Kern Clarke, Dia Johnson, Anwar Abdul-Qawi - Benchmark
Below is a link to the home page of the website we created for our benchmark
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3451542/History%20Project-1/index.html
Art. Such a small word
but into it goes so much meaning; So many different forms and interpretations
of this three-letter word. But what does it mean to be an artist? It means having
the ability to put down every emotion and every feeling inside of you into a
picture, a dance routine, and a sculpture. It means being able to paint a
picture of your mind for the world to see; and that I why I do what I do. I
want the world to feel who I am; to touch and see and feel what’s been inside
of my mind; my heart. When I work with paint I am reminded
that the world is a colorful place and that we’ve stepped out of the black and
white days into a colorful and diverse place. I begin a piece by thinking about
the assignment and how I can add my own person experiences into it.
I know a piece is done when I feel that it’s
complete and I’ve got my message across. When my work is going well, I am
filled with a sense of happiness and expressive success. When people see my
work, I'd like them to step into my shoes and look into my mind.
When
it comes to my artwork, it’s really all about how I feel. Honestly all of my
work has to be thought out in my headfirst so when it comes to decision-making
I try my hardest to think about what fits best in my piece and what makes the
most sense in my mind. I like making my work really out there to reflect my
bold and expressively different personality. When it comes to different themes
of my artwork, I try to keep it real. I like making my art a reflection of my
life and what is happening. It gives me a way to document my life in a sense;
some girls have journals where they jot down all of their emotions, I have
little pieces of artwork to serve as memoirs throughout my life.
My
current artwork is a heart made of recycled newspapers and other re used
objects. In my current life, I am going through some hardships with love and so
my piece is centered on a heart. The recycled paper is coming from the top in
many different kind of untamed ways to represent the wild and untamed habits of
teenage love and love in general. In the center of the heart is a silver square
that is different and more luminous as compared to the rest of the piece. This
represents the different being inside the core of each person; weather it’s a
strong and bold center inside of the cowardly girl or a scared and hurt boy
inside a cold and courageous man. This also can relate to the heart of the
earth and how it needs our help to survive and we need to remember recycling
our resources is like the reusing of blood to our heart.
The
days are:
Monday=
lunes
Tuesday=
martes
Wednesday=miércoles
Thursday=
jueves
Friday= viernes
Saturday=sábado
Sunday=domingo
*notice
that the days are not caputalized unlike the english translation.
Teige
walks up and talks to Anthony who is singing the days of the weeks
Anthoney
¡Hola! ¿Le gustaría decir los días de la semana conmigo?
Teige:
¡Sí!
Breaks
into song
lunes
martes miércoles jueves viernes sábado domingo
lunes
martes miércoles jueves viernes sábado domingo
All:
Yay
English
translation
Anthony:
Hello! Would you like to say the days of the weeks with me?
Teige:
Yes!
Monday
Tuesday Wednsday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Monday
Tuesday Wednsday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
All:
Yay!
If
it isn’t the latest fashion trend we won’t allow the human species to be
recycled,
Our
hearts to be reused, more like thrown in a landfill because you can’t be saved
here,
No
matter how many shirts we decide to wear that claim we are going green, we don’t
change we are selfish
Wrapped up in a diabetic tornado, it isn’t sweet here. We’re dying."- Toni Marshall
This quarter in art, hearts will change and beat a different tune, we are getting in touch with ourselves.
My project came about as I was sitting in a book room surrounded by, obviously, books. In a fit of temper I picked up the Encyclopaedia Britannica and chucked it at the opposing wall. As it slid to the ground the pages made a very delicate and interesting curl. I had seen pictures of other artists who had taken books and twisted and carved at the pages to make interesting wave patterns. I took inspiration and began tearing the pages out and curling them. The shapes and lines of the type were endlessly attractive and from there I built one loop on top of another. Fastened to a wooden rod the pages hung, reminiscent of water droplets.
