Special Edition Post - Barbara Cooper

Barbara Cooper is a sculpture artist. One thing she emphasized the most was her strong connection with nature. She cares for the growth of nature and its role in the environment. She finds a lot of interest in abstraction of nature, how it was distorted through uncontrollable circumstances, such as a tornado hitting a forest. She takes irregular patterns and transforms them into something different without losing its essence of where it came from. This is her way of taking organic trash and giving it life again.

She focuses on erosion, how the variant shapes and lines were formed or essentially distorted or destroyed by a naturalistic phenomena.

The first two photos on top are an example of her using organic trash to make a nature related sculpture. The wood itself is incredibly thin but she didn't want to worry about that because she wasn't trying to put her entire focus on the flexibility of the wood but its strength, which is why her pieces primarily consists of layers upon layers upon layers, which emphasizes that strength. It almost seems like something that belongs in nature because it seems as though the work itself was developing almost a "tree tumor" but it's clearly manipulated by the artist.

The Bottom two photos are her showcasing this idea of 2-D implying 3-Dimensionality. The second to last photo is known as her contour map. It is map that she drew on because she wanted to give it a sense that a place with such an irregular pattern existed. She used something I believed was called walnut ink to add those ripple patterns on that map. Same goes for the bottom photo, using irregular lines to create depth and 3-Dimensionality.

Barbara was really interesting to listen to not because she was an artist but because she was interested in irregular patterns. She examines a wide range of patterns and incorporates these ideas into an naturalistic sculpture. It's steps further from clay sculpture. Her method definitely conveys this idea of reparation, almost considering the feelings of the art and the viewer.

Week 8 - Contrast and Unity

Craft: I used a canon camera and adobe photoshop to create these images. The purpose of this assignment was to understand that photos can be manipulated to seem much more interesting, such as adding effects or even a stroke and we must be able to use those effects so that they work in unison with other components within that manipulated photo. I took photos of a jar of marbles, full, half- empty, and empty. I started by making the images black and white. Soon after I de-saturated the color to create a subtle contrast. I then used the elliptical and polygonal marque tools to create distinguishable shapes. I then added a stroke and drop shadow. I tried to have different opacities and or thickness of the stroke and drop shadow to be able to tell a narrative but these images aren't a good representation of that. Lastly, I added text that would flow smoothly throughout the photos, continuing the narrative pattern.

Concept: One of the things I was trying to accomplish was consistent unity. It was important to consider color as well as subject. I wanted to showcase a city that was full of life and was progressively losing that peace of mind. The first image shows a moon, using the marbles to show moonesque features that resembled a moon as well as the city. Slowly the moon losses its life along with the city, almost losing its "fullness", as well as using the color and shapes to tell a ominous narrative, with the words stating "fading peace of mind" to tie everything all together.

Composition: One of the most important things I had to considered was what shapes to use that would work well with de-saturated colors. The best I could think of was a city skyline because you could experiment endlessly with a skyline to get many interesting results. The gray that sits on top of the image also helps us to visualize that city at night. Different saturations for each image would have been better to help make the story clearer as well as the use of different effects but it works well.

Week 7 - Solid, Pop, and Super pop

Craft: I used a canon camera to produce these photos. The purpose of this assignment was to understand the importance of editorial functions that could make photos much more dynamic. I took photos of marbles and decided to make three different but similar edits. I took three different photos of different subjects and make three different edits. I took three narrative style photos and made three similar edits. All of these edits were made using Adobe Photoshop. I used different functions of that software, such as the marque tool and lasso tool, which are both used to create a section within the photo that we would like to edit. The usage of layers was also critical because it allowed for easy and quick maneuvering between the different edits all within the same photo.

Concept: There are no themes in regards to the photos that I chose to use. It was more of an experiment to be able to understand how changing the color scheme of a photo could make it much more interesting, which ties us back to contrast, such as having two significantly different colors in order to be able to make one thing stand out in a photo where there are multiple things. This can also be done to be able to draw the viewer's attention to just one part of the photo instead of viewing the entire photo.

Composition: Many of these photos contain different elements that make them interesting in their own way but the one that interests me the most is the photo with the boomerang style pattern. You get one effect when you isolated one part of the photo when its side by side to another thing but its different when the subject overlaps other things. You're able to see how well they work with the other components of the photo and its easier to see the impact of that change.

