lee graf

so for this past week i worked on compiling all my different videos into one format. i was pretty happy with how it came out. i set it to music that worked really well with the rhythm and oddities of what the images were. there were some technical difficulties, but it seemed like they weren't too important as the subject matter was sort of this homemade quirky thing. im not sure what ill do next really, but the class gave a few suggestions of making a larger installation, more reflections, etc etc. im just not sure if i want to take it to that point or not - it will be a nice break to think about things and see where i want to go with it after spring break.

supposedly this link will take you to youtube with the video i tried to upload but...i haven't been having much luck with technology as of late.

Emily Gordon

Yesterday we had our midterm critique and it went really well. I've been realizing with my work that I'm moving away from the original form of the fountain basin and have become more interested in flooding and overflowing and with the water in general. Also the idea of a narrative does not seem as important either anymore. The comments from everyone during critique were really helpful and I'm looking forward to continuing to explore flooding and working with watercolor. However I'm defintely excited to take a vacation from my work and come back to it after break.

Catherine Hite

ok so now mid-term crits are over and i have included my 'final' work
i think that the idea and movement of my piece was much better than my original sketches and i felt that the ideas related well/easily. i had suggestions of how to integrate my desire to go into the fashion major with this concept and i am exicted to have a break from it but then to get back to it and try to work in that direction.
i will miss jana much but look forward to meeting julia.
-catherine

Victory!

Last week before Spring Break... came back from a weekend with mom and grandma having no idea where I was going with the piece. At the train station a wad of Double Bubble on the sidewalk caught my eye and I went on a quest for it in Florence. I decided to cast the inside of my mouth with the rubbery, scently candy. I had also left some aluminum casts of my mouth with glue in them drying over the weekend. I realized that peeling the glue had no adverse effect on the forms of the mouth they had uptaken, so I put two and two together, combined the glue and bubble gum molds/casts and created these miniature little nuances which I then placed on plaster casts of the crevices on my body ( pelvic bones and between the ribs). Stuck these in the nook behind my desk. I wanted people to get up close and personal with the detailed little buggars so I set up a type of bed area before the exhibition space in the wall, and presto: we had ourselves a piece. With all the exploring I did to try and come up with a concept, I'd say I have quite a few ideas burbling up there that walk along the same road in terms of materials, forms, and what not. Wrote them down so as not to forget, but who knows how long my attention span and passion for these will last. At any rate, what a satifying first half of the semester this has been. Thanks Jana!
~Nicole

Allison Shellito

So I know it's not technically "blog time," but I wanted to record my thoughts about the midterm critique while they are still fresh in my mind. I had a really enlightening critique today because, after weeks of struggle and some good suggestions from my friends, I think I know how I can approach my spiral to communicate the form I want. This is a relief because I have been searching and struggling to find this form for awhile now and now I know what to do! As of now, I am switching to video. I have been trying to communicate something that is too mobile of an idea to represent in 2D form. I think that only video and maybe photo will do it justice. So I am excited to get back for the second half of the semester and continue the exploration!! I have updated Flickr with photos of my work that we talked about today. The watercolors just don't communicate the motion the way that my videos will....

Adell

The nest is a highly constructed object, as artificial and considered as any work of art although it comes from nature. I was interested in making art about art - art about the process of making something, with the wires and paper tying in a more familiar and human artistic process to the creation of the nest. It was a little more personal, like looking into the mind of how someone like me would think about objects in terms of their creation, and showing that creative progression by beginning wit the wire armeture.
As an aside, it was interesting working three-dimensionally again since I haven't touched that since freshman fall. It didn't convince me that I should do more 3-D work, but it was nice stepping outside of the safety of drawing, and knowing that I can branch out materially if the concept requires it.

Alessandra Perez-Rubio

This week i am trying to not use any of the collaging materials i have been working with in previous weeks. I also decided to work on a completely different scale and and hoping to get another effect. I decided to start making photocopy's of all of the images that i had been working with, and messing with the size and contrast of the image. I am trying to make all these shapes and patterns mesh together and explore the idea of the beauty in decay in a completely different way, yet using the same inspiration.

Lee Graf

II forgot to do this yesterday - sorry!

Anyway, last week after going around Florence to different hardware stores, looking for my parts to make my little contraption, being told I need to have a blacksmith craft my piece, I was a little frustrated. I came into class with my wheel and my newfound box, and Jana suggested I go to the bicycle store. Of course, they were quite helpful, and made my entire thing and taught me a lesson about wheels, so off I went with a piece that I had nothing to do with. I was...less than thrilled that I didn't figure it out on my own, but eventually got over it and began to mount it in the box and experiment a bit. So these are my pictures of the contraption, lit during my experimentation.

