Briana Carter
10/30/14
Homework

We had to go onto this site to take a 100 question quiz.

http://community.good.is/

The questions are based on creativity, our involvement in the community, and how we feel about certain subject. The questions were a little difficult to comprehend, and it took a lot of time, but I wanted to make sure I was being efficient on the quiz. Once finished, this is what  saw.

I am a dark night. Basically, it stated that a dark night does good deeds alone and where nobody can see. That is actually really true about me though. The questions did not even seem like they dealt with who I was. I like being alone and I am good to the environment, but in small ways like picking up pieces of trash that I see and recycling in my dorm. That is why I think that it is a good idea for my project to be based off of this. Something that is small, but can make a huge difference would be nice, or maybe something that most people do not notice on a daily basis that I can bring to attention.

Briana Carter
10/28/14
Weekly post

10/21- Tuesday, we met in class and discussed our task of the day. We were going outside to perform and get accustomed to performing in front of an audience. I am really used to this sort of thing because I am a cheerleader and I am in front of crowds all the time. We warmed up with movements that made me think of theatre a little bit. When I was in theatre in High School, we always did movements across the stage so we could learn to become the character. After we were all warmed up, our task was to be put into groups and get a slip of paper. We all had to perform whatever was on the paper. I saw some really interesting acts, but a lot of people were either way too shy, or was not taking it seriously by laughing the whole time. My slip told me to become a text message. I could not think of anything to do. My first thought was the sound a message makes when it comes to your phone, so I made that sound and made a little pop-up bubble with my hands. I also did a little bit of the typing noises. This was really fun, but it was hard for me to come up with something to do. Everybody else had really easy things to become like animals for example. I could have easily have been a bee or bunny rabbit. I guess that just shows the difficulty of each one of the items. This made me realize how hard it was going to be to interact with others or have others interact with you during your performance, but the whole idea is to play off of each other.

10/23- Thursday was the day to present our projects to the class. We had to meet in Rowe, and walk to the drawing room for our photo-shoot. I have not gotten my photos yet, but I will describe my costume. I attached a red cloth to the outside of a picture frame. and crawled up inside of it. This way, you could not see anything but my shirt and face through the picture frame. I wore a black shirt that was wide on my shoulder and pearls. Also, I looked very presentable with my makeup and hair done. When I heard that we would be doing a photo-shoot, I figured that our teacher was just going to be taking a regular picture of us, but it was a professional with different lenses and a backdrop. I felt like a model getting in front of the camera, but also a little awkward because everybody in the class was watching us. The performances were really interesting. Some people were really shy and stood in the back, and others were very outgoing with their character. The mixture of characters was good in some of the groups, but bad in some. You had crazy people running around and then others who stayed still and giggled the whole time or had slow movements. My sound was playing classical music. Basically, I was trying to go for a very classical and beautiful look with my project. When I was younger, I always wanted to be "as pretty as a picture", so that is why I became a picture. I always think of pictures being perfect and flawless, so that is the look I was trying to pull off. I really liked my group. It was the baby, and the old hag lady with many items. I felt like I was mothering over them because I just stood straight up the entire time while they were down on the ground interacting with each other. I was like the person watching over them. Some comments that I heard about mine was the fact that I was a good center piece for that group and I looked like the pictures that move around and talk in the Harry Potter movies. I actually never thought about that until somebody said so. I loved this project in the end. It was fun, and it did not feel stressful at all. That is the one thing I love so much about this class. I don't have to worry about if it is wrong or not; instead everything is right, but has different meanings and differences. I feel like our class became so much closer through friendships throughout this whole project. We interacted with each other, and showed our real self through our characters; clicking with people more like us.

