I went into this project open-minded and skeptical, knowing that I would be challenged to think outside of my comfort zone. After some contemplating, I began to have a strong knowledge of who I was and what I wanted to say through this piece. One thing that I was worried about, however, was how I would be able to help others understand my art and its meaning. I believe that through life, people are quick to judge others and therefore only see and acknowledge the parts in which they want to see. And because of this, the public doesn’t always see everything that may be true about a specific person. Similarly with art, an artist’s entire truth may not be completely uncovered or understood by the beholder. This gave me the fear that people would not correctly comprehend what my message was, but instead only assume what it looked like to them. For this reason, I designed my portrait specifically around a part of me that I wanted others to notice. I used the vibrancy of flowers, red barn wood, and greenery in the background to showcase my love for nature and the outdoors. This is particularly special to me because I have always grown up and lived on a farm and was constantly being exposed to the great adventures that awaited outside. Going along with this, I also thought it was important to keep my actual portrait and face natural. I chose to do this because in reality, this side of me (and my love for nature) is still in relation to the same person that most people know me to be, only that I wanted to emphasize this part of me that many don’t realize. Akin with the mindset that I just mentioned, many artists also do the same. I don’t believe that self portraits are specifically created to change the perception of the public, but instead are made to only enhance a part of the artist in which the creator is wanting others to see. Many artists want to create portrait to to just slightly tweak, not completely change, the assumption of others. Relating to this, creating a self portrait does in fact often mean that the artist is trying to influence the way in which they are perceived. Some artists may choose to only bring out a smaller, more specific trait or story of theirs, whereas others have the intention of drastically changing the opinions and viewpoints of the public. In closing, self portraits can be very beneficial to create. They can alter mindsets and affect the thoughts of others. Self portraits can also show an artist’s true traits and identities, which is perhaps the main reason as to why artists choose to make so many self portraits. And while creating my own identity collage, I tried to follow these same principles. I wanted to constitute a piece that would express myself, my thoughts, and my identity as an artist.
The Real Anatomy of Technology
The next piece, The Real Anatomy of Technology, really challenged me to incorporate different techniques in my art. We were told to first try and find a way to combine a piece of technology with a piece of anatomy. At first, I really had a hard time finding what story I wanted to tell through this piece. After some thinking, however, I wanted to take this project to more of a medical side of technology and show its impacts. I began to think about just how much technology has truly improved the medical field and the way in which medical professionals use technology in order to enhance their research and data. Due to this, I chose to take the lungs and put their sculpture into a tablet. If you look closely, you can see that one of the lungs is closed off while the other is open, exposing everything that the lungs compose. This represents a study that a medical professional may be working on, trying to see and understand through technology what the patient’s anatomical situation may be. Around the tablet, there are many medical tools that can be used for surgeries or work on the lungs. One thing that I have included, for example, is an inhaler, representing the relevance to the lungs in a medical setting. Technology plays a huge role in our lives and in our futures. While we may not know exactly what the future of technology holds, we all can assume that it will only continue to advance and improve. While doing my interview, for example, the person that I talked to mentioned the fact that he always assumed that the world would advance through technology, yet he never knew the true extent of how extravagant some inventions would be. Similar to my project, we can also guess that technology in the medical field will progress as well, opening a plethora of new inventions and ways to understand a patient’s body and their medical case as well. If technology were to suddenly disappear, however, many of us (including medical professionals for instance) would not know what to do in many situations. Many jobs rely on technology in order for their business to run properly. If all of that was taken away from them, it would be nearly impossible to adjust within a short time period. It would most likely take a long time for anyone to get used to not have technology. Like this, it was also a similar effect when some of the first pieces of technology came out. One person that I interviewed about technology recalled that it took a long time to get used to having technology or even to first use technology. The internet, for instance, had a hard time becoming popular in an area like we live in now when it was first invented because of the location. While the invention sparked all over in large cities, smaller and less developed areas across the world were some of the last to truly receive and utilize the internet, along with many other pieces of technology. One thing that was mentioned during my interview that stuck with me was when my dad stated that people didn’t know any better so technology didn’t even really matter: it was never something that they thought thought about during the time. He also made the point that everyone at the time knew how to do things without technology. Using a map, for instance, was a skill that almost the entire generation knew how to do. Today, however, everyone relies on the maps on their phone to get them to places. Being raised in a time when technology was sparse strongly affects the way in which that generation uses technology present day. However, in our time, technology will likely be “embedded” into us; it will always be a part of our generation due to the time in which we were raised.
