Trick or Treat!

Right now, I am sitting behind the glass of my living room door, waiting for two kittens and a princess to approach. It's all so cute, I've decided that...

1) Halloween costumes get to be on the inspiration list this week. It seems irrelevant, I know, but let me remind everyone how obsessed I am with dress up performance. I love the variety that kids (and their parents, and corporate money-grabbers) come up with. A favorite from the last five minutes: a homemade cardboard "paper doll."

*candyhandingout break*

Okay so I know that kids are not graceful, but after this last tiny Superman, I am starting to get concerned with the lit candles inside of my Jack o'lantern.

2) Pumpkin Carving has also been a seasonally-appropriate inspiration this week. In fact, a pumpkin gathered from Yarnik's farm inspired a small stop-motion project on Saturday. Also, it made yummy seeds.

*candyhandingout break*

As for an artist this week, I'm going to go with...

3) Chris Stevens. Though, strictly speaking, he is not an "artist," Stevens grows world-record breaking pumpkins. You can't tell me that the process of growing a 1,810.5 pound fruit is not an art. Also: art made with giant pumpkins (maybe Stevens'?) surfaced on the Google doodle today. Consider this post-project inspiration.

Gotta go tend to the ghouls knocking at the door now - Happy Halloween!

pics with post

left- pyramid head

Halloween:)

1. snow- I love snow, except when I have to go places of course. The things I have seen created from snow are always interesting. Snow men have really come a long way. Paper snow flakes are also fantastic, especially the really delicate/intricate cut outs.

2. pumpkin carving- with it being Halloween, more pictures of pumpkins popped up. Its crazy something as simple as a pumpkin can be transformed so drastically. Its too bad pumpkins don't have much of a shelf life.

3. Costumes- this one ties into my own personal work somewhat. Watching everyone wonder around in their costumes is great. I am always amazed at how creative people get with making their outfits. Last year someone was wearing a "Pyramid Head" costume (character from Silent Hill), it freaked me out so much I would not go near that person the entire night.

Apologies for slacking..

1. Omar Ortiz - It's pretty irrelevant to what I've been working on, but the guy is flatout phenomenal. He's a painter based out of Mexico (I believe), and he does large-scale hyper-surreal type paintings. He is just one of those artists that just kind of gets me jacked up to improve my craft.

2. Old star/sea maps - There's something about the borderline fantasy aspect of them that is just interesting to me. They're kind of a reminder that the knowledge we've gained since then hasn't always been around, and on top of that, the world as we view it could become as archaic as those maps are now.

3. Tattoo art - It is most likely me being in the Halloween spirit, but themes in tattoos such as Dia de Los Muertos motifs and the old school tattoo art has been somewhat inspiring lately. I'd like to say that there's a deeper reason, but honestly, I've just enjoyed the aesthetics of it lately.

snow, videos, alyssa monks.

1. Snow! This is my first inspiration because the first snowfall of the year always brings a beautiful feeling inside me. It brings warm feelings of family love and closeness. It brings reminders that my birthday and Christmas are almost here. These feelings connect to the bugs and family photos I am exploring right now and trigger me to want to dig deeper and find the best way to portray them.

2. Videos! I had forgotten how much I loved video! When I was a senior in high school I would carry around my camera and use the video on it to shoot 30 second clips of my life. I carried it everywhere with me and filmed everything. I created a movie using some of them. I have been inspired again after being forced to do these stop-animation films. I'm not sure how long this inspiration will last but right now I am very excited about it!

3. Alyssa Monks http://alyssamonks.com/portshow.asp?portfolioid={9C2EB4DA-44B9-4297-99EA-360A00216893} is my artist for this week because of her ability to create realism and abstraction together. I am really drawn to her older work because of the experimentation with the angles she takes her photographs from. There are many sexual innuendos in her work too, which draws me to them as well.