Briana Carter
10/16/14
Weekly Post
  
   On 10/14, we did a warm up writing exercise where we had to select an item out of a bag. The items were different kinds of clothing. We then had to write an imaginative story about the person who once wore these different parts of clothing. I pulled out a very long and colorful hat. It looked like the hats that elfs wear in the Christmas movies, so I decided to write about a little girl elf who made the hat and put her own little desighns in it to express who she was and what she liked to do. Once we had finished the writing exercise, we had been assighned a pile of different kinds of cloth and threads. With these, we had to put together our own masterpiece from all of the materials. One thing I got was a green cirle with two holes cut out of it in the shape of a slice of pie. This reminded me of a ninja turtle mask. I also had a slip of a pink bandana. This made me think of making my own little mask out of these materials, so thats what I did. In the end, my threading with a string was not very good and falling apart, but I tried my best. I have never done anything like that before, but it was a lot of fun. It makes me think of doing something that I would like to create when I start my project. At the end of the class, we got into our groups to discuss art 21 videos and readings. These are my notes: 1. 2 different "attitude" definitions.- Artistic is what they feel will work best and attract their audience while attitude is who they really are as a person and what they like to do. 2. Lorna Simpson- She reveals the real self through her photographs like with the telephone project, because they can not see each others faces on the phone. If they can not see the faces of one another then they can make whatever face they want on the phone. Sometimes, she even makes it an illusion when she has her models facing the back or only having them shoulders and down. 3. Jeff Koons- He portrayed fantacy really well. It may remind somebody of their own childhood because of all the circus like colors he uses in his work. He may sometimes pull concepts out of no where because it seems like his meanings make no sence. Its like he comes up with an amazing project and just makes up a meaning to back it up.

   On 10/16, we were suposed to meet at the Mint Musium on Randolph Street. Because I went with another class the day before, I did not go when the rest of the Concepts class went. The moment I walked up to the Mint Musium, I felt this amazing presence. That feild in front of the building made me feel at home. The beautiful green grass and huge trees witht he sun glaring off of it was amazing. I love sceneries like that because it just makes me want to lay out there and just absorb the sun and let out all of my stress. There were a couple of areas inside the Mint Musium that can be compared to our project coming up. The older costumes that were presented on manakins were different I think. This would be a great idea, but it looked like that artist spent so much time on her work. It paid off though because everything was absolutely beautiful. Also, the different mask from the different cultures were really neat. I have a hard time apreciating those kinds of mask sometimes because they always remind me of something from a horror film, but I understand how well it would work in our Fantacy project. I got a couple of ideas from this feild trip. I could always be somebody I like in the movies or on telivision. Maybe make an outfit in comparison to them. I also really liked the African shirts that were in glass boxes in the hallways. These were interesting to me because usually people do not acknolegde clothing from todays society in musiums like that. All together, it was a great experience and I collected a lot of information from that trip.

  

Briana Carter
10/14/14
Art 21

     Nick Caves artwork is unlike any others and it is the one that stands out to me the most. It gives me the most creative ideas and ways I could go with this project. His design skills and wonderful costumes are amazing. I just wish that I could do something just like that. And the fact that his costumes make a ruffling noise to set an edge to everything he does is just amazing in my mind. I have a couple ideas that I could use relating to his work. It made me think of the clanking of chains together and how that would attract my audience. The only problem with this though, is that would be really heavy. Another idea was to become a homeless person with a buggy and rolling it around the classroom with a bunch of junk inside it. I have no idea how I could get a buggy though, so maybe a lot of trash bags with cans inside them would work also. Maybe even making a suit out of cans would also work. Once our instructor explained how we have to make it about ourselves, I got really confused because I don't really remember much about my childhood and what I used to like or do. I just really hope I can use something that is like Caves work to express my project, even if it has no relation to me. His work does remind me a lot of the characters of children's shows like tellitubbies.

   Jeff Koons is a very interesting artist. His balloon projects are out of this world, but at first I was kind of confused because I really thought they were just huge baloons, when in reality they are hard steel or metal of some sort.  He is very different when it comes to artist because most artist stick to one kind of art and stay with that until they die, but Koons is experimenting with so many different types of media and I believe that this is why he is so known around the world. He is literally speaking to every kind of viewer their is. He has wood, metal, painting, and many many more. Some of his work is just so random. Imsure his viewers are always interested because you would never know what he would come up with next. One thing that is hard for me to contain would be the fact that he works in this huge factory with so many people. He even states in the video that he "likes paying attention to detail", but he never touches his work. He basacally desighns it all on the computor and his workers do it for him. I think that this is going to be something normal from now on. I never would have known that artist did this so much as they do. I guess that if your business is so big though, there is not anything you can do about it or you would never get anything finished. I dont really get any ideas from his work because they are so out there. I could always cover my whole body with baloons, but that would be very difficult to pull off.

