Discoveries in Art and Media

The sculptures found outdoors of the Albright Knox Art Gallery have always fascinated and provided me with a deeper connection with the land in this area. This style of art has an undeniable spiritual energy that permeates the geography and the urban world surrounding it.  © 2010 Do Ho Suh   Karma , Do Ho Suh. 2010.  bronze and copper-plated steel.  South Korean, born 1962.       I was awestruck by the illusion of diminishing scale in the stacked vertical figures of this sculpture.  © 2012 Jaume Plensa. Photograph by Pamela Martin Laura , Juame Plensa. 2012.  Macael marble, lead, and stainless steel.  Spanish, born 1955 The Albright Knox has a large collection of modern art that can be categorized in multiple schools of art due to its ambiguity.  From my visit, there were numerous abstract and surrealist works that left a significant impression on me. The following works of Op-Art are found in different a...

The Eye of Providence embodies the omnipresent nature of human consciousness.  The mind's eye, through the lens of creativity, can perceive with boundless imaginative power. I was compelled by the symbolic power of this image when I first visited the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, founded by Alex Grey.  I began by drawing the letters of my name in a sans-serif, geometric font. I joined Z and N side by side to form a triangle, and eventually placed a lower case e snug inside of it.  After sketching this crudely (pictured below), I designed the logo in Adobe Illustrator.  For the purpose of presenting it to you, I painted it here in acrylic on paper. 

This generator is an educational tool, and avoids the syntax tools and more complicated formatting options. Rather, the user pastes text into a box, and then sees a random arrangement appear on the screen to show a potential example. Along the top of the page, you can edit the color of the background and text by choosing from color pallets (already made).  The layout of the cloud can be changed to common shapes like a square or heart.   I find this type of web tool exceptionally easy for a classroom setting, and could be a fun visual literacy experiment.  The first site I visited in pursuit of my word cloud was https://www.wordclouds.com/, which teaches the user a special syntax for determining the size and emphasis of their words. 

Zen Lines Logo Design      The Eye of Providence here represents the creative vision within each of us. I'm interested in creating a name that can be recognized universally.      I designed this logo in Adobe Illustrator. The path and shape tools, and the complimentary Pathfinder window, are instrumental in drawing vector objects like such.            First I drew a triangle, with the almond shape at center.  I typed a Z, E, and N in a Helvetica font on the canvas, and converted those letters to outlines.  I was able to drag the corners of the letters to create the shape of the triangle. The curvature tool enabled me to fit the eye within the letter E.      The strength of a logo or representational image lies in its timelessness, which was the best advice I tried to follow in creating this logo. 

Colors, RGB Primary and CMY Secondary: Generated with Acrylic Color Value Scale: Generated with Graphite ink

Elements and Principles as Seen through an Abandoned Nursing Home

Kevin's speech caused me to deeply contemplate "What kind of visualizing do we engage in private or public, and what even constitutes as public or private? What do we share? How does our behavior change in an audience versus one-on-one, or with a new person behind closed doors? What type of opinions, information, and reactions do we engage in publicly?" Anti-terrorism efforts such as TIPS: Marine Watch, Highway Watch, and Block Watch.  These initiatives must have been the lesser-known news during the time of Bush's presidency. They recruited members of the public sphere, such as USPS mailmen, to become informants for anti-terrorism.  Another piece of lesser-known news was the UN's cover-up of Picasso's Guernica for Colin Powell's address. Neither the United Nations nor our own country would agree to make visible an protest painting that inspired many to seek peace over war for years. It was seen as "too sensitive" while our Defense of...

Living With Art defines the role of the artist as such: "Create extraordinary versions of ordinary objects: Art is an interface, or a portal, to a world beyond. Record and commemorate Give tangible form to the unknown Refresh our vision and help see the world anew" Of the artists and theorists discussed in the Aesthetics video, I thought this one was important: Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury ,  PC  (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683) "beauty and good are one in the same, and that God is the source of harmony and order. The perception of beauty is based on the viewer's sensibility.  Even if one is sensitive, that is not simply enough. The carbon-dating approach to tracing the origins of art and creativity is incredible important.  This school of knowledge is linked to our biological evolution, as Changeaux puts clearly. Art was an early form of emotional communication, before the inception of language.  R...

GMail and the other web applications associated with it are exceptionally user-friendly, setting up the Blogger account took minutes.  In Fundamentals of Art Inquiry, I hope to build a better foundation of art knowledge, not only technical terminology, but a current social and political contexts with which I can make (and teach) art. I hope to investigate the process by which children can learn through art, and how to shape that with technology in a positive and beneficial way.   I feel prepared and enthusiastic about taking this course online, and appreciate being able to work from a creative space.  After watching the Growth Mindset videos, I was struck by one sound bite from a video that said "Keep trying, again, and again, and again." I think this is exceptionally true for students who need to learn the balance between many subject areas at a young age. It's important to realize while a student may excel in the visual arts, they may truly need assistance in...

Within Indesign, I believe the Package and export options are the most essential to understand when handling & moving a pdf or another data-encrypted document between software, as these steps can help you preserve image clarity and resolution. Understanding the new document sizing options, whether preset or manually determined, will ultimately create the foundation of all pixel-related knowledge in learning this software (as in any graphic design program) In terms of creating layouts, the frame tool functions similarly to a clipping mask in Photoshop or Illustrator. These are instrumental in defining accurate dimensions for an image to appear within. When typing original text or analyzing paragraphs, the tool Show Hidden Characters exposes the space-holders within the document.  This becomes really important in formatting a letter or simply finding places where the space bar may have been used in error. The ability to copy and paste layer styles helps one mov...

Digital images are small nodes in a huge net of information.  As they become ingrained in my visual memory, I become compelled to arrange some in artistic ways.  However, there are certain ways that digital images and icons work discretely in our thinking, like the flare of a message on a cellphone, that snaps the viewer to into an action. I use digital images at a range of scale, from minute or molecular, to human-scale, to pre-visualize arrangements for many of my paintings. I snap photographs of architecture, designed spaces, environmental light, and many human expressions and gestures. The resulting collection is stored in volumes on my computer that I reference often when painting. Icons, and thumbnail images, and logos are the types of nodes that stick in our highly-accessible memory.  I can react and adapt to my surroundings quickly if digital images are symbolic, such as ordering coffee from a digital menu or separating a list of departures and return f...

[September 4, 2018] The creative potential of the Adobe Photoshop interface is nearly limitless to the average user.  In working with multiple sources of media: photography, line drawings, vector artwork, there are techniques that can help the process immensely.  Workspace layouts are the most resourceful options when performing different edits to an image.  The ability to swap between painting, layout, and typography windows help one move smoothly between frames of reference. Also, learning how to arrange multiple documents is a great way of pre-visualizing artwork. Within the layers of your work, it's important to use the naming and grouping features, especially when you begin to exceed 50 layers.   When adding and editing dimensions of your layer with the Selection tool, we have the magic ability to go back and view the same grouping of pixels in their exact placement.  This is a critical part of graphic design in photoshop that enables us to constant...