From the Start

   Art is always a new experience. You could be an artist for your whole life time but you would always end up starting back at the beginning. You would always be using different techniques, different styles, and different materials. Your ideas would be new and fresh each time you start a new project. I've taken an art class before in school but comparing it to this year, everything changed. Each new project required a different mindset. The bike drawings were completely different from sculpting. The candy jar project was a world away from the collages. Nothing was the same. That is what made my art experience this year so much fun. I always got to try new things and learn different techniques. Although I know I'm not the next Michael Angelo, I still had a really great time making the art that I have made. I started with little confidence but throughout the year I realized this isn't math. There are no right or wrong answers. Everybody's creation is different and everyone has there own preferences. I've learned many things related to art this year such as shading, mixing colors, sculpting, and many more. The most important thing I learned this year is to be patient. I learned that being frustrated while drawing or sculpting or just making art in general is common. I'm sure I'm not alone. Just by looking at the other students around the room I could tell they were frustrated also. While being frustrated occurs often, I learned that I shouldn't let it stop me from making art. It taught me how being patient is what makes art that much more enjoyable. Overall, I'm proud of what I learned. It definitely wasn't easy at times but it was worth it in the end. Hopefully in the future, I can create even more experiences like the ones I have created this year.

Locked Away

Coming towards the end of the school year, the art class' assignment was to make a time capsule. We started out with a plain, white, identical boxes and it was our job to make them our own. 

Throughout the year we added different things to each of our boxes and towards the end we were given a list of things to try and find and put inside. Sounds easy enough, right? Not so much. Trying to find things that I wanted to include within my time capsule was challenging. It wasn't challenging in a bad way, but it required some thought. For me, it was hard to find something important enough to put in there but not important enough to the point that I couldn't part with the object. It was interesting searching through my room and house and finding old things that I never really see on a daily basis. I found old pictures, letters, gifts, and so much more. It was really fun. Sometimes you don't realize all of the stuff you have until you actually take the time to sit down and look through it. Most of the time, half of it is junk. I found that my room itself was almost like a time capsule itself. Who knows how long those letters have been crammed in the back of my desk? By transferring those things from my room into my time capsule, it makes me wonder how I will feel when I open the time capsule up again in the future. Will I smile like I did when I found those pictures? Will my memories be the same as they were when I read those letters the other day? That's the fun part. It is also the part I cannot wait to find out in the future.

Stories to Sculptures

    Have you ever been completely fascinated by something? That no matter how many times you see it, you still cannot look away from it? I know the feeling. For as long as I remember, my family and I have been fascinated by rain storms. Not the rain that you can barely even see, but that thundering, booming, lightning-flashing thunderstorm that you can feel throughout your whole body.

    As soon as we see the dark clouds in the sky, my family and I rush towards the windows. Then comes the thunder and with thunder comes lightning. I know they say to never stand by the window when there is lightning outside but I think that my family would rather risk their lives for the chance to watch the thunderstorm take place outside than to not be able to see anything at all. 

     What fascinates us? The easier question would be what doesn't fascinate us? Outside, you can slowly see the black and grey clouds rolling in. In reality, there is not much else you can see. All true forms start to become blobs of color that you can just make out through the pouring rain. Every once and a while, the "blobs" of color are illuminated by the flash of lightning above them. It's not only what we can see that amazes us but it's what we feel. It's like there is a static in the air. A thickness in a way. You can even smell the rain before it comes. You can hear the sound of the raindrops crashing into the ground. It's like its own soundtrack. Bring all of those factors together, and my family and I go crazy! 

    I always wonder what we look like from outside. Probably insane. But at that point, we don't care how we look. We are too busy squashing our faces against the glass, waiting for the next storm to come.

From Fortune Cookies to Art!

Everybody always enjoys seeing what their fortunes are whether they believe them or not. And each fortune can have a different meaning to everyone. I really enjoyed looking deeper into the fortune cookies I received in class and turning it into art. With that said, it was still extremely hard. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am not talented with collages. They are against me. But I did my best with what I had.

All of my fortunes had the same message to them in a way. They all had the idea of being patient, and calm, and then you will succeed. But how was I supposed to change that message into art? So instead of trying to work with that exact message, I went with the idea of fortune cookies in general. I decided to write down each of the fortunes on the paper, in cursive of course, and slowly bury them, or try to make them hidden. I attempted to give the message that fortunes are always hazy, and that you have to be patient in order to understand them. And that there are always different paths to take although they aren't always clear. Overall it was challenging, but as always, fun!

ART x 3

The 'Art x 3' project was definitely one of the hardest projects. It really proved that everyone had their own style. Collages have always been hard for me. I personally like making art from scratch rather than putting together things that already exist in order to make new art. What made this project even harder was the fact that we had to give our page that we worked on each day away multiple times. It was hard because you would receive a new page, and maybe it wasn't all that bad, but it always ended up being not your style. Or maybe it wasn't giving off the same message as you were trying to portray. It was definitely a rough experience.

  Overall, finishing with something that wasn't completely mine was fun. It had pieces that I contributed but it wouldn't have gotten there without the other people who worked on it's help. The lesson I learned would be that everybody has their own style. And they think their own way. Because although we had the same topic, everyone had a different message.

Printing Pop Art

I can easily say that the 'pop print/ pop art' project was one of my favorites. In the beginning, choosing what I wanted to draw was the hardest part. First, I was thinking what object would be the coolest to draw and turn into a stamp. But then, as I started noticing what everyone else was choosing, I just decided to choose an object nobody was choosing. That turned out to be the Extra Gum container. Turning it into a stamp was fairly simple and making the designs in the stamp was fun. Overall, the stamping was the most fun part of course. I really liked how you could stamp the same thing over and over again, yet, you made it different each time by changing the color/design. I was surprised at the outcome because in the beginning, I honestly thought it would be boring and repetitive but it turned out to create a fun, "poppy" piece of art!

Inside a Collection

A collection can explain a lot about a person. Not only is it just a gathering of objects but it is a story in a way. It's as if each little piece is a page in one big book. A collection can show a person's interests, hobbies, favorite colors, etc. It can go on to explain happy memories or even go on to show their whole life.

                                               Collection: Code Blue

In class, we have been starting our own little school collection of blue things from each of our lives. The 'stuff' ranged from simple things like cleaning supplies and school supplies to some more personal things. Even though many students probably went home to grab the first two blue, unimportant things that they saw, I think that this collection still somewhat says things about our class. Now maybe we don't necessarily love using cleaning supplies or like reading biology textbooks but there are still objects in there that depict our lifestyle. For example, the make-up and nail polish. Our generation, mostly girls in this generation, are focused on beauty and the idea of "perfect". The fact that their are many nail polishes, make-up containers, and even perfume show that. Also the award, that itself could show the popular sports/ interests of our time. I also noticed some pieces of clothing/ accessories in the collection. When looking at them, in a way they can show the style of this time period. Overall, a collection is just more than stuff. If you look past the view as a whole and look at each individual piece, it is so much more than just a few things piled onto each other. Many famous artists use collections in their art. They use it to show a theme, or a story in a way. A major artist for collections is Portia Munson (as mentioned in the last blog post). She has many collections, with many themes, each showing different stories or giving off a different mood. Relating to our collection, she has a 'blue' collection also!

It's crazy how you can take a bunch of things that might look odd standing alone and put them together to make art! It's as simple as that! When you compare Munson's work to our own work, you can tell that she has more 'things' in her collection but it doesn't make it any more important or special. Each collection is its own and shares a different story.