Anna

=__**Ambition**__:=

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I have finally started putting all the pieces of my work together, and I think the result is great. I think you can see the tension in my pieces, and I do not want the viewers to be comfortable with what they are seeing, because the figures are not comfortable. I also think my pieces are starting to show some consistency and seem to be a concentration, while earlier on they were harder to connect. By finishing these first set of pieces, it has spurred a lot of ideas on my part. I recently saw the documentary "Good Hair" that talks about how American black women are using the religious sacrifice of Indian women in a ceremony called tonsure to make weaves. This documentary also talked about relaxers, a perm that burns the scalp of the user, and as a result women have adapted to asemetrical hairstyle because of damaged scalps. I also have a piece coming up about Mursi women in south Ethiopia, that are physically restricted by their cultures definition of beauty.===== = EVOLUTION I have definitely focused in on a more limited two part medium of paper and watercolor (rather than a lot of random mediums) for my concentration. But I think the contrast of those two medium has allowed me to give another layer to my pieces. I think originally my concentration was seeming to focus on feminity, but I am focusing on how that lack of feminity (the shaved head) gives liberation. I am also interested in possibly showing the restricted nature it could be. The watercolor shows that liberation against the rigid and harsh paper cutouts. Once a secure down these pieces I am also interested in examing the flip side of liberation: when head shaving of women is a restricting act. I expected this with cancer patients or in concentration camps, but have found out that head shaving women is a punishment dating back to biblical times (when a woman commits adultery) and was even reinstated after WW2, when in France, Belgium, and Italy women who had been with occupying german soldiers were publicly humiliated and punished by having their head shaved. In dealing with this negtive side of my concentration I think I might revers my mediums, having the figures become paper and the backgrounds become watercolor. =

Generating something is different from creating it out of thin air. It implies that something needs to be built up over time in order to reach a certain level.

How have you gone about generating this project? I think a lot of my work comes from stories. I create complete personas and backgrounds for the subjects in my pieces and use that to determine the materials I am using. In some ways my concentration is going to be snapshots of the women in the moment they reach liberation, or are restricted by, the shedding of their hair. I am still experimenting how I want to make all these different scenes connect on a more coherent level than just they are of women with shaved heads.

What has proved challenging about your materials/ idea/ sources that you had not anticipated? I am finding exceedingly difficult to find the exact body positions I want, and the materials i want to focus on. I desperately want to work with acrylics and create realistic paintings, but because of the time constraints I don't think this is going to happen. Also size is a definite issue because of time. I think I might shift my concentration to continue with water color and paper layers. I think this could emphasize the femininty of the women through delicate water color stroke, and show the harsh response of the world in a more graphic paper cut out background.

What have you learned that you will take with you into the second Quarter? I would like to start all my projects in the next quarter, and also nail down body positions earlier in my piece.

Digital Project:

What aspects of working in Photoshop did you find helpful while working on these pieces? I started out with an abstract line drawing of pinecone, but with the tools in photoshop I got to take sections of my drawing and completely change them into new objects. I really liked the ability to change size, proportion, and color to create something entirely different. Also rotating and blurring the objects. Also the fact that everything I did was temporary, and I ability to be more radical without worrying about ruining the piece.

What do you like more about working with physical materials? I feel like I'm creating something more organicly when I use physical materials. And the different materials add true texture and layers to the piece that photoshop can't.

How can you make use of the program in designing your conentration? I am still in the process of solidifing my visual stategy. Once I know my strategy fullly I think I will decide if i want to use photoshop to alter pieces.



This project definitely taught me to work outside the box, in something I am completely uncomfortable with. Also, after the different steps of the project it was crucial to think of the composition and balance of the piece. I tried to go as extreme as possible, with the size and the simple and bold color choices, which in the end made my solution harder to find. Even though the shapes and colors were somewhat simple, I think the added element of transparency made the piece more dynamic. Also the repetition of shapes to create nevgative spaces along with copyiung elements from the chinese boxes to go on the forground. I think my piece became unified y the application of the solid purple as a background, and then the gradual purply red pink around the edges, also the repetition of the red line shape in the bottom left helped to continue flow throughout the piece.

I think in some ways I worked backwards on this project because I had a clear vision of two of my layers, and then had to use strategy to accomplish my final layer. I think the startegy of this project was to find a really captive scene, and then use the layers around that scene to enhance it more. I also think that in a way we were thinking of our projects more three dimensionally, also I started with a simple idea, and then once I started working on paper with it, the interaction between the layers and the layers them selves became a lot more complicated. The basic positive and negative shapes were fairly simple, but when I started cutting them, and using source material to help make them, they became a lot more complex. I think that strategy was essintial because with thought the different steps, a complex, successful piece could not have been accomplished. Being able to process each layer individually, and then work on the interaction between the layers allowed the scene to truly become 3D on a 2D surface. In addition to the strategy of planning the interaction of layers, I implemented several strategies in making the piece. I think bold color contrasts, intense negative space, layering of water and paint, and mixing paper with paint and pencil added a lot to my piece.

For the dramatic self portrait I brought a velvet ribbon to the photo shoot, along with a lot of ideas pertaining to childhood like jump roping, patty-cake, and crawling. I wanted my piece to be of a child because I do think a part of me will always be very goofy and childlike. However, I ended up choosing a photo in which I am adjusting my hair ribbon to be my drawing, something that I had not planned on. In what ended up as my final piece I see light as maturity, I am trying to adjust my hair and make myself a proper adult. My facial expression shows one of a type of sarcasm or almost forced obedience. I see my character having to adapt into adulthood rather bitterly, reluctant to withdraw from a world of innocence and no obligations. I think my character doesn't want to, but is making a choice of conformity - instead of rebelling. As far as learning a lesson from this piece for my concentration, I think I realize now the layers that have to be put into work. Not only conceptually but the steps of blocking out, lightly shading, developing gray ares, and darkly shading all were necessarry to make the piece cohesive. Also I see a chance for a concentration of reactions: to conform or rebel.

For Project 2 I started with one of my favorite fruits - the pineapple. I think this was a great object to work with because of all the different textures and parts that it has: the leaves, crust and insides. I started looking at different angles that you can see a pinapple, and began putting these ideas together like a puzzle. This concept of a pineapple as a puzzle not only comes from the different pineapples in the arrangement, but the different parts of a pineapple itself as well as the puzzling pattern on the skin. In order to present this idea I made puzzle pieces out of the cardboard and then painting a still life which I would then disassemble. By using acrylics I could copy the paint like quailities in so many puzzles as well as layering colors more effectively. In addition, the puzzle spilled over from not only the puzzle pieces, but the border around it - which turned into pieces themselves. Lastly, by integrating pieces on top of other pieces, not only overlapping, but actually copying designs into places they wouldn't be normally, I continued the puzzle idea. If I were to develop this into a concentration I think I would take an even more of an abstract approach, making pieces that were not necessarily square, and not necessarily broken up, but still have puzzle qualities of not correlating with everything around it.