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.