Introduction to Art Final

This is Beth and myself at the Bodies Exhibit. It was very cold that day!

This is Beth and I again, but this time, we're watching "Footloose" at the Anderson Theater.

This is me right outside the Fabulous Fox Theater to see "Twilight". I LOVED the Fox!!!

Here I am again at the James C Bonner Lecture Hall for Eve Ensier's "The Vagina Monologues"!

And here is one more of me at the Fox, but this time, I'm with Mr. Anthony, the greeter! He's been doing this job for over two decades!!!! WHOA!

Diorama Drama

My diorama was centered on how women in Islamic nations are treated. I took a box and painted it an oppressing black. I then located a photo of an Islamic man facing away from the camera and transferred it into a negative... sort of a sterile xray. I then super imposed the rules of the High Court of the Islamic State of Afghanistan that I soaked in tea to stain as the years have stained mankind. I also made a burka out of broad cloth and created a stitching of mesh to cover the eyes... the burka then in turn covered the diorama itself. As my classmates passed by, they were encouraged to put the burka on so that they could see what many women see everyday: a trapped life.

Our class was also encouraged to make a list of other dioramas that caught our eye. We were asked to answer the following five questions:

• Which diorama evoked a strong emotion in me (anger, sadness, etc.)?
• It sadden me to think how many potential great thinkers have been aborted, but it also gave me some hope that perhaps the next Hitler was aborted as well.
  


• Which diorama taught me something I did not know?
• It's not that I didn't know anything about pollution, I just never thought to think of the good and the bad, side by side. It's like when your doctor tells you that you're overweight, but it's not until he/she hands you a three pound can of Crisco and explains to you that's what fat weighs that you start to worry about that little pooch upfront..
  


• Which diorama was very creative?
• I thought this was a great piece! I fully support the rights of Gays and Lesbians. My God teaches me to love one another, but it's funny how people hate in His name. I think the creator of this blog hit the nail on the head.
  

• What did I have to say about this diorama?
• I loved Ashley's diorama. She asked me my input because she knows how strongly I feel we have a need to be over there in Iraq. She strongly believes that it's being fought over bad blood and oil... I gave her my full support and I even prompted her to show the flag in a distressed mode... we each heard people muttering their dislike of her display, but it doesn't matter. My family has shed its blood so that Ashley may have her opinion.
  


• Could the message in this diorama be considered propaganda?
• To me, it did scream propaganda because it was put together poorly; they focused on the Troops, which is quite important, but nothing more is shown... other than little plastic Soldiers. I am a HUGE supporter of our military; in fact, I volunteer with six military organizations and I come from a military family. I currently support six complete strangers who are deployed overseas because I feel it's my duty. Those who just say it's about the Troops don't help us garner support; it's also for the civilians over there who need us.
  

Art and the Human Psyche

"The intriguing Human psyche - more complex than the metamorphosing cocoon, and more phenomenal than the human brain could ever imagine.

Deep within the realm of your subconscious is the centrifuge, or cerebral core of all Human possibilities. Therein, lies the key to the supernatural, heightened spirituality and the unique potential of overcoming obstacles, large and small.

Human psyche is one of life's most bizarre and unparalleled traits within the physical being. It enables our extrasensory perception, encourages drive and motivation, feeds our emotional balance and at times, permits us to undertake feats that our conscious being would never allow.

It controls impulses in our brains that activate our dreams, instills our fears and is the driving force of our physical stamina. The deity within of which all life transforms into the wakened being - thus is the Human psyche.

Interestingly, we never notice its presence, as it is always with us. Spiritual and emotional awareness are the elaborate, invisible compounds of it. As we wake each morning, oblivious to the ensuing day, it is the psyche that jump starts our will to conquer the light, to tempt our nerves and even directs our hopes and dreams.

Stories of the impossible made possible through incredible feats of strength and psychic-kinetic energies released through channels of our internal beings; the mysterious force that empowers mind over matter .

Through our psyche, boundaries are nonexistent between the parallel planes of all inter-human, spiritual connections. By means of meditation, we permit our bodies to become one with our multifaceted world. When we absorb the spiritual energy around us, molecular transformations incur within. Self-healing, radical phenomenon, and psychic interactions are all aspects of this wonderful charge.

