Book Poem Visualization, Project 3

For this project, I picked the poem Messy Room by Shel Silverstein. For this book, I am going to use illustrator to draw the room and what is described in the poem. I am going to use photoshop to color in the illustrator documents. I want to make the book directed towards children, so the drawings are going to resemble children’s drawings. I am going to bind it together by a string in the bottom left corner to make the book lose, like a mess.

Messy Room By Shel Silverstein

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14818

Self-Visualization Project 2

For my self visualization, I wanted to portray my inspirations in life. The words are the meaning of the claddagh, which is an irish symbol that is very important to me. My family is one of my biggest inspirations, nature being another, and friends being a final one.

Collaborative Presentation Overview

The Rise of Motion Capture Art

Trisha Brown and Reuben Langdon

The theme of our presentation is motion capture art. Reuben Langdon is a stunt man that does stunts for videogames, movies, commercials, and more. Trisha Brown is a choreographer that worked with the movement of humans turned into the movement of light. We wanted to show the change of digital art over the years, and what people can do with it now.

Reuben Langdon's Site - http://www.reubenlangdon.com

Response/Comments on each of the Class' Collaborative Presentations

Masaki Fujihata and Perry Hoberman

The presenters picked two artists that went together very well. Both require interaction with their pieces. Their idea of having an interactive exhibit is a great one because that is not something that is very common. One of the pieces reminded me of something I see at the malls by my house. There is a projection on the floor and when you go near it and interact within the square that it is contained in, the pieces move. I think the interaction is great because it allows the viewers to be one on one with the piece and experience it for themselves.

Lynn Hershman and Marina Abramovic

I like these two artists a lot because instead of using the normal mediums, they use their bodies a lot. They also both portray feminism, which is something I feel that many people are scared to talk about because they are afraid of being ostracized. I was shocked by the fact that Marina Abramovic had a piece where she conflicted pain on herself and self-mutilated her body. I think she intends her piece to be shocking because it makes people realize and pay attention more. I feel the presenters did a good job in giving ample information about the artists and their works, and I feel this would be a very interesting exhibit.

Lucy's Presentation

During her presentation, I was a little lost on who she was talking about. I know that she was talking about avatars on the computer, but I was not sure what else she was talking about. I feel that she picked something that has just evolved, not two different things. There is not much more I can say about her presentation because I did not completely understand it.

Lillian Schwartz and Robert Lazzarini

I found these two artists and their work to be very interesting. Lillian Schwartz has a little bit of humor in her pieces when she combines already existing pieces, like the Mona Lisa and a portrait of Leonardo DaVinci. The video that they showed of her color and sound work, which I found to be very annoying and hard to watch. Robert Lazzarini does a lot of work with warping things which I found to be very cool. I think the artists that they picked created a very interesting exhibit.

Whitney Biennial Compare/Contrast Posting

Two pieces that I particularly liked at the Whitney were Ari Marcopoulos' Detroit and Kate Gilmore's Standing Here. They are both similar and different in many ways. They are both pieces that deal with audio and visual effects. Marcopoulos plays with the theme of youth, and the freedoms that they have. In his piece he has two young boys making noise with all different types of devises. I liked the piece because it was like a home movie and reminded me of my childhood and how my younger brother and I would play together. Kate Gilmore's piece is different because she is dealing more with the social struggles that woman face. Kate is in a column made out of sheetrock. She is wearing a polka dotted dress with heels. Through out the performance she is trying to break free of the column using pure muscle and determination. I liked this piece because she is a woman, doing some sort of construction, which is typically a man's job. She is still exposing the struggles that woman face today.

Word Visualization

For the word visualization, I choose to depict alcohol. I simply typed in the word and used the twirl tool to make the word hard to read, as if you are under the influence of alcohol.

Live Trace Vector Exercise

For this project, I took a picture that I had of my best friend. I used illustrator to alter the image and create this. There really is no intent behind anything I did. I was just playing around with illustrator's tools, since I have never used it before and was just learning.

Marina Abramović, Frida Kahlo, and Cui Xiuwen

Marina Abramović is an artist from Yugoslavia. She chooses to use performance as her form of expression in the art world. She is well known for her exhausting performances that are usually very lengthy. She is also a photographer, but in each picture there is an act, or performance, being done.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist from the early 1900’s. She became a famous painter, and is often linked to her husband Diego Rivera. Frida’s paintings are a self expression of who she thinks she is, and of what has happened to her in her short life. She used vibrant colors and graphic details in her paintings to express the pain that she went through.

Cui Xiuwen is a photographer and painter from China. She does many series on social criticism, which has been put on the back burner with her new found interest in womanhood. She specifically is interested in portraying issues like pregnancy and maternity. She has a compassion for other women, and wants to express that through her self-portrait paintings.

