sadness and pain in my right hand are all I feel right now. I had the idea of making a box with multiple layers like a shadow box. I went out and brought all the materials to build it, it took me quite a while to cut out the frames since the board was tough. My hand cramped a lot but I still pushed through it because I really liked the idea I had sketched up. I ended up not being able to finish cutting out the squares in class so I took them home to finish them there and that’s when I started having doubts.
I started to overthink and ended up not liking the idea so I abandoned the whole thing. thankfully I did speak to one of the teachers, she gave me feedback on my work and helped me figure out a way I could bring back the shadow box idea and include it back into the new idea that I’m currently working on.
cutting the board was a pain in the ass. the third image is me trying to figure out how I’m going to make it stand on its own
Robert Kushner and Tariq Alvi are two artists that I will be taking ideas from when it comes down to what techniques I should incorporate into my own body of work.
Both of these artists use collage in their works especially Robert Kushner, he tends to use old pages from books, which he layers letters and images on top of that to create a background for his paintings. the website that I linked above, mentioned his use of color and how ‘His work is characterized by a use of rich color harmonies and bold’ this gave me the idea to maybe stick to a color that’s more eye-catching instead of just black. I was thinking maybe a more vibrate color like neon green hopefully that’ll give life to my work. I could also gather up scrap paper and create a really interesting background for my own work, the first pieces that I made at the beginning of the brief had ripped up map pieces and I wanna bring that into the final piece.
overall looking at Kushner’s work I like the different layers that he has going on and I want to attempt that in my own work.
bookbinding today got me wondering how I’m going to base my final piece around books. I enjoyed the whole process of putting together each component, it was very calming. I wanna somehow carry the touch of gold into my work I think it would make the whole thing pop out and be a really great eye-catcher. Also my artist model Robert Kushner incorporates a lot of gold into his artwork and those always seem to be the best.
my first week on the new brief was quite fun. mostly enjoyed Thursday where we were introduced to techniques we could use in our works. the images I’ve included are some of the pieces I created that week, enjoyed just slapping whatever on the paper without putting too much thought.
well, the first week of this block was hard for me, I did find it difficult especially the first task that was given (discovery) which was walking around taking pictures, and explain what you feel and see. I’ve never really been able to put my thoughts down onto paper so it was hard trying to describe in-depth what my surroundings were like and what I felt during my walk. explaining things fully was a struggle for me like I said I’m not good at putting my thoughts onto paper, what made it even more difficult was that since it was lockdown I couldn’t really adventure out further I was just stuck in a small area with not a lot of interesting things to look at. so that was the thing I found hardest and frustrating. after the lockdown was lifted and we got to go into the studio it became easier since now I was in the city and I got to explore more and there were new things for me to look at it became easier to do the first task and the second which was the tourism walk and I found new spaces and little pockets within the city.
this really small coffee shop caught my eye during one of my many walks in the CBD it was run by one man and there was a line of people, so I’m guessing the coffee there is really good.
things became a lot more exciting when we starting working with the pinhole cameras and this part of the brief was my favorite, I’ve never even heard about pinhole cameras until now and it was interesting to know that there were different ways of capturing a moment without using a high tech camera. the first couple of pictures I took came out really bad, the paper just straight up turned black when I developed it which was frustrating but by the third week, I’ve had gotten the hang of things and knew how long to expose the paper for and the photos started to come out more decent. At one point I tried taking a pinhole photo indoors in my room and it came out questionable.
here are all the good photos that I got with the pinhole camera. the last photo in the first row is the photo I took in my room, you can faintly see me in it.
overall this brief helped me be more aware of my surroundings. it helped me understand even the simplest things could be more if I just look into it, it also helped me gain a sense of belonging in Auckland CBD with the tourism task we were given.
the last piece I made for this block was based on the recovering section. I recovered the past by foraging old and new letters that were given to me, which lead me to read a couple of letters that I was too scared to even open but me doing that helped me find the meaning behind my final work which, that a person must really love you to keep writing letters even if they no longer play a big part in your life.
final work.
if I got the chance to further this work I think would’ve interviewed those who wrote letters and asked them the thoughts and emotions they had while writing the letters, I would’ve presented that as a video, like set up a small viewing area where people could watch it.
in conclusion, my time doing this block was fun during that second, third, and fourth week I got to explore new ideas and try new things like developing photos in the darkroom and I also talked to new people which was fun. I also went back to the first task (discovering) and went on a small adventure with my friends which took us to a beach we’ve never been to. the sand at the beach was quite interesting and the views we saw on the drive were amazing.
I don’t really remember the name of the beach
the trip and brief helped me understand that there’s a big world out there and to also take in the small stuff and view them more differently and treat them as if they weren’t small. the only major struggle overall that I had was that I didn’t post enough of what I did on the blog, blogging is new to me so I didn’t really seem to do it much and at one point forgot about it. I think I could get over this struggle by not caring and just straight up uploading whatever I took cause one of the problems is that I’m scared of posting on public forums where people can view my work that’s an obstacle that I’m trying to get over. hopefully, in the next block, I will have more courage to share the work that I’m doing on this blog.
