Desk & Destruction

Before I write about my classes and my week, I want to brag a little bit! After I blogged last Thursday, in the morning I came to NESAD and built a desk for my studio! I’m very happy with it and proud of myself. I’m starting to feel it really is my space to create in now: I have the desk, all of my supplies, and I’m starting to hang some of my small pieces and inspirational things around. Over the weekend, I threw a party for my girlfriend’s 21st birthday which was real fun, and I tried to get caught up with all the work I have to do. It seems like a heavy work load is here to stay!

On Monday, I finished up my figure painting from last week. I ended up covering the female figure that I had left underneath the male one; things were looking a little too busy and the underlying figure was distracting. On Wednesday, we started a new painting with a different model; this one we will paint for three sessions. I started the painting with my darkest darks and I’m working in lighter colors as I go along. I’m taking my time since I have three sessions, and I’m also experimenting with painting with a palette knife as opposed to using a paintbrush all the time!

On Tuesday, our seminar class met in the morning to go over our ideas for the Janus double self portrait. It was definitely a different class atmosphere than what I’m used to, which is not to say that I don’t like it! I enjoy the change of pace of talking through each of our ideas and offering advice and constructive comments before even beginning the project. I can tell the class will be an interesting and close-knit group. I’ll write about my idea for the Janus project next week once I get it rolling!

After lunch, our class took a field trip to Somerville to the Tufts University Art Gallery to see the work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Being of Cuban, Nigerian, and Chinese descent, Campos-Pons aims to explore cultural and racial topics and overlaps in her work. After viewing her show, my class discussed if this concept came across in her work visibly or if it was not a clear enough message.

Today, we presented our group projects on Destruction to our Contemporary Trends class. The prompt was to create a work of art through destruction. My friend and I took a video of us destroying a TV with a giant sledgehammer. We were going to leave it at that, but we wanted to push the destruction and the art aspect a little further, so we took the pieces of the smashed TV, glued them to a canvas, and smashed bottles of paint over the pieces (with a sledgehammer again). The paint was very brightly colored and fun, which contrasted with the sharp glass and jutting wires of the smashed pieces. The idea was that a television is all fun and games from a good distance away, but when you really examine what it’s all about and what it represents, a television can be quite dangerous. The use of primary colors evoked a childhood feeling from our classmates, which I think goes along with our idea of people getting sucked into the culture of TV from a young age. We did the smashing, gluing, and painting across the street from my apartment in a big field, and it was so heavy and wet with paint today that we had a really hard time getting it to school. We made it though, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!