Creature critiques.

This was the day of the creature critiques, in case you didn’t pick that bit of info up from the title; I know I can get a bit cryptic sometimes. ;]
Every time I come into this class more impressed by the works. These animals were so clever and creative! There is, of course, a fine line to walk between creativity and bull-hockey (ole!), and I wonder who in my class has blurred this line (besides me! ’cause that’s just inevitable), and why they were willing to fudge where they did. Buttt… That’s just my imaginationnnn, runnin’ away with meeee. (insert Temptations dancing here)

So, you want pictures and a description? Okay. I’ll give you pictures and a description. Can you handle it?

Choweron Wishmissus (Those are Latin endings, folks!)

This is a magical clam with an antenna. It is not much to look at, as far as animals go, but that is part of the clam’s charm. In fact, the ugly exterior drive away those that are “shallow” (these clams live in deep water), and only those who can “see” beyond the outside of a creature can utilize its power.
Once captured, the person is granted one wish, received by touching the antenna, and the gift will appear to the wisher from the wish pad on the clam’s tongue.
Very enthralling.

See, now. Your mind is blown. What am I going to do with a blown mind? Sigh.

Well, let me tell you, if I had had more time, I would have outfitted this clam with a light up wish pad, interactive in the same fashion as mood rings, written a children’s sea adventure about him… I would have decked him out for sure.
If you would like to read about a set up of light similar to the interactivity I was describing, see: http://www.colourbynumbers.org/pdf/confpaperLRB-CbNwebformat.pdf (the document is ironically devoid of color).

This project opened up a whole other can of worms/creativity/pretty lies, and it is overwhelming the places we can go from here. Woo!

Oh, and PS. When Nell asks you what part of your creature you think is the most representative of you, do not say, “I have a big, pink tongue and can give you whatever you wish for.” She may not hear it, but the awkwardness never goes away.

Notes: 03.27.2011.

We critiqued our abstracts today. Wait! Hold the presses! There is a second portion to the project? I have to take pictures to match the nonobjectional pieces in front of us?
I would like to change my abstracts to make the photo easier to conceptualize.
And I am assuming this is exactly why she didn’t tell us until now. 😐

Before we get to that, let’s talk about the art that has already been made.
I was especially drawn to Polly’s scattered/ cohesive pairings, not only because I feel Polly’s words without having her describe them to me, but also because it is obvious she made real efforts in doing this project the right way- intensely, focused on the task at hand and nothing else.
I feel as though, by now, everyone should know that my best work has come from dicking around- and don’t think that my best work is something to be proud of. I just haven’t gotten to that point yet. I suppose it is true that we admire the things we do not possess. Was that Nin? Or Nietzsche? Oh, well. I can’t remember the quote or the author, so let’s just pretend I said it. Cool? Cool.
But back to the point. Polly’s use of fierce black and stark white makes her image, one of her cohesive prints, full of dimension (contrast via shape/ value/ color). It’s just so damn awesome! I commend her and her work.

And this is the part where I write a polished paragraph about my choices for intense and mild…
Well, let me tell you about intense. Do you know what intensity is like? The sweat of anticipation on your upper lip, your heart beating furiously under your breast plate, your ribs cracking under the pressure of your lungs trying frantically to suck in oxygen that seems to have disappeared from the air around you? Yeah. It’s like that. It’s all that put together, and what you see when your eyes are closed. The incredible contrast in feeling and unpredictability of shape, form, and framing. There is an extra turbulence created by the media (charcoal), which only adds to the effect of intensity.
And as for mild? This is me imaging the moment you open your eyes after a plain dream. Not good, not bad. Just there. Much like the feeling (or lack thereof) I embodied for several of my teenage years. It is uniform and calm, with minimal contrast and little variation. even the lines are almost all horizontal, drawn in pencil. It was me shaping a piece of around the phrase, “Don’t rock the boat.”
They both were accomplished the way I had envisioned them- I only wish I had the skill to capture them more effectively.
{insert photos}

Oh, and as for the photos, I think I have an idea. But I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll just have to wait and see.

03.27.2011

In English, we are reading a book titled Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joesph Cornell. It is a text that uses poetry and prose to better explain the life and work of Joesph Cornell.
Professor DeWeese (that’s my English professor- look him up. He’s a mighty fine poet. In fact, I’ll do you one better: http://infiniteowls.blogspot.com/- That is his blogspot, and it is great. Check him out!) asked us to write a paragraph in the style of the author, describing one of Cornell’s boxes he had chosen to display on the projector. This is what the box looks like:

Hotel Eden- Joesph Cornell.

