Current concerns

I like my drawings so far. They look good at the size they are now, but what about when I make them bigger. I'm thinking that the detail will need to be amped up. I want to play around with a projector and see what happens when they get big.. redraw them at a the larger size...maybe scan them into the computer first?
....should I work more from life and get models to stand in as these figures?

I'm also trying to think how the whole piece is going to come together. The angels are important, the main figures but I want to have other imagery integrated into the whole. maybe computer is the next step cause it would be a quick and easy way to combine images and play with scale. 

Angels

Angels provide comfort, hope and guidance. They are messages of God and intercendents between heaven and earth. Not only are they an important image in religious art but funerary art as well and angel statues are commonly found in cemeteries.
These are a few of the reasons I chose to use angels as the main figures in my memorial panels. Beyond their initial connotations already mentioned, they are easy to manipulate with further symbolism. I have chosen to use the angelic female figure to personify the 4 elements-Fire, wind, water, earth-to emphasize the human connection with nature and the added implication of the soul as the unseen 5th element. Taking it beyond the elements, I've given each figure wings from either a bird or insect that not only coincide with the element represented but add even further spiritual symbolism of reincarnation, transcendence, and eternal life. I also gave careful consideration to the positioning stance of each figure so that each fully embodies her metaphor.

Fire-Phoenix

Water-Dragonfly

Earth-Honey Bee

Wind-Hummingbird

Portrait of a City Landscape

Ok... I played around with some photo compositions... here are 3...let me know what you think!

New Photos....

These are some new photos I'm thinking of using for my 5 School submission....along with some of my previous photos of shoes on a wire, vacant buildings, etc. I think I'm going to use multiple photos to create one piece. Still got to work out which ones specifically. I'm working on my artist statement to go with it...

I'm not just an artist but a curious observer of the world. The camera lens serves as a tool to examine as well as capture. Having grown up in the suburbs, I am currently fascinated by my new environment of the city. I find myself surrounded by various sources of inspiration: signs, degraded buildings and structures, people, graffiti, trash, bicycles, etc. These things often show a stage of decay, passage of time, or life cycle. They are evidence of urban life while simultaneously represent a sense of urban death.  Within this dichotomy I see a metaphor for the lifecycle and the human body.  The city is in constant flux; construction and deconstruction, traffic, commotion, communication, and so on... These photos are the beginning of a series called “Portrait of a City Landscape” With the combination of Portrait and landscape orientated photos in a square, they are both and neither...portrait and landscape...city and body.

My Man Mucha

It's kinda scary but awesome the way I make connections almost unconsciously that make a lot of sense when I really look at it. In particular, my fascination with Art Nouveau has been there for awhile as inspiration in some of my design work (as it was a precursor to graphic design) and in my tattoos and now for my thesis work. But I started reading this book about Alphonse Mucha and this section on his influences and well it super works for my thesis ideas....

..But Decorative Art was conceived by its creators as the most profound means of artistic expression, by which ideals were to be intuitively conveyed to the viewer through symbolic and synthetic forms. And not just any ideas for the values of Decorative Art were highly mystical ones. The New Art was to be 'the first step in the journey to the true expressive synthesis' whose object was 'not only a particular idea, but also a universal idea, sublimated into the highest point of harmony, intensity and subtlety.'
Thus, Decorative Art was intended to be nothing less than the expression in symbolic form of the highest and most abstract values of human life.
The centrality of idealism and mysticism to symbolist thinking and Decorative Art was linked to another trend in fin-de-siecle French culture: fascination with spiritualism and the occult. The fin-de-siecle was deeply preoccupied with a wide range of theosophies which expanded or supplemented christian mysticism with spiritual messages thought to originate in Buddhism, Brahmanism, the Jewish Kabala and Egyptian, Greek and other ancient faith. Spiritualist, mediums and psychics gained wide followings.

Aha! connections with spirituality and symbolism and integration of cultures... and here is a bit on Mucha's use of the female...

