Ally Glazer

I can't believe that the semester is almost over and I'm working on my final piece. I changed my idea around because installing the hanging mirrors at Officina wouldn't have worked. I took all the mirrors I had and put them into lots of different compositions to make a 3d work. The mirrors reflect one another and they're layered so it shows a lot of space when looking at it. I took photos of the 3d piece and put them into a book, similar to what I did for the midterm crit. I'm really happy with how the photos came out and how many dimensions can be seen within the mirrors. Jana - it was so fun talking to you the other day. Come to the opening!

Emily

It’s so weird to think about how I am making the pieces for our final show! Last week I put up three new photographs from the batch of new pictures I took. I printed them larger and on mat paper. They are still tinted slightly green, but they look pretty much like what is up on flickr. During critique, there was a pretty good response to the images I chose.

I also soaked a bunch of paper in ink and watercolor and attempted to draw more fluidly upon the backgrounds I created in a similar fashion to my previous drawings, but I got really frustrated and tried a different approach. I printed out the same photos in a very light version and quickly painted on top of them, to see what kind of effect I could get. While what I created was not so successful, it made me realize that the combination between the photo and the image is what I would like to make for the show.

I experimented with photocopy transfers on nicer paper and was having a lot of difficulty getting them to work. My next step is to print my photos on the laser printer on the good paper and water color on them. The only problem is that they are going to be a little smaller than I hoped. I’m excited to see if this method is going to work.

Rachel - almost final week!

Hello~
So the last critique went pretty well, I suppose. I did 3 drawings (posted in flickr). One of the biggest issues was that I don't have a background, so people suggested that I develop an environment or something.
Which brought me to a choice - this whole semester I had been sort of planning to do an animation, but doing that would sacrifice drawing quality out of necessity - and I could not do both an animation and a more developed drawing (time constraints). So, I think that I will focus on one drawing, create an environment and make some of the modifications that the class suggested (no random girl). Anyway, that's all.

bacini, bacini, bacini from Jana

HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I miss you guys!!!!

It was such a kick in the pants to hear some of your voices Friday night!
(And I heard you kept Miss Julia out past her bedtime! Naughty!)

Your work has progressed at a clipping pace. I am so pleased for each of you. I appologize for not "commenting" on every entry, every time.... but be assured, I'm keeping up with you! I have to tell you that I giggle and sigh every time I go through your words and pictures. You have such an amazing combination of humor, seriousness, focus, and freedom. It's an incredible mix.
I wish I could be at the Officina for the show. Please, someone, take photographs and post them somewhere!

I wanted to tell you a little of what I've been up to.
The Drawing Game show in Kansas City went great. You can view the work at thedrawinggame.com (Regan and Melissa are both participants...) The show is called From Flat to Phat and it's about printmakers who break the mould. Phil Slien and the curators of the show have been talking about bringing it to STL to the Des Lee Gallery.... So hopefully next year you'll get to see it.

The Arcadia workshop was amazing. I posted pictures on my flickr site so you can check them out.
I collaborated with a Landscape Architect named Jane Wolff and we organized a workshop (for 10 students) and a public symposium based on different aspects of Arcadia: found, made, and lost. These activities all accompanied an exhibition of artist's books called Arcadia Id Est which was curated by a Brittish woman named Sarah Bodman. You can learn about the exhibition at http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/arcadia.htm

Tonight the artist Leslie Dill is giving a lecture at COCA so I'm going to that.... and in two weeks I go to Arizona to be a visiting artist. I've asked if we can go up to the Roden Crater and see James Turrell's observatory that he's been building (http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/clip1.html)....

And for boring news, I did my taxes today..... and now my tummy is rumbling..... so I better sign off.

good luck getting ready for the show..... I just KNOW it's gonna be awesome!!!!!

