Update On Visual Poem

So, as all of you know, I am working on the song 'A Dustland Fairytale' by The Killers as my 'poem' choice!  Over the past week I have done quite a bit of brainstorming, and gathered some ideas that I would like to peruse. I want to make my visual interpretation of the song more literal than the video.  I want to be able to incorporate as many song lyrics as I can into my piece of art.  I thought of a few ways to do this, until I decided on one.

1. Stop motion animation: I worked with stop motion once in Grade 9, and once in Grade 10 I believe.  I really liked the final outcome of it, but I found it very difficult, and time consuming. I'm kind of a perfectionist, and I couldn't achieve the flawless transitions in my stop motion that I've seen in the past.  As much as I do like watching stop motions, because of my frustration with them, I decided this was not best for me.

2. Pottery:  I really like pottery, and I would like to work some more with it, and I felt that this assignment would be fun to do with pottery, however, I am not the biggest fan of the clay my class has.  The clay easily gets lumps, and it's really hard to make the shape I want with the clay.  You can't make it too thin, or it collapses, and I don't like the look of clay when it's too thick, so I decided not to go with this option.

3. Painting:  I am pretty familiar with painting, but I have this weird thing where I only paint during the winter, I don't know why, I think I feel more motivated to stay inside my house and paint, than go outside where it's all cold and snowy.  But, anyways, it has been a while since winter, so I haven't painted in a while, and I thought that this would be a good way to test the waters with where my current skills lay.  I have always found painting beautiful, and I think that it would be easy to represent my song through a painting.  So, I did decided to go with a painting.  I stretched a canvas for myself for the first time, and I made it bigger than I am comfortable with.  I am used to painting things on a small scale, but for this assignment, I decided to kick it up a notch!

So, after establishing that I wanted to paint my visual representation of a poem, the next step was deciding what to paint.  Like I said before, this is one of my favourite songs ever, so I did go into this having quite a few potential ideas of what to include in my painting.  The next step was to limit down my ideas to things that fell under my 'literal interpretation' theme.  Here are some song lyrics from the song, with ideas that I could represent them with.

Moon River, what'd you do to me?- Some kind of river, lake, or ocean with unusual colors to display the uncertainty of this line.  The river could be in a different shape, or could be shown through raindrops?  The raindrops could be different colors, pouring into the plain river, changing its color. 

And the decades disappear, like sinking ships but we persevere.- I could have some kind of ship, or tombstone at the bottom of my river.  Or I could start the bottom of my river darker than the top, to represent to the change in years.  It could begin black and white to show that this all started a long time ago, (as old film was black and white), and it could progress toward color to show that this is where we are now.

Castles in the sky sit stranded, vandalized. - So, I kind of want this to be the backdrop of my whole painting.  I want my 'castles in the sky' to be the silhouette of trees against a sky.  I don't want castles, because I've never seen a castle, why would I paint something I'm not familiar with?  But I think that the trees standing tall gives the same kind of feeling.  I want trees against the sky because the still image of that can be beautiful, but we also don't know what is happening behind those trees, we don't know what has happened there, or what will happen.  We don't know who lived there, or who partied there, or who grew up there.  I want to paint this silhouette, and the paint inside of the trees for the rest.

Straight to the valley of the great divide, Out where the dreams all hide... - I want to have some kind of cold looking valley inside my trees.  Maybe have some black hills leading up to it, I don't want it to look welcoming.

Is there still magic in the midnight sun?- As this is one of the final lines of the song, I want it to leave an impression.  I want to paint some kind of weird looking sun rising out of the 'valley', out of the 'moon river', and above the 'castles in the sky'.  I'm not exactly sure what I want it to look like yet, but that's where my mind is right now!

If anyone else has any idea, please checkout the lyrics and write down what you think I should include! :)

Art and Craft

Alright, so this is that big, long post I was preparing everyone for.  What is art?  So I’m going to start with my own personal definition of what I feel art is.  I think that art is anything anyone creates.  I think it must show expression, and it must makes people feel something.  I think that art can be temporary, or permanent.  I don’t think it has to be around forever, I think it can last for one day, or a lifetime, and either way, I think it is art.  I don’t necessarily think there is a difference between art and craft.  I think that originality and expression is key in both.  I think music is art, and movies are art, and video games, and graphic design, and jewellery, and paintings, and sculptures, and carpets, and clothing, and landscaping, and buildings and almost anything really.  I think we can find art in anything and I think it is presumptuous and close minded to put restrictions on what can be ‘classified’ as art.  One person’s view of beauty does not have to be another’s.  So who is anyone to say what I consider to be art, is not?

