BLOG POSTS
photography and writing
BLOG POST ONE
Since the development of software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, artists are now able to create, manipulate, and transform images in a way that was simply not possible before. These tools enable photographers, painters, illustrators, and creators to control the narrative we want to tell—to evoke emotions or thoughts that were intentionally placed or removed from a photo post-shoot. This has been an incredibly powerful instrument for me in the visual art that I produce, but not only in the technical sense. In mixing two different mediums (photography and illustration), I allow a photograph to live on, to take on a different narrative than it would tell standing alone.
I often work in mixing Adobe Creative Cloud and photography to lightly illustrate how different mediums in the art world are constantly intermingled— to allow the viewer to question how he or she perceives a portrait dependant on their environment. A lot of visual artists influence my work and encourage me to strive towards more minimalistic or “less is more” paths. I love working collaboratively and I wholeheartedly believe that we, as artists, are subject to influence and change in all areas of our lives.
In studying and working within the art world today, I am often confronted with the teaching that all art must have a conceptual and cohesive backing in order to be labeled capital A Art; I disagree. Photography and illustration have been a tool that I have used all my life to express myself and my emotions, and while the work I produce is subjective to me, it is objective to everyone that sees it. It is my philosophy that in order for Studio and Fine Art to serve their purpose in the world, they must be considered objectively. In the creative process, conceptualizing an idea is what allows an artist to begin their project, but I have found that this initial idea is often times not where a work ends up. I believe that while a project can be completely straightforward in the message it’s telling, that does not mean that it must. I believe that art loses its power not when it lacks a direct and guided translation, but when the viewer loses his or her freedom to perceive it.
BLOG POST TWO
WIP & processes
I am very excited to continue my research and processes for the projection mapping project. As far as my object(s) go for what I want to project on, I am thinking about finding old/ damaged electronics (tv/ computer” and stacking them together. I think this could be a cool idea by using different visual and audible elements on each of the respective screens. I want my visual elements to be a mix of both naturally occurring colors/videos and more psychedelic design.
In the past couple of months, I have felt relatively uninspired in my art. I have struggled to conceptualize and execute a cohesive concept. Sometimes in my work, I find myself overthinking the end goal so much, that I discourage myself from the most important part-- just trying. Getting out there and producing work. I was recently reminded that sometimes the process of making art can be far far more interesting than any sort of end result you reach. Over the last couple years I have written down many imprinting quotes from my photo 4 teacher, Melanie Walker. I recently wrote down something she said in class the other day, “the best camera you have is the one that you have on you”. This has really stuck with me and served as an important reminder that it is not in the best materials or most expensive equipment or most planned out settings that iconic photographs are born, but rather in the moment.
This project is nothing like anything I’ve ever worked on before and stands as an opportunity for artistic growth and variation in my focus. I am excited to learn new techniques and am hopeful that it will lead me back into my creative process in all areas of my life. At the least, shed some light into my imagination and give me direction with it going forward.
BEEN EVERYWHERE
met everyone
BLOG POST THREE
research blog
Only If You Want It
I was recently involved in an art exhibition put on by one of my friends. This show was a fundraiser for MESA (movement to end sexual assault) and tackled the concept of body sovereignty. The event showcased 11 local artists with work ranging from gum prints, embroidery, photography, and other mixed media. Both viewing my work and others at this event shed light onto the importance of this movement. I learned a lot about what it meant to practice body sovereignty.
My series, Only If You Want It, is a combination of line art and illustration that I have produced as a testament not only in prevention of sexual assault and support of its victims, but to shed light onto the importance and weight that the Body Sovereignty movement holds. While body submission is something that lives, to some degree, within all of us, I have found that women are the predominant martyrs. All too often, we are complicit rather than courageous when it comes to our own bodies and its needs. For how far our country has come in regards to women’s rights, the oppressive paradigm that views women as commodities, incapable, and less than, very much still exists around the world and manifests in our own mothers, sisters, and daughters.