Cassie

website (in case the link doesn't work): www.flickr.com/photos/cassiehamrick

Hello! This week I've been working on putting films together - I'm not very technically apt, so it's taken a while, but I'm happy with what's happened so far. Jana pointed out to me last week that the little white man submerged in water (can be seen in photos from last week's entry) refers very strongly to either birth or death, or both....so I tried to decide if that was indeed what I wanted. I think it is - it's birth, actually, but an exploration of the thing being born, trying to find out where it comes from and what that place is like, how it feels, what the environment is. I went to the market in Cascine yesterday morning and bought these tiny, beautiful patches made of thin lace. I thought I'd make another grass blanket, maybe a bit larger and better crafted this time, and sew them on - I would document the blanket every day with both video and photographs to have a record of its greenness/lushness and its decay.

Emily Gordon

This week has been a continuation of last weeks’ effort in working out my technical issues and finding the best way to communicate overflowing and flooding. I set up another series of experiments to help me understand the relationship between the fountain and the boat, which was really helpful in allowing me to depict the water more accurately. In terms of concept, I feel like I haven’t made enough work that is uniting as a group and I’m becoming increasingly unsure of my direction and where to go next. I don’t know if the sketches I have been making are linking together as well as they did before.

Rachel - Week 7

Well...it is midterms time. I had been having a lot of trouble deciding what to do for my final project. I was stuck on the idea of morphing and finding fantastical ways of combining trees and people, so my first idea was to create encyclopedia pages about a disease that causes people to mutate into trees. That did not turn out so well (and I apologize for the really faint quality of the photos I took). Then I decided that, since morphing was sort of my theme, I would create an animation by adding/subtracting to a single, charcoal drawing while taking pictures. Unfortunately I could not find the tripod, so photography was out. So, since I was messing with the human body I thought I would use myself as a subject - and I finally decided to do a self portrait where I'm kind of....tree-ish. I'm also making a flipbook.

Meredith Nelson

Work this week is going well, by Thursday I should have something coherent to show to the class. I've scaled down the size of my drawings, so they're a bit more intimate. It's easier this way to play with the arrangement of objects in space and how they relate back to each other. Drawing lots of pictures of flowers with ink and watercolor, it starts to get difficult keeping my work from becoming kind of girly. I think I'm making progress, and I'm pretty happy with the drawings that are coming out of this, although honestly I can't see this project going much further. I think when I come back from spring break I think I'd like to find a new idea or direction to focus on. It's been frustrating over the past few weeks trying to reconcile my interest in the physical forms- plants, biological materials, things tied together, clusters, etc. with any kind of overarching theme or concept. I've been using the materials I already have as a jumping off point for looking at ideas of things growing apart, distance and seperation and the tension between this and how organisms relate to each other.

Abbey Teller

This week I have continued drawing portraits and experimenting with different ways to communicate a visual definition for the blank portrait. Recently, I have been exploring a lot with the photocopier, and am interested in the dichotomy of the framed drawings which I have on my wall and all of the photocopies scattered around on the floor. One thing that I learned is that if you paint the inked side of the photocopy, the image will show through on the back (I have really thin paper). All of the images I uploaded for this week are photocopies of my drawings or concepts. They also show my decision to erase out all of my backrounds, as they are very distracting and make the drawings look more cartoonish.

Sam Week 7

Wow, week 7 already. well, the project has grown to be over 20 panels, all of which may not be enough, I fear, to convey the message I want to get across. At any rate, I am resolved to keep poducing narrative panels until thursday, both to complete my narrative and better flesh out the life and personality of Boris, my cheracter. I think i will attempt to create two endings, both of which will convey an act of bursting, but correspond to different attitudes the viewer has when viewing the work. Hopefully, and with any luck, I won't have to spend an extreme amount of time explaining the nuances of the piece. At any rate, it has been fun to work on a project that allows me to explore my interest in narrative story telling.

Kelly Diehl

Last week in class I was feeling antsy. I had answered my question; it's two. I didn't know what to do next, so I took a walk. I didn't see that my idea/theme/form was going anywhere. I can't think of what to do with my forms besides making them bigger, which would do...what? I guess I needed a break. So I'm trying a different excercise for this week. I went back to my home drawing (part 2: four homes). I wanted to make the lower right section in a sculptural way. This section is my Florence section, which, interestingly enough, also battles with the 'one or two' question. ha. I feel so obvious. and a little lame. So, I'm using masking tape, wire, acrylic paint, and string to rig up these marks in space. I still have to figure out the little frame/structure/trellis-looking thing I'm going to dangle everything from. I don't know if I'm going to go any further with this project after this week. Maybe it will be enough to get me back into the other idea. I mean, it's all the same idea, it just depends on where I'm looking for it. Florence artworks, my drawings, articles, my head, yada yada yada.

