New Flower Painting

I tried to combine my flower paintings and my drawings and came up with this.

22" x 30". Gouche, graphite, watercolor, acrylic, and collage on paper.

Another flower painting in progress

Colored pencils, markers, gouche, watercolor, and acrylic and collage on paper, 18" x 24"

Prolific Weekend

Colored pencil, sumi-e ink and graphite collage on paper, 11.5" x 14"

I was sick this weekend. I mostly stayed in and made work.

Happy Work

"Happy Work" is the title of an exhibition I submitted to a gallery for a juried show. A juried show is when you do a call for artists and pull from the people who submit art for the show. In this case, I would be the jury. None of my work would be in the show. Here's part of my exhibition proposal:

“Happy Work” is meant to be both an honest attempt at a descriptive exhibition title in that the exhibition examines the naïveté and absurdism of attempting to find or express the simplistic yet earnest emotion of happiness. However, the title also serves as an example of this absurdism by suggesting that this goal is impossible.

In the wake of 9/11, SAIC students have the experience of living in both a pre-9/11 and post-9/11 world, which makes them well-suited as both viewers and artists to understanding concepts such as loss of innocence and impotence in the face of disaster. This is an important time to address a less-charged post-9/11 atmosphere of innocence lost when many students have lived almost an equal amount of time in pre- and post-9/11. Work in this exhibition may not address 9/11 directly but it hopes to ask questions about feeling and communicating happiness through art. “Happy Work” can be interpreted as absurd, naïve, overly simplistic, or sarcastic. Yet, if we attempt to express or comment on personal happiness through art, why does this dichotomy of seriousness and absurdism reveal itself? I would like the viewer to ask herself how either seeking/experiencing personal happiness or making “Happy Work” reveals an underlying tension between earnest desire and absurdity.

Four new works

Colored pencil and pen collage, gouche, watercolor, and acrylic on paper, 18" x 24"

Gouche, acrylic, and watercolor on paper, 22" x 30"
Graphite, watercolor, gouche, acrylic, and collage on paper, 22" x 30"

Marker, sumi-e ink, colored pencil, and graphite on paper and tracing paper, 11.5" x 14"

I'm working right now on communicating the purest form of my concept, which is why I did the last drawing. Drawing, colored pencil, and marker is a very quick way for me to get thoughts out, and I enjoy drawing. It's also very convenient to do at home.

It's almost ten on a Saturday night and I'm working. I did have free time today but last night I worked until 10 after a long day. I have about one week of complete burnout and one week where I'm okay. Right now I'm about four days from burnout again, where I sort of collapse and do nothing for a couple of days. And I still feel like I'm not doing enough.

I'm really excited, though, because I have a few ideas that I'm working on. Also I submitted some stuff for a couple of exhibitions, one as an artist and one as a curator.

Work in progress for Friday.

CRAAAAAZZZY!!!!! This is something I'm working on for a materials and techniques class. I think I'll just resolve the upper right corner and then it will be done. It's gouche, acrylic, watercolor, and graphite on paper. I think it's 25" x 35" or something like that.

Fiber and narrative project I - Identity in four parts

This was my workspace on Wednesday night. Shown: Power tools. Not shown: bloody towel.

This was taken after everyone participated. The boxes are glued in those positions. The pink box is glued shut, but you can see someone tried to wedge something in there. In one of the boxes, someone put the instructions for the project.

This project took me a long time because I had to learn how to build things. I designed a toile pattern and then printed it on white fabric in four different colors. In the pattern of the toile there is, in addition to a floral motif, lipstick, a corset, needles (for botox perhaps) and razor blades. I wanted to suggest different ways of modifying the physical body. I'll take a close-up picture of the pattern later. It's actually quite a nice pattern.

This project is about identity. I wanted to ask some questions about what identity means and how we interpret our own identities. I gave everyone a handout with statements from pyschological tests, and their instructions were to tear off the statements and put them in the box they thought represented different parts of their identity. My critique went ok, lots of negative comments and some good ones, but overall I think people didn't like this project. It really frustrated people, which was kind of my intention. Here are some of their comments:

The boxes should be more clinical.

The statements seemed like they were from Seventeen magazine for girls to think about their feelings (they were from actual tests given to psychologists' patients, and one man stood up and said that men think about their feelings all the time)

People should have been directed toward the same final question more clearly

It was too gendered and feminine or not enough

Some people felt the statements didn't apply to them

I thought the last comment was the most interesting. People kept saying to me that some of the statements did or didn't apply to them, as if I was responsible for defining or knowing who they are. I do think who we are is defined in large majority by external factors, and when they disappear or change, we do the same, even though we have a strong sense that we remain the same person. If not for our memories, we might not have any specific identity at all.