This piece is about the allyship that we must share with ourselves. It is time to recognize the supreme power and authority we have of our own bodies, even at the risk of ruffling feathers or disappointing others. This is about creating a definitive statement that one’s needs of their mind & body no longer have to take the backseat. This is about reshaping the approach of making others comfortable at the demise of ourselves. You are not stirring the pot, you are not creating problems, you are not responsible of fulfilling others needs and desires, and you are beholden to NO ONE but yourself.
So, order that extra slice of pizza when no one else wants one, speak up when the person doing your nails is cutting those cuticles a little too short, make it clear that just because you let them into your bed, doesn’t mean you wanted to have sex. Say no to everything your body is telling you, and when you do say yes, make sure it’s only because you want it.
In freeing ourselves, we allow others to find their own freedom. Your body is yours, your body is good, and your body is sovereign.
ONLY IF YOU WANT IT
BLOG POST FOUR
projection mapping
In the projection mapping project, I was able to explore a medium that I have never used before. I have been using Adobe Premier Pro cc for years and so I thought instead of using single videos or videos from the internet, I would make a collaboration with videos I’ve taken. In doing this, I was able to combine several different videos in each respective layer. The use of color is one of the most static elements in all art that I have produced, including this piece. On Premier, I utilized the strobe effect and transparency in the videos to create a more textured and broken up sequence. In addition, I used color blocking to simulate a more playful and performative vibe. My videos are projected onto mannequin because I feel it is representative of different memories or feelings that our bodies posses. Specifically, for me, I think this worked in representing my ADHD through the manic and distracted visual it presents. At any given time, I feel like I have a million different thoughts, songs, and colors jumping around in my body. It’s difficult for me to stay focused on just one aspect for a concentrated amount of time.
The videos I chose to use are representative to the dichotomy of what my life makes up- party culture, lots a people, and lots of adventures outside. The jellyfish are metaphorical to the concept of floating through life, with a lot of action along the way. I really enjoyed learning and working with this software. I plan to use it for our end of the year exhibition.
PART 1
BLOG POST FIVE
WORK IN PROGRESS
For the Digi-Log collision project I plan to print out sticker designs that I have made and incorporate them into a form of media that lights them up from behind. Stickers are traditionally used for labeling things and are placed on all kinds of inanimate objects. With that being said, I want to collaborate this idea into actually “labeling” something that is represented as a person. We go through life with all sorts of labels being placed on us:
Fat
Skinny
Tall
Gross
Pretty
Insecure
Bright
Hot
Chunky
Passive
Funny
LGBTQ
Black
White
Rich
Preppy
Poor
Single
Married
Sister
brother
While labels are important in our society to help us identify, recognize, and categorize things and people and places, they often end up hurting us as well. In labeling something, you leave little room for the person themselves to represent who they really are. With labels come stereotypes and these stereotypes do not allow for an individual to present themselves as they are. Nothing can singularly fit under one category- every version of every label is subjective to the person themselves. In this project, I hope to create a more abstract idea of labels to show that while you can be one thing, you are also many other things as well.
As far as how I want to depict this on an object, I plan to use varying fonts and designs of words that hold a meaning of identity. With these stickers, I will place them accordingly on an object that is representative of the Self. I do not want to singularly translate to a certain “type” of person, but create something that allows all individuals to find themselves within it. Labels are not necessarily bad-- we can all relate to them in some ways. It’s important to be able to choose what you identify with and how YOU want to be characterized. You should be able to find bits of yourself in everything, and you should be able to have a choice to choose what those things are. I am using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to carry out these designs. This project is going to be a challenge for me because I have never used the printer for cutting out designs for stickers. I am excited for the challenge.
