“No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still just be stationery”

This project was huge for me. Not only was it a big job, but I really pushed conceptual meaning in this one. It turned out to be very personal, and ended up having a great deal of meaning for me. I found myself questioning what it means to be an artist, how the world views artists, and the struggle we face when presenting something that we've poured our creativity into.

Art is a very competitive world, and as artists we're always trying to "push the envelope." In this piece, we have the hand of creativity pushing a stack of envelopes, which are leaning at quite an angle but will never fall over. The hand of creativity, splattered with paint and filled out on the inside so it has dimension, obviously hasn't given up. It keeps pushing, even though it's getting no where. There is an optimism there; even though it isn't accomplishing what it wants to, it keeps going and trying. I've been there, and I think we all have. We don't give up, even when things look hopeless.

The other glove is flat and colorless. It is literally deflated. The hands belong to the same person, but this glove represents that side that isn't so sure.

The letter that this hand wrote reads:

Dear World,

An envelope is an envelope is an envelope. You can call it whatever you'd like, whether that be mail or art, but from an objective standpoint it is what it is. I will look at it through my eyes, and you through yours; we'll be looking at the same thing but seeing it differently. It will be a never-ending struggle to understand one another. I can't make something out of nothing. Will you see an envelope when I place it before you, or something more? No matter how much I push and shove, this tower will never topple. I will keep building up, higher and higher until I kiss the sky, but can I ever escape the confinements of this stationery?

Nothing is new; everything is recycled from something else. Does that make my ideas less valuable than those before me? Can you find value in an envelope that is not an envelope? I hope that my ideas can extend outside of this paper and touch your mind. Then this stationery will not just be stationary, but alive and breathing. You will see beyond paper and into something more.

Sincerely,
An Artist

I'm so proud of how this piece turned out. I was able to experiment with a lot of different things, like how to keep the envelopes up and how to make the stack appear bigger. When I look at it, I just feel happy. It was very cathartic, and I couldn't be more proud of the end result.

Cardboard Red Pepper

This is the first cardboard sculpture of the year, which we did some time ago. I had a total of two hours between the beginning of this project and the end; it is completed in only hot glue and cardboard. As a first attempt under time constraints, I'm very proud of this project. I really like how I decided to keep the inside of the pepper white, and the outside brown. The texture I was able to achieve on the inside with hot glue is also very successful. I wanted it to look shiny, and I think the hot glue really helped with that. Attaching the stem of the pepper was perhaps the hardest part, but everything worked out in the end. I was able to learn a lot about my medium through this project, and how cardboard bends (and doesn't bend). It really helped me create my cochlea later on! This was a fun, if not stressful project!

Blind Contour Face: Riley

This piece, one of the first of the year, was completed on August 26, 2010. We had to do a blind contour drawing; essentially I drew Riley, who was sitting across from me, without looking at the paper or lifting up my hand. In revising the piece I cleaned up some of the lines and had to add five shades of value. This piece was done so long ago, but I think I did a great job achieving value around his neck and chin. It was hard to work with at first, especially since I had no drawing experience, but I think it turned out nicely for one of the first things I did in art!

Lend Me Your Ear: Text as Art

Again using my body part sculpture, I had to create a piece using only text. I am most comfortable in photoshop, so I decided to work in there instead of drawing by hand. The theme to this piece is idioms. Continuing on the concept of how we hear and listen, I wanted to expand that idea to how we interpret cultural oddities, like idioms. There is so much more to it than just listening, but understanding as well. I purposely made the background text small, because upon first glance it's not important content, just as color and shape. I hoped, however, that if someone was truly interested that they could get closer and read the background. There it defines various parts of the English language, such as idioms. I was able to combine my love of English and art in this piece. I love how this turned out!

Are You Listening? Digital Collage Project

For this assignment we had to incorporate images of our body part sculpture into a digital collage. Since the cochlea is a part of the ear, I thought listening was a fitting theme for my collage. My sculpture has an impersonal, science fair sort of feel, so I wanted to pair that with a human element it had been lacking. I used personal photos of friends and family, all in black and white. I wanted to contrast the foreground and the background, and I found this to be the most effective way of doing it. This piece turned out to be very personal for me, and I'm pleased with the results.

Primordial Soup: Final Stage Collage

The third and final stage of my collage project! I think it came together so well in the final stage, I really enjoy how it looks. It feels finished to me, and I'm very pleased with how it came out. The little circles dotting the piece, all in the colors used in the ooze creatures, really tie it together. It feels fun and happy, which is quite a leap from my original collage. The second stage was really what led me to this point; the ooze creatures, as I call them, were just starting to emerge from the background. They were still bounded though, both in color and form. They connected into the background. The colorful bunch was finally able to break free, overcoming the black and white to create something new and beautiful.