Ok, so as far as a metaphor goes, i'm not sure howww closely i will touch on that, but i really wanted to talk about this piece, so i am going to try and relate it as much as possible to the assignment. I created this piece out of frustration. I was feeling artistically drained and uninspired at the time. That happens to me a lot it feels, because i never take a break to sit and reflect on other things. i constantly googogogogogog. Anyways, i was in an setting where i felt like all the art i produced and all the art others came up with was meaningless and void of purpose other then a technical exercise. One day my class went to a nature lab to draw dead animals. As i looked at the butterfly i was drawing encased in a glass box, i could relate to the feeling it could of had. Yeah i know, what sort of feelings can a dead butterfly have? or other dead animals in there...? they are dead! well, they weren't to me if that makes sense. They felt constricted within the confines of the dull wooden walls. They were there to serve a purpose of being stared at and meticulously copied. I could relate to that... well not the copied part. The more i drew the dead butterflies and other species the more i felt united with them. Together we were trapped in this stagnant place. When my teacher told us to make a collage with these photos, i knew i had to break from the bubble i felt caged in. While others sat around and chatted about their plans of artsy fartsy collages i racked my brain for something new- something fresh. Something to break away from what i was doing. Break away. that was it. I wanted to take my drawings and unleash them into city school i had grown to detest. I wanted to take something like a boring butterfly drawing and personify it. I wanted to take them and put them in a totally different context then they were use to being seen. I decided to take the drawings and turn them into a living breathing vessel. I went to kinkos and blew up/shrunk and copied hundreds of my drawings. I bought bottles of mod podge and white paint. People that i told were confused as to what i was doing, but i did not want to take the time to explain. I had a plan and nobody would alter my path. I found the perfect model. someone totally comfortable in his skin, well maybe a little too comfortable. I started to rip the pictures and collage them on his body with glue. it took hours to get it just right but when i was done i had created this new living breathing creature. i took paper and graphite and gave it life. i took dead butterflies and insects and gave it a pulse. I unleashed it into the town. I followed this creature around documenting his every move. He was not to talk. He was to live in the moment of being this creation. He was to forget about who he was and think about who i had transformed him into. Peooples reactions were incredible. Smiles, confused looks, anger, giggles. I saw it all. People pulled over to get pictures with my creature. They honked, drove in circles, everything you can imagine. I felt vindicated when it was over. I had broke through my artists block. I created something that gave a collage and boring studies more depth and new life.

An orgasm for the eye. My friend dropped this statement once and i thought of this experience. An experience so visually striking photographs can't do it any justice. A year ago i traveled to the island of sardegnia off of Italy. I did not go for tourist reasons, like to site see or to get a perfect tan. I went for a much deeper / darker reason. To say the least, i was surprised at what my eyes sat foot on when my shaky plan set down on a cold windy winter day. I eyes fell onto a paradise. Something unpolluted and almost completely untouched by modern eyesores. I saw sheep. Sheep with thick coats of fur running through the streets as their bells tinkled in the breeze. The palm trees that surfaced from the ground stood tall with age and good nourishment. They were certainly the farthest thing from the trees i saw in myrtle beach. The architecture. oh god, the architecture. so beautiful. so old. covered in beautiful rich coats of mango and lemon paint. It offset the piercing blue sea that engulfed the island. The sea, was a site. It stretched out for miles and miles, with hitting the coast of kenya. I was told the water was murky for that time because it was winter, but i felt it was the clearest water i had ever seen. The water was translucent exposing the grains for coarse acidic sand underneath. Sea glass scattered the beach catching the sun at perfect moments. It was completely deserted. It was a paradise. How can some people wake up to this every morning? My father does. I wish i did. The water stung as it soaked through my hightop red and orange nike air force ones. The intensity of the temperature was liberating. I felt that i was in a place close to my ideal of heaven. That moment restored my faith in their being untainted beauty left in the world. My biggest fear has been in loosing the beauty of nature. The feeling that i get from being in it, connecting with it, can never be replaced by skyscrapers. The connection i had with that sea went back hundreds of years. Through the sea was connected with my father, which ultimately connected me to my heritage. This connection reminded me of a turner painting. Beautiful and violent in paint strokes, rich in paint, saturation, darkness, and potent meaning.


My soul transcended from my physical body towards the depth of the sea. It intermingled in the abyss of salt, creatures, and stories. My soul found its home, in the confines of this translucent liquid ecstasy.

