" edition

It (or they) is finished! Finally. This was a very time-consuming project. I took this mask photo assignment and ran with it. There were scheduling issues, technical difficulties, weather related problems, etc. But, after 4 days of "let's try this again tomorrow" I finally got what I needed and very nearly abandoned it all.

I got the photos I need for the assignment and worked for a day in Photoshop getting it all together in a way that was working for me. I think I am still going to call the finished piece "Icarus" because it still feels like it belongs to me, and it adds another level of contemplation to the piece.

 I am pleased with the final piece, but still wanted to experiment with the idea of combining photographic with illustrated elements for a different kind of image. My original idea was to incorporate cartoon-like drawn elements into the above image, but after some trials I abandoned the idea. What ended up happening was that I did a digital painting and then added the mask in as the face. The painting was inspired by a child sitting on the grass in a park near where I was shooting the portrait for the above image. I took out my sketchbook while waiting for the model to arrive and did some figure drawings of the child that I later used. This image is more literal when it comes to the Icarus myth. The child sitting on the ground with his wings falling apart around him.  Also the "i" on his shirt with the dot as a simple sun.

There are a lot of things about this image that I like, but I liked it more without the photo of the mask incorporated. Because of the time invested in getting it to this stage, I will likely work with it more, adding texture to the background, and completing the face of the child with the mask off. I may also change the feathers to gray-scale and add some melting wax dripping off into puddles in a luminescent golden-yellow... or rainbow :)

Journal; the "Brocade, Lace, and Feathers" edition.

 So by the time I got the email about the photo and all that jazz, I had already completed my mask. I decided to do a photo-shoot with a model instead of just placing the mask in a setting and photographing it. Because of the steampunk/pirate/arts and crafts look to the mask, I am drawing inspiration from Victorian/Edwardian costuming, Steampunk & Pirate cosplay, Greek myth, and Cartooning. I began with some sketches, image and materials collection  and I think I have a concept that synthesizes the themes into a coherent aesthetic. Tomorrow I have arranged with my hair and makeup artists and the model to meet me at the locations that I went and scouted out today. Hopefully I'll be able to get the shots I need and the weather cooperates. In addition to amalgamating the different styles and aesthetics of the various areas into a single image, I am going to play with gender roles in this piece. Because of the combined costuming from several areas, it naturally became a bit androgynous, and having a female model wearing the male mask will hopefully bring to binary into sharper focus. I am excited to do this piece, I just hope that I have enough time to get it all worked together the way that I want it. The digital work is going to be extremely time consuming :S

 So it's a female Icarus in a steam-driven Victorian age, with corsets, brocade, lace, ruffles, blimps and boilers. Likely over-exposed and finished in desaturated sepia tones. It plays on male/female, youth/aged, and bringing together elements of different time periods. Im not sure if I have a message that I want it to convey, but it is going to be a whole lot of fun and fantasy... if I can make it work in the time that we have.

*the sketches are just some ideas for posturing and some detail work, nothing solid; simply idea generation for the development of this image.

In class:
Had a sub today, spent time looking at the concept of socially engaged art; or art that engages people in social issues. Condé and Beveridge were used as a study. Their work is photo-collaged and surreal. The subject often deals with social issues.

This image deals with the privatization of water.

After looking at images we came up with some social issues that are relevant to us or are current in our culture. Some of the key ones are:
- the removal of all bunnies from UVic
- Rising cost of tuition without equal raises in funding for students
- issues related to the recent renovations on campus (lack of sprinkler systems in Mac, continuing classes while asbestos removal was occurring)
- The slaughtering of 100 dogs in Whistler.

Following the class discussion we divided into groups and make collages related to the dog issue using images taken from materials in the magazine/paper bins in the class. The result was three different, but effective socially engaged art collages.
This class was extremely helpful in defining what engaged art is and looking at some of the devices used to create an engaged experience for the viewer. The exercise creating the collages of the dogs in groups was good as well. We were able to develop an image as a group that had more punch than would likely have developed if a single individual had developed it.

The Mask We Wear

So there it is, The plaster mask after a couple days of play and experimentation. Even though I dont enjoy the feeling of the plaster covering my face and I ended up building a rather featureless face-shape from a news-print built form, I had a lot of fun with this project. Once the plaster was dry, I brought it home to put on some finishing touches and decided that I didn't like any of the sketches I had done. Instead I decided to take the opportunity to dig through my various boxes of collected odds n' ends and have some fun. I started by painting the base with a lot of different colours in a mid-value range and then gave it some form by sinking in the eye sockets and cheeks with some very deep purples and greens. After dug through the boxes and selected some bits I thought could work for this. Some National Geographic images of predator animals on the hunt, some watch gears, bits of foam, etc. I am extremely pleased with the way that it turned out in the end. If I were to change anything it would be to put more hair on the top of the head and to carve the sponge that makes the mustache more or use a different material. Something I like a lot is the mono-goggle/eye-piece thing. The ear pad from a broken set of head phones found in my neighbors recycling was perfect for this. I had used it to make some marks on a painting last year and the dried paint on it really adds to the playfulness of the whole thing.

