Week #9

This week in class we did not do a lot of drawing, we watched a lot of performance artworks being created. We did, however, do a short exercise following Morgan O'Hara's process. We watched a contemporary dance performance and drew the movements of the dancers with each hand. I really enjoyed this exercise. It's a possible strategy that I could use for one of my drawing performances. 

Week #8

This week we started a new project: Performance Art. 

We were given the task of setting up a performance that was supposed to last one hour. My strategy was: Tracing paper, taped down onto the table. Oil Pastel/Conte Crayon. I moved along the table with both hands on the paper, and did not lift the drawing materials off the paper. I did this on each side, back and forth. After 30 minutes we were told to stop, which is lucky because I was running out of materials. (I did not realise I would go through so much pastel/crayon so fast!)

At the beginning I was apprehensive of this project. But after about 10 minutes I really got into the rhythm of the movement. You kind of go into this meditation doing the movements over and over. 

I liked the outcome of this experiment and plan to continue on with this idea in my own project. 

Critique Day

Artist Statement:

I used to try to avoid expressing my personal life and illnesses in my work, I considered it to a be a taboo topic. But when I started to think about my relationship to text, and then to time, all my daily rituals came to mind I felt like there was a lot of stuff inside me that I needed to express. 

I started the text project by taking the side effects sheets from my medications and then running them through the photocopier at 400%. I then scanned them into my computer at home and took them into photoshop and collaged them together. There were a few fights with technology during these stages. Then I gridded them up, resized them and printed them on 200gsm A4 card. When I set up all the grids together I found that new words began to appeal to me, so I chose to highlight these words in different ways. At this time I was reading through the article of Ed Ruscha. Ruscha described his word choices as 'hot words' that he needed to capture straight away before they disappeared. I really like this concept and I think it's applicable here. 

Influences for the text project include, Jenny Watson, Mel Bochner and Bruce Nauman. 

The text project influenced my narrative project quite a lot. After seeing the date paintings of On Kawara, I was inspired to look at my daily rituals with my medication alarms. I have a diploma of animation and I had seen quite a lot of flip books pop up recently which inspired me to delve back into creating moving images. I am not entirely happy with the outcome of this flip book, I used a premade sketch book which restricted me with the timing of the work. I ended up photographing each image and putting it together in a gif maker to create a small stop motion animation. I think the short animation worked a little better than the actual book in the end. 

Influences for the narrative project include, The Flippist, Serene Teh and Mou Hitotsu no Kenkyujo. 

Flip Book Progress #2

These are the final two gif's of my flip book. The book flips two ways, from each end, so that is why there are two gif's. This is just a quick stop-mo of how it would look if you flipped it in person. The creation of the flip book was a little more problematic then I first thought. Once you put the images together you can see were you should have added more in betweens. The timing is a little bit off for some of the flipping. 

It's interesting what came out of this project. I didn't quite follow the storyboard/plan for the book. I just experimented with each page to see where it went. 

Text Project Progress #6

Final layout tests for the three collages! 

Text Project Progress #5

Progress on collage #2. I realised that the colours I have been using are all based around the medication packaging that I took the side effect sheets from. I have one tinged purple, one orange and one blue. I have tried to make them look similar so they feel like they are a group of collages. But at the same time I tried different techniques on each one. 

Response to Ings

"Embodied Drawing: A Case Study in Narrative Design"

Welby Ings

This article explores the notion of sketching as a method to communicate and process ideas. Ings relates this back to the creation of the film Munted. He states that he was interested to see if a new method in drawing might allow him to open up the processes of film design to other ideas. Ings discusses how in film the director/writer's ideas are firstly translated into scripts and written proposals before any investors will even consider the work. There is an assumption that the imagined film will only work if it is first translated into the written word. So Ings used new methods of drawing to broaden narrative concepts in film.

"the pencil...is a bridge between the imagining mind and the image that appears on the sheet of paper." (Pg 2.3)

Ings notes that there are three primary uses of drawing; concept sketching, presentation drawing and drawing for manufacture. He then goes on to describe a method of drawing called enstasic drawing. This process is an immersive experience that allows the creator to slowly reflect on their work while they are submerged into that world. 

