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aananduniverse-blog · 5 years

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Blog 8

1. Which artist or artists that you were exposed to through this class had the biggest impact on you - why? (in class work, video, trips, etc)

The miniature worlds of Tracy Snelling, I think, provided the greatest inspiration for my work. I think because we were limited to a box, when I read the article detailing Snelling’s work, I was able to make a connection between trying to portray a world in a box. The picture below shows some of the worlds Snelling created.

I wanted to create a world, bigger in size, limited in a box yet expanding beyond. I wanted to create a sense of infinity, and that was what I did through the backgrounds and lighting in my box. Snelling’s boxes, on the other hand, were with backgrounds that helped contain the world immediately in the box itself.

Snelling’s use of light to illuminate, and create shadows, also features in my own picture of the box!

2. How do you feel about your final piece as a box and as a final image? How do you feel that this work differs in viewing it as a 3D collection of objects vs. an image? Explain how these two were connected during your photographic process

The final box, when I was trying to compile the objects I had (more than 30 unique items), seemed elusive. Yet, I used the knowledge that I didn’t have to use everything I had in the composition to my advantage. I placed and replaced and removed many pieces from the box. I didn’t use things that were tangentially related and used things that were directly related to the world I wanted to create. The individual pieces I had were similar in size, and there was no way of creating depth. So, I experimented, and built platforms for some of the pieces, to create depth.

The end result for the box was something I was satisfied with. However, I started thinking about the possibilities a bigger box could’ve had for all the pieces I had created over the course of the semester. I will take all the pieces I have from the Art Studio and try to recreate this in a large storage cardboard box from Home Depot over the second week of May, as one of my creative ventures post-graduation.

The pictures I had prepared for the final critique were ones I was extremely satisfied with! The black and white regular-sized picture encapsulated a city-scape that I had wanted to create towards the middle of the semester! The colorful second picture allowed me to change the same organization of objects into a foreign, surreal setting. It seems set in outer space, rather than on Earth. This was my objective, too! Finally, the large poster of the black and white picture, too, met my goal of trying to create a sense of urgency and fear – personally, the scale of the poster and the objects created this feeling, which I will further describe below.

(The pictures aren’t attached because they’re too big files. I will submit them via email if you’d like me to).

3. What do you think you did well and what do you still feel needs work in terms of your final piece?

I think working away from the physical to the digital went well for my final piece. Being able to use the Digital Photo Lab to manipulate the pictures that we took really allowed me to move the needle towards the world I wanted my picture to depict. Having the ability to magnify, using the poster printer, also broke a ‘barrier’ of sorts that the small-sized box seemed to have reduced the prospect to. For that reason, too, I was very enthusiastic about having my large poster in display for the final critique.

I think what would provide even more clarity to the final piece would be a greater sense of depth. If I could go back and redo some steps, I would iterate many of the processes (3D printing, laser cutting, molding, etc.) to create similar objects of multiple sizes. The size of my objects was set, because of how each phase was based on the previous phase, but with hindsight, I could’ve changed a few outcomes (doing multiples of the same object in different sizes, rather than different colors, etc.) during the semester that could’ve prepared me for a final piece that evoked true depth, rather than an artificial depth that I had to create.

4. Which processes or technology were most interesting to you this semester? What would you like to try again, why? What could you see yourself using again, maybe even for another (non-art) purpose?

I truly enjoyed laser cutting and 3D printing. Both of these will be staples in my near future, as I will try to find places, wherever I may be, where I can go and create more and more objects that I can use to decorate my living space with my own ‘creations’. I know that Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as Tinkercad, will be tools that I will use for various purposes, and I am truly grateful to have learnt these skills before graduating! I was always someone who didn’t want to take a intro to drawing class, or a traditional art class, but this course has piqued my interest and understanding of art and that knowledge along with the many processes I learnt will forever inform my observation of art.

5. What were your starting intentions in this course vs. where you ended?

When we first started to play around with clay and make physical models to 3D scan and then 3D print, my idea was to create a scene where a destructive force was about to engulf humankind, with saviors attacking the destructive force and pushing it backwards. Keeping this initial idea in mind, I moved through the eight phases we had. However, over time, the idea had to evolve due to the nature of materials, techniques, and iterative steps we had to take, as well as limitations of equipment we faced.

While the final pieces seem like either, one, a cityscape, or two, an alien world, I personally am still able to see the main goal I was trying to allegorically depict. There is a destructive force in the top corner, and all the rest of the population is ready to face it.

Through the course, there were a lot of moments of learning and adapting, and I think that the outcome I ended up with provided better learning outcomes that what I wanted to end up with. It led to some abstraction, manipulation, seeking meaning from what exists, reading between the lines, and making deeper observations.

6. What was your intended tone and hierarchy for the final piece - example, how it makes viewers feel, the use of space and scale, the use of color and light, etc.

The three pieces presented at the final critique were all intended to create different effects. I will discuss each below.

The first piece, the black and white 13*19 piece, was created under limited natural light. There were various lights illuminating different aspects of the box. On Photoshop, I stripped the photo of color, and created a black and white picture with emphasis on multiple parts and shadows in others. My intention was to create a cityscape that moves into infinity. The white dots in the background are a continuation of the city, and it truly looks and feels like that is what it is. It is a strong shift away from what the actual box looks like, but a shift that I wanted to create.

This piece, like other pieces, is crowded in the center and right, and empty-ish on the left. This is to create a divide between the object ‘hanging’ above, and the rest of the building and objects below.

The second piece, the colored 13*19 piece, was created with intense exposure to natural and artificial lights in the Art Studio. With long exposure time to light, the image was almost obliterated. However, using the Digital Photo Lab and the digital tools available there, I was able to manipulate light and colors to create the final image which is exactly what I wanted to do – create a surreal landscape, that seems out of this world. Furthermore, in this piece, the art seems to extend into infinity, because the background is no more an extension of buildings but rather into the sky, the stars, and further.

I presented this piece at the final critique to distinguish what the effect of light exposure can do to the same scenario. It also resonated with some of the comments that my peers had made during the in-class critique last week – that the black and white picture reminded them of an alien world. I decided I truly wanted to create an alien world – and allowing the faded colors, as well as the shape and textures of the objects to show, truly allowed me to create this effect.

The third piece, the poster, was my way of magnifying what we had created. This poster was something I deliberated deeply whether to include or not, and in the end, I decided it should be included. It gives perspective about the size of the objects. Throughout the class, we had talked about having some of my objects existing as standalone art work in public spaces, and those conversations also fueled my decision to present this larger scale poster at the final critique. I think the details of the art in the large poster allows the audience to see where the picture came from. The details and mistakes and discrepancies are easily visible, and that is something I wanted to lay bare.

Lastly, this has been a wonderful class of discovery, learning and fun. Thank you, Professor Boone-McCreesh! It has been an amazing journey, and it feels like it ended too early.

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