miranda elyse.

Problem: Sit in a location for one hour. Document all the sounds you hear and the times you heard them. Mark the approximate locations of the sounds in relation to you on a map. Your map can take ANY form you like (graphic image, drawing/painting, sculptural, video, poem, etc.) but must be creative and visually interesting!

I sat outside of the SCAD Museum and for that hour or so I noticed the same sounds happening over and over even though it was from different people. I started off representing the sounds through an arrow going towards the left, which was the direction of most of the sounds.  There was constant sounds of construction so I lined my arrow with caution tape. From there, I put the majority of the sounds that I heard inside of the arrow, casual conversations, heels clacking, keys rattling, and footsteps. The “X” represents where I was sitting in conjunction to the museum. Another constant sound was some sort of AC Unit in the building in the far left distance. Doors were also constantly opening and closing in front of me, along with birds rustling in the trees. There is a road outside of the arrow to represent the honking and traffic in the distance.

Problem:

Start with a map – any kind of map. Think about the logic of its purpose. Now do something to deliberately negate its function: cut it up, switch the pieces around, glue it back together, combine it with drawings, photos, charts, diagrams, symbols, pieces of paper from the street. Cut holes in it. Shoot holes in it. Tape it, mask it, tear it, shred it, fold it, crumple it, leave it out in the rain. Confuse it. Run over it, Xerox it, fragment it, sleep with it, obscure it, cloud it, camouflage it. Write on it. Draw and paint on it: pencil, ball point pen, felt-tips, spray paint, motor oil, purée of carrots, finger paint, ink, charcoal, lipstick, blood, crayons. Add places to it: atolls, mountains, clouds and sky, stars, weather, heaven.

In this destruction, I took my map of Savannah and put it in the sand of the volleyball court and stomped on it. It then floated away in water and I dried it out by putting it on the grill with charcoal. I then took it and nail polished all around it.

The second part of this project we had to make something out of the end result of the destructed map. I looked at it and wanted to do something with the concept of “home” being that Savannah is my home now. I wanted to do some sort of new beginning and old beginning with my new home, Savannah, and my old home, North Carolina. Eventually I decided to just stick with my new place of living. As I continued to look at my destructed map, I realized certain places in downtown Savannah were still legible. I took those pieces of maps and went to those places. For River Street I photographed a guy selling his art work. For Martin Luther King, I photographed a woman waiting for the bus at the bus stop. For city market I photographed a guy working the tours on the horses. Lastly, for Forsyth Park I photographed a student studying at the park. In doing this, I tried to create a sense of everyone’s home here in Savannah. I presented them all together in black and white to create a sense of unity between all the different residents here in Savannah.

The Project:

Being an artist is about seeing the world differently. It is about training your eye to pick up on details of shape, color, form and texture. It is about PAYING ATTENTION. And so is this assignment.

Please photograph the letters of the alphabet and numerals 1-9 as found naturally occurring in your environment. Do NOT take the easy route of finding the letters in signs or on the sides of buildings. Look closer. Look at the leaves on the trees, the cracks in the sidewalk. Pay attention. Carry your camera with you everywhere you go. Look. You will find the letters and numbers when you least expect them!

As a benchmark, if you could show your photographs on Sesame Street and have a group of preschoolers recognize them as letters, you have succeeded at your task!

Post all of your photos on your blog AND create some sort of presentation of your photos to show during class. This could be a poster, a handmade book, a video, sculptural installation, etc. Please do NOT make a Power Point or Prezi presentation – remember this is ART.

For all of the pictures I used my fisheye lens and then edited them the same way to have a sense of consistency. I found my letters and numbers all throughout Savannah, mainly on Broughton St and around the dorms (Weston & Turner). My most challenging letter was probably the G and the most challenging number would be the 5. All of the others were pretty easy to find and I had a lot of fun with this project. Any project I get to use my actual major in makes me have more motivation and ultimately results in a better project for me!

Problem: On six separate 8”X8” sheets of Bristol board, create visual equivalents for each part of the nursery rhyme “Jack & Jill” (listed below) by using the dingbats and/or punctuation marks given on the assignment sheet. These marks, symbols, and pictograms can be used individually or combined to develop a visual metaphor. You may use a photocopier to enlarge the selected graphic images to the appropriate size of the given space, or you may enlarge the symbols freehand (stay as true to the original graphics as possible.) Remember this is NOT a collage project though you may opt to use collage elements as part of your concept. Execute your solutions in black and white, unless your concept dictates otherwise. Include the words for the specified section of the nursery rhyme as a part of your design, or simply let the images speak for themselves.

