Metaphorical Mind Map

This map came as a result of my Hollow of the Restless project earlier in the semester which I posted on here a while ago. The map is made up of fantastic places but the places also represent a person's possible state of mind at points in their life. There are the moving mountains, that move literally because they have feet but they also represent a moving or especially critical time in a person's life. There are the depths of depression, the rock of reason, the sea of illusion, the lake of lost things, the mist of memory, the plains of perpetual growth, and the peak of enlightenment, not to mention the forest of entangled thought. It was lots of fun to not only make but think about the places and their metaphorical meanings.

More Paintings...

This brightly colored collage is my painting final. I think the colors pop great and the imagery paired with the personal symbolism produced a result I'm pretty satisfied with.

Paintings...

These are my first attempts at officially painting for my class second semester. Paul Jeanes is a fabulous teacher who makes you want to "Paint like Cave men" as he calls it. I got really absorbed in painting and found that the medium is wonderfully satisfying to work with.

The Hollow of the Restless

In the hollow of the restless,
Is where I spend my time.
Skipping, Screaming, Laughing, Weeping,
Collecting the things I find.
A feather here, a memory there,
A bottle filled with time.
A small round stone, a chicken bone,
A shriveled lemon rind,
And the faces of the ages,
Before they lost their minds.

Please listen friends until the end,
If you would be so kind,
To my tale of no avail,
Which I attempt in rhyme.

I began a normal being,
No different than yourself.
Until a great and grand revealing,
A gift of knowledge wealth.
I grasped the act of seeing,
All previously masked,
And then came the believing,
And all the questions asked.

Upon my shoulder grew the eyes,
Of which you now see multiplied,
They searched the mountains, hills, and skies,
Witness to the dumb and wise,
Truth, beauty, deceit, and lies,
All of the castles in the skies.
Twenty-one in number do they stand,
One of the primes in number land,
Another oddity of life,
Thrown amidst the love and strife.

After the eyes came the dreads,
Which grew like fire from my head.
Pinks, oranges, maroons, and reds,
An animal that’s never fed.
Each time I attempt to give them a whack,
In a matter of seconds it all grows back.
The reason why I cannot fathom–
Well…I guess I could imagine.
Reflection of human’s hate and passion.

How symbolize dichotomy?
By nature of their similarity.
And since hatred and passion,
Shall never run out,
From my head these worms,
Shall forever sprout,
Housing one particularly nasty lout,
Who knows what torture is all about,
And makes me itch and kick and shout.

Waking the spirit of the bones,
Which I have given a lovely home,
On a string around my neck,
Freeing them from hell and heck,
And a single dirty speck.
From four different men each bone came,
Experienced men in the life game.
The first one died in bloody war,
Witness to the loss and gore,
Fell as both his legs went sore,
No walking or talking forever more.
The second lived a nice long life,
Loving children, loving wife,
But never rich and always poor,
Was laughed at for the rags he wore.
He watched as sickness took his child,
Took his wife and spread like wild,
Until he was the last one left,
Alone, old, and bereft.
The third belonged to noble king,
Whose praise people would ever sing,
For wisdom, care, and understanding,
But renown isn’t everything.
Soon the king became corrupt,
And death upon him so abrupt,
A heart attack in the night,
Or so they say in fear and spite.
The fourth a young and gallant lad,
Could simply not escape the bad,
A fair young love once he had,
Now unrequited, and ever sad.
He fell into a deep depression,
Due to the unhealthy obsession,
Leading him to further regression,
Never to escape oppression.
And then his fragile mind caved in.
Try as he might he could not win,
Gave in to the darkest sin,
Chose to wear the demon’s skin.

Next to the bones I wear the teeth,
From many curious animals I meet,
Who (before introductions) were going to eat,
Of the fleshy tender meat,
That comprises my hands, body and feet.
But don’t you worry I stopped them friend,
They did not get me in the end.
After a discussion they would tend,
To understand my position.

Between the worlds of real and not,
Attempting to figure out my lot,
Before I die and start to rot,
Feeling ever trapped and caught,
A tooth they’d give me for good luck,
Before returning to the muck,
Thinking oh…the poor old shmuck.

The last creature I must detail,

I met inside a giant whale,

An octopus who measures time,

With tentacles that number nine,

Each to represent a year,

I am to spend in this land here,

Ever searching far and wide,

For reasons unknown, and answers why,

Always restless, never to sleep,

Roaming mountain tops and oceans deep,

My friends, my secrets will you keep?

