More Art!!!!

Like I said two posts ago, I suffer from depression. So today I had to get a psych evaluation. It went pretty well I think. It has been decided that I will be going to Intensive Outpatient Therapy three days a week for three hours. So guess what!!!!During these sessions there will be some time for art therapy. =D yay more art!! I believe they take our phones away during these essions :( but I will do my best to take pictures of my art and post them on here. If I can't I will at least post on here and describe what I have done the best I can. 

See Ya Later Loves<3

Keep Marchin On,

Erin

Empty Bowls and Best Friends

Every two years at our school we have a charity event called the Empty Bowls Dinner. For this dinner, the art students make pottery. We mold bowls, and plates, and platters. This year we are doing a pasta pottluck dinner. Anything made with pasta can be brought, and eaten in one of the bowls, or on one of the plates, that each person buys when they come in. They can take these bowls home with them. All proceeds go to the South Jersey Foodbank.

The dinner is on Febuary 9th. This year it will also be 5 years since my friend Kaela Beth DeJesus passed away. She died on February 8, 2008. I only knew Kaela for about a year and a half. In sixth grade we had every class together, and we became really good friends. She was the kind of person who would do anything to help another person, and she had an extremely kind heart. Kaela also loved the arts, whethe it was visual or performing arts. She played violin, and loved to act in the plays and musicals at school. Kaela was always drawing. Sitting next to her in most of our classes provided me with a good view of the sketches she drew in her notebook. She was good. Kaela, like me also had a very crazy side to her, and we often shared good laughs. I know that the Empty Bowls Dinner would have been something that Kaela would have loved to do, and so I dedicate all of the bowls I made to her. To her kind heart, and gentle spirit. To her crazy side that always made me laugh. And of course to the person she never got a chance to be. Kaela Beth DeJesus, I miss you. 

Two sides to every story

Everyone has been told multiple times that there are two sides to every story. In this blind contour self portrait project I tried to embody that idea as much as possible. I feel like every person has many stories built off of two major stories. One is who you really are, and the other is who you let others think you are. I made this piece two sides. The one side represents who I am now, although most people don't know the real me. The other side represents what I think others think about me. It is also who I used to be. You see, people change. I grew up, I made mistakes, I learned some valuable lessons, and I am not who I once was. There are parts of me who want to be back to the old me. I was innocent, and naiive, and nothing bad had happened to me yet. But now I am also wiser. I know how to deal with a lot more things. I still have a lot of learning to do, but we all do. Nobody is perfect, and I certainly never claimed to be, because I know I'm far from it. This project definitely shows that I am not perfect, because it is not perfect either. 

The first side of my project looks like this:

It represents who I really am, and what I feel inside of me. It is colorful because it is real, and alice, and happening everyday. The main focus of this picture is my face with a tear. Something very few people know about me is that I suffer from depression. I constantly want to cry even though I don't. There are cracks, because as I described in my last post I have cracks, cracks filled with both light and darkness. There is also a brick wall, because I have built walls around this world that I live in. It is a lonely world, but it is mine. 

The second side of my piece looks like this:

This side represents what I think people think of me It is very structuredd and organized. That is how I appear on the outside. Everything has a place, and I look like everything is just fine, even when its not. On this side, I didn't use much color. There are several reasons for this. One reason is because I wanted it to be plain and simple. I feel like I must look very plain and simple to others, because thats how my old life felt. This new life seems so much more complex, so I used a much more complex color scheme. Another reason their isn't much color is because when there is darkness surrounding you everything is shades of black, white, and grey. This side of me seems to be lost somehere in the dark. The color represents the sliver of light that peaks through the cracks in the doors and windows. The light that letss you see colors, and gives you hope. The colors are hope for a new beginning, and a good ending to this long lfe I hope to live. 

"Chasing The Light" and "Paper Towns"

In this first project of the marking period, Ms. Kiick asked us to create lanterns out of paper. These lanterns had to be based on a season. Admittedly, I was increadibly lost (I do seem to be lost a lot, dont I? But alas that is part of this incredible journey we call life). For days and days I doodled patterns, that might possibly resemble a season. It was incredibly hard! for two reasons. 1) I wanted it to be deep yet simple. That way when someone looked at it, they wouldn't see just a season, until they looked deeper. 2) We were working with exacto-knives. Now to some people the art of using an exacto-knife comes natural. However, it was not so natural for me. I was discussing this with my guidance counselor one day, when she suggested that I do something that represented what I felt during one of the seasons. (She's so smart! She's the same person who introduces me to a ton of good music. Yes, that includes Marchin' On!) So since fall was the last season to pass us by, I could most easily relate to how I felt during the season of crunchy leaves. How did I feel this fall I wondered? I thought back to those chilly days, that were still warm enough to wear a teeshirt, but cold enough that a sweatshirt was better. And I realized the past fall I had been a pretty sad person. Fall brought back a lot of memories, and so did this project. But there were good memories too. In the fall I remembered a book I read, Paper Towns by John Green. In the end it talks about cracks, and how everytime something happens to us it leaves a mark. Bad things leave cracks, and the more bad things the more cracks, but through these cracks we can see who others really are more clearly. We become better people. This is how I made my lantern. It is cracked. Lines that represent things broken, but also the path to becoming a better person. The cracks let out light, and we must chase the light. It will make us better. 

