Craft Art: Making Bracelets

For Christmas, I am making thread bracelets for my friends. Although this means that I am having to find the time to make 40+ bracelets, it is a lot of fun for me to make them, and it gives me a break while studying for exams and finishing up final projects in various classes. These bracelets are made by tying knots in strings of embroidery thread. I love these bracelets because they are a form of art that you can wear! Plus, they are very cheap to make.

Picture Source: http://friendshipbracelets.wordpress.com/page/5/

Website Project Results

Click here to see my group's final website!

The website is an "Art Guide to Atlanta" aimed at Georgia Tech students. I worked on the "Theatre" and "Museums" pages. We presented our website in class this morning. I was much less nervous during this presentation than for the presentation for my visual essay, but I feel like I was less prepared for the website presentation, and I did not write out my speech and have exactly what I was going to say ready for the presentation like I did for the visual essay presentation.

A lot of work went into this website. A lot of group meetings, a lot of nights leaving the library at midnight. However, overall, this was a very fun project to work on, and the group I was working with was a great group. I am very proud of how our website turned out. I think it was significantly more rewarding to design and code it ourselves using Expression Web, rather than using a template. 

Definition of Art: Second Edition

My definition of art has definitely changed since the beginning of the year when one of our first blog post assignments was to write a post explaining our definition of art. I think the biggest influence on this change has been the unit we talked about in English about public art, and the visual essay assignment about public art. Before when I thought about art, I thought about the more obvious forms of art such as paintings and sculptures. However, through the work I have done in my English class this semester, I know realize that art can encompass so many more things, especially in the genre of public art. For example, I hadn't ever thought as much about landscaping as being public art, and that became a large focus of my visual essay. I've been interested in photography for several years, so I have been seeing things such as landscaping as art once it has been captured in a photograph, but I had never thought much about how landscaping can be considered art on its own, even without being in a photograph. This class has expanded my appreciation for art and its various forms, and it has opened my eyes to new forms of art that I had not thought about before.

Improv

I previously wrote a post about little known theatres in Atlanta. One of the theatres I mentioned is Dad's Garage. I would like to talk in more depth about this particular theatre because they portray another kind of performing art under the theatre genre. Dad's Garage is an improv theatre. This means that the vast majority of the show that they do are completely improved. Improv shows are fun to watch because you can never know exactly what is going to happen. Because not even the actors know! Improv performers make the show up as they go along. If you have never attended an improv show, I highly recommend that you do so, because it is a lot of fun.

Georgia Tech has it's own improv troupe called Let's Try This! or LTT for short. LTT is a division within DramaTech, and you can find out more about when their shows are through the DramaTech website, or by visiting LTT's website.

Picture Source: http://atlanta.metromix.com/bars-and-clubs/roundup/atlanta-comedy-clubs/1285421/content

Website = public art

Before this project, I never realized hoe much work went into making your own website (your own website that actually looks good anyway...). Websites are a form of public art. They require a lot of time and effort to design and make. The process can be made simpler by using a template, but if you are making your design from scratch like my group for our Art Guide project, it can be a long and tedious process. I think that making a website that way though is more rewarding than using a template, because you can say that made it yourself, and you can say it is your art.

Little Known Theatres in Atlanta

For my Art Guide to Atlanta website project for English, I am doing a theatre section fro my group's website. There are a surprisingly large number of theatres in Atlanta, and many of them are relatively unknown to most people, especially people at Georgia Tech. All students know the Fox Theatre and The Shakespeare Tavern, and most know the Alliance Theatre. But what about Horizon Theatre? Dad's Garage? Kudzu Playhouse? 7 Stages? These names are mostly unknown to Tech students. Horizon Theatre and Dad's Garage are both included in my section in my group's website, along with The Shakespeare Tavern, Alliance Theatre, and DramaTech, Georgia Tech's student-run theatre.

School Uniforms

My high school had school uniforms. School uniforms inhibit public art. Fashion can be considered a form of public art and artistic expression. Uniforms inhibit this because students are no longer able to freely express their artistic styles through their clothing. For example, at my high school, not only did we have uniforms, but we also had rules about the kinds of accessories we were allowed to wear. I think that suppressing students' artistic expression through fashion in this way takes a large amount of public art out of everyday life. On a daily basis, the vast majority of public art that you will see is through fashion and what people are wearing.