...there in contrast stood Mucha with his irrepressible optimism and vitality and the Mucha Woman who, nearly alone among the representations of female figures of the period, is neither demonic nor dissipated. Her glow of happiness and the hint of some hidden message, her suspension between this world and another, the integration in her person of Madonna and Venus, express a unique and joyous intuition.

and more good stuff about spiritualism...

the artistry represents Mucha at his best -- finely wrought, detailed images and complex, sometimes hidden, geometric systems of symbolism. What is especially striking is how far his commentary and illustrations deviate from orthodox Christianity in favour of a neo-platonic spiritualism. The illustrations on the text clearly depict the striving of man toward the inspiration of divine light and the presence of idealised intermediating forms that are surely nothing less than the 'great soul of the world.'

and he seemed to do a lot of.... (what do you call a series of 4? like a series of 2 is a diptych, 3=triptych, 4=...quadtych?) anyway, like his 4 seasons, the Arts(music, poetry, painting, dance)... It's just kinda funny that without thinking about that before I had decided to do a series of 4 women(angels) as the 4 elements(fire, water, wind, earth). I can also think about them as the four realms...Heaven, hell, earth and limbo. I mean, there is so much symbolism and metaphors within religion and spiritual culture that i can dig into. I might only touch on a few important ones for the paper and leave a few more juicy bits for people to discover on their own while looking at the work. ...Oh man...there's so much to do!

Elemental Angels

Ok, ideas are really coming together now. After starting the Phoenix, I thought of how I might complement her with other pieces. So I came up with the idea to do 4 pieces of angel-like female figures. Each one is a personification of a different winged creature and also represents one of the four elements. Phoenix of course is fire, then dragonfly-water, hummingbird-wind, bee-earth.
I'm still keeping with an art nouveau style, which just makes sense with these female archetype figures and the graphic meets art is totes me. I'm focusing mainly on Victorian symbols but whats great about the Victorian era was that it borrowed from a lot of other cultures, ancient greek, roman, asian... and then that also makes sense with the art nouveau aesthetic.
I might make a series of graphic prints but i'm hoping to get at least the 4 big pieces for the show with some college work over prints. at the moment, i'm seeing them like alter pieces.
What i need to figure out is should these 4 women be in the same face on, open palm stance or should i mix up their positions? maybe one could have her hands together as if in prayer. hands have meaning in Victorian cemetery symbols...symbol of leaving, pointing down-sudden death and mortality...pointing up-confirmation of life after death, hevenly reward...

This is starting to sound like a real thesis statement, yeah?

My thesis work is an investigation of symbols and metaphors for spirituality and mortality as I struggle to understand and find peace with my own faith after the loss of my mother. Memorials, alters and shrines serve as structures in which to build on these themes as their purpose, outside of art, is apart of the grieving and healing process. While exploring how different religions and cultures view death and the afterlife, I've combined their ideas with my own to create a vocabulary of symbols to be used within my artwork. Death is a universal fate we all will face one day and my overlapping and integration of cultures transcends any one religious view to leave it open for interpretation of what comes next.

Hmm..um...Yeah?

I started writing a post about feeling lost with my work and unsure of connections and directions and what I wanted the visuals to be....nothing has been feeling very me lately and i've been feeling kind of down about my work and abilities.
then I took a look at the list of symbols I've started to compile. One of the words was Phoenix. Sounded like something cool to play with. So I googled phoenix. but i wasnt jazzed about any of the photos. so i added art nouveau in the search cause i've been thinking about my tattoos and tattoo ideas that revolve around an art nouveau theme, including the one on my shoulder of an angel with dragonfly wings. The dragonfly is another symbol which signifies transcendence and my mother was also a really big fan of dragonflies, hence my tattoo design in memory of her. so i was like, well, i really like my dragonfly angel. And it fits with the theme of my thesis. so what if i did something with that. I already have a plan for a humming bird angel, what if I came up with another angel with the phoenix. I made a quick sketch. Combined with the block caps I've been writing with lately and it started to have a comic bookish feel to it. An art nouveau comic book. Comic book covers. "Out of the Ashes she rose to fight again" "You can burn my body but my soul survives" Now remember, my mother was cremated... see how it fits together?




also FAILE. another one of my artist (group) obsessions. that does reconstructions of comics and is super awesome. plus, they got their start with doing a memorial print for the Challenger explosion that happened in the 80s.


