been a while

So I haven't really blogged since I've been staying at my parent's house. I've been working nonstop, going out, and sleeping. In no particular order. But anyway, I have a feeling a good post will come soon. I'd like to catalogue all the cool stuff procured during the holidays. I got a new camera, so watch for documentation!

For now, I'll leave you with some Frankie and Annette, as I am real tired of it being cold.

i kind of dig this...

LINK

color interaction book

I made this book last semester. It's about color interaction and rhythm. I hand cut the patterns on each individual sheet of construction paper with an exacto. I chose to use construction paper as it was an familiar and inviting material which lends itself to a playful color palette. The pattern, as always, is intuitive. I am quite pleased with the result and would like to make more, and on a more grandiose scale in the future.

nevermind

finished!
how about some awesome 90s graphic design.
Also, Hole was one of my favorite bands in middle school. HA!

A. Aburey Bodine

The other day I trekked down to the Barnes and Noble in the harbor for a well deserved break from finals. I was on a mission to get some Albers note cards that I saw online, but proceeded to be overwhelmingly underwhelmed by their selection. Luckily I found this lovely little rounder in the corner of the room that had all of these historic baltimore photographs. They were some of the most beautiful images. I've come to develop a real love of Baltimore in the past two years, making these images even more wonderful. A. Aburey Bodine was a photographer for almost half a century at the Batlimore Sun and had accrued a plethora of images. I really am fond of the ones from Bolton Hill in the 1950s, and the ones of kids in the 50s just doing goofy things. I bought a few of these note cards, but the more seasonal looking ones. I scanned these three in before I gave them away, as I felt they made a nice triptych.


I just took the most wonderful four hour afternoon nap, my Graphic Design final critique was at 8 am today, so as I am sure you can imagine, I was real tired. I think it went really well. I just have one more short essay to write this evening for Native American Studies class, and then I am done with first semester sophomore year. In the great words of Busta Rhymes, WOO HA!

Type Final

This is my favorite thing from the semester. For my Type One final, we had to create a poster which presented four hundred things that had an impact on our lives. These things had to create formula of hierarchy and activate the space within a 20' x 30' poster.

I chose to list the various different models of guitars made by Fender and Gibson, as music has always been of great importance in my life. My family is filled with musicians and I have a certain affinity for guitars. I have an Epiphone SG Special Edition at home, which I bought myself in 6th grade as a promotion to middle school (aka, moving into a new level of teen angst).

Anyway, I'm really proud of the solution, Helvetica Neue Light really lent itself to my endeavor as it allowed me to achieve various different levels of typographic grays and helped to activate the white space. I think that was the most enjoyable part of creating the poster, figuring out the amount of space between the typographic forms and the asymmetrical rhythmic pattern I had developed.

tangible

So last night I stayed up until 4 am cleaning up some prints and treating a couple hand embellished elements of an edition for my Collagraph and Color final this morning at 9am.

My final project for this half of the semester was an accordion book hand sewn with small squares cut out, and then sewn together. Each page was a small relief rolled lino of a seascape, all of the pages lined up so it expressed the idea of the undulation of a wave. I've been working with this idea of "controlled intimacy" the second half of the semester, and in doing such have tried to include some sort of tangible element to each of my pieces.

Coming to these small sculptural solutions just reenforce my love of more tactile work. I really miss the sculpture class I had with Ivy Parsons first semester freshman year. I learned so much about building principles, and just how to think more creatively around problems. She forced us to extend available materials and explore the boundaries of physicality. Also, I learned so much through the artists she exposed me to, specifically Matthew Barney, Jean (Hans) Arp, Eva Hesse and Robert Morris.

I really enjoyed staying up late (not so much being exhausted today) and just building beautiful objects.

Here are some photos from my sculpture final last year. The assignment was to change a space using one specific medium, and a lot of it. Or at least that's how I remember the description of it. I used hundreds of pieces of white paper, light, fishing wire, and a few cut out patterns to create a sensory experience one could emerge themselves in. It was very fragile, but it was really beautiful to see people interact with the hanging pieces, as it altered the shadows and created a lot of really lovely shapes.







I'll upload my work from Collagraph as soon as I get a chance to document it.

i'm real pleased

with the work i've been making
i can't wait for finals to be over




my pandora playlists ^^
can't stop won't stop

I really love type.

In my TypeOne class, we had to develop a book that highlighted five fonts we were particularly drawn to in a unified manner. I'm proud of my final solution.

