My Art Practice

I have been really loving all these women's creative blogs and their communities of other creative bloggers. I've seen A LOT of scrap-booking, which is always fun. And, I've come across the more serious painter's blogs.

Now that I've graduated college (with a degree in studio arts) I am wanting to put my creative juices to work. I'd like to begin my own journey, the solo one, without teacher's opinions or lesson plans or assignments. Now is my time to explore what it is I really want to create for the world.

In order to avoid sitting open-mouthed without a direction and only and endless possibility feeling I need to take small steps.

I think it's time I start collecting. When I'm out I often have idea, but they are only words in the wind and soon forgotten. I should jot down everything and take my notebook seriously back at home. When I am out, I'll start to keep my eyes open for materials that spark my inspiration. I will begin to gather. I am mostly interested in using twice used materials, and natural ones as well.

Painting has been a hard task to maneuver in my small studio apt, which I share! Yet, anything is possible. I have a tarp I can put down now to protect a small corner, and act as a marker. Now, I just need to know what to paint! It's so easy for me to paint my emotions directly, and I can go, and go, and go non-stop, but I am not sure if I am satisfied with those end results. I do enjoy painting people, but I don't have live models yet. I also like to paint on a large scale, which can be costly and space consuming. Well. I have three larger canvasses to start with. I know I'm interested in working with textures and materials into my paintings. I guess I'll start there!

I have come to love sculpture, but this medium can be the most space necessary. I wonder, should I opt for the more crafty or should I manage a sculpture into a small space?

I say both. Once I gather materials and sketchbook ideas I can begin in my place.

Wow, I really feel like a little baby chick just coming out of the eggshell. These are the beginnings of my practice!

It's crazy to think I've done so much work (through school etc.) but now is when I really feel that I am starting out for real.

This is great!

These are materials I like:

Leaves

Straw

Clay

Cork

Chocolate!

Sponge (Natural)

Charcoal (To draw with and to sculpt with)

Sticks/Wood

Color Palate:

light blues

white

beige

light yellow

saffron

crimson

light brown

Subjects:

work

cooking

living

dancing

I like to draw people's faces in a fantastical way

Inspiration:

Essence

Energy*

* I have a lot of internal energy, and my art sometimes portrays that, and when it does I think it is most successful. Therefore, how can I focus my energy so that my art is always portraying my energy. I enjoy seeing multiples of things such as sticks, and sometimes i'll collect them and create a sculpture. I think the mass amount of one gesture portrays the idea of a moving energy.

More Art

"Today is the tomorrow you were promised yesterday" - Victor Burgin

Words and images as art. Fly-posting 500 copies...

Contemporary Art

Yo.

I'm starting a website, and it will include an array of inspiring artists and their art from mostly the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I want to also include a space to explore crafts and indigenous arts from cultures across the globe, and into historical times from basket weaving, to body tattoos. In my research thus far I've experienced a lot of fantastic art. One piece of the art world I will tap into here today includes a family of artists. They operate together under the name Boyle Family. This clan included. Mark Boyle and Joan Hills and their children Sebastian and Georgia.

Boyle Family aims to make art that does not exclude anything as a potential subject. Over the years, subjects have included: earth, air, fire and water; animals, vegetables, minerals; insects, reptiles, water creatures; human beings and societies; physical elements and fluids from the human body. The media used have included performances and events; films and projections; sound recordings; photography; electron-microphotography; drawing; assemblage; painting; sculpture and installation.

They were also making up the light and stage shows for Jimi Hendrix back in the day.

....in their work they try to isolate and reduce randomly chosen elements to as truthful an approximation as is within their power.

Their work is largely about trying to release themselves and their audience from pre-conditioning or prejudice.

‘We also want to be able to look at anything without discovering in it our mothers' womb, our lovers' thighs, the possibility of handsome profit or even the makings of an effective work of art. We don't want to find in it memories of places where we suffered joy and anguish or tenderness or laughter. We want to see without motive and without reminiscence this cliff, this street, this field, this rock, this earth.’

Tribal Fashion

Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration From Africa by Hans Silvester.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this stunning collection of photographs, Silvester (Ethiopia: Peoples of the Omo Valley) celebrates the unique art of the Surma and Mursi tribes of the Omo Valley, on the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. These nomadic people have no architecture or crafts with which to express their innate artistic sense. Instead, they use their bodies as canvases, painting their skin with pigments made from powdered volcanic rock and adorning themselves with materials obtained from the world around them—such as flowers, leaves, grasses, shells and animal horns. The adolescents of the tribes are especially adept at this art, and Silvester's superb photographs show many youths who, imbued with an exquisite sense of color and form, have painted their beautiful bodies with colorful dots, stripes and circles, and encased themselves in elaborate arrangements of vegetation and found objects. This art is endlessly inventive, magical and, above all, fun. In his brief text, Sylvester worries that as civilization encroaches on this largely unexplored region, these people will lose their delightful tradition. 160 color photographs.

As an artist myself I take great inspiration from the images I have seen from this book already. I am interested in traveling and in photography, and I have great passion and good eyes for doing so. Through these images I have recently discovered on the internet by Hans I am inspired for my own creative project of paintings and sculptures. Tribal Fashion are two words with meanings that I have been drawn towards, yet never did I expect to find the two together. There are so many inspirations here, so how to I begin without displaying an overwhelming array of words? I love nature and the use of what it has to offer: leaves, flowers, palm fronds, corn husks, spices, and more. I love tribes, because they show a true human connection to the earth. This is how I think humanity should soon exist again. They see the beauty in the nature on the planet and display that in their everyday lives. This is a deep spiritual existence that they have. The creativity in these African people's designs shows the fun of life.

Creation

Materials I like:

Hemp/Burlap/Glitter/Rhinestones/Prisms/Glass/Spray Paint/Sharpies/Wood/Metal/Spices/Leaves/Flower Petals/Stones/Feathers/Cloth/Textiles/Coffee/Chocolate/Papier Mache/Hammer and Nails/ Metal Working/ Wire/Acrylic Paint/

The Beautiful, The Spiritual, The Inspirational is what compels me.