Soon.

The busiest part of my semester will soon be over, which means that I will be able to post my work from the semester and begin writing actual blogs again. Excited!

In the meantime . . . enjoy these photos posted on a nifty french blog"There's a Feeling I Get When I Look to the West"

http://grizzlygirl.wordpress.com/2009/08/

Photorealistic Sculptures

http://theswedishbed.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/giant-photorealistic-sculpture/

I have an idea, involving this style of sculpture. I don't know if I have the means to do it, but I'm researching it anyways.
So cool.

Update:
I probably will not be making a super realistic sculpture due to limited funds and resources. I'll continue making plaster molds like the one I experimented with this semester. Instead of using plaster to make the mold, I plan on using silicone this time and bypassing the process of chiseling out my final piece. I will then use plaster as my casting material after making the silicone mold. I'm excited to try this out over the summer :) I have so many ideas!

Links:

http://www.hirstarts.com/moldmake/moldmaking.html (main site that I am referencing for these sculptures)

http://www.ehow.com/how_5635830_make-fiberglass-sculptures.html

http://nga.gov.au/mueck/director.cfm

Supplies:
Silicone Mold (OOMOO 30 Silicone Rubber Link: http://www.smooth-on.com/Silicone-Rubber-an/c2_1113_1136/index.html?catdepth=1 (www.smooth-on.com.)

Moldmaking & Casting Pourable Starter Kit

Paintbrush

Legos (to build custom boxes, I plan on making small scale clay models so this should be fine)

Foam Core Board (as support for mold while casting plaster)

Straps (to hold mold together while casting)

Instamold (used during 2 part silicone mold making process to create 2 halves)

Large Plastic containers and stirrers (to mix plaster and silicone molding and instamold)

Mask (to protect me from dangerous fumes!)

Clay (to make the figure- What would be the best modeling clay to use for making a mold? I'm not sure . . . little help here!)

Pottery tools (to form the figure)



Talcum powder (helps remove air bubbles during casting process)

Carving tools and sandpaper (to refine plaster mold if I need to)

Mold releasing agent (so silicone mold halves don't stick to each other . . . we wouldn't want that now would we?) link: http://www.smooth-on.com/Ease-Release%3D-20/c1226/index.html?catdepth=1)

*Instead of plaster- I may wind up using "Aqua Clear" from ArtMolds. I could make a translucent model with this casting materal. They look SO COOL. link: http://www.artmolds.biz/product_detail.asp?prid=54&sid=32

Link: to buy from Utrect : http://www.utrechtart.com/dsp_view_product_zoom.cfm?item=49923&v=2

It seems pretty involved but I love process, hopefully I can afford everything and it won't be a problem!

fantastic (more eye candy)

http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2010/04/ana-bagayan-ana-bagayan-was-born-in.html

Ana Bagayan
(my favorite is the girl with the butterfly over her mouth- beautiful!)

http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2010/04/terry-strickland-using-human-figure-and.html
Terry Strickland
(paints light and skin beautifully- I love these images. Its my dream to paint like this!)

Nearly done for the semester. Soon I'll have photos of my work to show. I can't wait!

In the meantime, I have one more painting to do before the semester is over (pressure is on)

My inspirations for this last one include Frida Kahlo, Helen Frankenthaler, and Francis Bacon.

Biography - Frida Kahlo (A&E DVD Archives)

Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting (New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts)

Francis Bacon: Commitment And Conflict

Tsk tsk tsk . . .

The end of the semester is drawing near and I am busier than ever. I have plans to post an essay about the effects of Westernization on Contemporary Chinese art, as well as my thoughts behind the painting I exhibited at the SEPCHE conference about a month ago. Soon I'll have my newest paintings and sculptures posted on here to share.
Considering that my final critique for the semester is in a week, I need to get moving on all of these projects . . .

Wish me luck!

As a reward for the end of the semester, I treated myself to two Michael Jackson movies that I've never seen . . .
Michael Jackson: This Is It


Michael Jackson MOONWALKER DVD 2010 NEW (USA FORMAT) English Packaging

I'm not allowed to watch them until after the first week of May. . . it's my reward for surviving this semester lol can't wait!

The Presets - This Boy's In Love

Beautifully shot . . . I love this song, they're like a modern day Depeche Mode.

Nic Rad "PeopleMatter"

Nic Rad's show "PeopleMatter" at Rare Gallery in Chelsea is so in touch with our world today. Rad creates portraits of celebrities, bloggers, and media personalities. Rad,in an interview with PaperMag, discusses how the idea for this exhibit came about:
"The last 18 months I've been thinking of an industry and trying to make a portrait of a period in time. That's journalism. The structure is kind of inverted at the moment and what "free" means is fascinating, between who writes for blogs and gives away their content to generate traffic and who's behind the pay wall. And what that means."
Nic Rad's website: http://www.nic-rad.com/
check out these amazing portraits up close!



