Line Artist Statement
In our reading, seeing from above was said to create “a universal and anonymous subject”. This is why, for my line project, I decided to sit with my dog on our fire escape above the street and follow her gaze, mapping it out with my key. My dog's everyday expression of attention and intrigue contrasts her everyday laziness in thought and action. Her gaze moves so fast, “every walk consistently leaps, or skips like a child, hopping on one foot.” (Page 101) It seemed impossible, yet simplistic, to use lines and shapes to map the space from above in order to show the erratic sequence, but it created consistency on the page. There are some obscurities in her gaze that intrigued me most. These are represented by the dashed lines. The movement of walking or biking or driving inside a space is discussed between all of the differentiating lines. Relying on my dog to realize the final product of this project was most exciting.
Newspaper Artist Statement
Printed news is dying like the cartoons and candies that rocked in the early 21st century. The coverage of “All The News Fit to Print” is marketed for the American public too, just like cartoons and candy for children. I chose to use childhood images like shiny ring pops and Courage the Cowardly dog to cover the New York Times front pages because the collision that occurs between the past and the present symbolizes how the content our generation absorbs now has changed; no longer do we watch these cartoons or suck on these candies. All we know is news, news, news. In my pieces, all that remains is only what the imagery allows you to see, since the space and text that is covered is either completely obscured, or only partially visible. This creates a stronger presence of the past, which is what I was aiming to remember in this project. Before sensationalized violence and political drama became the unfortunately, yet understandably important norm in American news, commemorating the changing of times that Generation Z has gone through.
Glendalys Medinas and Shapes Response
Glendalys’ thoughtfulness exercise made me envision shapes surrounding my emotions. The walk through my thoughts entirely in shapes helped my experimental drawing, with her guidance. The setting I envisioned for this piece is the setting as the squares receding into the background, with circles as sadness and/or anger, and the abstract shape as myself. Both sides of the squares have these shapes but I have different colors and intensities to show the two sides of my growth in life. The past and the present. This is what I experienced during the meditation. The right side is more exciting and whole rather than broken up like on the left. The two patterns that I created are derived from random shapes. I scoped the new york city streets for shapes that captured my interest and chose to trace these in Adobe Illustrator, instead of tracing shapes from inside my home. They came out to be very abstract so I multiplied the shapes and arranged them in many different ways, with different colors, and opacities. They are all together different. This is what I most enjoyed from the beginning and end of this project.
Color Response
This color; the shade #C2DCF2 is loyal, and it is honest. It is the color that every person knows to be the color of the sky. Free of interpretation, it exists naturally and consistently for us all. Why is the sky this shade of blue? That is not an answerable question. We simply know it is. It takes recognizing the truth to see the beauty in anything. Let’s take a look at the sky. Some days it will be cloudy and other days it will be sunny. “God is in the rain” (V for Vendetta). What falls from the sky is not up to humans, neither is the weather. So when the clouds part, and this incredibly luxurious shade of blue appears, can you not help but think it is the meaning of life? Blue appears before us all--and I mean everyone on Earth--specifically, #C2DCF2. Recently, I have had to make amends for the biggest mistakes that I’ve made in my life, and I am able to say that this is the color I saw on the other side of my life’s story. Waking up, feeling differently, or should I say, “on the right side of the bed”, I marvelled at the color of the sky. Just like I marvel at the beauty of the moon. It is always there, and that is the essence of truth; that is the essence of blue. The shade, #C2DCF2 is also muted, which is a potential characteristic of the constant presence of a thing. If you live with a lie for so long, it might just fade. But, that’s the rub. It never really does. It is always above you. What is above us all is truth; “If spring can take the snow away” (Kanye West), then this shade of blue can take your sorrow away. Just keep your head up. Go to a beach, or the top of a mountain, in order to experience the expanse of its truth.