Poster Project

For my assignment I was given the the theme of sports and the style of postmodernism. So I decided to create a poster for the LA Marathon. I tried to capture the essence of LA, including the grungy yet shiny cityscape, its beaches, the Pacific Coast Highway, and neighborhoods downtown. I had it so it looked like the city was literally running. I was inspired by postmodern artists such as Paula Scher and Neville Brody. While my design was not as busy as theirs, I tried to take the freeflowing, daring style of postmodernism. My font choice was also inspired by postmodernism. Though people in the class took issues with the lowercase a, I did that to imitate the style, but perhaps I shouldn't have. Overall, I'm happy with my project. If I could change a few things it would be to rearrange the fonts and maybe change the font. I would also put a couple more saturated colors in, maybe in the font. And the other place would be to make the shoes more saturated and brighter.

Poster Project: Whitney Wiese

For this project, I was given ITS (International Typography Style) and theater. ITS is known for its clean, simple and legible characteristics. I wanted my poster to posses those qualities. I liked how my poster had a simple design layout with little going on. The hat and the layered rectangles were two symbols that worked for Wizard of Oz. I used different shades of green tracing paper to emulate the Emerald City. The yellow strip is purposely going off the edge of the poster in order to replicate the never ending yellow brick road. The only thing I would change on my poster is the use of red as the title. The red was intended to symbolize the ruby red slippers but a shade of green might have been more pleasing to the eye.

Bringing Back Broadway

For this project, my design style was Constructivism and my topic was theater. I tried to incorporate Constructivism into my poster through the composition, by making the diagonal lines bold. However, because this style's color palette is very limited, I decided to use contemporary colors (thank you Ikea Catalogue 2009). As for the topic, I didn't want to use a film, so I decided to literally take a theater (or several in this case) as the subject of my poster. The first picture was when my poster was still in the works (and when my kitchen floor was covered with yellow paint). I had just cut out all the windows in my buildings and taped my color swatches to the Bristol paper. I then used two coats of gesso and then two coats of acrylic paint. At first, I wasn't sure how I would make the two lines, but then I found my dad's electric tape so it was all good. The second picture is the finished poster, where I had to cut out the letters and make stencils for the film reels. I then sponge-painted them so that it would be somewhat transparent, allowing the buildings behind to be somewhat visible. I had some trouble making the film reels look like film reels, because adding any more detail seemed to clutter up the space. As for the type, I wish I had exaggerated the size of "Broadway" so that it would be distinct from "Bringing Back". All I can say is, I need to learn to use Photoshop.

Handtmann Photography Lecture Series: Arthur Ou

I attended the Handtmann Photography Lecture by Arthur Ou on Nov. 23, 2009. He is an artist based in New York and teaches at the Parsons The New School of Design. His work has been exhibited all around the world, including Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Beijing, Berlin, Taipei and many other places. I was especially interested in learning about him as an artist because he was born in Taiwan - the place where my parents were born.

His photography implements many different media. Ou says he likes "translating from one medium to another", and this can be seen in many of his photos of dirt mounds contrasted with ink splatters. He talked about the presence of motifs in his work, and that he likes reusing certain motifs because it presents the action of viewing photos in a more specified way. He mentions how photos are very "slippery things" because a lot of external work is necessary for the photo to have meaning.

For much of his work, he said that he was inspired by many household things he saw in his home and his friend's homes. Statues and vases were some of the objects he was inspired by. Furthermore, he mentioned the decorative walls often seen in Chinese gardens or backyards - he made these part of his photos because of the repeating motif and elegant shape of the walls. Many of his earth works were made with dirt and he repeatedly rearranged it until he achieved a composition he liked.

In the Taipei Biennial, Ou had an installation where he had, in the middle of the room, a large yet simple fireplace. He used this to contextualize his pieces with something that was more "familiar and domestic". I thought this was clever because just merely showing your work is perhaps not enough anymore - the idea of contextualizing is important for viewers and can give an entirely different experience for people looking at the artwork.

For some pieces, Ou had a tendency to have double objects for subjects. He said that he intended this to be a reference to the history between Taiwan and China, which I thought was very interesting.

He concluded with his thoughts about the German word aufheben, which means "to preserve, elevate, or cancel". To him, this represents the direct process of photographing something. For example, the initial drive to take a photo could be to preserve something or an action. And then a subject can be transformed and the original experience of taking the photo is cancelled out. This word resonated with him and made him feel that photography is very much a part of the human experience.