The project is not finished, to be honest. The form is lacking all of it’s body and the flow of the piece is not completely controlled. However, from what there is, the shapes, depth and interaction of all of the separate parts of this larger sculpture give an interesting feeling. There is a juxtaposition of hanging squared lines and weighted curved droplets that makes the sculpture almost whimsical.
I can’t say that I’m incredibly proud of it. There was very little preparation and the inspiration was rash and almost ill-advised. I like the idea of what I wanted to do but the presentation of the idea left something to be desired. As I looked at it I nit-picked each flaw that I saw and attempted to remedy it with more paper loops. That caused the whole thing to become a little overwhelming and messy. I also feel that, given more time and a little more care, the project will turn out to be alright. It’s just not done yet.
I know that my piece is not quite finished because when I look at it I imagine more and I can visualize more dimension and movement. Now, technically, all art work is a continual state of creation but there is an evident sense of incompletion. I want to add more volume in a couple places and include strips of paper that hang from the bottoms and edges in order to give the downward pulling motion a little more delicacy.
Basically, I’m gonna finish it soon, but what I have now is pretty chill.
Art is creativity on display. Art can show you the mental working of the artist, and their way of expression. Art can be in multiple forms, such as performance, written, or hand designed. That is why art is individual and unique. No peace of art is the same as another.
I chose to start from scratch, literally. I took newspaper and recycled it into canvas. This process consisted of turning twelve newspapers into strips, then using a blender and some water turning the strips into pulp. After the put was made, I used a picture frame and a thin cloth to fish out the paper and strain it. Once the pulp was strained it needed to dry, so it was placed between two towels and I used a rolling pin to squeeze the water out.
After the, newly formed, canvas was dried I glued the thin cloth to the back to keep it sturdy. One the glue dried it was time to paint. I used watercolor paint to create abstract lines and figured on the canvas and glued on various recyclables. Thus was my form off art created. In
art class, we’ve been talking about how much plastic we use that isn’t recycled
and how much plastic animals and humans eat. This made me think about how much
paper fish must eat, seeing as paper is used more if not equally as much as
plastic. Just simply walking on the street, I have seen newspapers, candy
wrappers and other things on the ground and near the sewers.
I
decided to do a seascape. I decided to use a seascape because our oceans are
affected severely. I cut patterns from
magazines into fish shapes, all different shapes and sizes. I decided to use
magazine cut-outs to symbolize the paper that makes its way to the ocean, I cut
the cut-outs into fish shapes to show that the fish consume what makes its way
into the ocean. I cut them into all shapes and sizes to show that just as we
are different so are fish; they have an identity just as we do.
I
usually don’t paint because I do not believe I am very good at it, but in this
particular project I decided to paint to add a texture and opaque color to the
newspaper. In health class, we were cutting images out of magazines to make a
collage about ourselves. I decided to use an old Vogue magazine for my fish
seeing as there is a lot of unique and creative patterns designers use in their
clothing lines. I figured this could show so individuality in the fish I cut out.
I also used newspaper print in a few of the fish to show that paper makes its
way into the ocean.
11/5/10
Art – D2
I have always been interested in the art that is in our natural world. I have always looked at the environment around me and seen a piece of art. Right after I would get home from a long ride, I would run directly to my room to sketch that red and brown tree that I saw on my way, releasing withering leaves onto the front window of my dad’s small and beat up Toyota. I would always enjoy drawing small doodles on the sides of my paper whenever I was in class. I enjoyed the magical feeling of getting paint on my hands and clothes. I would enjoy the black spots that my pencil tip would leave on my index finger after an hour of vehement shading under the shade of the gates shielding my backyards. I have always loved the feeling of being an artist because with this new title came the right of depicting the world the way that I see it with paints, pencil, or even clay. This is why I am an artist.
In our art class, we are collecting bottle caps in order to make bottle cap art. Our teacher, Ms. Hull, was inspired to do this by Aurora Robson who builds sculptured out of blown bottle caps. To mold the bottle caps, Aurora goes through a process of melting the bottle caps and then blowing them up, like glass blowers blows up glass. What is cool is that not only does Aurora use bottle caps to create art, but she also uses bottles and other recyclable material.