These three artists, very different from each other, all share a common theme. They all do self-portraits of their lives, feelings, and thoughts. They each have their own way of expression, but they all are expressing the womanhood, and sufferings that women go through. You can fine similarities in each of the artists’ pieces. Marina Abramović portrays the “typical woman roles” in some of her photographs. This is similar to Frida Kahlo in a way because she also portrays some “women roles” while she is showing her pain. In one of her paintings, she painted what is meant to be interpreted with a meaning of pregnancy. The painting was actually about the baby that she lost. This can also relate to Cui because she is now doing a lot of work with maternity and pregnancy. All three women express their roles in society, while voicing what is a major issue in women today. They are trying to portray a stereotype, a common issue, or a personal account through different styles and mediums, and I feel that each woman achieved their goal.

Adobe Illustrator Assignment #1

For this assignment, we all learned the basics of illustrator. We had to use the pen tool to trace around a picture and make curved and straight lines.

Photoshop Composition #1

For the first photoshop project, we had to compile three different pictures into one. I wanted to go for a fantasy feel. As a little kid, me and my siblings used to pretend that our room was outside and we would joke around with each other. I wanted to capture that feeling in the composition of the three pictures.

Assignment #1

Interior

Exterior

Human Interaction

Class Photography Reactions

After reading the class reactions to the four photographers, I can see that the majority of the class had the same reactions or feelings towards the pictures as I did. Many people saw the humor in Hocks' photography. It seemed that the whole class was basically synonymous on the four artists.

Underwater is a place where man does not exist. The creatures down there rule the ocean and they are not concerned with mankind. The Jelly fish seems like a gentle creature but, if you come to close and touch the tentacles it can give you a shock that could be very harmful. You want to admire these creatures from afar.

Comments on Photography

Gregory Crewsdon:

Gregory Crewsdon's photography was very interesting and intriguing to me. When you first look at his pictures they look like they have a "fake" or surreal quality to them, as if they are not pictures at all but rather paintings. Gregory enhances his pictures so that the colors are very bold and vibrant, which helps create that surreal look. He uses very strategic lighting in his pictures to get the mood and scene that he wants to convey. Also, his photographs are very much centered around people in situations that are not far from real life situations. The viewer is encouraged to use their imagination when they look at Gregory Crewsdon's art, to imagine what happened before and after the photo was taken.

Teun Hocks:

Teun Hocks' photography also has the sense that some of the subjects in the piece are painted rather than actual photography. His photography has a sense of humor to them, which made me very interested in the story behind the photo. For example, his piece entitled "Untitled (painting at river), you see a painter looking out at this landscape with a river and trees and grass, as if he was going to paint that light, cheerful scene. Then, when you look at his canvas he has a painting of dark mountains under a dark sky.

Jeff Wall:

It is easy to see that Jeff Wall centers his photography around a certain theme of destruction or disarray. Many of his photographs depict someone in a state where they need either help to move on or they need to reorder their lives. For example, he has one photo where it is a room that is filled with destruction everywhere. The room is dismembered and everything is thrown everywhere. There are holes in the wall and tears in the mattress. Then, you have his photography where the destruction isn't as obvious as we think it to be. His picture entitled "Adrian Walker", you see Adrian Walker drawing something and on the table next to him you see an amputated arm with the skin off and just the muscles and tendons exposed.

Cindy Sherman:

Cindy Sherman's work is different from the first three artists that I looked at. Her work dealt more with still-life's, portraits, and self-portraits. Her photo's typically involve some type of fashion that was big back in the 70's and 80's. Compared to the other three artists, her photo's were not as captivating to me because they seemed normal. Her pictures didn't seem to be redone on the computer or enhanced as much as the other three, creating a simple look to them.

My Inspiration

The beach is something that has always inspired me and made me think. I have been going to the beach every summer since I can remember. It is the one place that I feel relaxed and open to new ideas. The colors are constantly changing, along with the scenery, so every time you look somewhere you see something different, something else to inspire you.

About Me!

My name is Casey Gallagher. I am a freshman fine arts major at The College of New Jersey. I have three siblings and I am the third child. I went to an all girls catholic high school and I have played soccer my entire life. I ultimately want to be an interior designer and design domestically. I am very involved in community service in my church. I have gone to Miguel Aleman, Mexico, New Orleans, and various other locations around the east coast to rebuild houses for the poor. Over the summer my favorite place to go is Lavallette, NJ. I have little Mac experience, as I just switched to one in August. I have been working on PCs all my life and in high school we were required to have a laptop. I took a digital photography class my senior year, where we touched the basics with photoshop.