STICKER GALLERY
RESEACH BLOG SIX
The Space Between Us
Evan Blaise Walsh is a photographer based out of New York. One of his more recent series The Space Between Us is a body of work created that examines self in a variety of scenarios, using male friends as collaborators and mirrors enabling him to consider where he fits in and feels authentic. The work also explores the notion of intimacy between men and the universal desire of simply being loved for who you are. I have found this series to be very compelling in that it forces an examination of gender, social structure, and identity through the culture that exists in America today. This series was impactful for me in it’s honesty. Growing up is hard. It’s a time filled with a lot of firsts and adventures, heart break, death, and love-- all feelings and things that you haven’t felt before. For some individuals, this can be even more difficult when you’re struggling with your sexuality (as I believe we all do to some degree). Specifically in these photographs, Evan Walsh explores the notion of intimacy between men and the universal desire of simply being loved for who you are. Mythologies of male intimacy and touch inform his photographic and his nonfiction-writing work, both of which examine the seemingly ubiquitous and invisible barriers between men. Performative and intimate life portraits show men as they really are—lost amongst themselves, looking for connection, and yearning for family.
In the photographs included in the series, Evan comments “My best friends and I, in this show, morph from ballers to gym jocks to nerds to hunters. That I am allowed to slip in and out of different roles as I please creates tension; I switch from one guise to another, enacting or defying rites of presentation that I’ve absorbed from an early age. Shown through solo self-portraits in the work, this act of wearing manhood has been a game I’ve played my entire life, an act of empowerment, subversion, and in certain spaces, a form of espionage”. The fluency of his photographs forces the viewer to ask themselves if the optics of male friendships are liable or subject to change or alteration. This concept has inspired me in a lot of my work dealing with people and relationships. The power of photography is in manipulation. An artist is able to purposefully remove or include information in a photograph that tells the narrative he or she wants to tell. This is even more powerful when it comes to the digital art world where the power lies in post production. I have found this to be incredibly important for the art that I like to exhibit specifically. Identity is elusive and, especially when we are just beginning to discover WHO we are, can be terrifying. This work really capitalized on the importance of finding a connection in our youth, wherever that may be. I hope to embody this search for identity in the work that I am currently working on. This process has been important for me to portray because it is also something I am personally yearning in my own life.
THE SPACE BETWEE US
by Evan Walsh
This is your Gallery Description paragraph. It’s a great place to add a description of the gallery displayed in this section, and a few more words about your business, your site or what you do. Use a friendly and conversational tone to engage as many users as possible!
STORIES FOR ANOTHER TIME
blog post project two
For this project, I made several different templates for stickers on Adobe Illustrator. My project certainly evolved from what I originally thought it would be but I’m excited with the result. I made several different vinyl cut stickers to see which designs I liked best once they were printed and I ultimately decided on the figure I drew with the text “stories for another time”. I really went out of my comfort zone in exploring this project utilizing equipment that I had never used before. Once I decided on the image I wanted to use, I vectorized it in illustrator. I bought a piece of cast-acrylic and went to the woodshop to laser etch my design into the acrylic. This was a really cool process, I had never seen my work come to life in three dimensions like I did here. After I cut the piece of acrylic with my design, I knew I had/ wanted to take it to another level. My original idea was to cut a box that would allow me to string LED strips inside of it to light up the design. I ended up getting a little more creative with the resources that I had available and instead used a box that was 16” x 16” which gave my piece of acrylic (14” x 14”) a two inch border. In consideration of the text I used to etch on the laser, I wanted to include a personal touch of MY own story. I printed out at least 20 pages of personal lyric or essay writing that I have done on myself. All of this writing is very personal to me and particularly informative to my narrative, my stories. I used modge-podge to solidify the torn up writing on the box in a collage-fashion. Although a lot of the print looks abstract and ripped, the viewer is still able to make out sentences and fragments; something I think speaks true to many of us and how others perceive our stories. While all of us lead such specific, detailed, and subjective lives, the people we surround ourselves with often times only see parts of it. Here are a couple of entries you will see in my piece.