A break will be nice.

Zoe Hillenmeyer

So things sort of came together two weeks ago, when I had no idea where they were going - and I'm hoping for the same sort of fortune this week, but if it doesn't happen, that's okay. I've built this thing. It's more of a "sculpture" than it is installation, or interactive, which is too bad, because I was hoping to play around with those ideas more. I've just spent a couple hours looking at the thing, so excuse me if I sound a little down, I'm not, really, I'm just feeling a little saturated. The forms I've been focusing on are bulbous ones, pods, seeds, nubs, clumps. I've also continued experimenting with materials, and have been filling condoms with beans for a better half of the week. cooking beans, drying beans, using pre cooked, and pre dried beans, all. To no real avail. I'm feeling a little stuck, but I'm alright with that. It's feeling like a lot of experimentation, but not in a bad way. Because I don't feel like I have to be on a timeline, I'm all right experimenting "creating" a "peice-like" thing, and then if it feels unsuccessful, acknowledging that, and moving on. It's a process, but the process is feeling alright. I'm excited for spring break, when I can work all day without much reason for distraction.

Katey Week 7

Okay, so this week I've kind of gone back to the exploration stage a little. Last week the string installation went pretty well (it had the desired affect, even though the space wasn't ideal). This week, I've been looking at the work of Sol Lewitt and doing some line drawings on black paper. Also, I'm working on making another tunnel, this time longer because I'm wanting to look a little bit into the concept of infinity. I put up some pictures of the work i've been looking at this week on flickr, but i had some trouble scanning my drawings, so only one of them is up there. I am also going to an exhibition about Fibonacci, and may have some things to add later on this week from that.
Ciao, Katey

Windnie Pan

Things seem to be going fine now that I have my compositions planned out. I am painting a little bit everyday and realizing that it is taking longer than i had expected. I am still trying to experiment with making my images 3 dimensional, but i haven't found something i like yet. Basically, i'm just painting painting painting.

Roar

I wanted to mold my mom, my grandma and my own breast and cast these in ice. It would have been like a "look through the ages" type of thing: Breasts: The Evolution.... that sounds like the name of a corny/hilarious Waynes Bros. film. Anywho, after plastering my mom's boob in a material similar to dental enamalhyde?, observing that it was only getting stickier rather than pulling away from the skin, and discovering that it would take 24 to 36 hours for the stuff to dry (sorry Mom!) I realized that idea wasn't going to work out for this project. Still, I'll keep it in my inspiration bucket. I'm thinking about making a piece akin to that of Verrochio's "Doubting Thomas", only making it about inversion of some sort. Haven't fully worked it out yet. This past week I experimented with hung ice, watched it melt and dissolve the marker drawings below: cool effect but not exactly conceptually "there" for me. The struggle is roaring, but don't they say that that is when the best is created?
~Nicole

Allison Shellito

This week has been the busiest so far in terms of homework. Midterms are stressful! I really enjoyed our class trip to Siena to see the "System Error" show. The work we saw there was really inspiring and it related to a lot of things people in our class are doing, if not in concept, in media. Saturday I attempted to go to Volterra but that failed because of the weekend bus schedule. I went to Pietrasanta and saw some of the contemporary art galleries instead, but by 1pm everthing closed so I went back to Florence. I guess it wasn't meant to be!

For my midterm project I am working from a model of a spiral I created (see photo link). It seems to be more inspiring than the pasta and candle that I also bought to work from. My project is a series of watercolors depicting the spiral form in different ways. I reshape it for each composition. My goal/struggle for this project is not making the spiral appear too two dimensional. Thus far, I feel that some of my pieces accomplish this better than others. I am looking forward to going to Greece for the first time next week over spring break! Good luck to everyone on midterms. Allison

Joey

Now focusing on one corner of the courtyard - which makes sense because those beautiful wires are what got me into this mess in the first place. I'm concentrating less on creating a cohesive body of work, and more on experimenting with different ways to emphazise all the lines and beautiful chaos that's already happening in this particularly decayed, wired-up, pipey, bricky, full-of-life corner. In class last tuesday i experimented with chalking in existing meandering lines on the wall. There were certain areas where the line was effective, but this experiment was, on the whole, somewhat underwhelming. In order to activate the entire corner, i decided to move into three dimensional space and put up an installation which did not follow preexisting lines but (hopefully) drew attention to them. The installation - consisting of strips of cardboard and paper threaded onto wire and strung from wall to wall - did help draw attention to all the naturally occuring stuff, but it felt like sort of a dead end to me. I realized that I wasn't quite through with two dimensions, namely drawings.
Thus - I'm working on a series of drawings of the entire corner, very light intricate pencil work, picking and chosing what to include and what to leave out, then going back in with ink and water color and pulling out certain elements. I plan to draw the same corner in vaguely the same way over and over, but each drawing will be drastically different. Because theres so much going on in this corner, its exciting to me to be able to draw it repeatedly but make an entirely new composition each time. I'm also much happier with this aesthetic. My disclaimer is that they look much better in person because the pencil is so faint, photos can't quite capture the delicateness. The only problem is that this corner smells PUNGENTLY of urine...sitting out there is kind of repulsive.

