Emma Abercrombie

We were first asked to choose a map and do basically whatever we wanted with it. Some people blew theirs up with firecrackers, others shredded their maps and ran over them, I chose to leave mine out in the rain in hopes that the color would bleed. I had a map of Florida and unfortunately the ink didn’t bleed. The map just crinkled up when it dried. I was sort of at a loss for what to do next, but then I decided to make a collage by cutting up the map into irregularly sized piece and then gluing them to a piece of cardboard. I wanted to subvert the purpose of them; to take away the maps ability to give useful information. I hoped that by doing this it would allow the viewer to focus on the aesthetics of the map, the colors and lines.

From here I knew that collaging the pieces of a map together was not enough and that I needed to take my concept to the next level. I decided to focus on topographic maps because of their intrinsic aesthetic appeal. I struggled for a long time deciding exactly how to do this. I thought of simply drawing the lines of a topographic and leaving the data off of the final piece, but I still wasn’t pushing the concept enough. I thought of incasing thread in resin to depict the contour lines of the map, but that really didn’t make much since to me either. I finally decided on creating my own topographic map, but arranging it in a way that would elevate it to high art. I used card stock and layered the different elevations of the map. I felt that by presenting the map in this way devoid of data I was successful in focusing on the aesthetic appeal and making the viewer forget they were looking at a map.

I received  a lot of positive feedback in critique. One student said they felt like it was the kind of work you should see at an Art and Design school, another person said it reminded them of the rings of a tree. I was really happy with this feedback because I felt like I was able to transform a map into something more. It is so interesting for me to see the initial concept and what it became in the end.

In this project we were asked to look at the world around and develop an eye for detail by looking to our natural environments to find the letters A-Z and the numbers 1-9. An artist has a certain way of looking at things and sees things that most people would never notice. I really enjoyed this project and I was really pleased with the letters and numbers that I found. I have many favorites, but the ones I particularly loved were A, F, H, K, L, M, N, O, 8, and 9. The photos I took were in color originally, but when I was developing the final composition I chose to make them all black and white because I found that this unified the piece.

My critique went really well and I was excited about that because I really tried to be conscious of the letters and numbers I chose and the way I presented them. I decided to make an 18 x 24 inch poster and I had it printed on glossy thick paper. This project was also the first time I had used Photoshop and it was a great introduction to the software. I did use a five that was intended to be a five and Professor Waldvogel would have liked me to find a five in the natural enviroment, I agree with her. I really enjoyed this project and I was happy with my result.

In this assignment we were asked to illustrate the story of Jack and Jill using only the images on the sheet below. This was a group project and I really enjoyed working with the people in my group. Our interpretation of the Jack and Jill story was that Jack was a mouse and Jill was a camel and they were seeking water in a desert oasis. Our interpretation of the story came from a combination of a poem Josh had written and the idea that they would have to steal the water from a greedy elephant. Katheryn and Michael came up with some good compositional ideas and I drafted the illustration.

We received really good feedback during critic. Our fellow students thought our illustrations were well crafted, but we could have taken a little more care to make sure they were on our board evenly. We chose to include text in the illustrations to give the piece continuity, but the group that critiqued us said it might have been difficult to follow the story without the text. Overall our classmates enjoyed our interpretation of the Jack and Jill story.

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water

Jack fell down

Broke his crown

 Jill came tumbling after

We were asked to sit in a location of our choosing for an hour and to record all of the sounds we heard and the time we were there. I decided to go to Forsyth park in the afternoon between 4:30 and 5:30 pm. There seemed to be a million birds in the trees, it was a warmer day and they were out in full force. I could hear the water from the fountain and people on park benches chatting and laughing. I decided to create a collage to document what I heard.

I find that blogs are a great way for me to get inspired and to find new artist. Here are the links and descriptions to four blogs that I really like.