The difficult part, is drawing the line.  If I say landscaping is art, when is it, and when is it not?  I think that this is the real question.  If we do begin to open our minds and allow new artistic possibilities to enter, when does it stop?  There aren’t any rules to this, because it is a relatively new concept; considering non-traditional pieces of work to be ‘art’.  But, I do stand by what I said above, art must display expression (in my opinion).  I think that is where the line is drawn.  I think that if you feel you’ve created a piece that will trigger emotions, you have created art.  If you view something, and it brings you back to a certain time in your life, or makes you feel happy, you are viewing true art.

Have your parents ever told you that you are there biggest masterpiece?  My mom used to, and I always thought it was kind of silly.  I mean, I’m a human, I’m not art.  But, is that completely relevant? We all trigger emotion, and we all have memories, and we all bring joy and sadness, and experience joy and sadness ourselves.  We base ‘art’ off our own emotions, and our own perceptions of beauty.  So does that make us the real art, and our pieces just copyright of our own feelings?  I’m honestly find it impossible to define art. 

I mean, some parents would define their 4-year olds drawing of a stick figure family as art, while others wouldn’t even consider it.  I think that art is weird.  And defining art is weird.  I think it’s a matter of opinion, and preference. 

I just have to say, I’m not sure what art is.  And, I’m not going to be so ambitious to say that I do. I was planning on sharing some images of what I thought art was, but after getting about half way through this post I realized that I don't have a clue.  I have my own idea of what I consider to be art, but I would be willing to listen to other opinions, and discuss it further.  I think the sunrise is art.  And no one created that, it is just there.  I love the sunset, and the constellations are a masterpiece.  So I really don’t know.   I just think that in any art class, or in any art museum, everything should be given a chance.  I don’t think that certain pieces should be shut down so quickly, and considered a ‘craft’.  I think that each piece should be given a fighting chance, and that the artist should be able to express why there piece is art.  I don’t think that this battle of what is art and what is craft will end anytime soon.  But, I do think it is a question that should be widely considered.  Art and craft is not so black and white anymore, there is a definite grey area, and I look forward to seeing what becomes of that grey area.  

Little Art Testing

Okay, kind of jumping topics here, but a few weeks ago my art teacher brought a few 'sample' things to art.  This included molding paste, and paint that worked well with the molding paste.  My and me friend, Kylie, decided to test it out and do a collaborative piece of art.  We brainstormed a few ideas, while waiting for the gesso to dry on our newly stretched canvas, and came up with something we both liked the sound of.

 

Before we actually began to pain on our canvas, we just tested out the paste and a few of the colors on a plain sheet of paper.

We decided that the red, and blue blended really nicely together, and wanted to make that our background. We contemplated mixing the paint with the paste right away, or using the paste, and painting after.  In the end, we decided to mix it.

I suggested using a spreading tool as it would give a cool vintage looking texture. In the end, I thought the background looked like a kitchen wall in an old Greek movie, I really liked the way it turned out!

Next step was where the molding paste really came into play.  We used a tool most people use for oil paintings to make our center focus; our big flower in the middle.  To create this, we used large amounts of the plain white molding paste, and smeared it at different angles across the canvas.  I've done this once before with oil paint, so I was a little more familiar with it.

We then added a bit of yellow as a color pop, just to spice things up a bit!

Final verdict on molding paste:  I thought it was really interesting! I always wondered how artists add texture to there paintings, and now I know.  I would defiantly like to try an individual piece with molding paste something!  It had a really grainy texture, and dried very solid. I was impressed.  

Series Artwork- Idea #1

Have you guys ever heard of wire wrap necklaces?  There really neat and I’ve been fascinated with them for the past few years.  Last winter, I made a couple, and it was really difficult, but the turnout was really cool looking.  Here is a picture of the 2 I made last year.

So, I was thinking that making a few more with charka stones would be a cool piece for my series, then I could maybe photograph them in a cool setting and incorporate photography as well.  I thought that this would classify as art, as it is original, it would require a lot of work, and I would have a final creation of my own at the end of the process.