They're inkjet prints on a slightly textured bright salmon colored paper. The binding is a heavy weight black paper with a subtle speckled pattern.

Avant Garde and Lubalin Graph are amazing.

But anyway, here are the photos. I'm going to post my type final in the near future, stay tuned!

I took these stills while the first batch was in the oven.
paper complete, cookies baked, time for sleep.

Neo Rauch, Not Neo Russia

I'm so bored by my paper for Sacred Russia and Eastern Europe, but I have to finish writing it within the next 5 hours. It'll get done, I just wish I was more compelled to focus on it. I'm also baking traditional slovak cookies as part of my final presentation and showing the opening funeral scene from Doctor Zhivago. 

That movie is so beautiful, I notice something new every time I watch it. 

For now, I just want to learn more about Neo Rauch. 

ellsworth kelly? ellsworth kelley?

Different sites have different spellings, either way, I just can't get enough.

images via ArtStor

More Albers

A couple of weeks ago I went with Andrew to a lecture on Albers and his teaching given by Fred Horowitz, who recently wrote a book on the subject called Josef Albers: To Open Eyes. The lecture was really wonderful because Fred not only described the work of Albers but also how his main goal as an instructor at the Bauhaus (which also fascinates me) and at Black Mountain College was to teach how to see and how to think. 

I really am drawn to the ideas of learning through doing, "pitching through the unknown", and having the ability to take risks. Albers emphasized all of these things in his teaching. My parents are both educators, and I grew up in city where there was a emphasis on the importance of arts in education.  I have a particular fondness for it. The lecture really peeked my interest, and I look forward to reading the book. 

these are a few of my favorite things

My roommate Claire loves the New York Times Style Supplement and Magazine. From time to time, I'll come back to the apartment to find something ripped out from the aforementioned publications on my desk that remind her of me. 

Yesterday while I was writing, she delivered this: 

Hermès produces most beautiful, special, rich things. I've been using Eau Des Merveilles for the past four years, and probably will continue doing such for a long while. The scarf is so beautiful, and so is the packaging. The production of the scarf was limited to 200, thus making it even more precious. SeeSaw Designs has a nice little blog about it.

I love Josef Albers. He is one of my two favorite painters (Hopper is the other). I am fascinated by his use of color and reductive approach to design. 

hirshhorn podcast

I've been dying to go to a museum lately. I really wanted to get to the MoMA (my favorite museum) when I went home for Thanksgiving break, but just didn't have the time. I was thinking it might be nice to go to the Hirshhorn before going back up north for winter break. 

The museum itself is really beautiful, and I very much enjoy their collection. Last year I went to see the Morris Lewis exhibition, and it was really inspiring. 

But anyway, I was browsing their website (again in avoidance of paper writing, even though I've got a solid thesis and a few pages) and found out they have podcasts! I downloaded a few of them but haven't gotten a chance to listen.  LINK

Lately I just want to listen to jazz, probably because I'm feeling overwhelmed with finals and anticipating not being in baltimore for a month, so it's helping to keep me in a possitive, focused creative mindset. I'm particularly enjoying Art Tatum.  Also, how good is this album cover?

Experiments in Collaboration

The Psychic Friends collective Experiments in Collaboration exhibition just closed at the Charm City Art Space. I didn't have the time to get the photos developed until recently. We worked diligently to get a cohesive body of work together, while we learned about each other and had a wonderful time. It was an interesting experience and brought the Psychic Friends closer together. Hopefully our next endeavor will go just as well, if not better!

ma$e, thank you.

I'm having trouble focusing on my paper for Sacred Russia and Eastern Europe. 

I'm watching this MA$E video on Youtube. 

Since everyone is already decorating

Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For you is my favorite Christmas album. It's perfect. 

Not only chock full of Ronettes, the Crystals and sonic enlightenment, but in a beautiful package! I'm familiar with the christmas gift album art but I absolutely love the minimal double album.

Sometimes I struggle with the idea of Graphic Design and being a Graphic Designer.

But as I discovered over thanksgiving break, album art always brings me back to understanding why I love design.

There is just something really great about it. It's such an undertaking to make a physical representation of something so intangible as song, it's fascinating. I love the minimal repetition and clean shapes of albums from the 50s and 60s, mostly the instrumental ones as the shapes often mimic the rhythm and syncopation of the music. I've been collecting records/album art for as long as I can remember, it's awesome to be able to appreciate them now with a new understanding of design.