Catherine Hite

last week i was heading towards the idea of motion...which is still visible in my work but i sat down and thought about what wings meant to me. the most important aspect for me was freedom through complete self-acceptance
so i drew up five second sketches of wings being weighed down and the thread breaking. i continued with this idea but am thinking about using three wings and having three images off the first two...it is hard to explain but just check out the images...it is about the progression towards complete self-acceptance...the lessening of the weight and then the thread eventually breaking altogether
-catherine

Julia

This is the painting I've been working on, and some details. its 1m sq. It's also not finished.

Daniel Lubniewski Week 8

In class, my exibition took a big step forward when I discovered exactly why my colored pencil were call "watercolor pencils." The effects I was able to create with them were pretty nice, and I found some ways to tweek up the narrative I have been working. However, by the end of class, I had finished everything I had originally planned to do, so I knew that I needed to keep adding on. I remembered that when I started working on this project weeks ago, I had considered the idea of making a narrative that went from a single form to many forms. After doing some considerable thinking into how to reincorporate that idea back into the narrative I had, I did several more drawings that ended in a exibition twice as big as I had originally planned.

Allison Glazer

Throughout the week, I've experimented with some of my ideas and altered my project a bit. I started by abstracting my images of the Arno and the reflections into organic shapes. I painted these onto plexi. Then I cut out other pieces of plexi and attached them to my paintings to make the surface more reflective. I made a few of these and then reflected them in mirror. When I went outside to see the reflections made with natural light, Jana and I talked about whether I needed the images I made or if the mirror could be enough. My original concept dealt with reflections and how they are both interactive and instantaneous. A person can change his or her location to find different things within the reflection, so it is interactive. What one sees can never be recreated to be exactly the same, so it is instantaneous. I installed the mirrors outside because I wanted to use natural light rather than light that could be manipulated. I placed the mirror in all different locations in the courtyard to create reflections that I found interesting. And when other people look in the mirrors, they will be able to find their own reflections.

Amy in a Box

So the box saga continues. This past week Jessica helped me reshoot me in my box. After some major editing that took forever I think I came out with some pretty nice shots (considering I'm not very familiar with Photoshop and was given a quick tutorial from my extremely fantastic roommates). The final photos are on flicker. I've printed out all the photos and am making a book to put them in right now. I decided to ditch the string because it wasn't coming out that way I wanted and I couldn't really find the right kind of string. This time around it was more about me and the strectching of the box. Alright, well I'm off to studio...

Jessica: Judith/Holofernes take 2

This week started out frustrating, but ended up finishing pretty well. I had a hard time finding sheets, a backdrop, and also the electrical sockets in my apartment did not fit the extension cord I was using. It all worked out eventually though. On Wednesday, the gang assembled and I retook the Judith beheading Holofernes photos. This time, I tried to focus less on the actual form of the painting and more on the spirit of it. I arranged three different compositions (2 mine, 1 original) and then photographed them from different angles. Abby was fabulous, per usual, she looks like a psychopath in all the photos and everyone was good all around. I ended up not liking the photos that I took of the original composition. Because of how it is arranged it was difficult to make it look like Holofernes's head was really coming off. I played around a bit in Photoshop but unfortunatly, my sk11z are not that developed. I picked ten photos that are my "final" ones, but really a lot of them came out well. Five of those photos are up here.

On to the next part of my project then: filming. Things conspired against filming this week and I did the majority of it... last night. I have all my shots currently and now just have to stick them together and do something with audio. Or not do something with audio, I'm not totally sure yet. I think the film came out well, but I haven't looked over everything at one time yet. Some of the scenes were very hard for me to do... For some reason I wrote in two different scenes that involve falling of being pushed over. One of these was falling down the stairs which is one of my fears/obsessions. I really wasn't thinking when I wrote that one in. Oh well...

water

I've been playing with the lines working to develop a visual language with more crazy lines and more basic lines. I've also been looking at Da vinci's water studies for inspiration, which has carried over a bit into my stuff but not quite in the same mathmatical way. it takes a while to embroider but its theraputic and I like it hope alls well maggie