BIG HUG!
Jana

meredith nelson

my project from last week is a mess, both conceptually and visually. a mess that i happen to like, but the criticism i got was valid. it was really more like two different projects in the same place. i feel like doing something different for the final show, but i haven't really thought about what that would be. i should go back to my ink drawings, i liked doing those. i don't feel very connected to the sculpture i was making. sculpture isn't really my thing. i went into officina this morning to check out the space. it was awkward trying to explain to the guy at the bar why i was taking pictures, my italian is not very good and neither is his english.

Adell

So I'm working out a very restrained style of tight hatch marks, sometimes using them along with paper cut-outs to make delicate little images that involve personal, idiosyncratic images (and a lot of little houses). My final piece will be a more abstract but still figurative rendering of the nesting/home thing, involving my own personal little city of marks on a very large background. I'm hoping it will look like a very large etching.

lee graf

this past week i arranged another little video with accompanying music. i think it turned out well, though i still do have to edit some of the transitions.

unrelated to the video, im interested in pursuing the globe idea i had previously briefly mentioned. im still unsure how i owuld go about it, but i have a plastic ball and am thinking about incorporating wax. i really have no idea where im going with this, but we shall see.

Alessandra Perez-Rubio

My camera has been broken for the past few weeks! finally works now though... i know thats no excues for not blogging, but ill make this one extra good. Since spring break i have been looking into more specific forms, versus the abstract ones i have been experimenting with. The form i was inherently drawn to for some reason were chandeliers. I just started taking lots of pictures of chandeliers and then rendering them on plain bristol paper. I experimented with different types of rendering, using tracing paper, layering these images and conecting them to each other. I also chose not to completely render some of the chandelier beads and just outline them. I didnt want to comepletely break from my initial ideas of shapes and pattern Then i decided to have them all compiled on one sheet of paper on a high rez file on photoshop. I took this to the printer next door, and had them print it out on velum, instead of normal paper. I wanted to play around with the idea of how transparencey reveals layers from underneath. I also wanted to experiment with how light showed through this transparency and how it enhanced/detracted from picture plane. When i had the image printed out, i felt that they werent stong enough to exist on their own, which is why i decided to go over the images in a black penn, and further bring out the shading and the outlines. Throughout this process i had been walking around the city and taking pictures of decaying walls and rustation in the buildings. I printed these photos out in black and white on plain paper and gave them all a very subdued watercolor wash, similar to that of my midterm piece. I then applied glue on the front of these images and pasted them on the back of the paper, so it would show through the velum, and then after a few seconds remove it so only a thin and slightly torn up abstracted part of the image of the decayed wall would show through.

Zoe Hillenmeyer

So I know it's been forever. It isn't because I don't like you or miss you, Jana. But that things have become quite wrapped up, being the end of the semester, and the sun has been out, and thus, I've been avoiding the computer like the plague.

So here is the stuff that I've been thinking about. I've been thinking about stepping back a little bit, and, as Officina would probably be less than delighted if I tried to install bags filled with honey dripping, or moldy beans in their toilet... I think I'm going to use this as motivation to try and refocus my next peice and work on the sanitary and containment. I'm planning on doing some mind mapping tonight, and seeing where it leads me. Everything is closed today, as it's easter monday, so my garden store that I just found is all shut down - but I am going to visit there, tomorrow, too.

I just wrote my art history paper, and slept like poo- so my writing has gone extremely down-hill. I will update again, sooner than last time..
sorry!!


hope you're well. Heard it's snowing a bit, there.
Zoe

Allison Shellito

Now we are in gear for the big show in a few weeks, which is fun. Everyone is working towards finishing something that can go into the show. I am working on my short film. After the critique last week, I got a lot of helpful feedback, so my goal for the next week is just to make some of the changes everyone suggested. I am finding that one of my biggest struggles is finding the right music. The mood changes so much depending on the music, so I need to find the perfect song to go with my film. I also need to make it shorter and have some of the clips move more slowly that are too fast. And transitions! So I am keeping busy. A dopo, Allison
P.S. No link to the video as of yet because I don't want to upload it to youtube until it is more or less finished.