Also, there could be a lot of symbolism in these necklaces.  For one, the stones I choose will hold a message themselves.  Different cultures have different meanings for different stones, and I would really like to explore what some of those meanings are, and be able to choose these stones accordingly.   Secondly, the way I decide to wrap the wire around the stone could hold a different meaning; I could wrap it tight to represent some sort of confinement, or loosely to represent freedom, I could bend the wire into waves to represent calmness, or storm/fear, or swirls, to represent confusion.  Also, the length of the chain on the necklace could represent how close to the heart one holds that certain value, or message, do they distance themselves from it?  Resulting in a long chain.  Or suffocate themselves with it? Resulting a short chain. Or does it fall somewhere comfortable, in the middle?  This will probably begin to make a little more sense as I start making my necklaces.

But, anyways as I was discussing this idea in class, my teacher brought my attention to an idea.  Is this an art, or a craft?  Is there a difference?  Where is the line drawn of what defines art? What do I define as art?

Poetry Ideas- A Dustland Fairytale

Okay, so. I had 3 main poems in my last post, and I wasn’t really sure which one to choose.  I decided I should go with the last one, just because of its short length, but then I also thought that I should really be able to see the poem as I am reading it in order to represent it by art.  As much as I think that all of these poems are awesome, I couldn’t really visualize any of them.  A little later, I was riding home on my bus, and listening to a song by The Killers called ‘A Dustland Fairytale’.  It’s a pretty cool song I think, it’s fairly poetic, and really rhythmic.  I can really easily get into, and visualize that song!  Plus, I was partially drowsy while listening to it so a bunch of images were coming into my head, and I knew that was the song.  I can totally relate to it and I love the words chosen, sentences assembles, and the flow of the paragraphs!

Over the past 3 years, most of my favourite one liner quotes have come from this song, it is defiantly a personal favourite.  (And, I must really like because really, who still likes a song after 3 years, most songs become super annoying, but not this one)

A Dustland Fairytale:

A Dustland Fairytale beginning

 With just another white trash county kiss in '61.

 Long brown hair and foolish eyes.

 He'd look just like you'd want him to

 Some kind of slick chrome American prince.

 

 A Blue Jean serenade

 Moon River, what'd you do to me?

 I don't believe you.

 

 Saw Cinderella in a party dress,

 But she was looking for a nightgown.

 I saw the devil wrapping up his hands,

 He's getting ready for the showdown.

 I saw the minute that I turned away,

 I got my money on a pawn tonight.

 

 A change came in disguise of revelation, set his soul on fire.

 She said she always knew he'd come around.

 And the decades disappear

 Like sinking ships but we persevere.

 God gives us hope, but we still fear what we don't know.

 

 Your mind is poisoned.

 Castles in the sky sit stranded, vandalized.

 The drawbridge is closing.

 

 Saw Cinderella in a party dress,

 But she was looking for a nightgown.

 I saw the devil wrapping up his hands,

 He's getting ready for the showdown.

 I saw the ending when they turned the page,

 I threw my money and I ran away.

 Straight to the valley of the great divide

 Out where the dreams all hide.

 Out where the wind don't blow,

 Out here the good girls die.

 And the sky won't snow

 Out here the bird don't sing

 Out here the field don't grow

 Out here the bell don't ring

 Out here the bell don't ring

 Out here the good girls die

 

 Now Cinderella, don't you go to sleep?

 It's such a bitter form of refuge.

 Why don't you know the kingdom's under siege

 And everybody needs you.

 Is there still magic in the midnight sun,

 Or did you leave it back in '61?

 In the cadence of a young man's eyes.

 Out where the dreams all hide

 

Here is how the artists perceived the song:

 

 *Seriously you guys all watch this music video it is one of the best music videos I have ever seen.*

I can totally see how they imagined it like this, and it defiantly makes the song more emotional to listen to.  But, I think it could represent many other things not as extravagant as well.   

I think that this song is about heartbreak, and how nothing will ever compare to teenage years and high school no matter how bad we want it to.  We are all really stuck in this mindset that high school is where some of the most important memories will take place.  But, when we look back do we remember what really happened? Or do we fantasize about what should have happened? How much truth is in our own perception of reality?

This song sounds very dreamy to me. Like nothing is really real, but everything makes so much sense.  The story is blurred ad the blanks we must fill in make the song perfectly clear.  I think that this song is about someone coming to terms with their own mortality.  Where did they time go?  I can relate to this, as I am graduating Gr.12 this year, but I remember walking through the high school doors the first time like it was yesterday.  How can that feel so close, yet be so far away? 

