Growth Reflection

Looking back at this class, I can’t say I grew.  I think you as a teacher is phenomenal and I wish I had you for another class where you could teach me something that would be actually helpful like understanding abstract art and using resin and creating art.  I think the class was very hard to take away any actually meaning beyond understanding how to make a newspaper and judge people’s art based on how they are as a person and interpreting based on a feeling.  I think if I grew, I grew more confused about what art is and whether or not artists are actually giving us something important or just partying, smoking weed, and then the day before crapping out a piece with whatever they had in the room, but that’s also just bias from what I see outside the classroom.   I don’t want to lie to you and say that I grew so much and that I learned what art is and how to make it, because I didn’t and I’m tired of fake people who are polite to your face and then shit talk about the class behind your back.  But hey, I guess that is what the theme of the class was.    I really appreciate the effort you put into the class and I think it was a great class for people who didn’t know what they wanted to do, but I wanted to learn fashion or least something that expanded the concept of art and not font study.    This class was really hard to stay engaged in, because it was so much busy work and so much work that didn’t teach me anything remotely related to art.

Monument

 

I wanted to make a video for my portfolio that I am applying to RISD with, but it was too big to upload it to canvas so I just put it on youtube and copy and pasted the link here.   She’s cute.

 

 

 

The brochure was a wish mash of confusion.  We had a Instagram group chat and we all were focusing on our own monument and thought someone else would get the brochure.  At the last minute the day before, we were like, who’s doing the brochure and no one was doing it, so I just decided to do it, and was why I was a little late, because I had to smash it all together at the last minute, but I am not blaming anyone.  I also had time.  I had a whole day to work on it, but being more focuses on important things like my portfolio for re-applying to Brown/RISD and trying to balance finals and studying what I want to study being fashion, I did put of the brochure because it wasn’t important in complete honesty.

Souvenirs

Condom souvenir

For our first souvenir, we chose to give out condoms with a simple avant-garde design in the intent to bring awareness and promote safe sex to individuals of all ages. The front and back of the packaging is all white with a gold detailed writing. On the front of the packaging are inspirational quotes fighting against the virus and identity  attributed to such as “aids does not discriminate” or “stay safe”. The condom inside will be black and ready to use. The condoms were inspired by the creator of the initial aids monument.

Sticker souvenir

For our second souvenir, we chose to create stickers to give out with out logo as a way to promote not only our monument but the fight against aids and increase awareness al around. The stickers are meant to be glued on phones, computers, street poles etc with the objective to end stigma around the epidemic and attract people’s attention. The stickers hold our logo inspired by Keith Haring’s art which we believe makes it easy to recognize and connect to aids from afar without reading what is written.

Sketches redesign AIDs memorial

 

I always design with words.  I know that for other people to understand it is easier to draw pictures, but the truth of it is that I already see the image so it doesn’t make sense to sketch out a half-done poorly rendered sketch of what I want to see.   Instead, of pretending I can draw, I just write down details that I would miss in my head or specifics that I need to incorporate like parts and logistics in construction and exigence.   To summarize the idea behind this the monument that I wanted to bring up parts of AIDs and sex that were shoved away from the dark.  Do people fear me?  I wanted to bring to light the parts of AIDs that people don’t talk about which is were the danger is.   The parts tabooed is what makes AIDs so dangerous.  Now, people with HIV are living happy, healthy lives if they get correct treatment.   The dangerous part, the part that people truly fear is infection.  Getting it is worse than having it, and if people don’t talk about it, then getting infected is so much more likely if that makes sense.  What you don’t know can kill you.  For my moment I wanted to mock the bathhouses of the 80’s and the grime and dirtiness it was and is.  It is the breeding ground for AIDs no pun intended.    We were steered toward adding a modern twist to the monument, and I choose to incorporate transgender people with AIDs, because of transphobia many people who identify as trans are discriminated against and denied access to get tested which is were the fear of infection is multiplied and fits perfectly into the boathouse theme for my redesign.  Ultimately, I focus on fear and I focus on things that people don’t want to talk about like sex, disease, infection, and discrimination outside of the US.  It has so many levels which is why is lashes out into several taboos.

