- potato prints
- sketching (1hr)
- carving (2hrs)
- printing (1 hr)
- library book reading (2 hrs)
- artist research (2 hrs)
- paper writing/reflection (1hr)
- book character design (1hr)
What I accomplished/discovered/encountered:
I am finally back in the habit of making! Still not as much as I'd like, but I was able to spend some serious time with my potato prints. The process was both fun and frustrating. It was especially frustrating when I took a lot of time carving out an intricate design (epithelial cells) and it didn't turn out the way I had imagined. It was definitely a learning experience and I was able to work out some ideas I had. Working with stacking, rotating and repetition was the most successful process I discovered. The most rewarding part for me however, was having physcial evidence to show that I'm doing more than thinking.
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| feathers, epithelial and vertebrae oh my! |
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| my carved tators |
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| playing with repetition |
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| some studies look good, others not so much |
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| stacked vertebrae detail |
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| pen + stamp = cool |
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| I really enjoyed playing with vertebrae |
Speaking of research, I got some more library books this week. Sally Mann's "What Remains" was a suggestion of James'. It was an incredibly haunting book that paired dark poetry with photographs of dog bones, the body farm, the site of a suicide, and her children. If anything this book made me realize that even though her work is powerful, I wish to illuminate anatomy in a much more whimsical sense. In addition to what remains, I got a book of DaVinci's illustrations, a compilation of scientific art from Philidelphia, and a book of medical curiosities. Although I didn't find any images that were particularly helpful to the current stage of my work, it was helpful to better understand the resources that were available.
When sitting down to write my project proposal, I realized that I wasn't truly aware of artists who are working in congruence with my idea that anatomy, despite it's morbid connotations, is both important and exquisite. I googled "anatomy is beautiful" to see what would come up. After tweaking my searches a bit, I stumbled upon a press release for an exhibition aimed at presenting the body as something beautiful. I took a look at all the contributing artists and felt particularly intrigued with the work of Frederick Sommer and
Katherine Sherwood. Sommer uses medical imagery to create surreal compositions. Sherwood paints medieval symbols with bright abstracted images from x-rays and ct scans to make a piece that veers far from the subject of death. Chelsea also suggested I look at Thaniel Lee's collage work. His collages include many anatomical images, however the compositions look like something out of an occult manuscript than a dissection manual. It was definitely interesting to see the artist give the provided images a whole new feel by only using color and symmetry.
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| Sommer's collage "Maria am Gestade" |
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| "Big Gremory" a mixed media piece by Katherine Sherwood |
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| one of Thaniel Lee's many collages |
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| some of my ideas for bone characters |
What I think I should do next:
I want to explore using cut paper and light to make shadows. I also want to further explore my book characters. By Tuesday, I will have some cut designs and the documentation from my experimentation with light. I also will have at least one worked out book character by Thursday. At some point, I would also like to stop by the Taubman Library and browse their collections. I have been borrowing books from there via the library website, however I think physically browsing could be helpful.
Hi Kyla! Thanks for getting your blog in on time. It looks like you are making some interesting experiments! It was nice to see you starting to explore some less "cartoon-y" imagery with the spine/vertebrae in particular. I think you are on to something with this - the simple repeating internal pattern made up of one element. Materially, it is talking about stamps and natural matter. It is also talking about repetition of smaller parts creating the whole/the body. Your inclusion of the artist work that follows in your interests was informative.
ReplyDeleteWay to go on being able to see something you were struck by (the sally mann work) and still being able to see how what you want to do differs! Excited to see where this goes with your new reading.