Line Art
My line drawings are interpretations of 5 places I spend the most time in; mapping my walking paths, the paths of others, and the energies that follow. These include my current dorm room (and bathroom), Starbucks, Corepower Yoga Studio, Dollar Pizza, and the A Train. There’s a beauty to slowing down a routine to view the city or a new home, as a plane of fields that people, including myself, cross, weave, and intersect within. Practicing spatial recognition enables the mind to conceptualize everyday geographical systems into basic organic elements; curvaceous lines weaving and touching in negative space with other colors. “These fixations constitute procedures for forgetting. The trace left behind is substituted for the practice...a way of being in the world to be forgotten”. This fascination with the current analysis of my world is not permanent, but my maps allow me to not forget my steps.The surface is only the limit because the city is everchanging similar to my life transitioning geographically. With this transition, it is essential to record the points, lines, color palettes, human energies, and movement in attempts to not forget a whole world.
WWW Response
The World Wide Web article by Tim Bernes-Lee presents this idea of a “ boundless information world in which all items have a reference by which they can be retrieved.” This poses an unanswered question that has yet to be solved in the internet world. However, throughout this article, there is still the implication that the majority of questions having to do with the internet have solutions to them. The World Wide Web has its only language in a sense that can not be interpreted by all. This has to do with what HTML stands for which is Hypertext Markup Language; the fabric of everything constructed is a designed structure. In Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel”, he expands this thought of boundless information in a different context. Using shapes and the exploration of human philosophy he comes closer to an explanation of the universe, “There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon”. Similar to the World Wide Web, there is a language that constructs the basis of these theories; Borges frames this language, “The library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible”. He concludes his idea with “The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope.”
Newpaper Response
This project I chose to focus my newspapers on Ru Paul. There was a vanity fair article that I scrapped from and added to a Washington Square Park Newspaper. In a collage type of manner, I formulated pieces based on his career and his beginnings. I think included other elements such as cut out words like, “Xenophobia”,”WomXn”,” Culture Masterclass in Change’sm”,” Insecure As Fuck”, “Invincible”, “The Philosopher Queen”, “The Boy Who Cried Work”. I also framed some photos with washi tape that had bananas (a typical joke made on the show, Rupaul’s Drag Race”. In the Last Newspaper Artists in Conversation they explain their relations to print going back to their childhoods with selling and reproducing zines and publications due to its accessibility, “My interest in News proceeds my interest in art.” I wanted to compare this to the life of Ru Paul, in terms of sexuality and gender. Ru Paul growing up had to express himself with whatever was accessible, similar to the artists that would do this at a young age with News, “There's something really beautiful that has to the with the nostalgia of the prints”.
Shape Response
I chose to illustrate 3 personal items located in my dorm; a stuffed animal-Psyduck from Pokemon, a small figure of a little girl-Mai from My Neighbor Totoro, and a vase my mom gave me with pink carnations. Rather than just tracing these items I decided to color them, so it would be more of a replication rather than a just a drawing. My textiles are all imitataions of a child-like pillow-case set with gridded designs with an influence on the negative space. I ordered two 8x8 prints-the psyduck print and the vase print. I wanted the Psyduck print to be printed on a thick material, so I chose fleece to imitate the feeling of the real life plushie. The carnations print is printed on a more delicate fabric, Chiffon which is a light, sheer fabric typically made of silk or nylon.
Color Response
sMy color project features two photos that I view as unique because they are both monochromatic. The hues in the photographs are different values of the colors pink and blue. Why focusing on the color pink many stereotypes come with it regarding it’s supposed femininity, or “gender-based color predilections”. Historically pink was actually a badge of self-determination and power rather than fragile. When studying the physiological effects this color has on the body, especially after active and intentional exercise, there would result “a marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse, and respiration as compared to other colors.” In “Color Goes Electric”, by Claire Lehmann, Bartleson’s study states that memory distorts the appearance of color and requires an objective system for measuring color in the first place. Kodak researcher C. James Bartleson explained in 1960, in his foundational essay “Memory Colors of Familiar Objects,” skin, grass, sky, and other “objects with which we have frequent visual experience” are indelibly imprinted in our memory. Memory colors are hues that we can recall easily. Pink is a color imbued in our memory whether it’s through a commercialized form such as Barbie or simply lowering the heart rate dues to its calming effect.