Aurora holds a pretty deep message with the art pieces that she creates; she is trying to raise awareness of how important it is for us, Americans, to recycle. This is why she uses only recyclable materials to build her sculptures and art pieces. She uses bottle caps in her sculpture because, although bottles are recyclable, bottle caps are not, so she uses them on her sculptures in order to reuse them in a way that will bring out their beauty and value. She does not use spray glue because of the contamination that it might add to the gases in the air and she makes sure to make all of her artistic processes eco-friendly. Currently Aurora Robson is working on an art piece that was in fact inspired by a recurring nightmare she used to have as a child. She explained in an interview that, she would frequently dream about being in a dark place surrounded by colorful blobs that were the size of huge buildings compared to her size. She decided to build a life-size mural of her dreams using bottle caps and bottles. She wanted to make a different representation of her dream. She wanted to turn something that was originally scary and unknown into something cool and beautiful.
Recently, in our art class, we were assigned a task to create a piece of art made out of recyclable material. This assignment was made to mirror the importance of recycling and the value that recyclable material can have. As soon as I received this task, I started thinking of a million different ways that I could go about this assignment. My first idea was papier-mâché a basketball. After this I was going to pain the ball with blue paint and then I was going to make the continents out of scrunched up newspaper (to show a sort of topography on the “pieces of land”). I was gong to later paint the “land” brown. Eventually I thought about cardboard boxes. I was reminded of a fish tank. After this, I started planning out what I would place inside of the fish tank. I thought about using newspaper to build my huge fish and using play sand to form my base. I was going to use plastic wrap to form my water in the background.
At the end, I used a cardboard box to make my fish tank. I cut out the frame, then I painted it a dark grey. Inside, I placed its sand. At the back, I attached its water, which I created on a separate frame. I then wanted to make my fish out of bottle tops, in order to make a stronger statement. In the end, I ended up with a pretty sturdy fish tank. I am thinking of using a more adhesive glue, because the paint that I used before is pealing off. Other than that, my project cam out better than expected.
With this fish tank, I was trying to show how important it is to collect bottle tops. My fish tank represent a fish haven, but the fishes inside the tank are made out of bottle tops. This represents the many fish that have died because of the caps they have ingested. These bottle caps are tossed in the trash, which eventually gets tossed into a body of water. This is where fish wind up eating these un-recycled bottle tops, causing them to die, because of our negligence to collect bottle caps and reuse them. This is what my fish tank represents. I call it “Fish haven”.
I do the work I do because I just simply like it. I
get the assignment and own the requirements. What I mean by that is that I sort
of take the black and white requirements and color them in my favorite colors.
The requirements are still there, you just see my likings all over them. My
goal was always to try and help as much as I can to clean up the world and stop
trashing it and harming the animals.
The way I make decisions when it comes to my work is
pretty simple. I just do what I like. I always have my own idea of things so I
take that idea out of my head and into the art. I select materials by
determining the difficulty of working with them and if it will open eyes. I do this
because I don’t want my art to be something everybody has been before. I want
my art to be unique so I take risks and use odd things. I chose to sew the bag
by hand because I wanted to feel like a sewing machine. Usually people just
take the easy way out and use a sewing machine. I wanted to see what the sewing
machine went through even though it is an inanimate object. It still uses up
energy and part of my inspiration for this bag was saving resources and energy
and keeping the ocean clean because these Caprisun pouches end up right in the
water or just on the floor somewhere.
My current work, stated before, is a handbag made entirely
out of Caprisun juice pouches. I never thought of where these Caprisun pouches
went when they are thrown away until I was given this assignment. I was looking
up ideas for my project while I was drinking a Caprisun. Then I looked up a Caprisun
bag and there it was. I went home and started thinking more of where the pouches
go and it drove me deeper and made me more interested in making this bag. Also,
I am a bit interested in the fashion world so it just made it all the more
exciting. I was going to get a sewing machine but I figured it would defeat the
purpose of babying the world and not harming it anymore. I am attempting to
make recycled art fashionable. I may even start making accessories and clothes
out of recycled things.