Project 1: Abstract Art
Artist Statement
Before beginning this project, I thought to myself what kind of artwork I could do to represent myself. I went through a couple of sketches until I got to this artwork. I had drawn a man posing on stage after a performance, meanwhile, there was a man in the back, kneeling down with his head down. I felt this piece represented me because I was a shy person, not much outgoing like the man in the back. But after gaining experience through theater, I gained a lot of confidence in myself to become more social and outgoing. I wanted to create a multi-colored print but I did not because it was my first time printmaking, and it was pretty stressful. I did not understand much of what I was doing, but I felt it was a good challenge for me. Eventually, I carved out all that I needed to, and began to print make, which was probably the easiest part of the project. I felt challenged and that I took risks because it was my first attempt at printmaking. Overall, I thought the project looked nice but now I know not to print make anymore.
Project 2: Story Art
Before I ran into this idea of making a collage, I wasn't quite sure on what I should make. I didn't want to draw for this storytelling project because my drawing skills weren't up to par and I wanted to do something different. The story I wanted to tell was the story of how humans have ruined the peace and tranquility of both nature and wildlife by taking animals away from their natural habitat. Mrs. Singleton suggested I make a collage out of my wildlife capture story, and I agreed to it because I thought it would be fun. At first, I had no idea how I wanted to start, or how to lay out pieces to make the big picture. That was when I thought that a lot of my space was going to be water, so I combined both blue paint and white to create a lighter shade of blue and painted the surface with that color. I grabbed magazines and began to cut small thin green pieces that resembled grass. I kept looking through magazines to find wildlife and nature pictures that I could cut out. I found a squirrel that was drowning and two parts of a tree that I combined to make one. I cut out a gray paint sample in straight edges and sharp cornered pieces to resemble rocks. I also found a ship, and a Big Dipper constellation that could resemble the humans capturing wildlife. One of the problems I encountered while making this artwork was the tiny pieces of grass were difficult to glue/gel down. Other than that, I solved problems on this project easily.
Project 3: Everyday Art
Late Date, John Echeveste, Silent Film, Art Foundations, December 2016
Artist Statement
For this project, I was brainstorming topics that interested me in everyday life. I was looking at a variety of topics until I settled on film because acting and creating movies has always intrigued me. It took me a while to figure what I wanted to create, but I settled on making a silent film because it seemed like a fun idea. I started planning out what type of scenes I wanted to incorporate into the film, whether I should make the film humorous or more serious toned. I decided to make a humorous silent film and insert cheesy music into the film. I began the project by casting an actor to star alongside me in this film. After a long process of elimination, I settled on Nathan McCann because he was the only applicant that was willing to help me. I told him about the scenes I wanted to create; he complied and we went off. The second step in this project was to film all the scenes first and later edit them. The first film day was a warm fall evening, where we filmed he opening scenes up until the running scene, it quickly became dark and looked for another time to finish. I took the videos I took and started editing them on iMovie even if I didn't have all the scenes. Weeks went by without another film day, as days got colder. Then, on a cold winter evening we set out to film the remaining scenes, this took us a little bit but eventally we got the job done. After the last scene was filmed, I finished editing the scens, transitioned them together, added a silent film era filter with cheesy music and my project was finally done.
Project 4: Activism Art
Artist Statement
I researched social issues throughout the world and eventually read up on unequal pay for women and about the wage gap. I did not know that the wage gap for women was actually this terrible. It has improved a lot since women suffrage, but it still has a long way to go, and it needs significant change. I chose to work on unequal pay for women because I brainstormed and thought of a great way to send my message across. I wanted to create a dollar bill, one that had had messages typed in with the normal printed text on the bill, that way it looked like an exact replica of a dollar bill, but with a good message on it. One of the problems I encountered was that I couldn't find the replica fonts that the federal government uses on the dollar bills, but I found some that look similar to it. On a separate bill, I wanted to have part of the dollar "ripped", that way it left approximately 79% of the dollar left, which resembled what women get payed compared to men for doing the same jobs in a metaphoric way. Overall, I enjoyed playing around with the Photoshop software, because I hadn't done it before, and it was good experience for me if I ever wanted to make a funny picture using Photoshop.