(Religious iconography!)

Today was a successful picture taking day. First of all, it was gorgeous. Secondly, I got a lot of good shots. However, some concerns were brought to my attention in regards to the abandoned building project I proposed in my last post. While I was out taking photos, I was questioned by a couple people from the neighborhood about what I was doing. Of course I explained innocently enough that I'm just taking photos, which is true for this moment. But it just shows that these buildings may be vacant, or look vacant but certainly aren't abandoned and forgotten by the neighborhood folk. This poses a challenge for if I go ahead with my idea to put up some kind of art work on these buildings. I have to take the community into consideration and perhaps earn their support. I'm sure there is a lot of concern about gang tags and vandalistic graffiti but that is not my angle here. I want to beautify an ugly eye sore, I want to engage the community in a peaceful harmonious way. Perhaps a good building to start with is one on my street that all the kids draw on with chalk. Clearly, it's become an accepted place for children to leave a mark so it shouldn't be a problem leaving my own. I like this idea of chalk too. It's non-permanent, ephemeral. I could paint the wood with a chalk board paint that would help the chalk stand out more. But I don't want the children to feel like I'm taking over their space so maybe I get them involved some how. Maybe all I need to do is prepare the surface and leave a big bucket of chalk for them to play with.... This needs more thought....













Starts to be a series of doors... there's a metaphor in that...


The Bike Shrines might be an easier place to start. They really are abandoned and not going anywhere. And i really like the idea of personifying them and creating a memorial.




Still taking pictures of shoes... its interesting to find them in clusters... i still don't fully understand why people do this.




I found myself getting really interested in No Parking signs for some reason.




Here are more Home tags.



and some other graffiti...

"I hate yo-yos because mine doesn't work."

Branching out...ideas...

Ive been trying to come up with other ways to use this memorial theme beyond my mom. Thinking more symbolically, metaphorically. so here are a couple of ideas ive been mulling over...

bike shrines... Ive been fascinated with old/abandoned/broken bikes for awhile an i think they make an interesting metaphor for loss. so i was thinking, what if i personified the bikes and used them as stand-ins for lost souls. I'm not sure how to fully realized this but i was thinking of maybe adding something to the bikes, like flowers or candles or knitting something around them or some combination to turn them into a bike shrine. but i guess i have to think about who they would represent...if they would represent a specific person or type of person. or type of death...what did the "bike" die from? ...cancer, murder, accident...?


vacant building murals...there are a lot of buildings in my neighborhood (and everywhere in philly) that are vacant or abandoned. Every time i go past one of these places with the boarded over windows, i want to make some kind of image or mural in these places. like maybe paint a scene of "inside" like people living in the space. or maybe just some kind of design. im still unsure of details. but the idea would be site specific, and with the idea of making something beautiful from something old and ugly.


dead birds... this idea has a couple ways to approach. first idea i had was to use the same dead bird drawing i'm using in my mom memorial and place it around the city. maybe on the ground cause thats where you'd fins a dead bird. the second idea is similar in that it would be the dead bird around the city but it would take into consideration the ephemeral quality of paper and the process of transfers. so i'd adhere the dead birds to a flat, smooth surface with an acrylic medium of some sort as if doing a transfer but leave the paper on and allow it to get wet, peal away over time, revealing the bird image. perhaps their would be a live bird image on the other side that people see first, then the dead bird image would be revealed... thus a statement about mortality. maybe i could branch out from birds to do other types of images that start as one thing and reveal another. id have to do a test to see how this idea would actually pan out. it might take a few weeks to see results though. hence starting with the bird first.



community shrines... I mentioned when we were talking to Paul that maybe I could start a shrine that other people are invited to add to. A collective of grief. But I'd have to find the right location for it and figure out a way to give a people an idea what its for and that they can add to it. again, a site specific installation kinda thing.