Briana Carter
9/14/14
Reading

     The article I read this week was in the "Expressing an Artistic Attitude" category of our books and her name is Lorna Simpson. I was a bit confused on what she was really trying to prove or say in this passage. I understand that she is an advocate for the African American society and relates them in a lot of her work. Mostly she did this in a more opposite way than people are used to seeing African Americans. Instead of photographing ideas that make the black culture seem helpless, like during slavery, she took photographs of them in jail and committing crimes. The passage stated that "it investigates the thoughtful process of investigation." I felt like this was interesting because everyone try's to make people feel bad for the pictures of children starving, and puppies being abused, but no one takes shots of the other side of it all. The strange thing about her photographs though is the fact that they are all taken of people with no faces and their backs turned. Most of them are only shoulders down. They wear clothing that do not state what age they are or where they would be from. She states that she does this because she likes the "simplicity" of it all. I think this is so strange because we as humans are always putting a name on people. She is popular, geeky, fashionable. In this way, you don't really know, but wonder what this person is like when in fact, it gives you no information at all. This reminds me a lot of Kara Walker because she is using African Americans in her art, but in a totally opposite way. I think that this would be interesting in my art work, because I could actually go up in front of the class with no face. That might be an interesting piece to do. Maybe if I covered my face and put on clothes that doesn't show my age. I might look like a creepy horror film character, but it is an interesting idea. Lorna Simpson has opened my eyes to a bunch of new ideas. I never thought of doing something so different. I need to start learning how to think outside the box because I have been stuck inside lately.

Briana Carter
10/07/14
Weekly Post

On 9/30, we filled out a worksheet of our personal life. This paper did get really personal, like on religion and beliefs in politics, but I did not mind that because I am not afraid to show who I am and what im about. The only thing that I did not understad was what all of this was about. Does it have to do with our next project? Then, once we were done filling out the personal area of the sheet, we had to fill out the back with our groups. These were descriptive words that described certain artist that we have discussed the whole simester so far. Artist who came up alot was Charles Ray and Kara Walker. I think that these artist came up so much because they have such a different kind of media, style, and meaning towards everything that they do. This was a good experiement because I had almost forgot about a bunch of those artist.

On 10/2, we had our project presentations. One of my favorate presentations was the bug ones. I loved how close up they got on the bugs and how detailed the pictures were. I really wish I could have gotten that close up on my pictures like that. I think that my presentation went really well. I think that a lot of people liked mine too because it was a different kind of subject while alot of people did trees and buildings. I was not feeling too good about my pictures, but once everybody was telling me that they were good, it made me feel better about myself.

Briana Carter
10/07/14
Project

     Research: My biggest inspiration was Mark Dion. His work was absolutely amazing and my whole idea of the bees project hit me whenever he said that "ecology is a balance in life."

     Intent:  My intent in this project was to show what bees meant in the world. Bees basacally keep a balance in life. Without bees, we would not have pollunitation, and without pollination, we would have plants. Without those plants, there will be no animals, and then, no us. Bees are one of the most basic structures in life itself, but make such a big impact. Instead of pin pointing all of the bad in ecology like most people like to do, I decided to look at the good and what helps our world.

     Reflection: I think that my project went really well. I was a little upset that I did not particularly get to take the best photographs because the face mask disabled me to look through the lense, but I did the best I could do with the little I had. Also, I wish that I could have gotten alot closer up onto the bees to see the really detailed parts about them like the yellow pollen on their legs, and the little larva eggs in the nest. I just did not have that kind of camera, but I will know that next time when photographing such small organisms. All together, I think that my project was a sucess. I  may have alot of the same images, but I didnt mind it because bees are a pretty interesting subject area.