Jonathan Adler: I love Jonathan Adler’s aesthetic and his blog is a great resource if you are looking for ideas on good design. He is an interior designer, sculptor, and the partner of another creative: Simon Doonan was the creative director of Barney’s for many years and is responsible for the funky, high art window displays at Barney’s in NYC. My major is painting, but good design is good design and I take a lot inspiration from interiors.

http://www.jonathanadler.com/blog/?p=670 

Art 21: Art 21 is a show on PBS that examines the work and lives artists in the 21st century. If you haven’t checked out the series I highly recommend you do so. It gives wonderful insight into the lives of contemporary artist: highlighting their process, background, and the concept behind their works. The Art 21 blog is a great resource for keeping me up to date about the happenings going on in contemporary art around the world.

http://blog.art21.org/

Art Fag City: Art Fag City is a fun blog that is a little bit cheeky and serves to highlight the work of underexposed artists, critiques of exhibits, and cover art happenings all over NYC, the US, and abroad.

http://artfcity.com/

Painter NYC: Painter NYC is a blog that I recently discovered and absolutely love. It isn’t updated as regularly as I would like in fact it hasn’t been updated since 2010, but maybe that’s a good thing. There is a fine line between going to blogs for inspiration and actually using that inspiration to create your own work. I love this blog because each post is just a picture of painting- some I immediately respond to and some I don’t, but this blog is wonderful if you want to be introduced to new painters.

http://painternyc.blogspot.com

The Black Square Problem: In class we were asked, using only flat black squares, to graphically represent each of the following terms: Order, Increase, Bold, Congestion, Playful, and Tension. The two I thought I was most successful at representing were Bold and Congestion.

Bold

Order

Congestion

Playful

Increase

Tension

In our third assignment for Design I we were asked to create a design utilizing the principles of form and repetition on a grid. We were then required to ink the design on a 10 x 10″ illustration board. The frist part of the assignment we were asked to explore creating a motif by drawing one shape and then cutting into that shape with a second one. This is the way were supposed to come up with our individual motifs. Below is my exploration:

The motif I eventually chose is not shown above, but below you can see the motif. I chose a 2 x 2″ box grid and then experimented with different compositional possibilities.

Design I

Design II

Design III

Design IV

Design V

I felt that Design V was my strongest design because it was so graphic. I felt that I utilized my motif well and had achieved the best economy for the design. After choosing our strongest design we were then asked to explore five inking options as seen below:

Design I

Design II

Design III

Design IV

Design V

My two favorite inkings were Design III and Design V. I ultimately chose Design V because it was the most graphic and attention grabbng. I also liked Design III because it seemed like a very Rococoesque design and I really like the feminine nature of it.

Final Composition

It’s difficult to see here, but I could have definitely used another coast of ink, it seemed that no matter how many times I went over certain areas they never got a black as I would have wanted. The ones I enjoyed the most during critic were the compositions that employed the 1″ cell structure and were inked in a complex, but symmetrical design. The simultaneous weakness and strength of my composition are it’s graphic simplicity and bold symmetrical patter. I believe it could be seen as weak because of it’s seeming simplicity, but I think it is an effective and bold composition. There seemed to be a million ways to interpret this assignment and it was so nice to see the varied compositions during class.

This is the body of work that I used as my transfer portfolio when applying to Scad. The work is from my Drawing I class, my Design II class (3d design), and pieces I made outside of class. Click on the photo for an enlarged image and a description of the work.

Today in class we talked about ways of achieving a focal point in  a composition by emphasizing and concentrating motifs. We also discussed ways of isolating motifs in a composition by differentiating from a pattern. Below are some of the things I came up with during class while trying to explore these concepts.

It was difficult to choose a final compositions because I really liked a lot of the sketches, but with each one that I chose I was trying to focus on a specific characteristic of the line type. I wanted the vertical and horizontal lines to evoke a since of stability visually and I feel that the composition is reminiscent of modernist architecture from the turn of the 20th century. The curved lines were meant to feel much more organic. I think they are also a little funky, meaning that they wax and wane, but because they are curved they still remain interconnected. I wanted the focus of the diagonal composition to be the negative space in between lines, making the point that when two lines run parallel there is also a third line created in the negative space between the two, this is represented by the white lines in the composition.  I found it really difficult to combine all the lines in an effective way in the composition where we were required to juxtapose curved, diagonal, and vertical/horizontal lines. I really enjoyed this project.