If we incorporate our psyche within the realm of our conscious, we can attain a higher level of spirituality, peace and enable our mentality to overcome physical & mental weaknesses. Practicing trance concentration through our psyche, we capacitance ourselves with unimaginable forces of nature.
In closing, Henry Ford once stated, "If you think you can, you will.if you think you can't, you won't." Within his profound words, we uncover incredible human spirit at its finest - therein lies the Human Psyche, and the impossible - possible."


I've always loved "Labyrinth"; ever since I was child.. it wasn't until I was older did I pick up on the psyche undertones... how MC Escher played a part and how it truly invoked in me to never rest until I find whatever it is I am looking for...

Art and Human Behavior

Human behavior is the collection of behaviors exhibited by human beings and influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics.

When some people think of human behavior, they think warm, happy thoughts. Well, life isn't always happy. This photo proves that point. It proves that sometimes, human behavior is fairly shitty.

Art and Human Nature

human nature –noun 1. the psychological and social qualities that characterize humankind, esp. in contrast with other living things. 2. Sociology. the character of human conduct, generally regarded as produced by living in primary groups.


I feel that Human Nature is definitely the first definition; we as a peoples give and give- especially in times of crisis. We open our homes to strangers and ours becomes theirs.

Art and the Human Condition

human condition -noun 1. the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being, esp. the inevitable events such as birth, childhood, adolescence, love, sex, reproduction, aging, and death.


"In this new proposal, Azofeifa talks about the human condition in times of globalization and over-information, with recognizable but anonymous subjects.

The use of painted playing cards (each one of the squares you see in the paintings is a playing card, see below for a detail or here to see upper left work in development) to create the bigger artworks, the same way the pieces are ordered, show the immediacy and precise situation of our times.

And who better to give testimony that someone immersed in information: an e-marketing and e-commerce consultant for Latin American and Fortune-500 companies, Azofeifa must receive, assimilate, and synthesize information about new technologies and trends, every day of his life.

In his art technique, Azofeifa paints each playing card using spray painting and letter molds, he paints groups of several hundreds at a time, making them cover and blocking areas of the ones below. After that he orders them according to their chromatic weight, like a puzzle. Cards are glued or stapled to the canvas. Each piece takes months to complete.

The figures (both the final ones and the individual pieces) are product of globalization. Each piece (card) has a weight of it's own separately, there's no central point and there's no piece more important than other. But every single one of them loses it's individual importance, and the result is just the sum of the apparent indifference of all of them. This can be seen since Seurat, Pollock or Chuck Close. Although there's a resemblance to Close at a first glance, anyone who knows Close's work will not only see that besides a sense of grid and the use of faces in some of the works, there's no relationship in the reading of the work. In the newest pieces of Azofeifa (web site under construction) the grid disappears completely.

The infinite amount of lectures that a contemporary man can do of this work shows us just how accurate this exposition is."

*Life isn't always easy; I had thought to use two different photos depicting birth: one of a 24 week old premie and the other of a 24 week old aborted fetus. It was too hard for me to crop and create a slideshow with either of the photos, so I looked harded and I found this article. I think it really explains what human condition can look like through the eyes of the art world.*

Art and the Human Struggle

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/45056

We all have seen the late night commercials featuring old sitcom stars asking for us to look into our wallets and adopt a child for the month. Hardly any of us ever do it though... in fact, many people crack jokes. Well, try cracking a joke to the little one in the photo above; his tummy isn't bloated from being full; it's bloated from being empty- swollen with gases that cannot escape because he's not ingesting anything to counteract it. While we gorge ourselves for every holiday and get together, there are men, women and yes, children going hungry in the countries of Africa; all over the world in fact. As my first piece says, the struggle to combat it and other issues continues.

My Photographic Eye: Sunshine!

I have a pretty terrific job: I get to work with some awesome kids. I have been with some of them since they were one day old... our bond is close and they always know how to make me smile. And when I think about smiling, I think about sunhine and how I tell each and everyone of them that I love them more than SUNSHINE! My five photos are of five kiddos I get to work with- my SUNSHINES. :o) You know you want to break into a smile already, don't you? :o)

Self Portrait: This is Me

This is my self portrait: a dying Azalea tree with a chance at a new life. In 2006, I lost eight friends and family members to death. My father died in my arms. We nearly lost our home. I attempted suicide.

It's been just under three years since it all ended. I've been dead inside all that time and just this year, I've begun to live again. I've dreamed. I've hoped. I've started to pray again. All that means new life in a dead space. I'm shedding the broken shell that once covered me all over. And I'm so grateful.

