Snow: Part 2

I made this snow-woman outside of the Tyler School of Art building. The first reactions I got from people headed to the studios was "what class is this for?". I explaned that I just did it for fun. The hair made of ornamental grass was the part people liked best. I don't know that it's great art, but it was really fun to make.

Snow

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It will snow about two feet in Philadelphia by the end of today. Here are some pictures I took while heading to breakfast.

3-D Wire and Cardboard project

In this project, we had to create a wire and a cardboard component, and think about their relationship. The wire had to depict a truncated body part or small object. The cardboard had to create form through cross sections. Where the two met, we had to lay down paper and select one color to paint that area.

All in all, this project had many requirements, but I'm very happy with what I came up with. I chose to make a wire ankle. Inspired by the fact that a sprain my left ankle at least once a year without fail, I decided to have my wire ankle be slipping off a cliff. I wanted to show how weak and prone to injury it is.

2-D Sketchbook from 1st Semester

An ongoing project throughout the year is the sketchbook project. "Artist Book" is a more appropriate term though, because it isn't really a sketchbook. Every week we do a number of pages. We experiment with new mediums, compositions, and ideas. In the end, we bind the pages into a book which is graded. The pages are experimental, but viewed as finished and resolved pieces.

These are some of what I consider the best pages from last semester when we couldn't use color.

Compressed Charcoal

There was a passionate conversation during our break today about compressed charcoal verses vine charcoal. Compressed charcoal lasts longer, is darker, and is harder to erase. I had been using vine charcoal before the break, so I decided to try out compressed charcoal after the break. The finished drawing is much darker than my earlier ones. I think both kinds of charcoal are good for different things.

Drawing - 2nd Semester

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Today was the first day we got to draw in Drawing class. Here are 3 figure studies I did. Each was a 15 minute drawing in vine charcoal on 18" X 24" paper.

1st Semester Personal Project (September, October, November)

This project was not for a class. I put this together myself to show the photographs I took of birds that died in Philadelphia when they hit the large glass windows of tall buildings. I wanted to record every bird I saw so I could count them. I chose the best photographs for this collection of prints.

I made a box to put these digital prints in. There are 28 prints total. Each is 8"X6". When one opens the box to view the prints, one slides the prints from the right side to the left side. This way, two prints are visible at a time. I placed the prints in a certain order so the sets of prints compliment each other. I got this box idea from the Editions Artist' Book Fair I saw when I went to New York City. Many artists put collections of prints into boxes like this.

At the book fair, I saw the work of an artist who was also photographing dead birds. Her name is Susan Silas. Her photographs inspired me to take the time to print out my digital images. Her work also inspired me to select photographs that captures the locations of the birds right after they have fallen (Susan Silas's work is different because she photographs in her studio and records decay).

I was interested in the photographs I'd taken where there was minimal decay. To me, these birds look like they could still be alive. This state makes the photographs a little more unsettling to me.

I made this collection of prints to officially end my personal project of photographing the birds this past semester. I titled it September, October, November because these were the months when I took these pictures (this was when the birds were migrateing so I saw many birds of different species). The prints look great, but I'm relieved to be done with this personal project. I learned a lot while working on it, but I'm looking forward to a new spring semester.