Battle of Beauty

We read an excerpt from a guerrilla girls book for english class. I completely agree that there should be more diversity of artists featured in art museums. Next time I get to go to the High Museum, I will definitely be more aware of the kinds of artists they feature in their exhibits.

What I really want to talk about in this blog post, however, is one  fact from the video of the guerrilla girls' lecture and presentation that we watched in class. They said that the first year they counted the number of female artists featured in museums, only 5% of the artists featured were female, but 85% of nude paintings were of women.

Nude paintings of women used to symbolize the ultimate form of beauty. However, it saddens me that women today see the skinny models in fashion shows as the "ultimate beauty." A lot of girls will do anything to try to be skinny and beautiful like fashion models, but they never want to look like the beautiful women in paintings. A lot of girls would even see a nude painting, and think that the woman in the painting is fat. Society's perception of beauty has changed dramatically, and I consider it to be a change for the worse.

Thanksgiving Turkeys

Baking a thanksgiving turkey can definitely be considered a form of public art. People who make home baked thanksgiving turkeys often take it very seriously. A lot of thought often goes into the presentation of a thanksgiving turkey, and a lot of people will comment on how "beautiful" and delicious the turkey looks. In this way, a thanksgiving turkey can be considered a form of art. It is just like any other "food art". People often see how bakers turn cupcakes into a work of art by making images or icing effects on the tops of the cupcakes, or just making amazing looking cupcakes. Not as many people would see a thanksgiving turkey as a work of art, but it follows the same concept as cupcake art.

Dreamweaver

My english class had a lecture about how to use Adobe Dreamweaver to create websites for our last project- to create a website that is an "Art Guide".  I am a Computer Science (CS) major, and I love learning to work with more software and computer applications. I had to make a website for my first CS class, and the assignment was to code it ourselves, which was very frustrating. I like how easy it is to use Dreamweaver. The features are easy to understand and use, even for people who don't know as much about computers and software. I will definitely enjoy using Dreamweaver to create a website, because I think it will look much more professional using Dreamweaver than hard coding a website, because it gives me the ability to do more on the website. There are some things that I could spend hours figuring out and coding myself, or I could just spend a few minutes making them in Dreamweaver. However, I also like learning HTML myself, and not having to rely on a program to code the website for me.

Picture Source: http://4sharedserialkeys.blogspot.com/p/serial-keys.html

Titian Exhibit

 I had the opportunity to go see the Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting Exhibition at the High Museum. The highlight and focus of the exhibition is the the two Diana paintings. I loved how the exhibit is set up in relation to the Diana paintings. People are encouraged to enter the exhibit, and start on the second floor of the building, where the lower level of the exhibit is located. This floor contained preparatory drawings and sketches from several venetian painters. So when you started going through the exhibit, you started seeing the drawings that precede the paintings, and the exhibit mentioned the Diana paintings in several places. And then when you go to the third floor, where the upper level of the exhibit is, you finally see the Diana paintings after hearing about them, building up anticipation. The Diana paintings are hanging in the middle of the room, and the walls are curved towards the two paintings. I really like how the exhibition built anticipation waiting to see the two famous paintings, and then they were revealed as the focal point of the upper floor of the exhibition. Furthermore, I also like that the walls of the exhibit are a dark red. It makes the exhibit feel more intimate and close together, and it provides more contrast to the drawings and paintings than the plain white walls that are in the rest of the museum would have. The white walls would have made the exhibition feel too spaced out, and would not have made the paintings feel as vibrant as the dark red.


The two Diana Paintings, painted by Titian:

Diana and Actaeon:

Diana and Callisto:

Pictures Source: http://www.high.org/main.taf?p=3,1,1,22,7

Visual Essay Reflections

Working on the visual essay was an interesting experience. I had never thought about the concept of a visual essay before taking this this class. The first thing I had to do for this project was to take the pictures. I had a lot of fun wandering around campus taking pictures of all the different buildings, sidewalk chalk drawings, and landscaping. My theme was the different forms of public art. There are many different things that can be considered public art that most people do not think of and appreciate as art. This project also allowed me to work on my public speaking skills, and I would like to think that I have better presentation skills now than I did before this project.