Turner

The reverberating sound spills and sprawls from powerful and magnificent waves. The sound swallows me up, pulling me down into the colorful depths of the sea. Down, down I go under the thick layer of yellow-green only to resurface by the delicate ship thrashing in the dangerous white peaks. The skies ablaze; radiating fire in every angle. Only someone that has experienced this could know what this was like. I know the old stories of him are true.I want so desperately to escape this horror, but yet I bask in the beauty and intricacy of his soft marks. This scene is crafted delicately, yet with a heavy hand. The sultry use of color captivates me, holding my attention for more than a second, consequently submerging me in the experience. It’s a sensual delight of the senses that dangles me dangerously closely to the edge of addiction. While I want to recreate this, I have neither the knowledge nor the tact to touch this talent. I would rather simply surrender to the dangerous beauty of Turners magnificent creation.

sculpture

Wowwwww. So this is incredible. This is a sculpture by Bernini. When i saw this i was basically in awe. So this is carved out of stone. I've carved stone before and i can't imagine doing anything like this. This is so..realistic and beautiful. The skin looks so fleshy while the hands dig into the skin. The hands evoke to me an emotion of need and urgency. The rolls of flesh that rise up from the fingers create valleys in which the fingers sit deeply in. The veins in the hands are strained popping out of the skin. The light in which this image is show helps to emphasize the cast shadows that the fingers create. I wonder what Bernini was thinking while he was carving this. I know that when i carve i poor myself into what i'm doing. All the emotions and thoughts i have spill out and overflow into the material i'm working with. My greatest sculptural influence is definitely Henry Moore. His design aesthetic captivates me. Henry moores pieces are simple clean and sleak. They have a unique sound that i resinate with. heres and example...

Although this sculpture is a lot different then Bernini's both speak to me. they clench my gut when i look and them, and also snag my breath. They make me want to pick up a chisel and attack a mountain of rock. I don't know how to explain why works of art do this to me, but i do know that work like this inspires me and fills me with the desire to create. When i create i feel whole. I feel like i'm doing what i'm destined to do. I wonder if that's how moore and bernini felt while creating these pieces. I wonder if they where addicted to creating pieces of art of if they merely only produces because they were naturally talented. While i can fantasize that they are like me, i can't even know for sure.

the art of the portrait

Caravaggio's portraits are incredibly captivating. The sense of dramatic lighting is so powerful that one cannot deny how potent the images are. After looking at the pictures i sent up a challenge for myself. My challenge? To create a powerful portrait. I tried various things. Here are my outcomes via photography :



So in these photos i stole what i liked most about Caravaggio's portraits- his use of dramatic chiaroscuro. I did this by taking a lamp and angeling it on the models body in a dark room. In the middle one i used natural lighting taking advantage of the shadows that fell on my models face. I placed around with covering my models faces in all the photographs because that's something that really interests me. While i'm no Caravaggio, i did like learning from him and applying it to my own art.

Pure Perfection?

Ok so what is pure perfection in someone in terms of looks? if i could answer that then, well i would know something rest of the world doesn't know. Take the mona lisa for example. It's one of the most famous paintings of all time. It is said to be a symbol of beauty. On a closer look though you notice the male features mixed within mona lisas face. here's a picture...

upon a closer look you see Da Vinci's face as an underlayer...

Setting aside the fact that most artists paint themselves , sometimes self conciously in their work, is the ultimate beauty a mix of male and female...aka androgy

nous?

Personally i find androgynous people to be gorgeous. here is an example.

so...here's and experiment..what if i took according to the internet the two most beautiful common day people and morph them together...

aka eva mendes and brad pitt

hmm..not so attractive? or maybe just a little bit? So what about having male and female features makes certain people so captivating? Maybe one could relate this to the theory in life that everyone is a little bit bisexual. Many people especially republicans hahaahah,( ok sorry not so funny ) would definitely disagree with me. I personally believe it though. I feel that we are all somewhat attracted to our own gender...hence why people that share female and male traits are so desirable. Androgynous actors are popping up all over the place. Take for example the actress in the show  the L word. aka shane. She is now known internationally as probably one of the most desirable women, not only in the lesbian culture but also to many straight girls. you want to know why? because she has male features. this brings me back to my theory on why the mona lisa is looked at to be a rare unusual beauty..her androgyny. back in the day there probably weren't to many androgynous people in paintings, thus when da vinci painted himself mixed with a female it shed a new light on beauty. it made people stop and look and pay attention because it was something different then what was usually portrayed in paintings. i feel this might be the whole reason why the mona lisa became so popular. the unusual take on a woman.

chaos.
my eye's cant even rest for a single moment in time.
delirious. what am i seeing?
curious little characters everywhere.
where am i?
a land so different and bizarre.
where am i?
my eye's can't even rest for a single moment in time.
clusters of people engaging in bizarre acts.
what am i looking at?
a painting so unusual i am forced to question the artists mental state.
where am i?
oh yeah, a bosh painting.

this painting trips me out. so weird. makes me question if bosh was trippin off something. i know that's sorta a sad thing for me to think. but hey? i'm just being honest. the power of the dense content is something that makes me feel claustophobic when i look at it. yet, i'm engaged by the odd events going on throughout the painting. overall, i like it. i might need to give my eyes a rest after staring at it for a while but hey, it's all good.