Book Finally Done!

Finally, the moment I've been waiting for!  My book is finally done, I finished it late last night with a few little details.  I decided to stay away from using acrylic paints on this book because I am pretty comfortable with them, and I wanted to step a bit out of my comfort zone.  There are however, a few things I would do if I were to try this again, everyone check out my friends blog!  She has some really awesome ideas I would probably steal for next time. http://www.mysenioryearart.blogspot.ca/

Anyways, here are my final pages.

I decided to do a scrapbook kind of theme for this page.  Focussing on the word paradise, and surrounding it with pictures of my friends.  I added little doodles to add the that effect.

 

I wrote on the book binding basically because I thought it would look cool.  The lyrics "Somewhere under the canyon moon" are on this part of the book, and I choose these lyrics because I never really knew exactly what to make of them.  I thought it would be cool to put them on the binding because you can almost 'open them up' and explore them further.  There could be a whole realm of explanations for them.

Finally, I actually loved the way this page turned out! Looked like something I'd find on Pinterest!  It took me about 45 mins to do this page but it felt worth it.  The quote matched the design and it looked super interesting.  It was kind of difficult to do this because I had to write 'inside out' per say. I'm not used to writing like this so it defiantly presented a challenge.

Well there you have it!  My book, voila.  Hope everyone liked it!

Syria Refugee Crisis

https://northernartteacher.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/students-respond-to-the-refugee-crisis-through-art/

Above is a link to my teachers blog exploring the Syria refugee crisis through art.  The grade nine class has been working a lot on this.  I think it's actually a pretty complex task for grade nines to look at.  I don't know what kind of artwork I would make now to represent something as terrible as that.  I definitely know my response would not be as deep as some of these kids are thinking. 

  

This sculpture probably stands out the most to me out of all the artwork done by the grade nines.  The figure looks so skinny, which to me represents hunger.  It looks to me like there are slits or scars on the figures torso which could show physical pain or a feeling of being broken.  The very plain face consumed mostly be a screaming mouth is really the focal point of this sculpture.  It really captures so much emotion in such a simple expression.  I feel like this person is being engulfed in pain, and there is no way to hide it.  Also, the plain color of the figure to me shows the loss of hope, loss of love, and loss of joy.  All emotions are supressed and the only thing this person has left is pain and suffering, there is no escape for this figure.

Great job with the art work grade nines!  This one was the most meaningful piece to me but the other sculptures were really well done and very thoughtful as well.

The Syrian refugee crisis is awful, I honestly feel terrible for the desperation the people of Syria must be feeling right now.  I think it's awesome that the grade nine class has taken this project on, I just wish there was more we could do to help.

Exploring Art Quotes

In an intsagram link, instagram.com/p/79BNuDDPmb/, Salvador Dali says "Because I am too intelligent to be a good painter.  To be a good painter you must be a bit stupid"  My art teacher asked my Grade 12 art class to expand on this quote, and explain what we think Mr. Dali means by it. 

Just on a separate note, I actually Googled Salvador Dali because I wanted to know more about who he was, and he defiantly is a good painter (in my opinion).  His artwork is super original and very beautiful. He paints common images in different contexts than they would usually be seen.  He mixes animate with inanimate objects and its really appealing to the eye.  But, anyways, back to the quote.

I don't think Salvador actually meant you must be stupid to be a good artist.  I think he meant you must be kind of oblivious.  When making art, you can't think of every little thing.  You can't focus on every detail and you can't worry about if people will take your art the right way.  You have to stop thinking for a while, a sense of melancholy or anger or joy or fear must wash over one in order for 'art' to become true art.  You must be oblivious to the world and let your feelings, your dreams, your nightmares prevail, and posses the paintbrush, or pencil, and let that part of you draw what you truly feel.  Good painters can be intelligent, but overthinking artwork will leave the artist in a headache and an un-meaningful mess of colors on a canvas. 