"The term enstasic suggests a standing within. It surfaces from the Indo-Greek roots ‘en’ (into) and ‘histanai’ (to stand)." (Pg. 2.4)

 

Drawing is a process that allows creators to think things through and try new possibilities. It's a way for someone to slow down and process what they are doing and explore their options. Enstasic drawing is not a form of communication, it is used to generate the creator's thinking. It is not meant to create storyboards or sketches, it is a method of creating. 

Rosenberg (2008: 109) refers to this process as a state “where one thinks with, and through drawing to make discoveries, to find new possibilities that give course to ideas and to help fashion their eventual form” (Pg. 2.4)

I like the idea of enstasic drawing, but I don't know if I follow this method. I go into drawings with a plan, and if I don't have a plan then it usually ends up really badly. I am not good at just creating. It's an interesting concept to allow the process of drawing to help generate new ideas and make new discoveries. It's just not my process. 

I also really like this quote, that pictures do not need to be pictorial. They can be abstract and still mean something too. 

"...abstract lines, and forms, and shapes, and colours can give emotional meaning and expression just as much as narrative lines, dialogue and characters." (Pg 2.2)

Response to Pasquariello

"Ed Ruscha and the Language That He Used"

Lisa Pasquariello

This article examines the text based works of Ed Ruscha. Ruscha is an artist that is associated with the pop art movement but was also trained to paint in an Abstract Expressionist manner. Pasquariello points out that Ruscha's work is not entirely Pop and that his work also fits into a Conceptualist framework.

Between 1960 and 1972 Ruscha depicted over four hundred words. Pasquariello talks about the kinds of words Ruscha chose and why he was drawn to them. In the first decade of Ruscha's practice he chose mostly single words, which fits in with the simplicity and directness of Pop. Generally in Pop-art the work is devoid of traces of the artist's hand, it shows no obvious traces that it was created by an artist. The focus is instead on the mechanical production of the work. In Ruscha's work, however, you can see the brushstrokes, the layers of paint and the exposed canvas. He also depicts the words without any accompanying imagery. This fits into the Conceptural proposal that language can be both the matter and subject of an artwork. 

"...he developed a language-centred practice in the very medium rejected by many Conceptualists." (Pg. 89)

"Annie", Ruscha, 1962.

Ruscha says that certain words attract him and his work goes back and forth between how the work looks and what the words mean. Ruscha's sense of language means that he has to capture words or phrases when he sees them before they disappear. He then goes on to  join the sense of the word with it's physical form and attempts to find the connection between the pictorial form and its meaning. He is very careful to not be too literal with his depiction of the words and tries to portray them as he sees them. 

"Whether or not the work communicates anything to anyone is not important to me...Sometimes I don't care about the definition of the word."  (Pg. 90)

"Because I love the language. Words have temperatures to me. When they reach a certain point and become hot words, then they appeal to me... Sometimes I have a dream that if a words gets too hot and too appealing, it will boil apart, and I won't be able to read or think of it. Usually I catch them before they get too hot." (Pg. 91)

"Quit", Ruscha, 1967.

"Damage", Ruscha, 1964.

"I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again." (Pg. 96)

I really like Ruscha's work, but I am more attracted to his drawings than his paintings. His work is beautiful and the words he chooses to depict are very interesting. I like that Ruscha doesn't just fit into one framework. Although he is associated a lot with Pop, he also links in with Conceptual ideals. Ruscha presents words in a very different way and endows them with life. 

"Self", Ruscha, 1967.

Week #6

This week we were  told to come with a short story from our personal life. I chose to use my experience in Paris on Bastille day. I brought a long roll of kraft paper and used charcoal, pastel and ink. I like the materials in this work and the textures that came out from them. I don't think it was a very successful experiment altogether by I do like a few little sections of the work.

Flip Book Progress #1

I am currently working on a flip book for my second folio assessment - narrative. I actually have a diploma in animation and went on to a couple of short courses at iAnimate, as well as attend the Gobelins summer school program a few years ago. I decided to go in a different direction with my art practice and decided to try the fine arts program, so it's strange to be going back to my lightbox and using some of my animation techniques again. I've decided to continue exploring themes of the ritualistic and using my everyday medication alarm times as the imagery for that. I feel that this semester I have been working through some of my personal issues because I keep returning to this imagery. I used the side effects info sheets in my text project so I can see that I keep drawing reference from these medications.