This plant is just right outside my front porch door. This past Fall, I had cut the tree down because it was just dead. With the Winter and rain we have had, I figured that was the end of it. And then, this past week in the sunshine, new growth began to sprout. Just like me.

I know my Daddy wouldn't have wanted me to feel dead, but I did. And I wanted to die. And now, now I want to live. For myself, for my father.

Another Catharsis!

Psychology is the bane of my issues here lately. I've struggled with the course all semester, yet somehow managed to score a 95 on my Midterm. I have flunked nearly five out of ten quizzes though. And those discussions my Professor asks me to post to? Yea, I suck at those. I always feel like I'm whining because I have mental issues myself. I suffer from PTSD and I've attempted suicide and I thought Psychology would help me understand myself, but it just makes me doubt even more so. I can hardly contain myself from counting down to the very last class. If it weren't soon, I might be a news story of the person who goes postal!!!! But I'll hold off on taking hostages. I'll let the bad get through with its storm and then I'll ride out the bliss of it being over. Thank God for silver linings.

Free Post

Our world is not an easy world. Our economy is in a downward spiral and has been for awhile. Our Troops aren't all at home, but, they are doing their job- because they want to. Remember that, ,they enlist- no one forces their hand. Our environment needs our help, because we have essentially been killing it. And if we look to the daily news, we are constantly hearing stories of children being murdered, raped. Widows being so forgotten that they die alone and their bodies are not discovered for months, sometimes years. We have lost touch with our common man and all because we are either frightened, ashamed or angry. Let's just stop all of the bad right now and start with the new. We don't have to wait for the next year to roll around, we can start this second and we can make a difference. Regardless of whom is in office, they need our support. Backlashes do nothing for you and they do nothing to them. When we're angry at someone or something, you have to let it roll off your back and realize, it's just a small blip on a REALLY big radar screen. We have some old adages we should start using again: "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all", "remember the golden rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you". I hope this helps someone. I felt the need to write and I didn't do it in blog form. Smile. Life, no matter how hard it seems at time, is still good- especially when we try to make it so.

My Favorite Artist: Tom Wesselmann

Tom Wesselmann was an American Pop Artist. He was an Army Veteran who made cartoons while he was stationed stateside.After being discharged from the Service, he earned his Psychology degree. He managed to sell a cartoon here and a cartoon there, but it wasn't until he was inspired at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, to feel a visceral feeling with art. He shunned action painting and instead focused on pop art. Hence some of his better known pieces like the "Mouth" works and the Great American Nude.

Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque

A Slide-Show fo my Favorite Works of Art

For this assignment, we were asked to pick a few of our favorite art pieces. Well, I chose pieces that were on exhibit at the High. I received a Photography badge and took pictures of what interested me and here they are....

The Art of this Culture

What do you see? I see four young men carrying a fallen comrade. Is he young too? Old? Married? A parent? A woman? I don't know; I do know that this is the art of my culture. I grew up in a military family, I volunteer with military organizations now and I plan to serve myself after school.

The face of war is ever changing. And it's intermingled with death. It's a way of life in the military. You never know if you're saying goodbye or Godspeed...



Recently, the ban that has been in place for over 18 years has been lifted. What is this ban you ask? Why it's the ban of taking photographs of returning Troops. Unfortunately, they are returning in coffins. The federal government has left it up to the families whether they would like their loved one to be photographed or not- most are in favor of allowing America what their son/daughter, mother/father gave up for our freedom. While you walk around in the sunshine, be grateful, because someone died for you to be able. Someone's family said a final goodbye. This is the art of my culture and yours. Remember, freedom isn't free - there's a human cost.

Art on YouTube II

For my second 'arty' YouTube, I chose the "Women in Art" clip. The creator of the video morphed some of the greatest pieces of art featuring women. Each face morphs into yet another memorable face... the piece speaks for itself.

I'm having a CARTHARSIS!

Do we all remember the Team Assignment: Picture This? Our group chose the theme: edible. Well, my photo of something edible was of my last relationship: Wes. Yes, Wes, was indeed 6'8" and very hot (in my opinion). Unfortunately though, Wes had an issue that I was no longer the size 8 I used to be. Wes felt I needed to go to the gym daily. He would even ask me if I had gone to the gym! Well, everything came to a head near my birthday and lasted for nearly three weeks until New Year's Eve. That's when I decided I could not handle how he made me feel. I felt poorly, insecure and I really lay it all at his enormous feet.