My Visual Essay

These are my pictures from my visual essay. The theme of my essay is the different kinds of public art, definitions of public art, or what can be considered public art. I put images together that show the same "category" of public art, and I ordered the categories, starting with the categories that are obvious as public art, and I ended with the categories that a lot of people would not generally think of when they think about public art. The images here are ordered in the same order as in my essay.

Visual Essay Theme

My theme for the visual essay presentation is different kinds of public art. When people think of public art, the first thing that comes to most people's minds are sculptures and murals. However, more discrete things such as landscaping can also be public art. Especially if you live in a large city such as Atlanta that is not a very artsy city, you have to learn how to also appreciate these other forms of public art if you want to find more public art because you won't find much public art if the only things you appreciate as public art are the more obvious forms of art such as sculptures and murals.

Art Experiences

Walking around a city looking at public art and going to a museum to see artworks are two very different experiences. I personally prefer walking around an area looking for public art as opposed to visiting a museum. First of all, you don't have to pay money to look around at public art, but you have to pay to enter a museum. Also, when you are out in search of public art, it feels like an adventure instead of walking around a quiet building with a lot of other people, many of whom probably don't want to be there.

However, going to a museum also has it's advantages. For example, museums have a larger amount of art in a smaller area. If you choose to go to a museum, you will not have to wander around an entire city searching. Instead, you can just walk around the building and enjoy.

Public Art

This image is an example of public art. The image shows a work of graffiti art on the side of a building in Dusseldorf, Germany. Although graffiti is often very unappreciated and  looked down upon, I think that graffiti is a very good example of public art, because it is painted specifically for the general public and the artist paints it to make a specific point about some kind of issue. I think that graffiti is also a good way to explain public art because not only does it fit those qualifications, the artists who paint graffiti are under a great deal of pressure because in many countries, they are committing illegal acts to be able to present their point of view to the public through their art.

Picture Source: http://akheilshah.com/graffiti-art-in-dusseldorf-germany/

Relative Height

My psychology professor lectured about a concept called relative height. To illustrate the concept, the professor showed the class a sidewalk chalk drawing of a girl swimming in a pool. her leg was sticking up out of the water. From one side of the drawing, it looked perfectly proportioned, but from the other side, the girl's leg looked 3 times longer than the girl herself. The artist had to draw the leg that long in order for it to look correctly proportioned when the picture was viewed from the other side of the sidewalk where the picture appears right-side-up. These pictures made me think about all of the strange ways that artists have to draw things in order for their artworks to look the way they want them to when viewed from the intended angle.

Autumn on the Siene, Argenteuil

I am writing my visual analysis paper about this painting by Claude Monet. It is entitled "Autumn on the Siene, Argenteuil". I love Monet's work, and I think this fits into his collective works very well as well as reflecting the techniques of the impressionism genre. I love the transition of color from left to right and the techniques that Monet used to create this painting. Impressionists use extremely small brush strokes, mostly dotting the brush on the canvas to eventually create the scene that they wish to portray. This technique is very difficult and requires lots of patience. I wish that I had the patience to paint this way, because the result is simply gorgeous.

"Speaking of Art"

I was looking through some art on DeviantArt and I came across a graphic design piece called "Speaking of Art" by a user named jmonzani. You can view the piece: HERE! I love his quote, which is stated on the artwork, "Speaking of art is useless if one doesn't feel anything." -Jean-Sebastien Monzani. ("Speaking of Art" © jmonzani.com Please respect copyright laws!)

The idea presented in this artwork goes well with Ways of Seeing by Berger. The very first sentence in the first chapter of Berger's book states that, "Seeing comes before words." It is more important for us to see a work of art for ourselves than only hear or talk about it. We need to have our own individual reaction to art. That's where Monzani's quote comes in. If we only talk about a piece instead of really looking at it for ourselves and developing our own feelings and opinions about the artwork, then we have gotten nothing from the artwork. Therefore speaking of art becomes useless.

Also, you can view my Deviantart page by clicking HERE!

