Final Project

Yay, the main project is finally complete!!!

The fade is meant to represent the past.

Progress Critique

At first I was going to do my final project on bubbles but that idea was a bust. I decided to start over and do a self portrait series. In the pictures below I am portraying different phases in my life. I do not have a lot of pictures yet but these will be the past representations. I am going to re-shoot the pictures that came out too dark. I would appreciate some constructive criticism.

I wanted to poke fun at the horrible faces I used to have when I played basketball.

Flamenco Dancer Phase

Thankfully this phase did not last long.

Final Artist Critique: Cindy Sherman

The first time I saw Cindy Sherman's work I was in my 20th Century Photography class. I remember being surprised because most photographers prefer to stay behind the camera. I suppose it helps that she is dressed as other people and not herself. In particular I like her series, the Complete Untitled Film Stills. 

 Sherman photographs herself dressed as B-Movie actresses. She sets herself up in different roles and settings, either in her apartment or outside. I like the series because she brings to light a lot of female character cliches. It also reminds me of when I used to play dress up as a little girl.

I have decided to draw from her inspiration and do my own character portrayals for my final project. Except I will be acting out the different phases in my life. I will be portraying my past and present self.  Wish me luck, I am going to need it!

Final Project Proposal

Project Ideas

         

         At first I was inspired to do some pictures of different people’s bedrooms. I liked the idea because it can show just how messy, crazy, organized, or OCD a person can be. However, after going to see the final photo series from Bree on Thursday I realized that maybe I need to make this work about me. Since I plan to graduate in May I should get a little more personal, even though I hate knocking down my wall. I am a senior so I guess it is time to do some work that show it.

            One idea I have thought of is to take some macro pictures of different colored bubbles. Each bubble will be a color representing the different departments I have studied in. My last picture will be a multicolored bubble popping. This will represent the popping of the college bubble and finally breaking out into the cold, scary, real world.

This is just an example. Not my work.

            My other idea is to draw inspiration from famous photographer Cindy Sherman. In the quest to find myself while being in college, I think it would be interesting to take self-portraits dressed in different identities and situations. I would be showing who I have been throughout these 7 years, who I am now, and who I hope to become in the future. I do not have a lot of money for costumes but I can do my best with what I have. 

Grad Work

Thursday afternoon I went to see work presented by the graduate student Bree. I feel like a jerk on account of forgetting to write down her last name. If I am able to find it I will fix this little problem right away.

In Bree's first set of photos I was not sure what the different frames were supposed to mean and why she had kept the tags still on them. After reading her artist statement all these questions, along with some others I wanted to ask her were answered. When she was a girl her aunt and uncle would send her picture frames with her name on them, but her name was always misspelled. I like that she incorporated something personal into her work. However, I think she could have gone a little deeper in showing the significance of the frames. One person in the audience suggested that she put her aunt and uncle's names on the frames and have them be misspelled. This is a good idea to run with because I think it would be comical and also help explain the meaning behind the frames. I also think putting something different inside the frames would help as well. The images inside need to show the connection to her, rather just being something that comes with the frame. Little tweaks like this may help strengthen her series.

Bree talking about her frames

Her second set of work was also very colorful but not very easy to look at up close. Professor Jim Stone noted that up close they made him dizzy but are nice from far away. I would not go as far as to say they made me dizzy, but I do agree that they were more pleasant from the other side of the room. Mostly because I was able to see the figures in the photos. In some ways I kind of felt like I was looking at something I was not supposed to be looking at. When I think about them now I think about them almost as surveillance photos, only with a very colorized background and the figures are white and faceless. I cannot offer my thoughts on what needed improvement in this series. I can say that she had a very creative idea and produced interesting work. Overall I liked her frame series better.  

Stop Motion

Artist Critique: Aspen Mays

"The role that photography plays in science sets part of the conceptual stage for how the medium is interpreted through art (or how I interpret it). By that I mean, ideas about objectivity that are inherent to how the camera was first used in science and the necessary (imagined or otherwise) remove that it must have from the humans operating the camera is a rich source of exploration. The technological innovation in photography that often stems from necessities in science (and really astronomy in particular) add layers of complexity, meaning or potential for art to pull apart or tease out."  
                                                                                                                                       - Aspen Mays

I like Aspen Mays's artwork because she is able to incorporate photography with her interest in science and anthropology. In her work she shows how closely these things are tied together. Her photographs and installations are not pretentious or serious, they are humorous and simple. In particular I liked her piece, Untitled (Fireflies inside body of my camera). At first glance it just looks like a lime green photo, but once you realize the color was produced from fireflies in the camera the photo seems more interesting. I enjoy finding the creativity behind her photos.

Untitled (Fireflies inside body of my camera, 8:37-8:39PM, June 26, 2008) Archival Inkjet Print, 2008

In an interview, Mays describes her methods for creating "Every Book". Mays stated the following:

 "Einstein is such a loaded figure- I think we, as a culture, pin a lot of ideas about genius on him. He’s the solitary genius, the mad scientist, the truly original thinker, someone that had deeper insight into the mysteries of the world than the rest of us.  So I decided to see how many books my library (the John Flaxman library at the School of the Art Institute) had about Einstein…there were quite a few for an art school, but the library also belongs to a consortium of all the libraries of all the colleges and universities in Illinois, so I could access essentially all of the books about Einstein in the whole state. So I just started ordering them, little by little."

 
" I made a bookshelf in the shape of an arc so that I could organize the spines of the books along a color spectrum or a rainbow as they came in. It felt like a fitting tribute to Einstein somehow- to use the shape of the books to evoke gravity and an investigation of light the way an artist is trained through color theory- breaking it down into the visible spectrum (as opposed to how someone like Einstein might think of or describe light’s invisible properties). One of the most iconographic photographic portraits of all time is the one of Einstein with his wild hair and tongue sticking out. I wanted to think of the books as making up a different sort of photographic portrait of the man- without using those incredibly iconic images of him. It also felt apropos of a age when knowledge and access to information feel like they are becoming blurred and confused. I wanted to question what could be gained from this sort of cataloging and photographic documentation." 

After looking at Mays's work I think Einstein was right, a true sign of intelligence is imagination.