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Colorful Vintage Museum Exhibit Painting Illustration History Class Education Presentation
Below is the Written Script of my presentation
What was the most challenging?
Although this process opened up my mind and helped me gain inspiration, it also brought some challenges to my final piece. Having too many choices makes it hard to concentrate and develop in a single direction. Hence, I had a tough time deciding what I should focus on. To escape the bottleneck, I find it helpful to seek advice from my peers and clearly express my thoughts through the one-on-one meeting. Overall, the challenges help me to be more considerate when making decisions. The final step is to narrow back to a single focus. I often have new ideas during this section and have to decide when to turn over or keep the original plan, such trade and risks in art-making are what continuously draw me in.
What lead to breakthroughs in both?
Trails and braveness lead to breakthroughs in both. Be bold to try every new idea that pumps up in my mind, never limit myself, and make enough prototypes to ensure that everything works well before starting officially. This technique makes my work more precise and organised in both studio and seminar.
What was unexpected in your research for both?
The result was unexpected for both of them. I always ended up in a direction that I never thought of initially, it allows me to see endless possibilities in my work and never hesitate to test them all.
What were the most helpful inspirations, tools, prototypes or writing techniques?
The most helpful inspiration to me is my surroundings. The more simple, personal, and interactive an inspiration is, the longer I can keep my passion. The most useful tool is Pinterest and all these art galleries and museums in New York City. In terms of writing, I think the most helpful technique is never to be afraid of sub-questions emerging during the research process, they are opportunities to get deeper and see more interesting sides of a single question.
CRITIQUE: What did you hear from critique(s)? Writing feedback?
The feedback I received is mostly focused on the use of canvas. On the positive side, people think the project was pretty well made with efforts put into different materials. The construction was so successful that people wanted to take a step inside the project. The overall piece is pretty powerful in terms of expressing my thoughts.However, some people suggested that the canvas is a bit plain, I could consider adding patterns on it or use an alternative material.
DESIGN: Explain your design and if you updated it, what you changed and why?
My final design is called Roots, a 60” (152cm) x 16″ (41cm) multimedia sculpture aimed at visualising my creative process. I would perceive the work as an explanatory model of my obsession – Illustration. I constructed a house out of wire to symbolise the creative space inside my brain. Then, I used pliers to twist three to four 16 gauge wires together, separate them at the top to form branches, and cover them with colourful threads that were pre-soaked in the white glue. These branches represent my senses that absorb inspirations from the outside world to keep my creativity actively sparkling. I covered the object with a piece of canvas, which expresses a saying by Christoph Niemann, my favorite illustrator, and my research object in the seminar. He stated that “When I am staring at a piece of blank paper, I just believe that some magic will happen”. It inspired me so much, and I hope my work could be a visual presentation of the magic of inspiration and communicate how powerful illustration is as a visual language. Whereas the colour contrast between the canvas and the branches adds a sense of magic to the piece because I think illustration gives endless possibilities for creativity to take place.
If I have more time, I would use bandaid instead of canvas, then use several colour dyes to make some interesting spiritual pattern on the outside.
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES: What would you do next if you had another week? What questions do you still have?
If I had another week on this project, I think I would work in a larger scale, aiming and making true interactions with the public. Other than that, I did not have change to test other interesting materials, hence I would make more prototypes with other interesting materials if there is another week
REFLECTION: Now that the work is complete in both classes, how did they influence each other? What connections can you make?
The Studio and Seminar intertwine and support each other during the prototyping, making and researching Process. I chose illustration as a narrow focus and went from narrow to board in both Studio and Seminar. To be more specific, I made more than 15 prototypes in the studio to open up my creative box and see the endless possibilities to approach a single project. Similarly, such techniques are also used in seminars by researching through hundreds of paper works and news articles to avoid the danger of a single perspective. Although the subject of my curiosity did not change, it gets more specific concerning my career at Parsons, the research in the seminar, and these Bridge projects in the studio allowed me to dig deeper into my passions. Specifically, my projects in the studio spend a big chunk of time narrowing down our obsessions. As a result, the studio making and seminar research both showed my obsession with illustration lingers on the role of abstraction. The more surreal and abstract the work is, the more curious I felt.
