more work...

I worked on this image a little more... added texture and some layers... made the colors more appealing. Anyone have any input? I like it better than before, that is for sure, but as far as truly liking it?

dorothy simpson krause

i just wanted to share the artist that i am doing my profile on her name is Dorothy Simpson Krause. i am fascinated with her work. it is sexy and intelligent and well, it's really delicious. she uses colors i love, golds and umbers... old things, creepy things, but sublime and beautiful. she's good. she has a set of tarot cards, and a bunch of art books that are absolutely breathtaking. a lot of her work is from old texts. i imagine her living amongst old tomes... weird medical books and illuminated manuscripts...

check her out at www.dotkrause.com.

the pieces that i am posting are hers...

some more images...

here are a couple of images that i decomposed a little bit more than the last few i posted. was hoping for feedback, but i don't think that we read each others' blogs much. so i suppose i shall post them with the intent of seeing them in a different context...
i think that i like these, but i'm very hesitant about being cliche...i have to admit that this class is the first real exposure that i have had to digital art and don't know much about what is out there. even though i have been doing some curious research, i feel as though i don't know where to look to find good art. i'm not sure what the criteria is. then again, a lot about art for me is the mere creation of it, the manifestation of it. in all the mediums i have gotten intimate with my art has progressed, so with this too, i suppose it shall...

i really like digital. it appeals to the side of me that likes instant gratification. i recently bought my first digital camera and there is something to be said for being able to immediately run to my computer and begin working. there is, however, a certain bit of soul that digital seems to lack. in my work i have been trying to replace that soul, give my images some girth and thickness, both visually and in general spirit. as far as context, i think this latest project of mine is pretty fluid. more about color, form and design than anything else...

final images...

so i have dug into my final project. it's theme is based on my idea of "pieces of november". texture and color are my primary focus. texture and color that evoke feeling. i am posting an image to get some feedback. i feel like the project is really loose. basically i took a bunch of pictures of things that interest me in my environment, things that have been effected, affected or altered by autumn. then i decomposed the images to a degree, altered them ... please comment, all feedback is welcome... i'm really not sure if i want to leave these images with anything realistic or recognizable in them at all... i have always been into the close-up view of things, moving so far in on an object that recognition of what you are looking at becomes difficult. thus we have some "bark", some "fungus" and some "rosehips."

self portrait in false bamboo...

I wanted to publish my midterm project so that I could see it and practice looking at it out of context. The theme for the project was, in short, making the private public. I'm not sure how much success I've had. Very private, but does the public get it? It is very emotional. I feel that it touches on some sort of domestic violence vein. I can hardly wait for some feedback. I showed it to my husband, I think that I offended him. (Point needs to be made that I am not an abused woman. My husband loves me very much.) Hard to explain where it came from. There is something... I think that it has to do with all of the things in life I have been trying to take on and how my house is awreck and some days I struggle to get out of bed... Full time Mother (in a wanna-be patriarchical home), Full-time Student and Waitress (payin most of the bills)... It is kicking my ass. My Japanese father-in-law brags about women in Japan doing all this like as though as simple as breathing... career, house, husband, children and then some. I wonder what it is I am missing? A gene somewhere.

paper plate lithography...

Here are a few pictures, well actually prints, also known as paperplate lithos, or photo lithos.

Basically, these are black and white photos I took of my children which I scanned into my computer, cropped, edited, etc... I printed them out and photocopied them on a black and white photocopier, a printer that uses toner, not ink. Then I coated the pictures in the wonder serum, Gum Arabic. It sticks to every part of the page but the toner. The gum repels oils, thus when oil based ink is rolled over the image, it sticks only to the toner... The plate is thus created. It is then run through the press and some really beautiful images can be created. These images are printed on deliciously lush hand made mulberry paper. The computer doesn't do them justice. They look like photos from feudal Japan or from a Kurasawa samarai movie. Old and textured.

I am doing an independent study that utilizes this process as well as photo etching. Photo etching is a process that perhaps I will tpuch on in a later entry...

printmaking...

My favorite thing in the world is my family. Images of them fill my thoughts and my work as a student of art. I have always loved photography and portraiture. Thus I suppose my family has become the natural subject for my work, albeit cliche.

I worked with a photographer for a while doing digital imaging for his studio. He opened my eyes to the possibilities that lie within the digital world.

My studio time in school has mainly been spent as a printmaker. I have been combining photo and digital in the printmaking studio for a while now and really love it. There are seemingly unlimited possibilities for what can be created. These three disciplines are the recent focus of my art. Photos, digitally manipulated to some degree turned into a print made with ink and sweat.

graffiti

After last week's graffiti discussion was really interesting. It took me backward in time. Back in the days before I had children, when I was a young hellion myself, I was intrigued by graffiti art amongst other things. As I got older and moved to a smaller city I lost contact with my graffiti friends. I stopped hanging out outside at night on the steps of the New Haven courthouse or in the midst of the mighty old building that comprise the campus of Yale. In a time and a place where the city and all of its elements made up my environment and affected my moods I loved the idea of graffiti. Now that I think about it, after I left the big city and moved to Maine where I hung around outside less I began to fill my own interior blank walls with art kind of like graffiti. I had a huge mural of human-size goblin-like things that I did in sidewalk chalk in my kitchen. Really appetizing. The walls of the dining room were filled entirely with the traced and filled sillhouettes of all of my guests. It was like a constant party. Funny to think that perhaps those pieces of mine were somehow influenced by graffiti. Oh, and yes I was renting and they did keep my security deposit even though the walls were so much nicer after I had gotten a hold of them. Wish I had pictures.

computer stuff...

Generally, this blog thing feels funny to me. Sorry for not having posted anything until now. It is new for me and I can't help, but feel like this is weird and invasive... for anyone to stumble on. I keep redrafting, but now I have decided to be free since I have to do this.

I don't mind carrying on the discussions from class in writing. Writing is kind of easy in way. I'm free to go on and on and on as I please. I always feel as though I am interrupting someone, or am interrupted when we are in our class. There is a certain incohesiveness as far as discussions go that is created, I feel, by the set- up of the room and having to look over computers to see the humans in the class. Everyone is contorted to physically relate to whomever is talking. It is funny. The whole idea I am talking about relates to the discussion in which we were all talking about the tarot cards online and how technology changes things. Well, I think that the presence of technology in our classroom effects discussion. I find myself sitting on my feet, literally, and feeling as though I need to be ultra aggressive to get a word in... and I wonder if it is worth feeling rude to get my thoughts out? I guess this blog thing might help that. Free to go on and on like I said... Perhaps technology itself is making up for its own drawbacks in some way. Hmmn... Something to think about.