Student Gallery in the Library on 11/29

    I attended the gallery that was in the library lobby on November 29, 2017. The main artist who I enjoyed most was Samantha Stepnowski. Her gallery was names Making Sense of Common Complexities. When looking at her pieces of work, the main theme of them were skeletal shapes and animals, mainly those found at the beach. My favorite was the back of the horseshoe crab. The attention to detail stood out most to me. It was also the only yellow piece of paper on a wall that was white, with other works done on white pieces of paper. Even by sticking to the brown color palette, she still was able to create dimension through the work with the different shades that she used.
    The next painting I enjoyed was the dotted lizard's head. This piece again stood out because it was the only one with color on this wall and was also on a more yellow piece of paper. Her other drawings had been more blended, yet this entire work was made of dots, making it more intricate. You can tell where she added more dots in certain areas to create more dimension and details. Also, I like that she stayed with one color. There was no color scheme that she followed; she just used the blue. I also like how it was just of the lizards head. It makes the viewer less overwhelmed, especially with the use of the dots to create this piece.
   Lastly, I liked the different seashells she created. There were five different seashells on the same paper as skeletal images of a crab. However, to me the seashells stood out most. They were all drawn using only a gray scale of colors. The lighter to the darker grays made the details of the seashells stand out most. She also was able to make the seashells stand out from the skeletal pieces since they were gray and the other were more brown. From this gallery, I learned that, even when having different images in the same area, one can easily stand out from other based on the colors. It may not even have to be the colors used to create the piece, but also from the color of the paper compared to the others.

Postmodernism Blog Post

"You are born modern, you don't become so."
    The composition of the piece has L-shapes throughout, especially with the multiple frames. The paisley around the border leads you to the next black frame, which leads you to the puzzle pieces, then leading you to the main image and the frames within that image. The color scheme is analogous because the main colors used are green, lighter blues, and rose golds colors.The denotative meaning of this piece that I made includes a modern day living room with the people from times in the mid-1900s. There are also images of today's world, with images of old times. It is bordered with a frame(s), playing off of the frames in the image. 
   The connotative meaning of this piece makes me feel like I am in the middle of two different worlds. Although they still combine and join together to create one, there are multiple differences that stand out drastically. The ideological meaning of this piece links to how the past and the future appear to be different, yet somehow there are so many similarities. Even though things be seem to be drastically opposite, there are always relationships between things to some degree. This is shown through the cars. Even though they look different from one another, they still worked the same way and got people from point A to point B. 

Tufte Reading

While reading the Tufte article, the first paragraph immediately grabbed my attention. It said that even though we live in a three dimensional world, everything that is drawn on paper is two dimensional. Even though this seems quite evident, I have never thought about it this way. When looking at a book with pictures of a city, we can imagine it in real life, but I have never thought that the illustration of a city was any different than a city itself. However, even if they have the same features, they still are drastically different. The article continues to say how we can make illustrations on paper more three dimensional like, however, it is still fascinating to think of these in two very different ways, than what I would have thought of it previously. 

Making different items appear to be more three dimensional like on paper did not just occur out of the blue one day. There have been many techniques that have been attempted over a great amount of years. Some of these techniques did not work as well as others. However, without trial and error, we would not be so advanced in the work we have today that looks more three dimensional than ever. Many artists took both the ideas of others who may not have worked out the best and the ideas who did work out to piece together what they have now. After so many years, we still can say that three dimensional drawing is at its peak, yet will over more time become even better and more detailed. 

Sunspots were something discovered by Galileo and deeply studied in regards to three dimension. With over three hundred eighty years of analyzing these sun spots, it is the one thing that’s designs have not changed by others. The same exact design strategies are used by many artists just as they were back in history. I think this is interesting because so many images are viewed again and again, and changed so many times until it is perfect. Even when it is perfect to most, there still may be someone who is not as satisfied and would change it again. However, the sunspot is the one that has not been changed at all. These strategies have gone widespread and used independently from the sunspots altogether. 

Postmodernism

     With there being so many different cultures, religions, and world views, we are bound to have them intertwine in whatever we may see. This can take place in magazines and in ads, or on the street when seeing different people. Even though all of these do mix, they are all something special and unique. It is up to us to find these differences and make them into something worth emulating. It is because of this mixing that we live in the world that we do today. Art can be a good way to find some of these differences and then recreate them into something amazing. Even if it is only one or two ways in which a person or magazine has merged cultures together, we can be able to find beauty in it through art.
     The age of Modernism is one of the ages that sticks out at me most. At this time, there was great dissatisfaction with the world. Edvard Munch in The Scream showed this dissatisfaction immensely. There were many other artists who used the world around them at that time and how they were feeling, as well as how many other around them were feeling, to capture that moment in time. Often times, we can use these pieces of artwork to determine the world at that time period. Especially when it was so long ago, they can be used as a great guide to help us see what society was like and what it was going through.
     In todays world, especially in Hollywood, many of the signs and images used are not representing the world as it truly is. However, instead, it is showing us this hyperreality. It is more real than the real itself. It creates a sense of entertainment, while also showing us this reality that we live in. In older times, artists use their work to show us how they believed culture was at this time. We now take out own reality and emphasize it even more to show just what we think of the world.

Colors Podcast

     One of the very first lines stuck out at me saying, "What is color?" This had me thinking greatly because I, too, often think about what color truly is. Isaac Newton did many thinks to determine what color is, one being the rainbow that reflected off of his prism. He determined that white obtains all the colors of the light. This I believe is so important when discussing light. It is important to realize that colors are in everything that we see. Even though we may not see all of these colors, they are all still there. This can help us to become even better observers in art and in nature because we can view things differently than we may have before.
     Jay Nights attempted to try and get things, like monkeys, who can't see red or other colors to be able to see these colors they are missing. I find this truly fascinating that this was possible. In order to determine this, the monkeys took a test every morning, and saw positive results after 20 weeks. This leads to humans who are color blind and if they can be changed, or make colors more in greater in people who are not color blind. This would give people a whole new way of looking at the world around them. If this were to be possible, so many things would change. Not only would we see new colors and different shades of colors previously, we could use these colors in our artwork and create new pieces that speak to so many people and move them.
     Colors come from factories, currently, especially special colors like sky blue, or aqua blue. However, the question is where did these colors come from in nature. One example is this sap from a tree and you can only get it through cutting the bark and using bamboo, and it is then left for a couple of years. Even though this process is slow, it helps to change the color by adding water and for it to become even more different than we would have ever imagined the yellow color to be. By finding all of these colors in nature, they become even more fascinating. We see so many shades of every color through factory use, however, when seeing this amazing color come through nature, it makes it so much more spectacular.

White/Color Project

This was my first picture that I took. When looking at the objects individually, they both looked to be white. However, when you place them next to each other, the folder looks like a more grayish-white color. The phone case looks more like it has a greenish tint to it. You are more unable to call both pieces as white. 

This photo was taken in better lighting. I now see two different colors than white and two different colors than I had seen in the first picture. The folder now has a yellow tint to it, instead of being more gray. The phone case is more white looking, though. I would say that it has a slight gray tint, but is mostly white looking. The colors changed drastically than what they seemed to be originally, what they looked like in the first picture, and what they looked like when the lighting changed. 

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