Poster Project, or: Why people pay money for the legitimate versions of software

For my poster, I had to combine the theme of Art Nouveau with a Theatre theme, so I picked a mentalist who does stage shows.
What I like about it: it's a cool idea, that represents 'something wicked' with a menacing man. The face peering back from the man's head is sort of emblematic of the idea of having eyes in the back of your head. Though the idea of the handbill means that half the composition is taken up with text, it leaves a more interesting shape for me to play around in.
What I would change: I needed a legitimate font, because it got blocky at large sizes. That's the risk you run with free fonts. The free online photoshop clone I used was also adequate, but more effects would have been lovely.
Composition could have been made better by having that art nouveau thing circle his head. Also, the hand needed to be lightened up, because in the way it got printed, it became too dark to make out the knife.

MFA Lecture Series: Aaron Curry

I attended the MFA Lecture by Aaron Curry on Nov. 18, 2009. He was born in Texas but now lives in Los Angeles. He talked about his art process and his work, which consists of paintings but mostly of large sculptures. He had received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and says that he didn't really learn art until he got to the big city of Chicago. He was interested in Surrealism, Dali, and Picasso, but at school the main emphasis was on Minimalism. However, he felt that as an artist, he wanted to go back to something and make it different with his style rather than embrace the new movements in art.

Some interesting pieces I thought he had were some sculptures with unique circular bases. For example, he made an abstract sculpture, but placed it on a base that was covered with a Garfield movie poster. He also made a piece dedicated to Tommy Lee Jones. His goals in sculpture consisted of a desire to "push them into a 3D space". His sculptures appear to be flat but they are actually 3D. Curry did this on purpose because he intended the sculpture be 3D but so the viewer cannot ever see behind it. Along with sculptures, Curry also did collages and paintings. He was most interested in approaching pieces with the mentality of "everything is either wet or it seems wet" in a piece or "everything is a shape or the image of a shape". He wondered how his pieces could be 2D and 3D at the same time. Curry also created a hollow deck from Star Trek: The Next Generation - he tried creating a virtual space with a grid in this project. The grid served as a means to create the illusion of perspective.

For color, Curry studied the palette used in medieval times. He also feels that color, such as red, for example, cannot be put into words and that it is "something you have to experience yourself". He also implemented "razzle dazzle camouflage" in his pieces, a way to confuse where ships were during WWII. He likes the confusion this can create in his pieces.

I found it interesting when Curry mentioned how he also worked with the computer before by doing some computer drawings. He said it was like developing a painting, but there isn't a physical "thing" to push around. However, he felt that it was difficult to make mistakes on a computer and that he actually "likes mistakes".

The most resonating thing from this lecture, I feel, was when Curry said that "once you start making things, it begins to mean something different to someone".

Poster Project

For my poster project, I was given the assignment of Book along with the style of 50's/high modern. I chose to do a play made into a novel published around the early 1950's entitled "Death of a Salesman," which is a very pensive and sort of melancholy filled novel about the troubles of surviving as a family and as an individual in the harsh world. I used photoshop for the poster, I decided to use two colors, white and a neutral grey blue.  I decided that this blue would fit the sort of "depressing" aspect of the novel. The image of a cutout is in white and it is a cutout of the salesman, walking away holding briefcases. The typeface runs in the interior of the cutout and is spaced for a stylistic 50's modernist effect. The "salesman" is intentionally the smallest of the words because it is the most important word of the poster--sort of an ironic emphasis. There is a very slim horizon line on the bottom to give the figure some sort of place within the scene, as well as one on the top (both do not continue toward the end of the page.) The cutout is clearly a salesman, and the three words that are most easily read  because of their size are "DEATH OF A" so even from a distance it is pretty effective to have the "Salesman" in a smaller font--it makes for dramatic tension. 

In the Beginning... (Crumb's Book of Genesis at the Hammer)

Yesterday, I went to go see R. Crumb's illustrated book of Genesis at the Hammer. His style has remained very similar to the album cover he did for Big Brother and the Holding Company, but the material has become more enduring. I thought his work displayed a great balance of representing an unknowable and sometimes unimaginable work that is taken to be directly as the word of God. His drawings are illustrative but not cartoonish, and represent the violence and sex mentioned in Genesis without being graphic. Of course, people are still going to be upset about that, especially because the text he illustrates is cobbled-together from various translations, and Crumb himself gives it a bit of his own spin, so it doesn't represent a true translation.

What I thought was interesting was that there were places where you could see the white-out he used. Given the complexity of his sketches I think this is understandable, but it is still interesting to think that the pieces he submitted to be shown at museums weren't perfect.

If you have means of getting out to Westwood, do check it out. Students get in free.