And this is what I wrote:

“Little night music for the eyes.”
Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. The cuckoo sits on a crooked stick.
This is what the inside of a bird’s house looks like. The cuckoo prepares his worm on a wooden stove, heated with tidings and shiny fragments of discarded human life. Berries and a worm, to perfection. Medium-well. The early bird gets the worm, an inch at a time.
Shouldn’t something make noise?
The strategy of home and Gardens for birds…
Like ours, but with a few more corks. (Thus, more alcohol?) What a view.

I should be a bird, but only if you are a bird, too.
Being a bird would get pretty lonely without you.

___

So. For all of this, I have but one comment to make. If we are translating literature into art and art into literature, who is to say I cannot do both?
Exactly.

On doing art for Latin 202.

First: the translated poem.
Catullus 07- Sometimes titled “How Many Kisses.”

You ask me how many of your kisses
are enough and more than enough for me, Lesbia.
As giant a number as there are grains of sand lying between Cyrenia,
where rests the temple of Jove,
and old Battus’s sacred tomb; or as many stars, when the night is silent,
as see the stolen loves of men.
It is enough and more than enough for mad Catullus
that you kiss with so many kisses
Kisses which the curious can neither count nor
bewitch them with an evil tongue.

The instructions were to make an artistic interpretation of one of the poems our class had read thus far. I chose that poem. This was my project:

The first of three unsucessful attempts at making a mobile- but fourth was the charm!

The making of a desert.

The first in a series of kisses.

Finishing up the kisses.

Just needed somewhere to keep track of it, really. This seemed like the place to do it.

My dreams are crushed:

Otherwise known as Nell-says-no syndrome. :[
I explained my interest in using hot sauce as a medium, and not only do I have to interpret the smell visually, but I can’t use color! What madness is this? I am baffled so distinctly that I refuse to work any more on this project today. It’s back to the webbing board… Man.

Word web for brainstorming possible works based on my pair of words.

The orientation button is not working. I apologize for those who may be inconvenienced.

Art notes 03.07.2011

These are important, important, important. Without these, there is no art. There is no anything. So. Notes:

• imposed thought
• language
• record and amount for all time spent (I feel like this hasn’t happened.)
• unity- it should all come together the same way your thesis sums up what your paper is about
• elements     ->     principles
• line            rhythm
• shape        balance
• form          scale
• value        proportion
• color        emphasis
• texture    proximity
• space        contrast
• Line: line quality, direction, structure and organization, soft, hard, blurred, organic… etc.
• |     \     /     —
• active vs. irritating
• every decision must support thesis
• two ends of a spectrum

Once I realized I was writing all this down so I would know how to interact with my two words, my two ends of the spectrum, I was worried. Not for the assignment, no. Because the first two things I thought about were chicken wings and sex (and not necessarily in that order.) How can I possibly incorporate my feelings of these words into a nonobjectional piece of work and succeed?
Well, again. I don’t know. But I made a list for starters, and hopefully I’ll start working on the word web tonight (I love those!)

Mild                       Intense

• dull                           bright
• easy                          focused
• childish                   serious
• banana pepper     cayenne
• concussion            surgery
• vanilla                     cinnamon

Hours later (nine hours and some change, to be exact): I’m thinking maybe I can do some splatter work with green and red hot/ mild sauce, then paint it over with darker colors to see if the smell stays. These words are so vivid, marked into my brain and seared into my vocabulary. I don’t know that I’ll be able to just flatten them out into paper and let that be enough.

I don't know what's more disturbing- the fact that this exists, or the fact that it is incredibly close to the hybrid image of my first two thoughts...

03.01.2011 (Is it really March already?)

pt. 1: post one image of art
be brief, be precise
email Nell photo
title piece
pt. 2: consider responses- one thing that surprised me and why
question for artwork because of artwork here i.e. prompt

“Home is whenever I’m with you.”
“I want to be where your heart is home.”

Forgive me, diligent readers (ha!), my phone is broken and I can’t seem to get my pictures together. I’ll have to come back to this post.

[http://terrorbird.alphapupserver.com/online/Lovers-02_Figure_8.mp3 I have to figure out a way to save this to my computer.]

It seems that my life affects my work.