Thesis Updates 10.20.2019 and feedback from Chang and Lauren
Feedback From Chang on 10/4/2019:
- Look at the artist “Swoon” for inspiration on collage/large scale pieces.
- Other artists: Chris Ware, Agnes Martin, Jess Johnson
- Keep making, and make sense of it all later on
- Maintain the Edge to edge routine–>both in style and markmaking
- refine technical aspects (ie. anatomy)
- Try working with a square blueprint and see what comes out
- Push the density, and the visual and physical weight.
Feedback from Lauren on 10/18/2019
Recommendations for reading/listening:
- “In our time” podcast with Melvin Bragg
- Edward Belamy, “looking backward”
- “Voices from Chernobyl,” by Svetlana Alexievich
- “Swamplandia,” and “Orange World,” by Karen Russel
- “Love in the Time of Cholera” and 100 Years of solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marques
She also noted that the mandala pieces I’m working on have a sort of spiritual language — They are not a narrative scene, but a distillation of what i am trying to communicate. The other pieces are narrative and contain an entire scene/story. Knowing that I am working in two different ways, is there a way to bring elements of one into the other?
Onward to the progress:
I’ve begun a new method of notetaking in research. All quotes from stories or articles go on note cards, which i can then use as reference to the specific piece I’m working on. This has bee really great for organizing notes, and generating ideas. Overall I feel really good about the project, but want to have at least 10 pieces by the time the semester is through.
In Philip K. Dicks story, “Dr. Bloodmoney,” a woman watches the first couple launching to Mars:
“She liked to thin of them as that, the first couple…like something out of a sentimental, old-time, science fiction story. Adam and Eve, once over again….”
Below is the result of that passage. Adam and Eve maintain their classical stances while suited up in spacegear. On Mars they eat the forbidden fruit, in essence bringing their sin with them to another planet, already littered with plastics and debris. Around them, there’s vignettes of the planets Earth and Mars. The large circle around their head shows an image of an atom bomb going off. Above them is a running skeleton, symbolizing how humans run from death, but ultimately succumb to it.
This piece revolves around the idea that reality is fragmented. It’s still in it’s beginning stages, but was inked in this weekend.
This piece addresses how Apple products are the new religion that we’ve gladly sold our souls to. It’s a strange sort of detached hell. I spent some time making the squiggle lines darker, as well as adding the images people taking photos along the bottom of the page: The bodies are submerged. The people are more concerned with capturing a photo than they are about their own safety.
In this piece I added some darker areas and refined some squiggles. I also removed the text that said, “DUCK,” because I thought it was too…Didactic? Simplistic? I don’t know the exact word I’m looking for. Not much else has changed.
This piece addresses the blurring lines between reality and fiction. Reality is littered with plastics, while mythological stories of Cerberus and and Odysseus remain pristine. The figure in the middle is the barrier between these two worlds, yet is slowly bleeding into the world of fantasy, lamenting their role in destroying the planet, yet doing nothing to stop it.
This piece is about how alternate versions of ourselves live in different dimensions simultaneously, but if we perceive them, they are only shadows. I added some darker squiggle lines to the top right, and have been adding shading.
My Notes!