Project 3: The Value of Words I started this project open-minded, as I had no clue what I was going to do in order to show the theme of this project. I thought of what I wanted others to see through my art and therefore, I floated around many ideas. After a plethora of considerations, I knew that I wanted to showcase my biggest passion; dance. I first began by drawing sketches of a dancer as I decided exactly how I was going to approach this piece of art. I determined, after a lot of drawing, that I was going to compose the dancer doing a firebird leap-one of my favorite dance moves. In relation to this, I wanted to portray the hard work, athleticism, and artistry that dancers contain. Therefore, I wrote words such as, “power,” “dynamic,” “strength,” “flexibility,” “grace,” along with many others, in which all represent the characteristics of dancers. Including words, such as these, on art pieces can greatly challenge the overall perception of the viewers. Similarly, with my Value of Words project, I intended to provide others with a different perspective on what a dancer truly is. Not only are they elegant artists, but they are also athletes, which is why I chose to include the words that I did around and in the dancer. In the background, however, I wanted to include words or phrases that bring out the joy of dancing. For example, I first started with a simple brick background on a street. I then added the phrase “never miss a chance to dance,” along with “why walk though like when you can dance” in order to show that this dancer chose to blissfully leap through the streets rather than just simply walking. While the use of words and phrases on a piece of art can have immense effects, they are also not necessary. Many artists, for instance, choose to leave the interpretation up to the viewer. Other artists, on the other hand, may want the public to perceive their art in a specific way, therefore enforcing the use of certain techniques, such as adding in these types of descriptions. This can also give an entire new purpose to the meaning and message of the artwork, therefore making this type of art to be very beneficial and intriguing.
Project 4: The Repetitive Print This next project, The Repetitive Print, challenged me to create art in a different way. I had never worked with ink and printmaking before, so I was excited, yet hesitant to begin. I started with the idea of creating a piece that represents my home state of Minnesota. It took me a long time to draw the outline of Minnesota, especially since I had to draw the outline backwards so that the image would print correctly. After quite a few hours of drawing, I finally got the outline of Minnesota drawn on my matrix. After that, began the process of cutting the design to create the print format. While I originally thought that this would be difficult, especially due to the detail of Minnesota’s borders, it surprisingly was the easiest part of my art assignment. This is possibly because of the fact that I cut in all one piece and continued to move the tool in a steady motion. When it came to the printing part of the project, however, I was nervous that I would completely ruin the image, smear the ink, or even just print incorrectly. As I practiced printing my outline of Minnesota on scratch paper, I became more comfortable with the ink and also started to understand how to correctly imprint an image. With this in mind, I progressed to printing my image on our final paper and making the six impressions. As I created my prints, I found that on some of the impressions had a cool texture like look on them. These textures actually reminded me of the different weather patterns and seasons that Minnesota has. Because of this, I wanted to connect my backgrounds to this idea. For example, the one print that I placed on a light blue background had a texture that reminded me of snowflakes in the winter. Going along with this, the print of the green background almost looks as if it has a wet or rainy texture to it, which is why I chose green to represent the rain that Minnesota often gets throughout the spring. The red, orange, and yellow background all contain prints that reminded of the leaves within fall. Finally, I put a light pink background on my final impression because it reminded me of the sun glistening in the summer, due to its more “clear” and white texture. Overall, I really enjoyed the project despite some of its challenges. I found it very intriguing to create pieces of art that I have never done or attempted before, as I surprised myself with new techniques to incorporate into my artwork.
Project 5: Art for Awareness I went into this final project with a specific idea in mind, but not knowing how to put it on paper. After a lot of thinking, I finally came up with an idea as to how I wanted to display the issue that I was spreading awareness for. With much debate on climate change and global warming, a significant amount of the population has begun to blame farmers as a main cause of the issue. Because of this, these protesters have tried to convince others to stop buying and consuming farmers’ products. What they don’t think of, however, is the fact that none of us would survive without farmers and their foods in which they produce. Along with this, many farmers are actually helping the environment much more than they are hurting it. Collecting runoff water, for example, is a healthy practice that farmers do to conserve the planet. Similarly, crop rotation is also another thing that a plethora of farmers do in order to conserve the environment for generations to come. These are just a couple of examples out of many. Not to mention, farming plays a significant role on the economy of not only the United States, but of countries across the world. Farming is needed in order to keep the economy running, along with the fact that farmers work extremely hard in order to make this happen by making sure that they keep up with population demand. I chose to create my project on this issue because I come from a family of farmers. Not only does my dad farm, but the generations before him did as well. Like I wrote previously, farmers work hard to conserve the planet for future generations and I have seen this happen right before my eyes whenever I look outside of my house. This is also why I believe that the population should be more aware of this issue and hopefully change it for the better.