Week 6 - Contrast Photos

Craft: I used a canon camera to produce these photos. The purpose of this assignment was to understand the use of contrast and how vital it becomes in regards to setting the dynamics in a drawing or photo. We needed to take photos of a subject of our choosing, representing different forms of contrast. I chose to take photos of marbles in a jar and I decided to take them in the same location. I used different "sides" of the jar in hopes that the pigment of the color and whatever transparency each marble allowed would significantly or even slightly affect the contrast.  

Concept: I don't know much about how light and glass works but It could be safe to assume that color significantly affects how light is reflected or refracted since color is involved as oppose to starting with a subject that is black and white. In the jar of marbles, it has been coincidentally split in between marbles on the warm side of the scale going up to the cool side of the scale. I noticed this because the warmer colored marbles seem to stand out the most when in warm lighting and cooler colored marbles in cool lighting.

Composition: These photos were taken using artificial lighting because I wanted to be able to manipulate the light. I feel as though natural lighting would only give me a subtle contrast, which could be achieved using artificial lighting. A white background was also necessary to be able to see how much of the value scale is shown in each photo, such as how the marble jar in one of the photos above is almost covered in darkness whereas in another one the marble jar seems to disappear in the light.

Week 5 - Color Wheel

                 

                          

Craft: The compositions above were made using oil paints. I used 3 brushes, turpentine, paint, and sheets of canvas paper, especially for oil paints. For this assignment, we were just exploring the realms of color and were discussing the color wheel. We were suppose to produce five compositions, showing the use of monochromatic colors, tertiary colors, complimentary colors, and two of our choice. I chose to draw a flower five times.

Concept: I decided to use a flower for every composition because I wanted to show case the multiple effects colors could have on a subject that is used multiple times. Different colors convey different emotions and sometimes colors can have a different impact to us when seen in comparison to one another. Just by staring at the flowers side by side, you can come to the conclusion that they feel almost ominous because of the color chosen.

Composition: The first three on top were made intentionally, being that they are a recognizable subject, which is a flower. I tried my best to maintain the color purple in each composition to showcase that purple can evoke different feelings based on different values or different colors associated to it. The two in the middle were made with crazier hand gestures to suggest that it was a flower but without looking at the other compositions, it would be difficult to make out what it's suppose to be.

Week 4 - Shapes

Craft: The tools that I used for making the five compositions above were black, red, white, and burgundy paper. The purpose of this assignment was to create five compositions using 3 white shapes, 3 red shapes, and 1 burgundy square. the white shapes were meant to be organic shapes and the red shapes were meant to be mechanical shapes. Each composition utilized many different shapes made by my classmates, so all that I had to do was arrange them.

Concept: One of the hardest things to do for this assignment was to decide how I was going to arrange the shapes. Its deciding how well each shape works with other shapes. Two of the five compositions were made strategically, in a way that creates a scenario or forms recognizable shapes, such as the one that appears as though there is a flying horse or the leaning square on a thin tower. The other three compositions were merely done by throwing the shapes onto the paper and slightly adjusting them. I did it this way because I wanted to compare the difference in composition making when its organic making vs mechanical making. (unintentional vs intentional)

Composition: Each composition has at least one element that makes them different from one another but one thing they all have in common is that they overlap somehow in every composition. For some it was intentional , as for the others it was just coincidence. After carefully reviewing each composition side by side, I've realized that red is the most dominant and in a way, it takes away the effect of every other shape just because it draws the most attention.

Week 3 - Line Photos

Craft: The tool that I used for taking these photos was a canon digital camera. The purpose of this assignment was to capture many ways lines were used in everyday objects. Many things had to have been taken into consideration in order to capture the essence of lines. How the lines worked with others lines, how impactful those lines were within the object, how the angle of the photo affected the flow of the lines.

Concept: I decided to take these photos of lines because they are common objects of lines that we come across everyday but we never seem to be conscious of their existence since we have categorized that sort of information as unnecessary, but little do we know they play a huge role in almost everything. The spectrum of lines can range from giving objects texture to telling a narrative. These photos are meant to show others the value lines can have and how they play crucial roles in our lives. Take the photo that is all the way at the bottom. That gated structure is formed by horizontal and vertical lines but without that sort of assortment of lines, such a thing as a gate wouldn't exist. Putting lines into context emphasizes its value.

Composition: The photos that I took feature primarily straight lines or lines that follow a linear pattern. Those are there to emphasized the importance of lines. The other photos have more of a zig zag pattern to them, showing the relationship between lines and how there functions can play a crucial role when they can easily range in form and how well they work together.