In this particular assignment I wanted to avoid the cliches related to my personal history. I wanted to compose and create sometime new and with a narrative edge. What I mean by this is that my personal history has always been about moving. When I was a small child I moved between the US and Mexico many times. More recently, in my adult life I’ve chosen to move back to the US permanently, but find myself, as I always have, balancing two senses of identity. On one hand I have a very american culture and on the other a very Mexican one. So it would have been easy to make this piece about color and place flags, icons, or symbols of each country. Instead of that, I chose to go for a more minimalistic style and monochromatic. This allowed me to empathize my journey, and not the jump from a country or culture. I also chose to place quotes on two different pieces of paper as a way to hyperlink to two different cultures. Octavio Paz inhabits a very Mexican side of me, and he also wrote a lot about the identity of the Mexican in the US. Agatha Christie inhabited the other piece of paper, even though she is a 20th Century English novelist. I wanted to show that I am spread apart between two cultures and their languages. I often think more in Spanish, even when immersed in American life. Thus, placing a quote in English and writing in Spanish was a way for me to represent that.
The reason I chose ink is because I believe it’s a medium that is not very forgiving. Once one places it on the paper there is no going back. Any mistakes or improvisations get recorded whether you intended for them or not. Life is much the same way and I found it only appropriate to use ink to show that. In my process I used a pen with thick ink and created 6 different shades of ink with water solutions. Then with a napkin, I dampened it and applied the shades that I wanted on the page to create value. I also used markers to create shadows and shade in my body. The model for my body was a combination between a picture of myself and a reflection in the mirror of certain details. It proved very challenging to show the details using ink, and many a times I opted for a more minimalist style in order to avoid cluttering the ink. The steps all stem from a place of darkness. That is my birth and in from t of my is darkness - the future. Our minds can only grasp that we live moment by moment and also what we remember. Every step I drew is a moment and a memory, individual and unique from each other. In this assessment I wanted to challenge myself using media I’m not very comfortable with and to make decisions that support the theme and style of my artwork. 

References: http://www.centerpieceadvisory.com/press/artron-interview-on-contemporary-ink-painting-
topic_201307/
http://en.cafa.com.cn/interview-with-liu-jinan-contemporary-ink-painting-modern-art-of-chinese- character.html
http://www.inkandben.com/blog/appropriatism-vs-minimalism http://arts.umich.edu/ink/tag/minimalism/
http://www.risecollaborative.com/uncategorized/new-take-minimalism-chatting-alyssa-ink- alyssa/ 

Mindful Meditation

Drawing the figure has always been my subject of choice, and because of this I have explored with drawing self portraits many different times. I usually go in the direction of making pieces that are more emotional and tapping into my personal life, or ones that are outrageous such as drawing myself as a mermaid or other fairytale creatures. Instead, I wanted to explore another side of me this time. Not the things that trouble me, and no the things that distract me. I wanted to explore the things in life that keep me grounded and where I come from. Growing up on a small remote island in Washington State, I was practically born and raised immersed in nature. Because of this, my interests and comfortability tends to gravitate towards the natural environment. My childhood home was in the middle of a forest, and I grew up playing in the woods, getting dirty, building stick forts, playing in tree houses, walking on the beach every day and looking out at the evergreen trees and endless greenery that surrounded me in my home town. 

I drew my self in a cross legged seated position not only to challenge myself with a more complex seated position, but because sitting cross legged is widely known as a meditative position. Meditation is something that I hold near and dear to my heart because it's something that keeps me grounded, and nearly cured my anxiety disorder. Growing up I struggled with anxiety on and off and as soon as I began practicing meditation for an extended period of time I noticed drastic improvements in my mental state. The background of the piece is green, which is associated with health and wellness. I am a very spiritual person, and one way of meditative therapy is through the use of color. Every color has it’s own specific meaning, and each one is associated with a different chakra. Green is the verdant color of nature, health, wellness, environment, renewal and good luck. If you want to meditate for overall healing, they say to meditate with green, or with the fourth chakra. 

In my hand I am holding a necklace that has a pendent in the shape of the island I grew up on called Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. I have it held over my heart because of the impact growing up in such a tight knit community had on me throughout my whole life. Moving to California and starting my life here has made me appreciate it all the more. 

Body and Mind

 For my drawing assignment, I attempted to use my body to represent my inner thoughts – where my mind is at this point in time. I wanted to combine conflicting ideas – chaos and serenity, completeness and incompleteness – within one piece. The goal was to create a sort of imbalance that may appear to be symmetrical and uniform at first glance. These conflicting forms of imagery reflect how I feel about myself at the moment – in one sense very put together and on the right track, but all the while bursting with ideas, constantly confused and at times unmotivated.