Captivating

My favorite artist is Claude Monet. When I look at his paintings, I feel as though I am in the setting of the painting myself. I love how art an offer that kind of escape into another world- the world inside the painting. Although I especially love Monet's waterlily paintings, one Monet painting that I think illustrates this point well is La femme au métier (pictured below).

I love this painting because I feel it makes me feel like I am in the room with the artist. I want to walk up to him and see what he is painting. Monet's paintings captivate me and take me into the painting's world. They inspire me, and they invoke my curiosity.

Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/later/

Another painting that has the same effect is Las meninas by Diego Velazquez (pictured below). Every time I look at it, I feel as if I am in the room with the princess, her attendants, and the rest of the busy people and events going on in the room of the painting.

Source: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/V/velazquez/meninas.jpg.html

The captivating ability of art, to offer a short escape into another world, is my favorite thing about art. Many people find that books have this effect on them, but art can have the same effect. I love to sit or stand in front of a painting and just let it captivate me. Whether I fully understand its meaning or not, the painting can still have the ability to take me away from reality for just a moment.

Semiotics and Art

I recently read the article "Semiotics and Art History" by Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson. The article was very difficult to read because it was written for a knowledgeable audience, and I am not educated in art history. However, in my own words, from my understanding of the article, semiotics, in reference to art, is analyzing the signs and symbols in an artwork. Many pieces of art, especially religious artworks, use symbols to convey the idea of the painting. Many paintings contain metaphors, using one sign to represent something different. A semiotic approach to interpreting art can better help to determine how these signs, symbols, and metaphors contribute to the overall meaning we see in a particular artwork.

One of the most famous forms of art that uses these kinds of symbols very heavily are religious icons that can be found in Orthodox churches. The picture below is a picture of one such icon:

Sources:
Picture- http://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/iconsproducts2.html

Art All Around Us

You can find art all around you. I like to think about the earth as one big work of art. For example, I am an amateur photographer. I carry a camera at all times just to make sure I never miss a single photo. Some of my favorite photographs are landscapes. Landscapes that most people consider to be the most beautiful are of things that you don't see everyday such as the Grand Canyon, but there are so many other landscapes that make gorgeous pictures that we all see every day. I may walk past a tree and take a picture of it. There may not necessarily be anything extraordinary about the tree. Anything you see, even something as ordinary as a tree can be seen as a artwork depending on your perspective. When I ride in a car on long trips to the beach, I like to watch the scenery outside of the car window. I pretend that I am looking at everything through the lens of my camera, and I marvel at the possible photographs that I pass along the way.

Just for fun, here is one of my photographs:

 This flower was on a tree in my backyard- something I saw everyday. Even so, I think that it makes for a beautiful photograph.

Photograph (c) 2009

High Museum

I visited the High Museum on Saturday. The museum was filled with captivating exhibits, but my favorite was the Dali exhibition. I love how the exhibit not only showcased his art and the history of his life, but it also showcased his witty personality. The first thing I saw when I walked into the exhibit was a wall with a line of different pictures of Dali (acting silly) and a series of answers he gave to questions in an interview. His responses the questions were funny and clever, especially once they were combined with the string of silly pictures. I thought that the exhibit was very refreshing because it did not just show paintings on a wall with explanations next to them. Instead, I found that the Dali exhibit was very engaging.

A Picture of the High Museum. Source: Here.

The promotion image for the Dali exhibition. Source: Here.

Definition of Art

This picture exemplifies my definition of art because, although I'm not the biggest fan of graffiti art, I think that graffiti artists best illustrate the freedom that artists have in forming their art and the freedom for people to have their own opinions about the artworks they see. Art is about freedom. The artist has the freedom to express whatever he or she wants to share through the piece. Viewers have the freedom to have their own unique opinion about the piece and what it means to them specifically. Graffiti is the form of art that best exemplifies both of these freedoms. Graffiti artists paint (traditionally using spray paint) whatever they want, wherever they want. In addition, the general public's reaction to graffiti greatly varies, some people deeply appreciate it, while others pass by, shaking their heads in disappointment and disgust.

Sources:
Picture- http://www.intute.ac.uk/hottopics/limelight/graffiti.html