Aids monument choice: Field Trip

 

We chose the Aids monument, because we were just drawn to it.  The reason were ambiguous from person to person, but personally, I felt like it was connected to me and going to get tested for HIV is a horrifying ordeal and doing it was so easy but scared me more than sexy cat costumes and bad eyebrows.   The AIDs memorial was packed with emotion and I feel that is an easy place to draw art from.

Newsprint

Not going to lie, I wasn’t super turned on by this project.  I made sure to contribute as much as I could, because I didn’t want to be a non-team player; however, this project really was hard to get it up.   It is a great idea and a great project, but in the context of art school, it just made me upset that I was taking out thousands of dollars in student loans to learn how to start my fashion business and instead we were being critiqued on how large our margins were and whether this font was cool enough.  It just was a very placid project.

Neighborhood Map

For this map, I choose to focus on all the areas in which there was graffiti.   I included both professional and non-professional because it also incorporates a statement about local art and gets behind the idea that every person is an artist.   Many people – artists – scoff at the idea that not every person is an artist and I feel like that is insecurity speaking at the professional level against those who are new or local artists when in fact, back in Virginia, I saw hundreds of people who were way more creative than artists.  take halloween where at Parsons, I saw a ridiculous amount of sexy cats which is the most basic costume, while in Virginia my high school friends choose to dress up as sexy Donal Trump.    Insecurity of the professionals shoves down the new people and any other person in general.   Insecurity is suppression and that is what I want to show in the map.   I highlighted the professional murals red and the murals considered as illegal graffiti in black.   The thing I found was that there were just as many professional pieces and unprofessional pieces and that those unprofessional pieces held even more emotion than the ones that scoff at them, because it is made out of emotion, danger, and anarchy.  sunset park unseen map-20v7pqk     : Photo link 

Photoessay

 

Photo essay Justification

 

Our photo is is composed of a two-part narrative. The photo essay is time based and sensitive, and gives an ephemeral sense of the fake city and the flashy, fake imagery pertaining to it.  As a base, we have a photograph. A simple 2:1 photo centered in a large white frame. This represents our fake city and gives a very surface level interpretation of it through the statue of liberty and the white borders.  The second part of the piece is the time sensitive portion, because once it is revealed, the viewer can’t unsee what they will experience. First, a massive flame erases the entirety of the photograph seen symbolising epiphany when entering the real city itself.  The flame is fast and doesn’t distort any reality as it is set behind solid glass represented the solidity of the truth. There is a massive contrast between night and day bringing out the extremes of New York and focusing on the night life realities. The fruit carts that give great deals are still sitting outside in the rain, in the dark, with the flies.  Union square is covered in new visitors including the rats and disenfranchised. That homeless man you donated change to is now dead and being u-hauled to a mass grave on some family-less island. A real dead mouse decorates the corner of the frame, giving an even more genuine experience making ithe art piece even more time sensitive, because as time goes on all that will be left is bones and fur.  We wanted to shock people. We wanted to horrify people. We wanted them to feel a sense of loss and surprise. New York city is a beautiful place, but if you want to see the cake you have to see the plate.

 

Post review notes:
If I had to redo this project, the statement of the mouse was too strong but I love the grotesque reactions it made.  People were really disgusted and it made me so happy to pull out emotion from the viewer.  I felt it fit with the idea and message but because the mouse message was so strong it.  To better incorporate it into the piece.  I love the idea of taking transparent paper and printing the photos or maybe more perfected more google search photos, place the dead mouse underneath the picture frame, and then place a very small light underneath.  That way it conveys the message of the real and fake city and still creates the shock value that I love so much.

Bridge 1: Dress

IMG_0722-21inoa7

 

This artifact represents pain.  Slit throats, constricted muscles, scratched out veins, and a swarming head.  I wanted to show pain in its beauty.   My fingers are wrapped in bandages and you can see blood on the corset for your pleasure.   The dress itself was a labor of intense pain and I literally put everything I had into this dress.  I’ve been working on this for weeks and haven’t slept in three days.   I pushed myself really hard and broke a couple thresholds and had new experiences beyond the ordinary which fills this dress with unique process and connected emotion for myself.   Ultimately, it goes back to that room and the extreme breakdowns.  It hurt back then and it hurts now but I like to find the beauty in that and thats how I survived.