My aunt gives each niece and nephew an ornament every Christmas. If you are married and have children, they receive an ornament as well. This year, I asked for one for Wes. I have dated here and there and have had meaningful relationships, but I have never asked her to have an ornament made for the person I was dated. I did this year. I should point out she starts ordering these things BEFORE Halloween. How was I to know that Wes would turn into the person he was?

Fast forward two months later and you will find a hammer in my hand hitting his ornament over and over again. It was my break through of letting go of him, the relationship and the awful way he made me feel.

Enjoy!

LOVE this Piece of Architecture

I absolutely love the inside of West Point's Cathedral. I dated an Army Officer once upon a time who was a gradute there. I remember fondly brisk cold days walking up to the Chapel and stepping inside to just be in awe of not only the architecture, but the history there.

When you're standing underneath the Colors hanging from the ceiling, glancing at the polished pews and ever now and again glimpsing a Cadet in gray... warm thoughts still flood me and I'm very grateful of my time there.

Why This Film is a Work of Art

"CATS" is most definitely a work of art to me. It was one of the longest running shows on Broadway and has been converted to filmed performances that people (like me) will gladly pop into their DVD players every weekend! I can recite every lyric and I know every step. While I was searching for a clip to use, I was torn, but of course, I knew the one to use! Rum Tum Tugger is a tomcat like no other! If I were a cat, I would definitely fall for his antics... who knew felines could be hot?

Add in the costumes with the music, lyrics and steps, and you have a bonafide piece of art on your hands! I was given the original soundtrack, a VHS copy of the play and the promise of tickets for my 18th birthday. I will turn 30 at the end of the year and that gift is still by far my most favorite!

Meet This Artist I Know

I met Carl Whitfield of CWW Photography nearly two years ago. We actually dated for a brief time and I count him as one of my closest, dearest friends. I absolutely adore Carl or Cow as I affectionately call him...

When we first met, he said he dabbled in photography; little did I know that he was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! I'm so honored each time I have the opportunity to view his work... he's able to catch light, motion and feelings in each click of his camera.

He lives and primarily shoots in Cornwall; the SW coastal area of England. He has shot in Portugal where his father lives and I hope that he one day is able to take a photo from every continent. I truly believe that one day he will be either a Royal photographer or working for National Geographic.

Carl takes mainly nature photos; he's able to pick up the most delicate of wings on a butterfly to the fast moving waters of a cool spring just outside of Carnglaze Caverns.

He has been taking photos for the last three years now and he is self-taught! He purchases his equipment online, mainly through eBay and the like. He has recently begun selling his artwork on varying internet sites and I wholeheartedly recommend the purchase of one (or two!) of his work.

Here are two sites from which you can purchase Carl's work:

http://www.cww-photography.co.uk/
http://www.redbubble.com/people/cwwphotography

FASHION as ART

"As you know, the runways are meant to be a source of artistic expression, not just trends. And the look from catwalks around the world are more cause to stop, stare and wonder.

Even if your first thought might be, what the heck were they thinking? It’s not as far-fetched as it looks.

Inspiration is all around and it is the outlandish ideas that ultimately influence more conservative looks.

Without the outrageous tilting one end of the scale, how else would we ever strike a balance.

The communication device-inspired creation (above left) from the 2009 fall collection of Nitin Bal Chauhan of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi, India, Wednesday.

Indian fashion designer Manish Arora showcases an interesting trophy (above right) in Paris, Monday.

A look from Japanese fashion designer Toshikazu Iwaya for Iwaya For Dress 33 (at right) as part of his fall ready-to-wear collection in Paris, Thursday.

And French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (above left) presents a tribute to the pre-radical surgery Michael Jackson that I never would have imagined for his fall collection, Tuesday.

Somehow, it all makes harem pants a lot more palatable." - Debra Bass, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

I'm not a fashionista. In fact, the only things I know about fashion are things I learned from watching "Sex and the City" and "America's Next Top Model". I know that 'haute couture' means a wilder design; something more and likely worn on the runway, not the street. But what I do know is that fashion can be art and art can be fashion, it's just how you look at it. With that said, here's a brief slide show of four haute couture designs. Enjoy!