Bowling alleys, elementary school, and Kathe Kollwitz

1. Bowling Alleys!

Once again the Elk's lodge forces its influence upon my life. I spend more hours a week there than in class, so it's no wonder I have this annoying obsession. So there is a bowling alley in the basement. Six lanes, post WWII automatic pin setter machines, oh and you have to keep score by hand. The bowling alley is my own personal bar. I practically run it. No one likes to work down there or even go into the place as it's in the basement and I think it scares people. But I love it. The day I saw the alleys at the Elk's I vowed to make them mine. And here I am. Working in the bowling alley has given me a bizarre set of absolutely useless skills as far as the real world is concerned. I know how to oil the lanes by hand, clean the lanes, perform general maintenance on the machines and fix most minor break downs. All this out of necessity. The machines are old. They are like my six finicky children. Like the printing presses, they must be loved and caressed just right so that they perform as they should.

Anyway, there are plenty of visually interesting things about the alleys: the way they move, the sounds they make, the simple operations all working together in these complicated machines.

Oh, and although I can fix an AMF automatic pinsetter manufactured nearly half a century ago, I can barely bowl over 100. Priorities I guess.

2. Elementary School

Recently I have been completing my EDUC 242 classroom observations at Horace Mann elementary school. It is less than a block from my apartment and is so super fun. Although I hate waking up in the morning to go to school, I have not had a bad day at school yet. Elementary students are totally hilarious. They are always excited and ready to go. It really goes to show you that no matter how many college classes you take, the real learning happens when you are standing in front of the classroom. There are so many layers to teaching which all need to work together in order to be effective. Anyway, elementary school is great because you can act totally silly and the kids don't care. They love you for being silly and excited, and they pick up on your excitement. Although I am sick and tired of jumping through the flaming hoops of the education dept here at IUP, I have never been more excited to have my own classroom and my own gaggle of children to educate. Really, it's gonna be worth all the crap (at least I think so).

3. Kathe Kollwitz

Did someone already use her for the blog? Did I? Eh, I can't remember. Kathe Kollwitz is one of my total fav's. I love the emotion and darkness in her prints, drawings and sculpture. The moodiness is as striking as the contrast of dark and light. Her work depicts a strong social consciousness, focusing mainly on mother/child, rebellion, death, and injustice. Her beliefs were so radical for the time that her home was bombed in WWII. Additionally relevant to the tone of her work, Kollwitz lost her son in WWI and her grandson in WWII. Not surprisingly, these traumas contributed to her political consciousness and the darkness of her work. All in all Kollwitz is one fine example of a strong, socially conscious woman making her voice known in the art world.

Childhood cartoons

I forgot that as a child I used to watch massive amounts of cartoons. The realization came to me as I was looking through some of these illustrations online. I was immediately overjoyed at the discovery, and it triggered a memory of my childhood addictions.

I was initially raised with Looney Tunes, I have a memory of waiting until 8PM certain nights of the week to watch it. I had a tendency to gravitate toward the stranger cartoons, even at a young age. I could go through the entire list, but it would be a partial waste of time in my opinion. So I'll go through some of the highlights.

At some point in my childhood I watched a ton of Ren and Stimpy. It surprises me as an adult to see certain episodes of this show, as I often marvel at how they managed to get some of the content on television at that time (what was that, fifteen, maybe 20 years ago?). I found the detailed stills hilarious. I was engrossed and horrified at the strangeness of the scenarios the two characters found themselves in (ex: "Marooned" was a good one, I felt like I was suffocating as I watched it). Many of these cartoons shaped what I consider the darker side of my sense of humor. And my vivid, mostly unhealthy, imagination probably stems from this. Unfortunately, the episodes got so gross that I eventually found myself nauseas as I was watching them. Kudos on pushing the envelope, though.

In my teenage years I moved and stumbled upon Cartoon Network. Granted, this was eleven years ago, so the cartoons were a bit different. But I found a great deal of joy from shows such as Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. There are probably others, but none come to mind right now.

That being said, here are the visual inspirations for me in a nutshell. Ren and Stimpy and Courage the Cowardly Dog's uses of background. I am influenced indefinitely by the character development of Courage the Cowardly Dog, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (specifically the imaginative side of the different characters and their personalities). The flatness of The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory is turning into a definite influence in terms of screen printing.

And while I'm on the subject of screen printing, here's a few more links:

Scott Benson: who I've mentioned before. I have this print specifically hanging in my home.

Papertrail Prints

..probably a few others, which I will post as I find. Oh, and another interesting link on Iso50's website:

Design, design, design. The St. Vincent poster is my favorite. Beautiful.

