I first started with this drawing. I had no idea what to do with this homework, so I just started to doodle flowers. There is some weird meaning behind it, but most people won't even look at this, so I won't go into describing it. I then went to this drawing to try to break away from the all crazy colorful stuff that I usually wind up doing. It came out somewhat cute, and if you look closely you can see little people in it, like this one. I then wanted to use this paper that I had that my mom gave me that has supposed Native American "symbols" on it. She goes to a lot of Native American festivals throughout New York that they have throughout the year, and it seems like this was from someone that came from the West (since there are symbols for cacti and teepees). The outcome was this. It looks like some kind of weird eye.
I then started to think of other ways to use the paper. I did not want to use plain white 8 1/2" x 11" paper for all of my drawings, so I started to look through my kitchen cupboards. Why I started here? I'm not really sure...but you can create weird effects with food. I also wanted to dye things with tea to give that old look, and then I moved on to red food coloring, and even some oregano. This created really brittle paper, but it still looked interesting. This was one of the drawings that I came up with. It is actually my astrological birth chart with some weird designs around it. Here is also my "Cat Island", which is dedicated to Bo Ae. Heh.
After these papers were drying, I then also tried figuring out what other materials I could use. I remembered seeing online a jewelry box that was made out of a shell and had some writing on it, and I thought it would be an interesting medium to use. So I used two different shells for two drawings, one with a hand reaching for more flowers and another with an octopus, turtle, and some dolphins. I also created these two necklaces, one was a girl and another was a boy. They kinda came out weird, and it was hard to tell what they were unless you went up to them and looked through each shape around the piece. There was also this piece of wood that I had from a wine box (I live next to a liquor store) that I wanted to use, so I drew symbols of different religions from around the world. Along the edge was a quote by Gandhi (which was hard to see while hanging on the wall) that read, "Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion-human religion- by any number of faiths". In the past few years, I've been studying different religions and it really gets interesting on how so many religions are really interconnected and have so many things in common. However, since we live in an extremely prejudiced world, we have people that would rather exploit the differences than see the similarities to just increase the hatred around the world.
Going on with this idea, I want to move to my next piece, which seemed to look very personal to a few people in the world. This piece was written one night when I had insomnia. People usually think that I'm joking when I have this problem, but I'm really not. That night, I went to sleep like usual, but I just had so many things on my mind. After awhile, I get so worked up about the problems that are going on around the world or the problems that are affecting the people around me, and I really needed to vent. When this happens, I usually do not write anything down since my head works too quickly for me to jot things down in time. That night, however, I decided to get up at 3 AM and wrote on one of the pieces of paper that I put oregano on. After I was done, it did look like someone ripped it out of an old journal and maybe instead I found it in the attic of my grandmother's house.
I then wanted to do some political drawings, but it would have stuck out compared to the things that I already have done. I also really hate drawing figures (unlike other people in the class), so I wanted to figure out other ways to display this. I used quotes earlier, so I started to look for some quotes by some authors that I really appreciate. One person that I find really inspiring is bell hooks (she doesn't capitalize her name so her books have more importance- ever pick up a book and the author's name is larger than the title itself?). hooks' usually focuses on race, gender, and class in her works, and I thought her ideas would be great to use, since while going to SVA I have met some very narrow-minded and ignorant people. In this picture, it shows a flower rising above the other flowers, with a quote, "I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or someone else's ignorance". Plain and simple. The next one is on an old dictionary page that I gessoed in order for the ink or paint to not go through. On this drawing, it says, "Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class difference than in educational settings." I drew the usual class structure except with three different colors and circles. The lower class was red, the middle class was black, and the upper class was green. On the top, I put larger circles to represent the people that "make it" in the world. It seems like that anyone who saw this would have not even understood this picture even if they read the quote. By going to two different colleges already, it also really seems like if you are poor there is no way you will graduate. You can't afford books, you can't afford supplies, you can't even afford food, yet your roommate complains about her petty problems even when her parents give her money every week. This happened to me, and I also know a lot of people that get everything from their parents whenever they want yet they still complain. They don't know how good they will have it, and yet who will make it in this world? This is a really big problem that I am having with going to school since there is no way in hell my parents could even give me a dime because they themselves work minimum wage jobs. I also tell people to be realistic with how their lives will be after college, especially as "artists", but they think it will not happen to them. You would think that a person who is literally a daughter of a starving artist (my mom is a graphic designer) would have the first hand experience of this problem, but everyone always says that I'm just an unhappy person...My mom asks me every week why I'm doing this to myself, but at least I have a little more wisdom coming out of this.
The last piece I want to describe is the collage of red papers and lace with the quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Wakefield". The quote states:
"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever". I often wondered what would happen if I would just disappear for a bit and live in the woods with a few cats and to just live in my own little world. I thought that after being a child, and then after being a teenager I would have gotten over this phase. However, I have always felt so alienated in the world, but by getting older, it just has been getting worse. Maybe I am destined to be that crazy cat lady that becomes such a pack rat that she herself can't even move around in her house? Or maybe I should learn how to build a tree house. I saw a few pretty nifty ones online a few days ago...