Art can not always be explained.  Sometimes 'intelligent' people try to explain everything. They may try to analyse every piece of artwork and give a meaning behind every brushstroke.  But, what we must remember is that art is not explained in one way, it can be perceived differently by different people and the way a painting makes one person feel may be different than that same painting makes me feel.  There is no way to explain why art does this to people, it just does. Art can be both confusing and make complete sense all at the same time.  It can be beautiful but hide an ugly truth or vise versa.  It is not important to 'get the right answer' when looking at art.  9/10 people may think of a piece one way, but be that one person that thinks of it differently.  To me, that is true intelligence.

Series Artwork

Although I am not quite done my other art project yet, I've decided to make a quick little post about the next project we will be starting soon and working on over the course of the semester.  We will be completing a 'series' project.  Basically, we have to think of a topic, idea, issue, theme, or art medium that we want to focus our series around.  Our series has to be at least 3 pieces, and all of our pieces must relate around the same topic.  Now, it's brainstorming time.

I've never done anything like this before!  I don't even really know where to start. Over the next few days I'll try to gather my thoughts and get a better idea of what I want to focus my series on. I'll look at some established artists and see what kinds of series they have created.

Some More Progress

Book making time is slowly drawing to an end.  I have these few pages, and about 3 more that I am just finishing up.  I am pretty happy with the results so far, and in a later post I will discuss what I would do differently if I were to make another book.  A lot of my classmates had some really awesome ideas that I would love to try! But, for now, I'm just going to briefly explain a few more of my pages. 

This is just the aftermath of the page below, I used an exacto knife to cut out the sleeping face to use as a template. 

Highlighted: 'Swimming is a dream'.  I don't really know what this means to me, it just sounded so peaceful I wanted to highlight that.  The picture underneath kind of reflects that quote.  I used blue paint to represent the water, and the moon and sleeping face silhouette to represent sleeping.



This is my back cover, kinda messy, not that pleasant to look at, but there was a point to all of this!  A pretty back cover signifies a book being over.  My story is not even close to being over, this is just all for now, each day I could add a new page, as each day my story continues.  So, I ended it like this, it is not done, just like a little hiatus.  And, of course, I had to leave my personal mark on this book. (my fingerprints)




Here we have some lyrics I really like.  The song is "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?", So I highlighted 'rain' at the top of my page in a cloud shape and wrote my quote through the raindrops.  I really like the look of this page!  Easy to read, neat, and a little colorful, I would love to do some more pages like this one.

Looking at Lucas Blalock

Yesterday we watched this video in class, and we were asked to do a quick sticky note analysis of Lucas Blalock's art, as well as answer the question, is Lucas only an artist because of  technology?  If he was born many years ago, would he still be an artist?

This is coming straight from my sticky note yesterday, word for word, first response:

I don't really know what to think of this art.  I'm sure there's some kind of message behind this, but I can't think of what the message might be.I think that this guy has a really imaginative mind, I think he sees the world differently, and as much as I think modern technology has helped him express himself, I think no matter what era he was born in, he would find some way to express himself without it.

After we watched it a second time, I think I got a bit of a better understanding as to what he may be trying to portray through his artwork, and what message he may be trying to send through some of the phases he spoke and vocabulary he used.

Blalock claimed he was trying to show the world through a 'different view'.  He was trying to find a way to bring people into the room,  He wanted to relate to objects and ambitiousness, and to make new spaces.

It was some of these phrases that helped me better understand the purpose of some of his art.  Now don't get me wrong, I thought a lot of it looked rather lame.  I thought it was messy, and I wouldn't call some of it 'art', However, there were a few pieces I noticed that I found rather interesting.   What he said about making new spaces really stood out to me.  He could add or take away from photographs in order to create a 'new space' a new world, or a new view.  He is not confined to social norms and I found that rather interesting about his art.  He takes a picture, and he modifies it, I could relate to this a bit since I am currently working on modifying my book, but hes changing it in a different way.  I believe he wants people to see that objects may be more than what meets the eye, the world you see may all be an illusion, just as his work may be representing a deeper meaning than just messy photo-shop.  I would be interested to hear what message he is trying to send through certain art pieces. What is his philosophy?