4. I remember laying on his couch, back to belly. “I think I am in love with you”. Well I love you too. And I loved running through the sprinklers in that park at midnight and the way your curly hair looked out of the shower. I loved your stupid hands and the way your muscles wrapped around down your back. I loved your laugh and your terrible style. I loved you because you were smart and nice to animals and didn’t just listen to me, but really heard me. I loved you because my dad loved you and because nothing about my ugliest self mattered to you. I loved you so hard I had a pit in my stomach and I fucking loved you until I didn’t.
13. Does that mean I do not value the life of a flower? Well, surely not as much as I value my own. Their life is over before it even touches my skin for the first time. They’re bred for my disposal, my adornment, my neglect— like dirty dishes thrown into the washer. Maybe I plant them maybe I don’t. How naive it is for me to sit and wonder why all my flowers are dead.
18.Always the “Rise and Shine” with whole wheat toast and Jam-- that and the senior discount. Something poetic about watching the yolk spill out of my over easy eggs in a shitty corner booth. Something poetic about listening to my 85 year old grandfather tell me the secret to 57 years of marriage. Something poetic about about a hometown standing Sunday morning date.
I have a lot of stories for another time, and I wanted to capitalize on that through this project. Inside my DIY shadow box, I installed an LED light to illuminate the papers as well as the cast acrylic. I created a frame for the box using a foam board. I dripped black and hot pink India ink on the backsplash of the box to highlight the cast acrylic a bit more. Overall, I am really happy about how this project turned out.
STORIES FOR ANOTHER TIME
PROCESSING
work in progress
Processing has turned out to be way more fun than I thought it would be. When I first began doing the tutorials, I felt very lost and confused, but once I had a better grasp on what I was doing and how the software worked, I began to have a lot more fun. What I’ve found is that a lot of the successful tutorials that I did in processing were more “happy accidents” than they were intentional ideas I was carrying out. I think it’s cool that a lot of what happens in processing is essentially a DIY version of what happens when you use Photoshop.
Traditionally, my medium is photography in the art world. I played around a lot with imaging on the processing software and found some really interesting ways of collaborating my photography. For my final project in processing, I want to figure out a way to incorporate both imaging distortion as well as a way for viewers to interact with it. I have done some research on the website tutorial options, and I think it would be interesting to include text/type into the processing. Processing is difficult especially for someone like me that is not too familiar with coding, which is why I think this project would be fun to play around with and kind of just allow it to do what it does. I do know that the images I want to use are different graphic and visual art that I have recently created.
Out of the tutorials on the Processing website, I want to use typography, Images and Pixels, Arrays, and interactivity. I’m excited to play around with this software more intermingle it into the other visual art projects that I have been working on.
The photos I've included below are representative of a mood board or rather overall theme I want to go for in the project.
PROCESSING FINAL
Processing was a complicated software for me, but I felt like I learned quite a bit just through messing around on it. In the final image I produced through my code, I experimented with various RGB tints. Since my primary focus in the Arts is photography, I wanted to find a way to incorporate a photograph into my code. I used the same photograph and essentially the same code, only slightly varying the tint RGB numbers. From the top right of the box to the middle to bottom left, my photograph shifts in a gradient grayscale, growing darker and darker as it goes down. Then, the rainbow pattern starts from the bottom left climbing up to the top left (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple). I made a zigzag pattern the goes into the middle. I marked down and saved the RGB codes for each individual varying tint and saved the different photos. Then I aligned the different codes and marked their individual tint code onto each photograph to show the different numbers for each corresponding file. I wanted this to embody different lenses in which we see ourselves, in which we see one another. I like how my final code turned out, I am looking forward to getting to know processing more in the future.
I have always been passionate about using color scales in my work, regardless of what that may look like. Going forward, if I continue to work in processing, I would like to be able to code something that is more interactive with the audience.