            I drew myself in a serene pose to reflect my outward view of myself. I am good at hiding my emotions and often show the world a content and fairly ordinary version of myself. Most of my body shows a range of values while a couple areas (my face and hands) are very flat and two dimensional, with hard lines. This shift in style within the figure is meant to show incompleteness. My head is the source of my creative spirit and my hands are the way I communicate these ideas through art and writing. Being so young, and in the transitional stage between college and the real world, while I enjoy creating work, nothing I create lately ever seems to feel complete. It is as if I am missing certain bits of knowledge or enlightenment that I have not received yet. The idea is that as I grow and learn, those vital areas of myself will become filled in overtime as well as the rest of me.

            I also drew shapes and designs pouring out of my ears and spilling around me. These images represent my mind and the way I think. On the left I have varying patterns and doodles, symbolizing the chaotic cloud of ideas in my head. They represent my creativity, but also the clutter of my mind. These doodles all deviate from typical strict patterns. I sought to create a sense of randomness within these designs to emulate the natural flow of imagination. The dark cloud on the right is representative of both the dark side of my mind (the thoughts I try to hide) as well as the feelings of laziness and lack of inspiration that sometimes creeps in at my worst moments. These two sides of me are constantly at odds, and the way I have represented them is as if they are exploding out of my brain and running wild. The overall theme of the piece is the conflict of the opposing forces I feel inside.

            All in all, the piece aims to show both the differences between my inward and outward self, as well as the differences between the types of feelings and thoughts that are part of my inward self. With this assignment I was able to work with value and line drawing, as well as pattern and design. It was a challenge to create a piece that shows my inner self, but through creating it, I was able to ask myself questions that may help me to understand more of who I am and where I am going.

Links:

http://www.kitchensisters.org/girlstories/the-series/the-hidden-world-of-shadi-ghadirian/

https://www.zentangle.com/

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/09/new-black-and-white-surrealist-self-portraits-by-noell-oszvald/

http://www.warhol.org/andy_work.aspx?id=684

http://www.iep.utm.edu/self-con/

Photos:

The Twins

             For my identity assignment I decided to explore one of the most important and defining aspects of my identity, being a twin. My sister, Amber, and I are identical twins, meaning if you don’t know us very well or see us at a distance we could be confused as being each other. So, this is what I wanted to focus on for my first project. The drawing is approximately 30in by 42in and drawn using charcoal. The purpose of making it this size is because I wanted the drawing to resemble a standard printed photograph. I also completed my drawing using charcoal in order to establish a sense of nostalgia. In the center of my paper I drew a picture of both my sister and me sitting next to each other as toddlers around the age of three or four. We are wearing the same outfits as well as matching hats. The faces, however, are missing and in the place of each face I wrote the text “I’m not Amber” and “I’m not Autumn”. The reason I drew us as toddlers is because I wanted to make a point about how my sister and I have always been paired together and seen as one person rather than as individuals. Of course, we wore the same clothes and did almost everything together, which perhaps added to the confusion. The remainder of the paper is completely blank, bringing attention and focus to the center. Not only were we usually  grouped as one person since we were babies, we were also mixed up and called by the wrong name, virtually causing us to assume each other’s identity’s as well as our own. For instance, if I hear the name Amber I automatically turn and look to see who is calling me and then realize that that’s not actually my name. Also, another reflex reaction that both my sister and I have developed is that when we are called by each other’s name, me as Amber and her as Autumn, we automatically respond and say “I’m not Amber” or “I’m not Autumn”, which is why I wrote these words on top of our faces rather than drawing in our faces. We were losing our individual identities because people did not really try to tell us apart. They saw two people who looked similar and took a fifty/fifty guess, or they just called us “the Twins”. Being a twin is probably the most important and impactful part of my life, but it also makes it difficult because of the way my sister and I were considered as one while we were growing up. It has made it difficult for us to develop our own identities and have people see us as individuals. This was a personal project for me that gave me an opportunity to explore myself and my sister as being twins.

 

 

 

http://www.juliecockburn.com/

http://www.heikomueller.de/

http://blog.nathaliegraafland.com/2013/12/18/carole-bremauds-faceless-portraits/

http://www.twins.org.au/twins-and-twin-families/about-twins/

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/01/twins/miller-textfacts-and-figures

Dancing

This piece was inspired by an existential panic attack.

I don’t believe in souls in the traditional sense. I grew up Catholic, so “eternal life” was something that was always heavily talked about; though our body was temporary, or soul was supposed to be eternal. However, I knew from psychology that a large amount of our mind was physical; emotions were a result of chemicals in the brain, talents and personality traits could oftentimes be explained by genetic makeup, intelligence was dictated by the development of brain matter. The soul was described to me as an “essence”—which, in my opinion, was an indirect way of saying: “we haven’t the slightest clue what it is, but we think it’s there because it feels right.” In my early teen years, I became intrigued with the idea that there was a rational explanation for eternal life, and therefore, a more concrete description of the soul.