Book Update!

It's getting pretty close to due date time, so I've been designing a few more pages lately, I'm just gonna take this blog post to explain my thought process as I was designing these pages!  Please feel free to offer feedback or suggestions, I've still got a few pages left to go and I have a few thoughts but I'm willing to hear some more ideas. 

Now, keep in mind this book is like 1000 pages long, so I'm only going to be focusing on about 15-20 pages for now.  

These few pages were kind of inspired by the sunrise, layer one is the land, layer two it the sun, and layer three is the sky. I wanted to include something about the sunrise, because after every dream, good or bad, there is a sunrise.  I have a lot of weird pictures in my book because it is kind of based on the unconscious mind, but I wanted to remind my audience and myself that all of the thoughts and ideas are in fact conscious thoughts, just inspired from those of my dreams.

I choose to leave the nightmare section of my 'sky' page un-painted for a few reasons.  I actually have a lot of nightmares for some reason, so I felt is was important to include that, I don't really know why but I do.  Also, I though it was pretty cool that the nightmare paragraph fell within my 'sky' page, because the sky page was supposed to help represent my whole sunrise idea.  I thought that I should talk about the fact that nightmares do not only occur in dreams, in fact the worst nightmares are those that happen when you are awake, and sometimes your dreams end up being your only escape.



I actually saw an idea like this in one of my previous posts, where there was a torn out hole for the word 'hole', I just thought I'd change it up a bit and do burn instead.  This page was so hard to make! I burnt my fingers like 20 times, and on the last page, (the one you mainly see), I couldn't get the fire to go out right away and I had a small fear I might burn the school down, but it's all good, Nip-Rock is still standing.

Anyways, there's not a super deep reason I did this one, I honestly chose the word burn because is corresponding with what I was doing to the pages, but really, I just love the smell of the burnt pages. Not in like a creepy arsonist way, it just reminds me of when I was a kid, and my family used to rent this camp, and we would have these huge fires every night.





I started off this page by using a technique I learned in my writers craft class last year, called 'found poems', I seriously recommend you guys look that up in Google, some of them are so intense and super cool! Basically, you take a page or phrase and make a new sentence or two.  I took a paragraph about airplanes and ended up with "Nature is a place for new experiences.  It signifies the desire for freedom, high ideals, ambition, and hopes. You wish to begin in the light of transition; a fresh assessment of our own identity, or fear of being left behind."

Now remember, this is a poem, so it may mean something different to me then it does to any of you.



After I wrote my little poem, I renamed the title to my favorite lyrics/quote "Are you looking for the sun?" and drew a quick sketch of the idea of a tattoo I want to get.  This page is jam packed with little pieces of me!



I also thought it was important to show that any changes you make on your book, will leave a mark.  I totally don't regret doing the previous page at all!  But, it is important to look at the influence my work will had on other pages in the future.



This was just a quick little thing I did, where you paint one side and then fold it so the design replicates, I think I learned this in like JK.  I just wanted to add some color, because my book was seeming a little gloomy.




I originally choose to do this fun design and bright color because of the word "Summer" on this page.  I am in love with summer and I wanted to properly decorate this page.  When I folded it over, I noticed that the corresponding design to summer, was the words "Demon and Devil".  I just wanted to take a note of how I thought is was interesting how something so perfect could be next to something so awful, and how even though the pages may look the same, there context is much different.

I have a few more done, just running out of time, I'll try to post them sometime tomorrow or this weekend!

#AskACurator

Today is ask a curator day.  Many people participate by hash-tagging the words #AskACurator and writing a quick question on social websites such as twitter.  I don't have twitter so I decided to ask my question on my blog!

