Author: Isabella

reflection and new ideas.

After an email from Amber suggesting I take a further look into the tape cross I used for 6 of my drawings, this piece of trash has many possibilities; positive and negative space is one idea that I can further explore. An artist called Veronica Herber uses tape in her artworks. I was fascinated by her work but feel that it is a bit too controlled for my liking. I can see the possibilities of using tape as a drawing tool; however, I have been more interested in ideas brought up by James today. We started talking about mess. But what is a mess? I see my work as messy, but there is still an element of control to it. The concept of freedom and movement caught my attention. Three of my drawings have a part of movement or fluidity, and I want to explore this further. The screengrab from mamma mia has a blue feather scarf controlled by the actress but also has a mind of its own as it is being whisked away by the wind. This got me thinking about motion, and how do you paint motion and movement? This concept of movement has endless possibilities, and I would like to explore it further.

when thinking about the movement I could help but think of the painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash by Giacomo Balla; This painting is a depiction of rapid motion indicated by the blur of the feet, dogs legs and the flesh. this is an idea that I would like to experiment with.

The relationship between the form and the background was a concept I hadn’t spent much time thinking about. Form does not have to be a figure or a shape; any mark you make has a relationship to the background. In the drawings from last week, I have been drawn to the contrast between light and dark using the different background eg, old books, dark colours and black paper.

for this weeks task, we had to bring in 6 images/items; this includes, 1. A photo with people, 2. A photo without people, 3. a piece of printed fabric, 4. printed images of a painting made before 1900,5. a screen grab from a film and 6. a piece of rubbish.

1. an image with two of my friends running
2. a photo of grafiti and stairs
3. a tshirt with printed text
4. Primavera by Sandro Botticelli
5. a screen grab from mumma mia
6. some tape coverd in paint.

I really enjoyed this weeks work; I found that I was making word really fast and with tools and technquies that I did not have much experiance with. I used, markers, charcoal, ink pens, the photocopier, crayons and a range of diffrent pens and pencils. I also played around with the surafces I was drawing on; I used old book pages, brown paper, black paper and white paper.

Mark making: this week we started off by making marks using verbs, some verbs I experimented with were, spill, dilute, smear, splash, spray, wipe, swirl, pour, drop, stomp, squish and carve. This week was mostly about experimenting with ways of painting rather than the what or why.

some ideas that I have been thinking about:

-what surfaces? are they absorbent?

-how do I paint? -what processes do I use?

-what is mark-making?

As this brief comes to an end, all I can think about is how much our plan has changed and evolved over the past two weeks. Britney, Emily and I have worked together to create our final art machine. With the help of our tutors, giving us advice and ideas along the way, our art machine is complete.

A few things we have added over the past two days:

We filled the glass bottles with water and food colouring so that when the light hits the bottles, colourful shapes and light are spread on the studio floor and walls.

Coloured and shiny cellophane was added to our machine

would we would do if we had more time and resources:

Ideally, we would have loved to have a space that we could blackout entirely so there would be no exterior light sources, making the shapes more effective and visible.

As to be expected our plan has changed many times. This was not a bad thing as this gave us a chance to develop our ideas over and over and allow us to refine our ideas.

Eventually, we came across an artist model that really inspired us. Light space modulator-László Moholy-Nagy, this art machine does not create a mark per say, but in saying that what counts as a mark? in our case shadows is our mark. We started collecting supplies, for example, glass bottles, scrap metal and different utensils. we were all fascinated but the shapes and colours left on the wall when the sun would shine through the glass bottles.

As for the ‘machine’ part of our project, we are using a small rotating motor connected to a box, inside the box are three different flashlights. The flashlights rotate with the box, casting different shadows and shapes in the surrounding walls.

We want the viewer to be connected to the work as if they are a part of the machine.  For example, the viewer can walk behind it and have the shadows cast on themself and they also cast a shadow with their own body on the walls. The plan for our final 2 days is to set up our machine and make sure everything is running smoothly.

After an inspiring presentation from James, we were all filled with ideas and inspiration. We had to get all of our ideas on paper to figure out what path we were going to further explore.

After bouncing ideas of each other, we chose to start with marbles as a starting point in our art machine.

A challenge we came across was figuring out how we could take our grand ideas and put them into a machine consisting of circular and or spinnable objects.

keywords and ideas that we had during our experimenting.

1. circle
2. spinning
3. obit
4. rotate
5. magnet
6. kenetic energy
7. push and pull
8. motion
9. movement
10. machine
11. spiral
12. endless
13. relation to space e.g. altitude

While thinking about how I can successfully recover in my own way I found old family photos of my great-great-grandparents and thought this would be the perfect way for me to execute this task. After playing around with the images and failing a few times, I printed them out on A3 paper and distressing the edges for a more organic look as I found the white outlines too harsh for the photos. I next combined the two photos to create an image with all four of my great great grandparents. Today I worked to take all the women out of as many old family photos as I can find and make a line of blended images with my relatives.

Now that I look back on the past few weeks of this brief, I wonder if I had come across this idea sooner that maybe I could have taken it to the next level. but some ideas I have had over the past few days have been to ambitious for the short time frame I am working with.

Displaying my work:

I chose to leave the photos of my mum and sister in colour as a way to show time and progress. I also chose photo of my mum and sister when they had their hair down and curly, most of the women in my family have very curly hair and I wanted to show this in the photos.

Over the past few weeks of this brief, I have been trying to plan out my next steps. However things do not always go according to plan, so I have been trying to adapt to changes that I can not control rather them forcing them to work.

Last week I narrowed my ideas down to family and the fact that my family is not here in Auckland with me. This leads me to print out photos of empty spaces where people “should” be, I then cut out human figures and silhouettes. I also experimented with trying to destroy the photos, I poured bleach, nail polish remover and rubbing alcohol on the photos, unfortunately, this nearly did anything to the photos so I chose to bin this idea.

Today I found photos of my great grandparent on my mum’s side. I deiced that these photos were the perfect example of a family that is not here. I layered the photos of both my great grandparents on top of each other to look as if they were all there together. This idea of being there at a similar time but not the same place was very interesting to me. Also, the fact that their children would end up starting a family together. This leads me to the idea of the butterfly effect “The butterfly effect is an idea that is more commonly used in chaos theory. A small change can make much bigger changes happen; one small incident can have a big impact on the future. “

In terms of presenting my photo/s I was thinking of either sanding down the photos and collecting the shaving and maybe putting them in a bottle or jar.

I then decided to put the photo in a frame and shatter the frame while leaving some of the glass on the photo, therefore you can touch the photo but it is still behind glass. so it will look like a family photo.

Where do you feel at home ?

I want to further explore the idea of home and my connections to my home. I not not see Auckland as home. My home is where my family is, even though my family is far away we are still connected. I am working to find a balance between my family and Auckland. One of the only part of Auckland that I enjoy is the North Shore- Torbay, and I also enjoy the Viaduct. I think this is because they are both by the water, and my whole life I have been close to the ocean.

I also found this morning work extremely helpful as I was in need of a fresh viewpoint on my photos. It also gave me good ideas and concepts for where to go next.

A new idea that I had today was to evolve my ideas of isolation from my family. I plan to cut out human figures from images. This leads me to the idea of being lonely and lonely in a crowd. of people. I next think I will take photos of crowded areas and also cut out figures, showing that even when there are people around they are not always the people I want to be around.

Another idea I want to explore is portraits, I looked into a photographer called Justine Varga and the controversies  it has brought with it.

More ideas:

drawing my family into photos with me.

Sending my family photos and getting them to scratch or draw on them.