My hands are starting to hurt, and this is getting pretty long, so I will just list the rest of my drawings.
Mixture of white fishnet, tea dyed paper, ink, and quote "Your soul is your highest self"
Green bunny and black tree on dictionary page
Secret garden and walking scissors with trees
Beaded feather and Buddha eyes with more eyes
Rooms before and after the growth of nature
Bookcase with velveteen rabbit, egg in backpack (from a weird dream I had), butterfly, and cat on bookcase
Turtles (from many Native American myths that the world was built on a turtle, but here are seven turtles representing the 7 continents)and two cardinals (someone said they looked like they were arguing)
Homemade soy hot chocolate and some weird land mass or iceberg...
Pumpkins on black paper and human plant (my attempt at the human figure)
Embroidery of skeleton (on left) and reaching for flowers (on right)
Castle (on the left) and witch with tree (on the right)
The Snake and the Moon (a Dead Can Dance song) and a glittery tree on a dictionary page that, of course, says "tree"
This took way longer than planned. There will be an update on my thoughts on our bigger projects in another post later...
Going on with this idea, I want to move to my next piece, which seemed to look very personal to a few people in the world. This piece was written one night when I had insomnia. People usually think that I'm joking when I have this problem, but I'm really not. That night, I went to sleep like usual, but I just had so many things on my mind. After awhile, I get so worked up about the problems that are going on around the world or the problems that are affecting the people around me, and I really needed to vent. When this happens, I usually do not write anything down since my head works too quickly for me to jot things down in time. That night, however, I decided to get up at 3 AM and wrote on one of the pieces of paper that I put oregano on. After I was done, it did look like someone ripped it out of an old journal and maybe instead I found it in the attic of my grandmother's house.
I then wanted to do some political drawings, but it would have stuck out compared to the things that I already have done. I also really hate drawing figures (unlike other people in the class), so I wanted to figure out other ways to display this. I used quotes earlier, so I started to look for some quotes by some authors that I really appreciate. One person that I find really inspiring is bell hooks (she doesn't capitalize her name so her books have more importance- ever pick up a book and the author's name is larger than the title itself?). hooks' usually focuses on race, gender, and class in her works, and I thought her ideas would be great to use, since while going to SVA I have met some very narrow-minded and ignorant people. In this picture, it shows a flower rising above the other flowers, with a quote, "I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or someone else's ignorance". Plain and simple. The next one is on an old dictionary page that I gessoed in order for the ink or paint to not go through. On this drawing, it says, "Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class difference than in educational settings." I drew the usual class structure except with three different colors and circles. The lower class was red, the middle class was black, and the upper class was green. On the top, I put larger circles to represent the people that "make it" in the world. It seems like that anyone who saw this would have not even understood this picture even if they read the quote. By going to two different colleges already, it also really seems like if you are poor there is no way you will graduate. You can't afford books, you can't afford supplies, you can't even afford food, yet your roommate complains about her petty problems even when her parents give her money every week. This happened to me, and I also know a lot of people that get everything from their parents whenever they want yet they still complain. They don't know how good they will have it, and yet who will make it in this world? This is a really big problem that I am having with going to school since there is no way in hell my parents could even give me a dime because they themselves work minimum wage jobs. I also tell people to be realistic with how their lives will be after college, especially as "artists", but they think it will not happen to them. You would think that a person who is literally a daughter of a starving artist (my mom is a graphic designer) would have the first hand experience of this problem, but everyone always says that I'm just an unhappy person...My mom asks me every week why I'm doing this to myself, but at least I have a little more wisdom coming out of this.
The last piece I want to describe is the collage of red papers and lace with the quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Wakefield". The quote states:
"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever". I often wondered what would happen if I would just disappear for a bit and live in the woods with a few cats and to just live in my own little world. I thought that after being a child, and then after being a teenager I would have gotten over this phase. However, I have always felt so alienated in the world, but by getting older, it just has been getting worse. Maybe I am destined to be that crazy cat lady that becomes such a pack rat that she herself can't even move around in her house? Or maybe I should learn how to build a tree house. I saw a few pretty nifty ones online a few days ago...
My hands are starting to hurt, and this is getting pretty long, so I will just list the rest of my drawings.
Mixture of white fishnet, tea dyed paper, ink, and quote "Your soul is your highest self"
Green bunny and black tree on dictionary page
Secret garden and walking scissors with trees
Beaded feather and Buddha eyes with more eyes
Rooms before and after the growth of nature
Bookcase with velveteen rabbit, egg in backpack (from a weird dream I had), butterfly, and cat on bookcase
Turtles (from many Native American myths that the world was built on a turtle, but here are seven turtles representing the 7 continents)and two cardinals (someone said they looked like they were arguing)
Homemade soy hot chocolate and some weird land mass or iceberg...
Pumpkins on black paper and human plant (my attempt at the human figure)
Embroidery of skeleton (on left) and reaching for flowers (on right)
Castle (on the left) and witch with tree (on the right)
The Snake and the Moon (a Dead Can Dance song) and a glittery tree on a dictionary page that, of course, says "tree"
This took way longer than planned. There will be an update on my thoughts on our bigger projects in another post later...
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