I've decided to ask the Art Gallery Of Ontario a question, I went to Toronto this summer and tried to stop by the AGO, but it turns out its closed on Mondays!



@AGOToronto Do new art pieces and exhibitions spark an interest in the audience? Or do you find people come to view more traditional art work?  Do you find the age of the audience influences the art they are interested in?  #AskACurator

JR Art Analyzing

My newest art project is to find out a bit about the artist JR, and analyse some of his more recent art. I remember hearing about one of his projects in earlier years of art class.  Anyone heard of the "Inside Out Project"?  JR has been working on projects like this one since he was fairly young.

The purpose of the inside out project is to make a statement.  The project is now really open to anyone willing to commit, but JR started the whole thing a few years ago, he did a lot of art like that of the inside out project in his early years, the project just basically opened up his idea to the general public.
JR was born in France, and did present a lot of his early work there, but progressed to bigger cities with more controversial topics.  His art represented many world issues.  He even traveled to cities in war to display his art. Here in his TEDTalk JR talks about the process of the inside out project, and how he established his ideas.

So now that we all know a bit about his past, what is he doing now? Where is he living? Working? Displaying his art?

One of the more recent pieces of art that JR has been involved with is the NYCB Art Series.  In my opinion the NYCB art series does not make as much of a statement as some of his other pieces, but it is still interesting.  The NYCB art series is basically a bunch of photographs of ballerinas, (I'll get more into that later).  The art that I am used to seeing JR do is a lot different than this series.



Does this ring a bell to anyone? This is from JR's 'face to face' series.  JR himself explains the idea behind the series, "We then traveled through the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much...After a week, we had the exact same conclusion: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families... And he is endlessly fighting with him. It's obvious, but they don't see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize."
It is obvious through this project and many others that JR is one to say what is on his mind.  He does not let society quiet him, he will be heard and his message will be spread.

Now, back to the NYCB Art Series.  JR was asked to photograph ballerinas for an art series, and began in 2014.  This series is actually quite beautiful.  I find it more appealing to the eye than his other pieces, but less meaningful.
I looked through most of the series and I found a photograph that I want to analyse, it was actually one of the first ones I saw, and right away I knew that that was the one I wanted to look into further, I must have felt some kind of connection or pull to it.


Cool right?  I actually didn't realize that it was an eye at first I thought it looked like people swimming in milk or something.
Okay, now for the analyzing time: Art analyzing is usually completed in 4 steps- Description, Analysis, Interpretation, and Judgement.

This artwork is a large scale image of a human eye.  The materials used to create this image are people  dressed in white, and plain white paper.  The people are all laying on the paper, pushing it and holding it in such ways to create the image of an eye from above.  This wouldn't be the prettiest looking drawing or painting, it is however beautiful because of the way it is done, all of the people come together to make a portrait on paper.  Paper is used in art lots, for drawing, painting, printing, however I've never seen it used quite like this.

I think that JR choose to used paper as a medium for this art series because of his familiarity and identification with it.  He made his name in the art world by printing large scale pictures on paper and pasting them up, it only seems fair to fall back to paper when beginning a new art project.  Although this time, the paper has no printing on it, it it blank, representing a clean slate and a new series for JR to begin.

The focus of this piece is the center of the eye, from there, the viewers look out and can admire the rest of the art piece.  I think that the center was intended to be the focal point because of the organization in the middle.  The people are aligned in a perfect circle, the paper is un-crumpled, and as the picture progresses, the paper gets messier and the people become increasingly more scattered.

I think that this piece is very symbolic to JR's past work.  JR would often paste up pictures, of people, or peoples eye's.  I think that he choose to use an eye in this art piece to show that he is still true to his artwork even though he is branching out a bit.  White is the color of innocence and the archetypal character 'the virgin', so I think its fair to say he was trying to represent a certain degree of purity in this photograph.

I'm not quite sure if my views on this piece are what JR intended when he created it, but it makes sense to me.  However I do have a few questions.

