AAAhhhhh, It has been tooooo long my peoples. I have utterly failed on keeping up with the blog over the summer and the first have of this semester. A big 'my bad' on that one. My summer was super slow, relaxing, and crazy stupid lazy. I worked for Slocumb Galleries on campus here for the first half of summer. But that was just a temp job and I only got like 10 hours a week, which was perfectly ok with me. Then I managed to score a job at Old Navy which is a great break from the restaurant and secretary type work I've been doing. Once the semester hit though, I got crazy busy. I've been trying to keep up with my 4 studio courses and a mod. art history class. So far so good and I have some art to show for it. I'll be posting the images as I complete them but for now I can show what I have....some I still need to take photos of.
Before the art take a gander at this tune. It is by Youth Lagoon and is called Montana. Such a nice sound and an epic build up that, if your like me, you will freaking love.
"CLOUDS" This was the first project I completed for my Intro to Printmaking class here at ETSU. Done on plexiglass, I attempted to produce a very figurative image to take advantage of the graceful line quality the plate allowed for me to get. Although this is technically a self-portriat I was more concerned with the clouds. I tried to capture the gaze of the figure as well as the thought behind the gaze. Wether I was successful or not is up to the audience but either way I truly enjoy this print and the way it came out.
I drew this in my 10th grade English class. I hated that class. Our teacher was oddly obsessed with Nathaniel Hawthorne. She had a picture of the man in her classroom and god forbid you diss the Scarlet Letter. But any who I doodled most of the time in that class and this is one of those doodles. I like it. It is simple and bland, but I feel it still possess a lot of tension. And pencil medium adds some almost ghostly feel to the piece.
Here is a really cool song I heard on KEXP recently. EMA's Grey Ship is a nifty little tune that really builds up, and subtly gives deeper and heavier. This is the first time I've listen to these guys and will def be checking them out in the near future.
I love westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Films. Clint Eastwood is featured in many of these classics and his acting is amazing. In many cases he is the same character in his demeanor but his actions go in so many different directions in his films. Within this work I tried to capture as many as these characters as possible in an iconic and straight forward fashion. I focused on the roles Clint played in the "Dollars Trilogy" (Fist Full of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). I created the work using stencils not only because I commonly work that way but also because of the hard edge impact I can accomplish, the images appear almost political in a way. I am very pleased with the piece and was fortunate enough to have it featured in the _Frontier Show.
Great Jam here I stumbled upon while messing around on the Youtube by 009 Sound System called Holy Ghost. If you love to chill out, listen, then space out.... you will love this one.
(Cardboard, Newspaper and Spray Paint), "22x"30, 2011
I really enjoy this piece. I loved the process of creating this, it was fun yet difficult. My visual goal was to create a collage but trick the eye into thinking it was a stencil. To succeed in doing this I saved all my beer , frozen pizza and other boxes. I then spray painted the blank side of all these single ply pieces. Black took just 2 coats and 3 cans total but white was absorbed by the cardboard much easier and took around 4 or 5 coats and probably around 6 to 7 cans.
I then started by making the surface. I cut out a "22x "30 piece of double ply cardboard and then mounted a piece of heavy card stock to that. From there I covered the surface with newspaper in the appropriate place (the sky and the road). I also played with how the newspaper was applied, very similar to other projects like "Bong Hits for Authority" and "Just Dessert". It is hard to tell in the sky but the paper is placed to were it looks as if it was radiating from the radio tower. I continued this style on the road, which is much easier to see, having the paper radiate from the horizon line. I then worked from the top down, first I sprayed a small amount of white over the sky portion already cover in newspaper. I faded the amount of paint as I got close to where the mountain breaks into the sky. I then took pieces of the white cardboard and placed them quite randomly over the top half of the surface, leaving breaks in between the pieces to allow the newspaper material to be realized. Once I had done this I created the radio wave using small bits of black. The mountain and surrounding hills and foliage are lacking in detail because of the flat colors I was working with. I attempted to create some variations in depth by attaching smaller pieces on top of the larger. Then came the power lines which I applied on top of everything and really works to balance the piece giving the viewer something with detail rather than just all these big chunks. I then attached the radio waves that are reflected on the road. Finally after hot glue had numbed my finger tips, I added my SB and was complete.
The concept behind this piece has a bit of history to it. Buffalo Mountain sits right behind campus and is simply a beautiful thing to look at, it is almost something of an icon as well( considering the ETSU logo's mountain looks quite familiar to Buffalo). It is pretty ironic to me though that we have this beautiful piece of nature and on top of it sits this cluster of radio/ electrical towers. Although I realize I too am probably benefiting from the towers being there I also realize the extent that people will go to for communication and just simple convenience for that matter. As much as I enjoy my cell phone I would give it up if it meant the removal of such man made objects, especially on a mountain. I get to see the mountain everyday and since I've came to ETSU I was sketching up ideas to do feature Buffalo Mountain in a work. I did do this piece for an assignment in my Computer Art class and did use the computer as a tool to get started. After taking reference photos of the mountain I worked in photoshop to build a design from the photos. Once I had my plan I was done with the computer... other than to document and blog about the work.
Wow, I wrote more than usual for this bad boy. Hopefully it is more successful with some explanation. However, if you would like to see this in person and /or talk about it with me... this piece will be display at the _Frontier Exhibition at the Tipton Gallery, Thursday 5-7pm May 19th.
Hey, OH!...This is a really cool song and a very cool video. I personally appreciate the video for not only its very simple and creative effect but also it goes very well with the song. Please Enjoy!
_Frontier is a exhibition featuring artists from ETSU and Adam's State College. The show is at the Tipton Gallery in downtown JC. Info is on the show card below....this is just my cheesy design and is not the official, but all the info is there. It will be a fun show with some awesome work. The Facebook page is linked here and the Flickr set of all the show cards is here.
Most recent Computer Art Project, the assignment involved the use of text. I created this with photoshop using just text. While my photoshop skills aren't quite amazing I really like how much depth I was able to achieve with a tool such as photoshop. I want to recreate this by hand to see how it would turn out. I like to think it would be so much more to look at, and it would definitely be interesting to see how to capture all the space and depth. But I like this for what it is now but I still feel it is a work in progress and will explore my options with it.
"ashamed" 2011
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Why? ...Why not? "Why?" the band, is killer and here are some killer tunes. The lyrics will most likely wrinkle your brain, while the righteous music works it all out again.
Sky for Shoeing Horses Under is a great one take music video and Song of the Sad Assassin is a pretty trippy simple animation but very very well done. No video for the song Hollows but it doesn't need one, this song really intense and really deep, some may considered raunchy so if your one of those people open your mind up a bit.
Another sketch from 2007, when I was really feeling colorful. You may recognize the plane from "Peace Bombs", I used the same plane design. It was just for fun and I like the effect that the colors give the image. I will play with these in future projects I'm sure. Reverting back to my earlier creative processes and such, I know I'll have fun with it.
Great song by Lord Huron that makes me want to fast forward the rest of the semester and get to summer. I will be taking summer classes and working so it won't be to much different but I'm so ready for a change. But the tune just churns up those thoughts. Very positive, very chill.