To Judge or Not to Judge

1. I believe the object of a noose is a metaphor for judgement. I want to use the idea of a noose to involve the viewer in my art. The viewer gets to decide if the object placed within the noose is guilty of not guilty. For my purposes I will use objects I believe need to be re-judged. I believe advertisements can be unnecessary, and therefore, there needs to be more censoring. I have lately been hanging objects such as Wendy's cups to decide if their packaging advertisements are unnecessary. An overkill. We know when we go to Wendy's we are buying their product, so why do they need to advertise to their own customers? You be the judge.

2. Lately the subject of art being to literal has come up in my classes. I have been really thinking about how to make sure my work is not too literal. Therefore, in my hanging drawings, I only draw the rope on the paper because this object is supposed to be the first thing the viewer sees and tries to understand. Then, using embossing, I will imprint the object into the rope that is meant to be judged. Because the object is not drawn on the paper, it allows the string to have more purpose than the advertisements on the objects. I believe this is a way to degrade the advertisements on the packaging in a very, un-literal way. The ads on the objects are practically invisible, and therefore call for a judgement of their purpose. And the point of these works is to judge if the advertisements are guilty or not guilty of being overkill for the customers.

3. Scale. I have made the judgement drawings/embossing very small. Smaller than the normal size of the objects. This is another way to degrade the objects. They are not large and so they are not easily seen. And the point of advertisements is to get your attention. I would like to pair these judgement drawings with drawings/embossing of objects that I believe fulfill their purpose without overexposing us to advertisements. These would have the objects drawn on a large scale because I am encouraging objects to fulfill their purpose. I may emboss a pedestal under the objects. I have not decided yet. It may be too literal.

Paper, paper and more paper!

Don't worry guys, it's just the title of this particular post. I'm not trying to use that as my three influences.

1. Papermaking

So this big piece I'm working on is finally starting to take shape, still in parts but I'm getting a sense of it now. The papermaking process, especially in the scale and amount that I'm doing takes some time, but I think it's gonna be cool. I love making it because the process is so simple and clean, but to do it well and get it to work, you've got to pay attention to what's happening to each sheet you make. I just dyed a big bunch of pulp in tea this week and it came out a sweet color. I also love it because there is no adhesive, the recycled paper becomes pulp and is then pressed together in a new arrangement. The fibers kind of fuse to themselves. If anyone's intersted, maybe I could do a demo for class. Let me know!

2. The Buddhist Monks at IUP!

Buddhism is still influencing my work, but it's becoming less literal. I think this is a good thing because it gives me more to work with.

I went today and yesterday to see the sand mandala that they are working on in the HUB and it's awesome. Definitely check it out if you had a chance. While I was watching them, I was thinking about how my work is beginning to show references to Catholicism and Buddhism, particularly the aforementioned piece. It's cool because I am Catholic, but there are fundamental aspect of Buddhism specifically that I feel more attached to. Ah, identity issues.

3. Reflection on life and death

Sounds so serious, but this was a big part of my life this week, and it has become not an influence for my work, but rather an influence to the way I view my practice.

As was mentioned in an earlier post, it does become easy to take ourselves and our work maybe too seriously. It makes sense why it happens...we spend so much time putting ourselves into this that we want it to be taken seriously. But maybe we lose some of our ability to make good work when we are so focused on making it good. I know I constantly try to fight that off.

STOP MOTION ANIMATIONS- just to loo at :)

http://http://www.thedesignwork.com/18-stop-motion-animation-video-ideas/

...

1)Surprises. yesterday i sat on a bedroom floor,my brothers old room.i reached on the ground to pick something up,it was a maggot. Horrors!I noticed i was surrounded by maggots, hundreds of them crawling in the carpet.

2)otto dix, i enjoy all his work,but i like the drawings and prints the best, i like black and white art. I seen a goodbit of his prints he made during the war whenever there was the german expressionist show at moma.

3)These ants on my floor in my apartment. They've collected all the little round sugar sweeties leftover from the cupcakes lastweek,and carried them all into one pile. now i bet if i strategically laid out the sweeties and crumbs,colors cordinated i could film them and have some sort of video.