Thursday, May 28, 2015

Art III Final Blog Post

Throughout this piece (on left), I collaborated with my classmates. During the planning phase of the project, I frequently asked my tablemates, specifically Claire and Alex, for advice on how to make this piece the best that it could possibly be. For example, I was not sure what to do after I did a "test-run" for the piece and the paint from each section bled into the white area. Then, Claire suggested that I paint the entire piece of cardboard white before beginning the piece. That way, when I went back to fix up little errors where the paint bled, the white would match the background perfectly. My classmates encouraged me to push through and keep working hard at the project, even when it got extremely tedious and a bit boring. I am thankful to have collaborated with them because if I had not, I do not believe the piece would have turned out as well as it did. I believe that peer collaboration, in any subject matter, is beneficial. Just having two sets of eyes on a work can be useful by decreasing the chance of making silly mistakes. It is great to be in an environment of encouragement and support.
The next piece, my text art piece, is, in my opinion, my most successful. It won third place in the Halle Art Show in the category of high school artists. This is a very original piece of art. I used ideas that I found on Pinterest to come up with the idea of using many words to create shapes. Then, unlike the pieces I had seen on Pinterest, I decided to take my own spin on it by incorporating a serious meaning into what is usually seen as a lighthearted medium. After deciding to do the New York City skyline, I was conflicted between doing the positive or negative words associated with the city. The deciding factor proved to be that I could not come up with enough positive words about it. Don't get me wrong, I've visited NYC and definitely enjoy being there, but city is the epitome and embodiment of the greediness in the United States. I came up with a huge list of words (each word on the piece is different) and then arranged them. The picture to the left does not show it well, but I used different fonts and text weight to draw the reader's eye across the picture. Also, the words in each building are going in a different direction, so it is obvious where the building begins and ends. I believe that this is an extremely unique piece because I had to be innovative and creative in order to make it come together. Also, the subject matter has real meaning and the audience is able to connect with it in order to understand my purpose.


If I were to redo any of my projects, I would redo my last one: my picture of North Carolina. I love the idea of doing a piece to represent my roots and the place I've been raised in. However, I did not give the process of this piece enough thought before I actually began working. I initially spraypainted the background black, traced the phrase "DON'T FORGET WHERE YOU BELONG" and then painted the letters in with yellow. Once I finished doing that, it was missing something. There was too much space around the western side of North Carolina that I needed to fill. So, I decided that I was going to paint over the background in red, white and blue, because those are the colors of both North Carolina's flag and the flag of the United States. I began alternating red, white and blue in strips along the western part of the state, but it looked absolutely dreadful. Now, I think that I need to start over 100%, so I am painting over the whole thing in black so I can start with a blank canvas. I think that I am going to try the text again, because I liked the meaning of it, but I am going to play with the fonts some so that it fills up more of the space. Also, I will not use yellow because it was too difficult to make the yellow strong enough to stand out from the black background.

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