Feb 2nd Class recap... or something like that

First up was putting our juxtaposition/transformation/distortion pieces along with our statements on the display boards in the hall. Not knowing how many pieces and sizes of pieces were going to have to fit on the boards, we haphazardly posted. We were then asked to look at the boards, and re-arrange the pieces so that they were more cohesive in overall appearance. We then briefly told about our piece, one thing we would change, and one thing we like. The thing I would change is to add more detailed pen work, and what I liked was the composition and the form of the octopus/pigeon beast. The feedback I received was:
"I really love this piece - it shows the concept well and is beautiful to look at :) "
"I really dig your picture! It reminds me of the old school tattoo style. I love the combination of a pigeon and octopus."

In class we did a value exercise that involved creating a gradient on the page in some way and then drawing a landscape into it afterward.

I created the gradient with charcoal from one side of the page across to the other. Other people created gradients in a thin band down the center of the page, from the outside edge inward, from the center out, or from corner to corner. I chose to make my landscape fictitious and the forms are very "Tim Burton" inspired.

When the exercise was complete we engaged in a class discussion about which ones stood out and why. Overall I think it was the ones with the highest range of value and high contrast that people like most.

Following this we brainstormed around the concept of "Enduring Ideas". Some of the ideas we came up with were:
Change, Existence, Empowerment, Family, Courage, Love, Growth, Peace, Emotions, Freedom, Knowledge, Understanding, Happiness, Music, Communication, Respect, Empathy, Loyalty, Friendship, Companionship, Art, Expression, Creativity, Story, History or Lineage.
These ideas manifest in all kinds of ways; in the people around us, in our actions and reactions, in records or logs, in physical objects, in our art, etc. There may be different types or ways that they can be divided. Some categories they might be divided into are: Values, How we relate to one another, and how we identify with ourselves (self awareness).

The second project was to create a piece that utilized either Juxtaposition, Transformation, or Distortion. I decided to focus mine on Transformation. I looked around the internet at some other works done on transformation, and tried to come up with two or more things that I could transform. Animal transformation and metamorphosis draw my interest so I decided to merge two animals into a single creature. After some thought I decided to do a bird and a sea creature. Initially I thought I was going to do a rooster and an octopus, but after some initial sketches I decided that I didn't like the rooster because the colours were not working for what I was trying to do. I looked around some more and settled on a Pigeon. This also lead to the idea of exaggerating the size and having this Pigeon/octopus creatures size and having it attack a sea-side city. At first I had the head positioned upright on the body of the octopus, but it was loosing some of it's awkwardness and was far too rigid. I decided to maintain the soft, malleable fleshy feel of the octopus up into the neck of the pigeon which made the head tilt back. I further emphasized the uneasiness of the creature by adding back in the eye of the rooster as well as an altered version of the neck warble. This made it somewhat phallic, but I decided to leave it as it works well with the rest of the image. After the image was painted and inked in the way I had planned, it felt as though something was still missing, so I went back in with a fine tip and added more sketch/scratch marks around some of the areas like the clouds and hatching in the rocks. The addition of some black splatter relates back to the ink defenses of the octopus portion of the creature and creates some interest and contrast to the soft watercolor.

Jan 26th Class Recap

Today was mostly about the boxes. We placed them together on a table and then engaged in a group communication about them. What were the obvious differences in the boxes, interior vs exterior, open vs closed, types of containers used, etc. Following this we proceeded to communicate to the class on an individual basis, taking turns presenting our box to the rest of the class and telling a little about it. This would be a good follow up to the exercise in a high school class, but time might become an issue in a larger class. To get around this issue one might ask the students to stand up and tell the class 3 things about their box.

Following the P/R for the boxes we were introduced and began working on the next assignment; masks. I have done these kinds of masks before and really did not enjoy the feeling of the shrinking/drying plaster covering my face. As a result myself, as well as a couple other students, built head shaped forms from news paper and constructed our plaster forms on top of those. I decided to keep mine fairly featureless in construction and will end up creating the features with paint or other materials. My thoughts on the design, at the moment, are to create a slightly disfigured older being. beyond that I have a couple of ideas and have begun sketching some of them out.

at the moment I am leaning more towards the one on the right, an aged ninja-turtle type creature.