I'll see you later my friends, and Keep Chasing the Light!!

Music+Art+Science+Philosophy=Me loving Wassily Kandinsky

I'll bet you $100.00 you've never heard of Wassily Kandinsky. "Who is he?" you ask. Well an artist of course!! "Really," you say, "I've never heard of him." (Ah ha you owe me $100.00) What!! You've never hard of Wassily Kandinsky!! How could you?!?! Haha well its okay I guess. I hadn't heard of him either until the other day when my art teacher presented her list of 50 artists everyone should know. So here's What You Need To Know About Wassily Kandinsky:

• Kandinsky was born in Moscow on December 16, 1866(Russian Calendar), but moved to Odessa when he was 5.
• He was a Pioneer in the world of AbStRacT aRt.
• He cherished the idea of creating a universally valid synthesis of painting and music, of science and philosophy. (My heart flutters every time I read that sentence, because I just love it that much. Art and Music together is just like heaven.)
• Like a lot of other famous people's parents, the Kandinsky's weren't all that thrilled about him becoming an artist. They wanted him to be a lawyer. And he did teach law…for a little bit. He graduated from law school with honors, but later gave it up for painting.
• Kandinsky played piano and cello from a young age, which is most likely what inspired him to be inspired by music, while painting. 
• Later in life Kandinsky (not a lawyer at this point) said "I remember that drawing, and a little bit later painting, lifted me out of reality" (Wow! Okay, so I feel the same way. If I didn't have art and/or music, reality would be inescapable, and that is why I like them so much. If I didn't have art or music to escape into I don't know what I'd do with myself.)
•  From the fullness of his inner life Kandinsky created lines, planes and forms.

Sky Blue
I like this one because it looks like the objects are falling, but really they could be going up, or just hovering. We don't really know we have to interpret it for ourselves, just like lyrics in a song.

 Studio del colore  
This painting reminds me of lots of things. Sound waves, cells, wheels, circles, squares, etc... A lot of these things I see are taught to us in Science class, but this too is left up to our own interpretation. ahhh so cool.

 On Points
The littlest points, can have so many meanings, options, choices, paths to take, journeys, memories, etc... I think this is what Kandinsky was trying to say through this piece of art, but then again that's just my interpretation.

 


"I applied streaks and blobs of color onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could...”
-Wassily Kandinsky

(Thats just so amazing<33333333)

~Overview~

Wow! we are already at the end of the first marking period! Time flies when you're having fun(or doing lots of work!! haha!!) I can definitely say I learned a lot in these first two and a half months!! I learned things about myself, and about art.

 I learned that I am actually not too bad at making collages, and that I really really like to make collages. So much so that I have continued to do so at home with my own photos.

I learned how to shade pictures, a trick that I had previously been completely clueless about. And I learned how to capture little bits of pieces in a viewfinder, and draw them big again.

I'm also learning how to express my self through my art. I have been taking home some techniques I learn in class, and I use them at home to make pictures that express myself.

I can't wait to continue my journey in art for the rest of the year!!

And remember to Keep Marchin' On!!! <33

~The Next President, Global Warming, and Collages~

Last year I took AP Government and Politics for my history class, so one would think I was up to date on politics. Right? Wrong! I hated the class, and did not want anything to do with politics. However with the upcoming election it has become very difficult to avoid politics. There are essays, and debate watching for History, and of course discussions in every other class. I thought surely we wouldn't be doing politics in art class too. Right? Wrong Again! The second project of the year was a collage on the upcoming Presidential election. I was nervous. First off I was still completely ignorant to most of the political happenings going on in the world. Secondly, collages???? hmm how do I do that?

But as I thought and thought about it I decided that the issue in the upcoming election that I felt the most strongly about was Global Warming. So I started my collage with that idea in mind. I started by walking around outside collecting leaves that had very defined veins. I used colored pencils to do rubbings, and create a cool looking background. Then onto transferring. I started out really terrible at transferring. I used my own photos of trees, and nature, but hardly any of them came out right. At first I was really disappointed, but as I went on with my work, I started to like the mess ups more and more. To me they represented the mistakes we make and the pollution these mistakes can make, literally and figuratively. We try to cover up these mistakes, as did I with glued on magazine pictures, and words. Then I made it personal by adding my own handwriting. Of course I added song lyrics, because that is how I speak, through the songs of others.I used the line "I know you can see all the world and the mess that we’re making" from the song Mercy by Dave Matthews Band and the line "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, Drifting through the wind, Wanting to start again?" from the song Firework by Katy Perry.


My collage in the making :)
click the link^^