Two things—according to science—are supposed to be “eternal”: energy and mass. Energy, according to the law of the conservation of energy, cannot be created nor destroyed and mass, according to the law of the conservation of mass, will remain constant over the course of a reaction.

Both of these laws can be evidenced in death. When an animal dies, the ground where that animal died takes the nutrients from its body, and grows plants in its place. As the animal’s body decays, the plants grow larger. There is a transfer of the mass. Similarly, the energy that powered that animal is transferred through the passing on of the nutrients.

Since the physical body is a mass, the more intangible “essence” that brings that mass to life (energy) is the soul.

I was always perfectly happy with this definition. But, I’ve recently fallen—pardon the cliché—head over heels in love.

So, after fretting about whether or not our energy would power neighboring stars or wolves of the same pack; I was calmed by both the boo, and by the other boo (Aristotle.) According to the philosopher, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” So since we are of the same soul, the same energy, we are bound to be alive together.

Since we are the same soul, I wanted my piece to include physical depictions of both of us. Both of our bodies are included in the piece, and they are seamless with the living, breathing world around us. We are mountains, we are trees, we are surrounded by fog. These are places that we have been together. We are all that has provided us with refuge and care, and we will, eventually be reunited with the earth.

All of this is framed by poetry written by my love. Since our souls cannot take our minds along once we have left our current bodies, they act as a representation of our physical selves. The words, the descriptions, are relative to our corporeal selves. They are the frame-work for our current relationship; abstract thoughts colliding together, creating explosions while bonding our energy together.

Nicolas Jolly

Nicolas Jolly

Alexi K

Haejin Lee

Haejin Lee

Brooks Shane Salzwedel

Alice Bloomfield

Unknown

Henrietta Harris

Unknown

Alexi K

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzYZjA3_7FE

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.chapman.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b1fd2ec0-b90c-42ba-ba45-13738c3dfeb4%40sessionmgr115&vid=0&hid=103

http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-conservation-of-mass-17395478

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/tuckerman/adv.chem/lectures/lecture_2/node4.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rJoB7y6Ncs

Self and Debris

Caitlin Albritton

Assignment #1 Self as Subject

            I really struggled with the assignment initially. I tend to be averse to making art about myself. In part because I find there are many more topics warranting discussion, but also because I was unwilling to draw my own body. I am much more drawn to drawing nude bodies than clothed bodies, because there is so much more clarity in the muscles and bone when they are seen only through the skin. However I am not yet ready to draw my own naked body, and much less ready to then present it. I had a few ideas for how to avoid this. One idea I had was to draw my face on a much older or much younger version of myself, thus using a different body as reference. I also tried to find a position I could hold myself in that would both hide my intimate parts and be dynamic and engaging, while also being a pose I could hold and draw at the same time. This proved to be impossible, or at least, unsatisfying. I decided to do a clothed, sitting pose, which ended up being challenging enough to maintain and draw simultaneously.

            I viewed some photographs by Francesca Woodman, desperately seeking inspiration. I found similarities in her work to my own photography, and looked through some of my old images. I revisited old photographs I had long ago loved and forgotten. What has been and remains to be my favorite subject to photograph are abandoned places, and broken things. There was one image I had taken at my favorite location years ago that featured a woman sitting with a queenly posture in a grungy room at sunset when all the shadows were long and dark. I admired the attitude displayed in behaving so commanding and dynamic amidst shattered glass, faded graffiti and stained particleboard.  I respect the kind of people who can be confident and strong even when their lives are in shambles, and decided to honor that in this piece. It is also a nod to one of my interests that brought me to pursuing art in the first place, which is a narrative in itself.

            In the drawing, I am sitting sideways in a round chair, with my legs hanging over the side. I am relaxed and casual, open but confident, suggesting that I am at ease in my otherwise unsettling surroundings. The background is bleak and empty, but busy with dirty details. Cracks, stains, decay and neglect surround me in a tight, stagnant room. While I have few complaints with the way the figure turned out, I am not so happy with the background. I was hoping to keep the focus at the center of the page, and have the background fade back into the edges. I was unsuccessful with this, and have too much contrast and business that I believe distract from the subject. If I were to do it again, I would keep the background much more simple, and lighter.

            Considering how frustrating I found the entire process, from concept and planning to execution, I like the end product more than I expected. I was also glad I got to use photos I took as reference photos. I do this whenever I can, as it makes the final image seem more “mine.” I was also happy to put use to old photographs that hadn’t been viewed in months. Perhaps it won’t be the last time I flip through Lightroom for inspiration.