Enduring thoughts

I started thinking about enduring ideas. I started by looking at the words themselves. what are the meanings of "enduring" and "idea". I looked at dictionary definitions, the roots and origins of the word, and found a quote I enjoy about ideas.

From here I decided to do a mind map of some of the qualities of "enduring" and see where that lead me.

I quickly realized that the page I was working on was going to end up being far too small so I started over and expanded my central thought from "enduring" to the whole concept "enduring ideas"

There are several things that came out of this exercise that I am going to investigate further in fleshing out a single idea for the project: the idea of archetypes as cross cultural enduring "forms" is incredibly appealing to me. The other one is "courage" or "bravery". I'd like to see where that one could end up going.

the Life Box

The box: to be constructed from the above book. I decided to build a "box" from a book because the largest part of my life at this time is being a student.

and so with a lot of glue and a lot of time waiting for things to dry, the pages were all glued together and the center cut out

I contemplated just filling the box up with some things that reflect the "inner me" but instead decided to take it in a slightly different direction. I did some sketches and came up with some visual metaphors to represent the things I hold closes to me and transferred them onto acetate.

and then painted them all in

at this point the walls of the box were divided into sections to keep the painted pages separate, creating some depth in the scene.

all that was left was to do the outside of the box. I took some of the pages that came from the book and tore them up and pasted them onto the outside to cover all surface. I also added some images torn form a Where's Waldo book as well as some photographs and drawings.

This life box exercise was interesting for me. Exploration of self is something that I have explored before in the studio, and I always find it to be a revealing experience. However, because this followed the mandala assignment so closely, I did not have any trouble of have to invest much thought into what I was going to do for as far as visuals go. The one thing I felt through the creation of this piece was frustration - with the time investment in gluing all the pages of the book together, with the knives I was using dulling quickly and ripping pages, with the glue not adhering to the outer surface of the book, all technical things.

Jan 19th Class Recap

The next project: Engage Art (enduring ideas)
Enduring ideas are ideas that are timeless and universal. Some examples are: honesty, trust, freedom, courage, communication and moods or expression.
One enduring idea I would like to further investigate for this project is Courage and/or Perseverance.

The assignment is to take an enduring idea and on of 3 given devices and create a piece. I believe it can be any medium, size, etc, so long as it clearly conveys the idea chosen and utilizes one of the following devices:
1. Juxtaposition
2. Transformation
3. Distortion

In Class Discussion:
We discussed the elements of art in relation to real life. ie. what is a life of value? what is a life that is full of colour / empty of colour? What kind of a line could represent your life? etc. This could be done with a class in conjunction with teaching the elements and principles to help students relate the application of the E's and P's in art to things they know and understand. It might also be helpful to put it into practice by following the discussion with a "drawing to music" exercise. Doing this exercise in a circular format would be a good lead-in to mandala's as well.
here are some examples of pieces from a "drawing to music" exercise I did with a small group last year.

more examples from the exercise can be found (here)

Katrina Baker

Justin Robinson

Spiral Staircase

The final Mandala:

I ended up using aspects of the drawing I did in class (last post) but my process took me much further and I developed this image instead. In class we put them up and told the class briefly about the image. From there we were asked to give one positive comment and one comment or suggestion pertaining to improvement on one or two of the others mandalas.

the feedback I received:
- I like the circles, they look like bubbles!
- I really like the gradient of light to dark from top to bottom as well as the square connecting to the large circle. It is extremely well balanced and the choice of medium and colour is perfect. It almost feels like a picture taken from underwater. Well done!
- The colours of this piece are magnificent. Very symmetrical! This piece GLOWS!
- Beautiful/ A more matte finish might have helped to reduce glare though :)
- I love the scale of it. Because of its size, it is extremely eye catching and makes it difficult to look at any other: it really takes the spot light. I think it was a great choice to use the gloss paper - it adds another element to it that makes the piece so eye grabbing.
- I like the transparency of the geometric shapes over each other. I also like the light on the top. Maybe try to use more colours.

The comment about adding more colour was of particular interest to me because I had two finished versions of this piece. the other one included a very slight difference in design, and had more colour.

The reason I did not end up using this one was because when I went to the printers, their magenta's were printing off and needed to be re-calibrated. Over all I am extremely pleased with the way that the piece turned out. If I were to change anything with either of them, it would to be to add the spiral in on the second one and remove the left eye socket. On the first one I might add some fuchsia or magenta in as a glow under the square that contains the mouth portion.

Mandala and other such things

In class we discussed what mandala are. Some characteristics that they often have in common are: circular in shape, often surrounded by a square, associated with unity, oneness, and spirituality. Some examples are the Medicine Wheel and Tibetan temple blueprints.