Why are some people laying face down while others lay face up?

Why are there so many people in the outside crease of the eye?  To me it would make more sense if they were in the inside corner, is there a reason behind this?  Perhaps everything is not always as it seems?

Was this design pre-planned, or did JR make it up as he went along?

My Book So Far

So yesterday I decided to take on the front cover of my book.  

Step one: Get rid of current book cover and back cover.  Somebody else designed that cover.  It doesn't represent who I am as an individual, I wanted to strip my book down to pages in order to get the cleanest slate possible.  After taking the front and back cover off, I noticed that the title still remained on the page after, as seen in the picture below.  I felt that this was a perfect opportunity for me!  I wanted to leave the title the same but modify the cover.  The book is still about 'dreams', but I'm going to make is about my own life and my own dreams. 

Back in Grade 10 art, my class did this project where we carved out stamps, the end result was really cool, but I remember it took a long time.. I guess I had just forget exactly how long it takes.  First, I traced out the size of my book on this stamp sheet, next my teacher helped my cut it out, and then, the designing process was ready to begin!  

I measured where the words were on the book, and then measured the same distance on the stamp sheet, because I had made it the same length and width. Next I started carving. 

Basically how my head felt after a half an hour of carving.. scrambled. 

Finally it was starting to come together! My title would fit in the box and now it was time to think of designs for the outside.  I was thinking of sticking to a night theme since this is what my book is about, and I love the night.  

I decided to add a sort of boho-ish moon and simple stars.  Perfect!  Would anyone else have added anything different to there front cover? I wanted to keep mine simple. (Plus, I was getting really sick of carving) 

I decided to do a trial run on a blank piece of paper, I was satisfied with the result so it was time to move on to the real deal.  It literally took me like 2 minutes to place it because I wanted to get it perfect.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome of my front cover, what do you guys think?  I had a lot of choices of color but I wanted to keep it simple, black makes a statement.  Now time to start thinking seriously about wha I can do with the rest of my book, I have a few ideas... I'll keep in touch!

I Chose My Book!

Okay so last night I went down into my basement (where we keep all of the books we've read) and did some looking around.  I wanted to find a book that related to me and had strong quotes.  I wanted to find something that I enjoyed and maybe a potential character that I thought could represent me.  So, while I was looking something caught my eye; have any of you guys ever heard of 'dream books'?  Basically, it's like a dictionary for your dreams.  You search what you dreamt about and it tells you the meaning behind your dreams.  I got this book a few years ago and had totally forgotten about it until yesterday.  Now, I know that this was not exactly my original plan, but, I think it's even better!

Using this dream book appose to a novel will give me so much more freedom!  It will allow me to use certain dream meanings to my advantage and completely modify pages that have definitions that mean nothing to me.  Also, for those of you who don't know me; I love the night.  I am literally obsessed with the night, moon, stars, everything about it. I feel that people are more true to themselves when the sun goes down.  Let's be honest guys, I bet most of your good memories happened during the night.  A certain sense of rebellion and adventure washes over us leaving us vulnerable to all the night has to offer.  So, taking on a book just makes so much sense to me.

I do believe that there is a way to decipher dreams and discover the unconscious meaning behind them, so I think that this book will be really fun to explore and modify to define myself!

Possible Book Ideas

Coming up with ideas for my own book has been really difficult for me to think of.  Do I represent my life as a whole? Or who I am now?  Do I include meaningless quotes?  Or events that define me? After giving it some thought, I have decided to try and focus on a bit of everything.  

I don't want to revolve my book around one aspect of my life, I am so much more than just one part of me.  Obviously some things will be missing, or my book could go on for thousands and thousands of pages.  But, I want to briefly touch among many things.  

At first glance, my book may be kind of confusing, but thankfully I have this blog to help me better explain my ideas to my readers. I was looking through 'modified books' on Google, and I found many great ideas that really helped widen my own horizons when it comes to thinking of possible book ideas. 

