blizzard smizzard

So, I've been surviving the Baltimore/Washington 'Snowpocolypse' of 2010 just fine.

More of the white stuff is allegedly coming down tonight and class is already canceled for tomorrow!
I was up until 3 last night putting the finishing touches on my GD4 infographic and started to build my exhibition guide for Flex.
You can see more photos of my infographic design process on my flickr photostream, but here's a quick photo of the final right after I printed it this afternoon.


They also canceled parent&family weekend, which is a bummer I was looking forward to spending the day with my Maj.
She called me last night reminding me to get get bread and other groceries before the storm, so I was walking around with a survival bag all morning.


hmmm what else?? Well, I recently designed a spring calender of events for the MICA Graphic Design department. It'll be printed into postcards as well.


also, my homage to saint valentine and josef albers

New Online Portfolio Website

this took forever but I'm glad it's done!

www.melissabarat.com

Big thank yous to Anthony Mattox for helping me with the original coding process, and Mitchell Jaymes for helping me work out the kinks!

documental

Just photographed two semesters worth of prints.

My website is gonna be updated so so soon!

I got back to Baltimore two days ago.

It's been nice to sleep in, do a lot of yoga and hang out with friends.

I think it's colder in New Jersey, but it's still pretty freezing here.

Been seriously considering buying a sunlamp. I'm so tired of it getting dark at 5 o'clock!

Pretty stoked for classes to start but missin my fam up north.

I think I'm gonna paint tonight, we will see.

Gotta get back to vvork

xo

Mel

acrylic ritual

Recently I've been thinking a lot about ownership of personal identity and body image in relation to popular culture.
I think that this is been inadvertently expressed within my work.
Actually not inadvertently, but directly.

My most recent flash animation is an at home tutorial for applying acrylic tips to your fingernails.
I have to figure out how to upload flash to the internet, but here is the opening frame.



(keep in mind that the text is animated - it changes colors and hovers up and down, and that her nails also flash colors at very quick impulses)


It was really interesting to watch people interact with the game today in it's half finished state.
I was surprised at the amount of people who had absolutely no idea what this acrylic ritual entailed, or that it even existed.

I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I'm confident it's going to be pretty excellent when it's finished.

"never trust a man who looks like Omar Sharif"

It's about 42 degrees in Baltimore, and the middle of October? What is this?!
I'm completely unprepared- my coats are in Jersey. All I've got is this stylish fashion-cape, but it's warm so we good.

Fall break starts today, I'm staying around instead of heading back up north. Gotta get some work done and embark on some entrepreneurial ventures which will remain hush hush for the time being.

But anyway I had a (surprisingly) good crit in experimental type for my final cyrillic hang tags. Ken was really into them. I was unsure of the final product just because they felt a little too playful and a little too naive, you know? But Ken said that it worked and it was kind of reminiscent of J. Otto; which I could get down with- I liked Olive the Other Reindeer.

Here are jpgs of the tags before I printed and cut them out on fawn stonehenge. They fold down the middle. There is a string that ties around the folded center and then around the tag on the other end.


Plush - Holiday


Plush - Valentine


Plush- Spring

I presented the hang tags in three different colorways, with the intention for the boutique to change them with the season, look for that month; making the tags themselves feel like more of a covetable item than just an indicator

In other news: the Duck Sauce video for aNYway finally came out.
I AM OBSESSED. So amazing.
I'm so happy for the Fool's Gold Fam. Enjoy!

Duck Sauce "aNYway" (Surface To Air version) from A-Trak on Vimeo.

Brian Wilson

For my final project for Digital As Illustration with Jesse Turnbull first semester freshman year, I made a series of album covers for a Brian Wilson compilation that spanned the different periods of his life. These are the drawings I made as a start to those pieces. I found them and a view others at my parent's house over spring break. Ironically enough, I like them so much better as line drawings than as the finished album covers.

wings for wheels

I know it sounds really corny when people start talking about albums changing their lives, but in all honesty, Born To Run changed mine.

Growing up in a small city in New Jersey, you always heard about Bruce Springsteen. I always kind of dismissed it. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't because it was what my uncles were listening to. I've always respected their tastes and have had a fondness for classic rock. I just couldn't tell you why. Maybe it's because the one Springsteen record in my possession at the time was Born In The U.S.A. I don't know. But anyway,

Last year when I went away to school in Baltimore, I had this funny homesickness. I bought Born to Run, with the idea of this album being what I wanted to think about when I thought of New Jersey. I just sat there in my dorm room and listened, for hours, on repeat. It was more than what I could have ever expected. Songs about leaving, songs about something more, songs about friendship. I guess I am being kind of a cheeseball now. But all this presented with a beautifully touching grittiness that just got to the core of things for me. It's like with every song I could smell the ocean air, feel that desperation and not feel alone at the same time. And thus began my love affair with Bruce Springsteen. My brother likes to joke and call me a "Bruceologist" from time to time.

For Christmas this year with my Italian half of the family (we do two Christmas celebrations), we had a Secret Santa. Uncle Bob, who as I get to know better just becomes more interesting, got me the Born To Run 30th Anniversary Edition box set. With the Album, a DVD of the Hammersmith Live, and Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born To Run. I've been watching Wings For Wheels a lot since I got it. It's really interesting to me to see the preciseness of the construction and production of the album, sonically and lyrically. When Bruce and the E Street band talk about what they were trying to convey, it was like this affirmation that I got it. When I listened, I got what they were trying to say, you know? I don't know, it was just really wonderful to have that kind of feeling.

The box set rules, I definitely recommend it to any Springsteen fan.


This is a screenprint I made two semesters ago, edition of eleven, one of my favorite pieces

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.

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 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!

janice trupo

Still peeking through second semester sketchbook, I always stop and stare at these for whatever reason.
I miss working with gouche a lot, as I haven't really had time to recently. I love small precious paintings.






I am going to start writing my John Ford and the Native American paper now, so, off I go.

Carry On!

recent-ish work

These aren't fully developed pieces so much as they are working to be part of a whole.

Primarily, my work focuses on the interaction of color and pattern.
Enjoy working methodically to create these forms
especially through the retractive process of cutting away from paper.
I strive to find a rhythm within the pattern to further expand upon.


More Work Soon!

tgif

so excited for the weekend, mostly excited for sleeping and chilling out


untiled 8 x 8, ink and acrylic on paper

i made this painting during the week, more art uploads soon.