This song is about being stuck in a place, mentally or physically, and not being able to break free. Suddenly summers are not meant for tanning, swimming and partying anymore.  The innocence of being young is gone and you’re stuck in the real world. 

This song can be about so much.  It is going to be difficult to put these words into art.

 

Art and Poems

As a bit of an extension from my last post.  We've been looking at poems that we can create through art. I've found a few great ones, and wrote a quick blurb of what I think the mean underneath.  Let me know what you think of them!

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev by Adrienne Rich

 
The cold felt cold until our blood
grew colder then the wind
died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak
it's with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say with voices)
When the wind tore our breath from us at last
we had no need of words
For months for years each one of us
had felt her own yes growing in her
slowly forming as she stood at windows waited
for trains mended her rucksack combed her hair
What we were to learn was simply what we had
up here as out of all words that yes gathered
its forces fused itself and only just in time
to meet a No of no degrees
the black hole sucking the world in

I feel you climbing toward me
your cleated bootsoles leaving their geometric bite
colossally embossed on microscopic crystals
as when I trailed you in the Caucasus
Now I am further
ahead than either of us dreamed anyone would be
I have become
the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind
the women I love lightly flung against the mountain
that blue sky
our frozen eyes unribboned through the storm
we could have stitched that blueness together like a quilt

You come (I know this) with your love your loss
strapped to your body with your tape-recorder camera
ice-pick against advisement
to give us burial in the snow and in your mind
While my body lies out here
flashing like a prism into your eyes
how could you sleep You climbed here for yourself
we climbed for ourselves

When you have buried us told your story
Ours does not end we stream
into the unfinished the unbegun
the possible
Every cell's core of heat pulsed out of us
into the thin air of the universe
the armature of rock beneath these snows
this mountain which has taken the imprint of our minds
through changes elemental and minute
as those we underwent
to bring each other here
choosing ourselves each other and this life
whose every breath and grasp and further foothold
is somewhere still enacted and continuing

In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready
and each of us knows it I have never loved
like this I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

In the diary as the wind began to tear
at the tents over us I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together but till now
we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean "to survive"
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow We will not live
to settle for less We have dreamed of this
all of our lives

This poem is about a group of women who died while mountain climbing, this poem had a different style of first person narration, because it was told through the eyes of a dead woman. The poem started off with the women slowly dying, and then continued to say what she thought, and felt while laying dead on the cold mountain.  The poem was set on the Lenin Peak Mountain, where the tragedy took place. The purpose of this story is to show the strength, and determinations of these women.  They never gave up, and never turned back, even when they knew the odds of them making it to the top of the mountain were not in their favour.  The conflicts the woman faced in this poem were breaking gender stereotypes, showing that women are just as good as men, and the weather.  Although the weather was not the main conflict, it still played a part, because in the end, it was the weather that stopped these women from completing their goal. The audience that this poem appeals to is women of all ages, or more specifically, women who are determined and want to make a point, or who have been told that they cannot do something because of their gender.  The voice in this poem is accomplished and calm, not at all sad or frightened like it might have been thought to be.  The woman feels successful, because she knows that she will be talked about and admired a long time after her death.  She has come to terms with that fact that she is dead, and died peacefully doing what she loved to do.  This poem was really well organized, and demonstrated to the reader what the women’s thoughts were, without going into too much detail. 

Next Day by Randall Jarrell

 

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a box

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

Food-gathering flocks

Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

 

Is learning what to overlook.  And I am wise

If that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

What I’ve become

Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

 

When I was young and miserable and pretty

And poor, I’d wish

What all girls wish: to have a husband,

A house and children.  Now that I’m old, my wish

Is womanish:

That the boy putting groceries in my car

 

See me.  It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

For so many years

I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

And its mouth watered.  How often they have undressed me,

The eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

 

Imaginings within my imagining,

I too have taken

The chance of life.  Now the boy pats my dog

And we start home.  Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

 

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

Some soap and water--

It was so long ago, back in some Gay

Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss

My lovely daughter

Away at school, my sons away at school,

 

My husband away at work--I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

And I go through the sure unvarying days

At home in them.  As I look at my life,

I am afraid

Only that it will change, as I am changing:

 

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at me

From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

The smile I hate.  Its plain, lined look

Of gray discovery

Repeats to me: “You’re old.”  That’s all, I’m old.

 

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

I went to yesterday.

My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

Were my face and body.

