Project 5

Bows, coral, and lace enhance beauty but can ultimately hinder the host. It can often be a result of the objectification of the female body by ornamentation and decoration thus skewing the perception of the female's role. It is this idea of something may be negative but is unmistakably beautiful that can be a contributing factor to forming ideas of beauty based on physical nature of the female form. 

Maurizio Anzeri

This artist sews embroidery directly into old vintage photgrpahs. Maurizio Anzeri creates veils and costume like features on the figures through embroidery forms. These highlight the personaity of the person in the photgrpahy is translating. The photographs are the only remnants of these people and he is determining how they are reflected by the portraits.

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman is a photographer that produced a lot of work at a very young age involving her body as a subject primarily. Her photographs display movement provoking shapes that are intriguing and curious to view. Most of her photographs seem to revolve around the female body and display a quite lonely feeling overall. Personally, this is how I read her work because there is not much literature that the artist herself write about her work.  Her work was primarily produced in her undergraduate studies and the few years after before she committed suicide. Most people allow her personal story to translate her work, and although it does inform it, I believe her work stretches beyond that story. Her photographs are provocative both in terms of sexuality of the female and in an innovative translation of photography.

Project 5: Independent Research

For this last project, I would like to continue what I am doing in the previous project. I will continue to style and setting of the previous while incorporating a different sculpture artist to base for the figure's appearance. Justin de Caines Taylor is an artist who produces concrete sculptures and place them in the ocean to act as coral reefs. The materials used to make his special recipe of concrete support sea growth and allow for coral to grow easily, helping the ocean naturally reproduce it's plants and animals that are being negatively affected by human interference. Here, the human hand is helping the ocean while the ocean his covering and ruining the sculptures. However, half the sculpture become the infliction of the sea growth. The result, is a beautiful combination of color, texture, and pattern that enrich and give life, literally, to the concrete sculptures.

I am trying to think about other locations besides the one used in my previous image for a background. I think that a change in setting would allow for a more complete change in concept in response to the original image and sculpture. This image would have a dynamic of beauty in growth and destruction verse the other image being a pull between restoration and injury.  Because of this, the domestic setting might not be as fitting since the previous has a quite home-like quality to it. The sea growth version would call for a more open atmosphere, possibly in a more open, but still natural setting. Allowing the setting a change would open avenues for comparison. Also the nude being bare and open will contrast the concealment of the sea growth over the body. The first being a recovery, everything has been broken down. The second being a struggle, everything being built up and around the figure to protect and thrive off of it which in turn hinders and destroys. 

The setting should be much more simplified to highlight the sea growth making that the focus. The corner of a wall with plain molding and background might advantageous in order to draw the focus away from the image as a whole and into the figure. Corners and mirrors seem to be situations that come up often in Franesca's Woodman's work, the photographer that I based my previous project on for background and will continue to explore. In continuing with this, the blank but afflicted wall with mirror for reflection will be a part of my piece as well. 

An additional idea revolves around the figure sculpture artist Christyl Boger. She sculpts mainly women sitting, often ornamented in traditional blue and white ceramics decoration and lustre. Her works talks about vulnerability and fragility and the impulsiveness vs. control that sometimes is attained through human action. She is strongly influenced by the history of ceramics, hence the decorative references to ornamentation. This adds a certain reference to class and ornamentation to her work.

For me, this can be cross-referenced with ornamentation that women wear as jewelry, highlighting the gold and old patterning. Old victorian jewelry seems to resinate an interest with me since it is often gaudy and over done yet so revered as being beautiful and precious. Utilizing the jewelry as the reference to lustre is interesting comparison. Having an over adornment of vintage jewelry may be another beautiful yet masking way of concealing oneself, in line with how sea growth can take over and cover. However, this is done by the person themselves to represent this idea of beauty while covering up other thing with something more appealing. Impulsivity has a relation to the emotional concepts linked with Justin Novak's work that what can be inferred from Francesca Woodman's overall impression. Referencing pain and sensuality in the same realm is an idea that can be discussed through ornamentation of the woman. There is a certain emotional association with ornamentation that is discussed with a conscious need to present oneself as one's best, initiating the need for jewelry or other adornments as well as a overly-concsious awareness of physical being. 

Project 4: Reenactment

Through reenacting this sculpture by Justin Novak, I inserted some ideas expressed through Francesca Woodman's photographs. I used myself as a model and tried to set myself in a similar position to that of the figure of the sculpture. The chair used in the image has similar curves to those in the surface that the figure is sitting on, which is also reminiscent of the chair used in one of the Woodman photographs I am referencing as well. The other photograph contains a fireplace that seems to be a place to hide or be trapped behind. In my creation I am using the fireplace and my backdrop, and even though I am not yet sure if it holds the same meaning, it is a similarity aesthetically through both. 

My "reenactment" revolves around the idea of emotions. The figure is in a darkly adorned setting yet there is an ample amount of light streaming through the windows. It seems as if there was once a darker setting and is now lighter. There was once destruction, but now the figure is sewing up and fixing the sores of the past and moving forward. My other work has dealt with being taken over and consumed by emotions as to stunt ones function and threaten their being. However, through this project it is almost as if this is the resolution to my previous work in ceramics. 

I am using the sculpture by Justin Novak included in his Disfigurines series as the basis of my Reenactment project. I like the adaptation of the ideal of the porcelain figurine and making it humane, but past that to the inhumane back to a sort of rag doll type of figure. 

Since it is a sculpture, I wanted to base the background and lighting off of a photographer, Francesca Woodman who seems to discuss some similar ideals to the sculpture above. She uses all natural light in old, ruined, but plain, domestic settings, which I intend on imitating in certain respects.

Project 3: Color Wheel

While on a trip to Florida, I photographed different parts of the parks throughout the days that I was there. Originally I had set out to focus on the depiction of the various countries in Epcot, one of Disney's parks. However, I found myself being drawn to a lot of the mechanical aspects of the area. After all, the park is completely run on mechanics and all of the magic that is presented would not be shown without these parts. I found myself focusing on the color yellow, orange, red, purple, green, and blue colors of rails, lamps, and operative systems that surround us in the park. These colors are the six main colors of the rainbow and are also the primary and secondary colors, which means that they are each others compliments. They are so intertwined yet so different. The warm colors are all hazardous or cautious things that were represented in the parks. The cool colors are revitalizing and calming or whimsical. I printed the images the size of an average postcard size. This to me references the fact that Disney, Sea World, and Universal are picturesque places and these are images of all the things that hold up those ideas, yet would probably never be showcased on the countless postcards that these companies produce.  

Project 2: My Favorite Image

I chose this image because it is taken nearby my house in a preserve. It is something that is out of the ordinary for the suburbs, but is completely appropriate since it is so apparent in my town. I altered the images on different surfaces including, tile, bristol paper, and glossy photo paper. All of the different prints of the same image makes it an interesting contrast to see how things change based on the surface. I also altered one of the images to make it significantly darker and bluer to have a spookier and more negative connotation attached to the image. The last image I made to look vintage in a way and resembled a lot of my mother's old family pictures.