I really, really like the idea of starting off with a book that has already been written for many ideas.

1. It gives me a starting point. I can then change it into whatever I deem appropriate.

2. It puts limits on my own artistic abilities and allows me to expand and see how much freedom and imagination I have.

3. We as people are not blank pages.  When we are born we already have a past, our parents past effects how we will grow up, there opinions will have an influence on ours, and the way they live there life will dictate the way we begin ours.  As children we do not have much say, our story begins already half written.  When we become older we finish our story, we can then choose to break free and do what we want, but we can not erase the past, we can hide it, lie about it, forget it, or embrace it.  But it will remain, written in those pages is your story, and no matter how you modify it, it will still remain the same.

So, that's why I have chosen to  modify a book, I feel it best represents my opinion on life. 

On another note, I found a lot of awesome ideas on Google! So, I'm gonna share some of them on here.  I'm sure my final copy will look nothing like any of these pictures, but its a good starting point.

You Are A Book

"I am me. I may look like you, but if you take a closer look you will realize that I am nothing like you at all. I am very different. I see things through a completely different perspective because in my life I had experiences that you didn’t have, and I had feelings you didn’t have, and I’ve lived places and seen places and experienced life from a completely different point of view than you have. I may be wearing the same shoes and the same haircut, but that gives you no right to have any preconceived notions about what I am or who I am."

                You are a book. Like Keith Haring’s quote said, you are unlike anyone else, with different experiences, perspectives and dreams.

                How can you define your individuality, your character, your uniqueness, by creating book?  How much freedom do you have by creating a book that defines you? What is a book?

                So this is the first art assignment that my Grade 12 art class has received. It is basically about finding ourselves, and realizing how our own experiences defines us and separates our ability to communicate and create art.  This activity focuses on pushing our own limits without going past them. We must define ourselves by using an inanimate object instead of other resources.  I apologize in advance because it may be kind of hard to follow my train of thought throughout this piece. A book is such a broad topic and I feel it would be both easy and extremely difficult to express oneself through a book.

                To define ones individuality and character by creating a book that defines you would be complicated.  I think that it could be done, but the question would no longer be the capability of completing the task, but the willingness to allow that many others a window to your life and all of your experiences; both good and bad.  A book is very straight forward, it is a concrete object and anything written in it cannot be taken back.  Would you choose to share the truth of your own life with all of your readers?  Or would you still hide behind a fake persona and sugar coat your life to have others believe you had never endured any hardship?  Would you portray the live you have lived or the live you wish you’d lived?

                Creating a book to define yourself would not be black and white.  Your freedom would be unlimited on certain levels while greatly stifled on many others.  One freedom that you would have while creating a book is that you could choose exactly what to put in it.  You could fill it with pictures, words, lines, shapes, anything that you felt sufficiently defined who you were as a person, it would not necessarily have to make sense to other people, as long as it made sense to you.  You could share your earliest memory, and name you favourite television show, you could include quotes or lyrics that you felt represents parts of your life, or leave pages blank representing stories you didn’t want anyone to hear.  There would be a huge amount of possibilities but many restraints would still apply. 

                In my opinion, one major freedom you would be lacking is the ability to actually share experiences with your readers.  You could write about something, a day or a place, even attach a photograph, but it would not be the same as actually being in that place at that time.  The reader would not see what the writer wrote, smell the air, taste the nature, feel the trees, or hear the wind.  The feeling that the writer had at that moment could be imagined, but never replicated, the reader would never experience what the writer wrote to the full potential.  So the question arises, if no one understands, is there even a point in sharing that story? Or should that page also remain blank among many others.

                What is a book?  A book is what one chooses to share.  A book is enlightenment.  A book is a chance to learn, a chance to better understand another point of view, if you take the opportunity.  A book is a chance to share ones stories, if others are willing to listen.  A book can be anything, if given to the right reader.