Check out Rad's interview with Papermag
http://www.papermag.com/blogs/2010/04/williamsburg-based_artist_nic.php

Dejan Nenadov

I love the use of light, so beautiful. The expressions are captured with such sensitivity. I hope I can do the same in my paintings someday.

Jack Smith

Give up everything.

'To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.'- Jasper Johns





Link: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/J/johnsbio.html


"I said: 'I take it that when you're making art you're often saying to yourself 'It would be interesting to see that."' He answered: 'Or "it would be interesting to do that", which is not the same.'

"Commands to himself to do something often occur in his sketchbook notes. ('Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time.') He is one who has always been driven to do things by working on some surface or another with some tool or object or another and/or some medium or another. ('Take a skull. Cover it with paint. Rub it against canvas. Skull against canvas.') While a famously philosophic artist, whose work was a key point of departure for conceptual art, he is anything but a conceptual artist. Just look at a catalogue list of some of his drawings and see how many different techniques and media and original combinations of them are there. Johns is a maker.

"It may be that focusing on the making diminishes thinking about what one intends the work to mean, leaves the unconscious with room in which to operate, allows meaning to accrue without interference. As Cézanne said: '. . . if I get at all distracted, if my concentration lapses, above all, if I do too much interpreting ... if I start thinking while I'm painting, if I intervene, then crash! bang! the whole damn thing falls apart.'

Jasper Johns: A Retrospective

Banksy film preview.

Wall and Piece



Banksy Locations and Tours: A Collection of Graffiti Locations and Photographs in London, England (PM Press)


Banksy's Bristol: Home Sweet Home

Starting off the day with

some artistic inspiration

Ann Pipper has a strong visual language. I've only seen a few paintings but her use of masks, women, and animals, as well as the actions of the women in her paintings creates a mixture that is both beautiful and disturbing.

Eye Candy Galore

Jose Luis Munoz




Drew Ernst



Csaba Markus



And some really cool drawings of random stuff turned into faces . . . like fire, and tentacles, and bugs ;)
follow this link: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Experiment-III-2010/472503

Mariola Bogacki

Links:
http://www.art-bogacki.de/

http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2010/04/mariola-bogacki-around-1880.html

Artology

http://www.examiner.com/x-37843-Philadelphia-Neighborhoods-Examiner~y2010m3d25-Artology-an-artbiologyecology-summer-day-camp-that-transforms-summer-learning-into-fun

A summer camp in Germantown that mixes art and science. How exciting does that sound?!
I might volunteer and be a part of it.

I like it

I can't believe I'm linking typograpy after watching that two hour Helvetica movie where I wanted to scream, but I really like the look of this.



"Neubau is a condensed geometric display typeface, designed in 2009. The inspiration for this face came from Joost Schmidt lowercase letters developed during 1925-28 in Bauhaus Dessau. Schmidt was one of the proponents of New Typography - a movement advocating the use of only lowercase letters which were constructed strictly geometrically using only ruler and compass.

Neubau family consists of two subfamilies - Neubau Sans and Neubau Serif, each of them in three weights - light, regular and bold."

found this at:
http://www.typographyserved.com/Gallery/Neubau/399132
thanks!

Dali

Oh the interesting things I've read about the two of you today . . .

wonder if they're true.



Salvador and his wife Gala.

An interesting question

was asked of me a few days ago by my painting professor.
I do a lot of my painting by observing images digitally on my laptop. These are images that I take myself and then collage in order to see how I want my finished painting to look. My professor asked me why I paint the image? Why don't I just take what I have assembled and make a nice high quality print out of it? Would what I'm trying to communicate through my paintings still come through in the digital print?
I don't know.

Why do I paint?
I never ask myself that question. I just do. I enjoy the challenge of recreating an image, of reinventing the world. I enjoy the process of getting my hands dirty with paint. I like the control and the lack of control at times.
But what am I trying to convey through my paintings? How it is different from what I'm trying to say with my photography?

Its something that I honestly didn't think about enough and now it's on my mind constantly.
I feel like I need to take my paintings to a level that my prints can't go.
I want to get more texture in the paint, make it more tactile. I want to experiment with over painting and adding things into the paint and onto the paint. Its time to stop playing it safe and experiment. Is this what my teacher meant when she asked me this question? I don't know.
I have constant fears that I'm not doing what ever I'm doing in the "right" way. Maybe there is no "right" way, maybe in life, there is only "my" way.

Lets see where this train of thought takes my painting.

after all, "Creativity takes courage."