Amy Scott

Crit this past week went good and now I'm taking my boxes to the next level. I'm still experimenting with materials and trying to make the boxes even funkier. I have a major box fetish that I can't get away from.

Daniel Lubniewski

This week I have been working on getting everything together for my final project. According to the feedback I got from my class, my mastery over the choice of medium is great. I now have to work on the narrative that will tie together all of my pieces. I spent a considerable amount of time doing storyboards and sketches before I even touched the paper I will be using. They also recomeded that I add the feeling that there was a three dimensional space to make it more engaging, so I am now focusing more on the background for this project than my previous ones for this class. I wanted to relate my project to the cafe we will be displaying in, so I took a few photos for references. Last but not least, I tweeked up the designs of my characters to make them unique yet mysterious.

Windnie Pan

So I decided to stick with the same concept I had in my last project but present it in a different way. To recap, the concept is the cycling and disposability of the news in the media-crazy society that we live in today. I decided to make wallpaper or patterns of some sort where individual news articles get lost among eachother the a mass of decorative forms. I am working on the computer to come up with different designs. The more I play around the more interesting the patterns get. I need to look into manipulating the articles even more with size of text, different ways of making patterns, and possibly with the idea of having a series of wallpaper patterns that work sequentially as more and more articles get added in. I was also playing with the idea of printing the patterns on napkins or something... disposability? hm. I plan for them to eventually get pretty elaborate.

Catherine Hite

well i have moved in a completely different direction for the next project....the only images i have to include are the steel wool and fake apples from last week, but this week i am moving into fashion.
i have bought lavendar tulle and white and a deeper purple to creat depth in the skirt of the dress. i intend to sew rocks into the bottom and perhaps feathers and flowers into the top bodice part. right now i still need to play will the form and how to construct it
-catherine

Let me see your grill...for nicole

hey there,
so let me start by apologizing for doing a horrible job keeping up with the blog since spring break. i kinda suck at life. okay, now that that's done with, onto the work. so immediately after break i had started on two works, one using the tunnels again and the other using cone shapes that still had the same linear perspectival element, but allowed for more experimentation. i also by this time had become tired of making tunnel after tunnel, so i decided for last week to just stick with the cones, and experiment with this shape that seemed to me to be more organic. i made a bunch of little cones, and then arranged them in various places in the bathroom, to look as if they were sort of growing out of little corners and crevices. i think it had an interesting effect. it seemed almost moldy, especially since i used various shades of blue and green fading to white paper for the cones. it had an especially interesting contrast to the stark whiteness of the bathroom. i'll put up pictures (i swear i really will this time). for the last stretch, and for the show over nextdoor in officina, i am currently trying to figure out what is the best spot for me to do a continuation of the cones as an installation.
katey

Joey Again

After the critique just thinking about ways to expand my pod repertoire...maybe making them out of different materials, and perhaps in different shapes. Possibly even hanging them different ways. Although i need to be careful not to completely abandon the style i've already developed because in the end, i want to integrate them all into one piece. Part of me feels done with this project, but deadlines are deadlines and theres really not enough time to start something completely new before the next critique and the final show. So for right now, its kind of game of add on. I dont know if i like that feeling.

Ally Glazer

For critique this week, I set up my mirrors in the courtyard. I painted on the reflections so that they matched what I saw in the site. The mirrors matched up to everything that I saw from one specific location at my height. In this sense, the work turned into a self portrait of what I see in my surroundings. I had one of the mirrors reflect a mirror in another location in the courtyard to make a viewer move throughout the space. For my final project, I think I am going to work with black paper on the mirror instead of black paint. The paper can be more exact and wont show my brushstrokes. I think I might cover the mirror with black paper and cut out the space that I want to be reflected so that if it lines up, all a person will see in the mirror is that one object. I thnk I'm going to install the mirrors in the bathroom because the bathroom doesn't have mirrors within it so my project will add something that one would expect to see. Also, my mirrors need to be seen with a lot of light in order to see the reflections, and I think the bathroom will be the lightest spot in the bar.
Happy Easter!