As I think of her I hear her telling me

 

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I’m anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary

 

This poem is written and interpreted through the eyes of an older women.  The purpose of this poem is to communicate the struggle of one coming to terms with their own mortality, and how strong of a desire one feels to be youthful again.  This poem is intended to make the readers feel connected, it is not very specific so it allows for everyone to relate their own lives to this situation.  Although I feel everyone can relate to this situation in one way or another, the intended audience would have to be people who are over the age of 50, or people who are struggling with the change of their physical appearance because of aging.  The voice of the women telling the story is very sad.  I think that she is trying to make the best of her situation, but is having difficulties coping with her old age.  I think that she regrets being so set on finding the perfect husband, and house, and having children in her youth.  I think that she wishes to go back and just enjoy life instead of worrying who she would marry.  The voice in this poem tells me that although the women is struggling, she keeps her problems to herself.  I think that she does not want to burden anyone with the issues she faces.  This poem in well organized, it is a little choppy and jumps subjects a bit, but it is easy to follow and keeps the reader intrigued.  This poem is set in a grocery store, where the old women thinks back to being young and reminiscences over her youthful body.  She thinks about how she is seen now compared to how the world used to see her.  The main conflict in this poem is self against self, she is fighting a battle she cannot win against her youthful self. It is very sad, but really allows for the reader to empathize, or sympathize with the women.

 

Gretel in Darkness by Louise Gluck

This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas . . .

Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest

This poem is about either a girl, or women.  She has done something terrible for someone, and is trying to deal with it by herself.  The purpose of this poem is to sum up some of the events in this woman’s life, and demonstrate the way she feels about them.  The audience that this poem appeals to could either be someone who loves somebody that doesn’t love them back, or someone who has done something for somebody, only to have that person walk away from them.  The age group that this poem would relate to most would be anywhere between 20-40, because between these years, people face many heartbreaks, divorces, fights, and kids growing up and leaving them, after all they’ve done for them. This poem would relate mostly to women, but men could relate to it as well.  The voice of this poem tells me that the narrator is scared, angry, and lonely.  She is used to having people watching over her, and she does not like being left without anyone.  All she wants is to love and to be loved in return.  This poem is well organized, it demonstrates the important events in this woman’s life, and it becomes progressively harsher and darker to read as the poem unfolds.  This poem seems to be set in the woman’s mind, she could be anywhere, but she feels like she is in a dark forest, all alone, with nowhere to go.  The woman faces a conflict with her own actions over the course of this poem, she is not proud of what she has done, and she now must live with the consequences of it with no support from the ones she loves.  She thinks back to the days when she was loved, and she longs for those days to come once again.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

So my class watched this TedED thing in class today, and I actually thought it was pretty interesting.  It's about different ways different people can perceive something.  I think the first was my favourite.  The artist took the whole 'spider' theme, and tried to include a kind of human figure in it. I thought it really showed a great representation of how everything isn't always as it seems. I felt like I was really getting inside the artists head.  The second was strange, personally, I wasn't a fan.  I could see where the artist was coming from, really trying to step out of the 'spider' point of view, and relate the poem to life, but I found the video a bit cheap looking.  And, the third one was also really cool.  I felt like the artist had a clear message, I think that that is the kind of video that kids should see if looking at poems.  The lines were simple and the drawings were fun.  However #1 was still my favourite as I felt it lead to a deeper kind of thinking and understanding.

Hippie Artwork

This is kind of a continuation of my last post. (Also, my train of thought is not fluent)

So, I’ve defiantly decided I want to work with hippie style art.  I’ve always thought it was fascinating and unique, and I want to explore it further.  I always doodle mandalas, and hippie suns in the corner of my pages and I want to focus working with this style on a bigger scale.  Some of my inspiration pieces include some of the following.  I don’t intend to copy these pieces, they just gave me an idea of colors, shapes, and mediums I want to use.

 

I’m not quite set on what theme or central idea I want to focus on yet, but I know I want it to be something along the lines of what brings us together as a world.  I want to focus on things we all have in common.  World peace is a super broad topic, and I want my idea to fall somewhere within it to further explore the whole hippie artwork idea.  I just want my artwork to represent something more educated than world peace.  World peace is kind of ambitious, I don't think at any point we fill fully achieve world peace.  So as of now, I’m thinking I want to focus on what we all share. We all share a world, we are all human, we all share the same sun, and the same moon.  However, we all fight, nations don’t get along, war engulfs countries, and death is used as a bargaining chip.  Through my art I want to focus on how do we share so many things, but brawl about so many others? How can we be so similar, but so different?