For this project, my group and I designed Jack and Jill as trendy teddy bears. Jack is older, and has a mustache and tattoos while Jill is portrayed as young and beautiful. Jack & Jill go up the hill to fetch grapes, Jack falls down (losing his mustache and tattoos) and breaks his “crown” or ego. The last panel shows Jack not being trendy anymore at the bottom of the hill, with Jill at the top with another teddy bear that has the grapes in his hand. We had a lot of fun with this project and everyone contributed and worked well together!

http://www.diegouchitel.com/

Diego Uchitel is the epitome of what I want to do when I graduate school. He uses his photography to advertise  for companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Olay, and Tiffany & Co. On his blog, he has posted all of his photographs he has done for these companies among many others.   On top of his advertisements, there is all of his high fashioned photographs separated by women’s and men’s fashion as well as lingerie and landscape. Because his photographs are all under specific subjects it makes it more accessible to the viewer. What really surprised me is my art history teacher used to work for him in his studio when she used to live in New York. In my opinion, I don’t think anything was really missing in his blog and he used all of his best work for the viewer to truly understand him as an artist.

http://www.dawoudbey.net/

In high school I was able to go to an art museum in Norfolk, Virginia and this artist’s work was presented there. At my previous university I was given the opportunity to pick an artist for a research paper and I reluctantly picked Dawoud Bey. His photography and stories behind each one is outstanding, which you can easily tell through his blog. He inspires me in a lot of different ways and takes representing emotion in a photograph to a new level. On his blog he separates all of his photographs by where he took them and each project he has done.  Not only does he present his photographs but the stories that go with each one as well. I was surprised that he hasn’t really had any updates on his projects since a few years ago.

http://esaoandrews.blogspot.com/

I have already posted a link to this blog but it is worth putting it again in this assignment. Even though this artist is not in my field I still really appreciate his artistic skill. His blog has all of his selected works which have a more illustrative and surrealistic feel to them. On top of his personal artwork, he does a lot of work with the band Circa Survive designing their album covers. His blog allows you to see what prints he is currently selling and any upcoming galleries his work will be presented in. I do wish this blog gave you more information about himself though.

I do believe it is easier for photographers to have blogs being that their work is all done in groups and are easy to separate. Illustration or painting is a little less necessary to have a blog just because it is done physically before putting onto the computer.

The Exploration:

By using only flat black squares, create a graphic image to express the meaning of each of the following six words (see below). Using only squares may seem to be a rather limited palette for expressing such diverse words, but consider how these squares can be expanded into a more comprehensive language by utilizing various design principles. You may execute this assignment in any media (construction paper, marker, digital, etc.) and post your results to your blog. Make sure you label each design with it’s corresponding word!

ORDER                              CONGESTED

INCREASE                          PLAYFUL

BOLD                                 TENSION

Order:

Increase:

Congested:

Bold: For some reason as soon as I saw the word “bold” I automatically thought coffee. Could be the lack of caffeine today but either way I thought it was somewhat creative!

Tension:

Playful:  Try and pretend with me that those teeth aren’t there! I thought it would be a good idea to draw them in and it came out looking like this, sorry! This was the only one I actually drew myself, the rest are done through Adobe Illustration.

My photography is up at the Desotorow Gallery Inc! Everyone go visit and like their facebook page!

https://www.facebook.com/desotorowgallery?ref=ts&fref=ts

This is a little photo shoot I did this weekend for my friend’s color theory project. She had to represent tints and shades but it had to pertain to her major- fashion management and marketing. She asked me to take part in this and I reluctantly agreed. Hope you enjoy!!

The Project :

Problem: Combine principles of form and repetition on complex grids

Materials: Regular tools, templates, tracing and/or layout paper, illustration board

Final size: Exactly 10”X10”, inked on white, cold-pressed illustration board

Method: • Draw any regular, repeatable form and use it to pierce a second, larger form.

• Draw a basic grid with at least 25 identical spaces, measuring exactly (Use a t-square, triangle, ruler and pencil to layout the grid.)

• Use photocopies of your motif to place in each cell of your grid and then play around a little! Shuffle your tiles around to create an interesting design , then take a quick photo so you can come back to the design later. You must come up with a minimum of 5 design options before class on Friday. Remember that while the grid lends itself to the creation of pattern, you are not limited to that sort of regular design. Try to subvert the grid and see what happens!

Motif Options:

Cell Options:

Here are my Five Design Options:

Final Design:

Three Inking Plans:

Critique Notes:

-Some of the positive critiques I had on my final design was that it looks like wrapping paper or a stair-set. I had a good use of my border and it had a good flow/connection. Some negative critiques were to create a focal point by turning the top right around so the hearts are touching. Also, I was told that my design looked a bit phallic, which I do not know if that is a positive or a negative critique.

Thoughts on the Project:

-Even though I did not particularly like using the india ink, I did have fun creating this project. My favorite part of the project was the inking plans and having to think of what I wanted my overall motif to look like.

The goal of the Isolation and Concentration Exploration was to create a design-in whatever medium- that represented concentration and isolation while still being nonobjective. I grabbed a leaf stencil in class so I tried to base my designs around that.