Artist Statement

Throughout this year, I have created an identity about myself that can be found in the thinking and production of all my works. I became interested in simplistic lines coming together to form a larger, more complex form of art. In combination with various color methods that I incorporated throughout the year, I feel that each piece had its own, unique look yet can all be related back to my central idea. I attempted to stay within the primary colors throughout the year to create my art. However, as the year progressed, mixing of primary colors or lightening or darkening them allowed for gradual  With my theme of simplicity, although there is a certain delicacy about it, it is easy to fall into uninteresting, boring art so I really challenged myself to create interesting work within my theme. In particular, artist Piet Mondrian captured my attention with the way he was able to use straight lines and primary colors in his amazing works. "It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true." (Piet Mondrian) I find this quote particularly interesting and indicative of his art and in certain ways, my art. Learning to balance seemingly easy lines and the complex intertwining of these lines took time and patience but I found that my work adapted and transformed as I matured to embody some of the qualities that Mondrian displayed throughout his career.

Picturing Places Final Blog`

From the first class of this project, I had a vision of an abandoned city or town. When paired with Nick, we collaborated to make a deserted barn while having a city skyline in the distance. It was important to us to have the barn be the central focus of the piece. In order to accomplish this, we took the picture at a vantage point where the barn would be central and the biggest piece of the project. We also used light behind the barn to create light that shined through parts of the barn and create shadows. While this was the first time I work to construct something as big as the barn I felt that my artistic voice was evident in the piece. I was very happy the way I built the barn and how is appears in the final photo. Although I didn't draw or paint like I have done in the past, building the barn taught me about various angles and points of connection that will help me in the future as I pursue my artistic voice in the mediums I feel most comfortable using. At the start of the project I was following Nick's lead when it came to the construction of the barn. He had a clear view on what the barn should look like so I was happy to help him. However, he was sick one day when we needed to finish the barn. We needed to finish the barn in order to move onto the background and skyline because we would base our measurements off the barn. I managed to finish the barn using various shingles and wood pieces that Mr. O had brought in for us. It turned out way better than I expected it to and we stayed on schedule in order to finish our project on time. Overall, I wouldn't change much of the materials that we used. However, I would have liked to use the fog machine to see what different dimension it would have added. It looked very cool in other people's work so I am disappointed that we didn't take advantage of that. Combining a sculpture and painting was going to be hard but I think we were able to do that successfully. The use of lighting really helped in regards to the color of the brown ground and blue sky. In conclusion, I was really happy with the way the picture I took turned out.

Final Work - Self Directed Project

Artist in Residence Initial Blog Post

 I really like the inclusion of mythology in this project. In particular, I am interested in Greek stories/myths because I have previous experience of learning about Greek mythology in middle school. In the group project, we created a sort of transportation system to the underworld so I want to build of this idea and be able to incorporate my own style on my project.
I found this piece of Luke's work particularly interesting because it empathized geometric shapes and lines. Because I have worked a lot with geometric shapes and drawings in the past, this piece combined my past work with the new concept of nature in this project. In this project, I hope to do something similar where I maintain my identity by creating something geometric or clean but also incorporating the natural and mythological aspects.
I found pieces by Goldsworthy and Olafur Eliasson to be the most inspiring and connecting to my ideas. I really like how Eliasson used shapes and color to create his hallway/room. I can relate to his process because of my last project where I, not on as big of a scale, used color gradient and overlapping lines to create a landscape scene. I also liked Goldsworthy work, partly because of the name, but also because he incorporated nature (twigs) into his piece and used these straight objects to create a circular image in the middle of the page.
In this project, I hope to use both Goldsworthy and Eliasson's techniques to create my piece. I want to incorporate nature as much as I can but also maintain the style I have used in the past of geometric shapes. Also, keeping in mind the mythology theme, I found both these creations to remind me of portals or a doorway. Janus, the god of doorway, can represent two different doorway that either look in separate directions or into the past and future. I want to create two doorways or portals using a similar technique to Goldsworthy while also incorporating color like Eliasson. I'm not sure on what the doors will represent yet, but I have a vision that the colors will reflex whatever the door represents. To create this project, I am going to need to find twigs or other objects to create the doorway. This also employs the concept of destruction/reconstruction. My vision is to create these pieces first, using the twigs or sticks, then painting them to represent either the past or future or whatever I decide them to be.
I am a little concerned with construction of the doorways because I am not the best in creating sculptures so I might need help or guidance when once I have my materials and I start to put everything together.

Project 4: Self Directed Project -- Final Blog

In this project, I found inspiration from multiple artists in books in the library. All these artists had similar looks in their art which focused on the use of lines to either fill the page or create abstract images with the lines. They also used color in interesting ways to create their pieces. Because I had a lot of freedom in this project, I started by creating 4 pieces of paper and experimenting with different ways of creating lines and incorporating color. I felt that I was able to create a piece that really expresses my intentions and overall is helping me create an art identity.

My final product changed significantly from my initial ideas. At first, I wanted to incorporate tape to create the lines but I found that it was extremely hard to create the lines I wanted and make the lines straight. I decided to create lines using a ruler to still get straight lines without the tape. With these lines, I began painting inside the lines starting with a dark blue on the top most lines. As I progressed downward, I began to form a gradient. At this point, I decided I was going to form a multi colored gradient that went from darker, cool colors to lighter, warm colors. As I progressed down the paper, the lines went from blue to green to yellowish. Looking at the final piece, I saw it had vague reminisces of a landscape. However, the lines and negative space kept it from looking to much like a original landscape piece. My piece also had a lot of negative space in the top half of the paper. I really like the piece with the negative space there but it also adds an additional intriguing aspect of adding an object or objects to compliment the lines. Since the lines were all very horizontal and straight, I was thinking of adding organic (circular) shapes to create a contrast between the lines.

I think my further work with geometric shapes and lines have increased my understanding of the process and hopefully has helped me improve in the formal aspects of my paintings. In the future, I will continue to incorporate geometric shapes or figures into my pieces and build off of that, for example finding geometric shapes in nature to use in the next project with the artist in residences.

In Progress Critique

For this project I was inspired by Bernard Frize who's painting of horizontal colorful lines intrigued me. Using a similar concept of lines I created vertical lines that crossed in various places to create an interesting look. About 1/3 of the way (going left to right) I decided to begin to paint in the lines to give myself a visual idea of what it would look like. While I was doing this I came across two ideas. 1. I didn't need to continue for the rest of the paper. The negative space looks very good compared to the blue I created. It also gives me options in the future to paint another figure in the white space. 2. I decided to make a color gradient from yellow to blue instead of just painting all the lines blue. I think this will add another interesting dynamic to my work and hopefully make the final product better.

Map Project Final Installation