Tibetan mandala is a temple design

the Medicine Wheel and dream-catchers are both mandala

Zen art is similar to mandala in that it is associated with oneness, harmony, order, etc, as well as being commonly represented with the circle. Zen circles are a single stroke created with a brush and ink after meditation or practicing mindfulness.

a zen circle

 Following this discussion we were shown a video of Alex Grey, an artist that uses art in a healing and spiritual way. He stated in the video that he works on the principle that if there is art that can induce depression or feelings of sorrow, there must also be art that has the opposite effect.

kissing

Assignment:
we began working with shapes and a basic understanding of mandala in class and were given tools to draw mandala. I worked exclusively with circles and eventually ended up with a fractal image ~

I may or may not continue to work on this further, or start over for the final design. I also experimented with interconnected knots.

I enjoy the aesthetic of this and will likely incorporate it into my design.

The Right to Education

Posterfortomorrow.org just released their issue for 2011. With last years Human Rights Violation and Capitol Punishment exhibition showing around the world, They have set Dec 10th, 2011 as the date to premier their "the Right to Education" show in the first annual  poster for tomorrow day. Entries open March 10, close July 10.

And So It Begins...

A visual introduction! The exercise: in a short and set time (5minutes), draw or sketch something that represents you. For anyone who knows me, the toon-like tree frog makes sense. The rest of the exercise consisted of showing the class the sketch, telling a bit about yourself and why you drew what you did.

"Tree frogs are my thing...3rd year expanded art ed... btw I'm Lance...etc"

great exercise for introduction. Could be done in any secondary art class. May help with remembering names because it provides an insight and something to associate with the name and face.


Exercises of the day:
1. Photograph mirror; Chose an image from a pre-selected set that appealed to us personally. We were unaware of what the activity was at this point.
The image I selected was similar to this, but not exactly. It was a fashion shot of a man in a black leather jacket. The whole image was in both warm and cool blacks and blues except for the mans face which was much lighter in value and warm. The activity was to answer a set of questions in relation to the image and ourselves. The questions were something like:
 ~How is the image a reflection of you?
~Why was the photograph taken?
~If you  were to receive this image in the mail with no return address, who and why do you think it would have been sent?
~Would you send this to anyone, and why?
~Imagine you were leaving this to your grandchild, what message would you leave to accompany it?

After writing down our answers to the questions, we got into small groups and shared our answers and experience of doing the exercise. I was a bit reserved at the beginning, as Im sure most of my peers were, but after a few questions you get into it and it is therapeutic to do that kind of self reflection and introspective investigation.

[In a high school class room setting I might be a bit hesitant to ask a class to engage in this kind of self reflection. Most students are still at a stage of being afraid of peer judgment and are constantly comparing themselves with those around them. As a result it may cause feelings of anxiety to ask them to go introspective and then reveal their thoughts to peers and/or the class. The exercise could be adapted by informing the students of the intent of the exercise before selecting their photo, and excluding the group component. Elsewise the exercise could be adapted by simply changing the questions away from introspection to the simple aesthetics of the photo. What kind of composition is used, colour palette, why was it taken, what is the target audience, etc. in doing this group communication could still be done.]

2. Lines
In this exercise we were given a bunch of black strips of paper and a sheet of white paper. When instructed, we were given 5 seconds to take the strips of paper and make a composition that showed the word given. For example; emotions, colours, etc. After we were asked to take the lines and an additional sheet of black paper and create and glue a composition relating to the previous exercise involving the photograph and the message we would leave to our grandchild. After gluing we needed to give it a title.

Timeless

On another piece of paper we were to write the title of the piece and write one line about the title that related to the use of line. The paper was then passed to the person next to us where they read what had been written and passed the paper on the person next to them, and so on. It was repeated till there were four lines to the poem. The poems were then shared with the class while the paper composition was displayed.
The poem:

Timeless

Line variety is timeless

Lines are timeless until ended by a point

Time cannot be measured through the use of lines

lines can always be continued

The final step for the assignment was to take the poem home, change it if you wished, and write it out or print it so that it could be displayed with the paper composition.

[This exercise could be used in the classroom with little tweaking. again it depends on the previous exercise and what kinds of questions are asked of the students. With a mature group, it is possible that the exercise could be executed as is with minor adjustments made for time, or done over the course of two class blocks depending on length. The question about grandchildren may be changed away from being personal to something more comfortable simply by asking if they could leave a message for a future generation or "if you were to leave this image in a time capsule with a message, what would it be?" The poem writing aspect of the exercise could remain unaltered.]

Something To Think About : Zen art and Mandala

Mandala are essentially art created in a circle. A lot of them are symmetrical but they are not always. They may be fractal. Present and important in most cultures and religions. In doing research for zen art I came across many different definitions, though a lot of the examples appear to relate to zen philosophy and Buddhist tradition.