One day, to this land, you may be borne

My friends consider yourselves forewarned!

Jump!

This piece is all about my childhood and the process of growing up. The young girl stands on the edge of the dock wondering if she should jump into the swarming technicolor waters of life or stay on solid ground where it is safe. The water looks so enticing but claws reach out to grab her and in the end she really has no choice but to jump. I really enjoyed exploring how I could create an environment out of the various fabrics and discovering how some of the fabrics gave even more meaning to the piece because they came from past events in my life. There are swatches of my elementary school uniform, parts of a dress I used to always wear as a little girl, pieces of a costume for a play I was in, and pieces of denim from the torn jeans of a boy I was once interested in. All of these connections only add to the history and theme of a loss of innocence through growing up.

Kalib And The Water Spirits

For another final in which we got to choose our own project I decided to explore my new found interest in puppetry and storytelling by creating a puppet show that fit entirely into a suitcase. It includes a stage, two scenes, four marionette puppets, and a few props. The two scenes consist of ocean waves and another of a small shack with a drying rack of fish next to it. The four puppets include the young boy Kalib, the Spirit of the Seas, the Spirit of the Lakes, and the Spirit of the Rivers. The theater and scenes are crafted out of cardboard, fabric, popsicle sticks, and a suitcase. The puppets’ heads and hands are crafted out of Sculpey and then painted with acrylics, and their bodies are made out of an assortment of fabrics. Once the puppets were assembled, I used popsicle sticks and fishing line to make them marionettes. The story behind the puppets involves the water spirits searching out a human ally who will show the rest of humanity the harm they cause when they pollute the water of the world and take it for granted. Kalib’s mission is to travel the earth, teaching people about the consequences of their actions and show them how to conserve and recycle. I chose to write a story that addressed an environmental issue of our time because we spent some class time discussing these issues and how artists can present them in a new light.

Time Tunnel

The final assignment for my Sculpture class was to accept the responsibility for failing to make an impossibility possible. The impossibility I chose was time travel and after much thought I decided that maybe in the phrase "traveling through time" through is the key word. Therefore I built a tunnel large enough to walk through that would transform the space around a person and make them feel more aware of their body in relation to time and space. The tunnel, constructed out of a frame work of metal piping and fabric can expand and contract like time in the case of black holes and time travel in that sense. Once the tunnel was built I chose to collect three specific memories from everyone I could because memories are not possible without the passage of time and just as time affects us we affect time. I asked them to write down the first thing they could ever remember, something that had caused either physical or emotional scarring in their life, and an epiphany moment or realization they have had. I then pinned all of the memories up in a progressive manner inside the tunnel along with pictures of my memories that become blown up scars, and bruises, then wrinkles of wisdom. As you near the end of the tunnel the paper pieces become thicker and overwhelming surpassing the edge and carrying over to fill the back wall. The paper pieces are blank for the memories yet to come and an image of a giant moth is place dead center. The moth is a metaphor for the metamorphosis we go through as we grow and travel through time. The moth is also the Navajo symbol for insanity and as we go through life our sanity is tested on many levels.

Detail Continued

Detail

A study in detail by way of mixing painting, embroidery, and illusion.

Invisible Cities

Jelly fish cities inspired by the National Aquarium and the New Pornographers song These are the Fables. The project was to create an invisible city or space through the use of imagination and observational drawings.

Wanting and Not Having: Freedom and Answers

Melusina-Series Beginning

Wanting and Not Having: Series Conclusion- Peace

This Mono-print collage is the end result of a series of drawings that started with the researching of a myth from my cultural heritage. I chose the German myth of Melusina, in which an enchantress sings from spring on a mountain top and casts a spell on a young prince. The prince cannot resist her beauty and kisses her even though she has the tail of a snake. The prince comes back for more but each time she has turned into more of a monster until finally her beautiful face becomes that of a toad. The prince is scared away and her desires are left unfulfilled. The main idea that stuck with me from this story was the theme of wanting but not having. All of us have wanted something we simply cannot have or have not yet found. This particular piece consists of six young girls' portraits, girls who I met while on a mission trip in Guatemala three summers ago. Surrounding them are the political symbols and signs of the time that we would pass as graffiti all over the sides of mountains and buildings. When talking with these girls all they seemed to really want was a sense of peace, a stop to the war between political factions, and a safe environment to grow up in. The portraits are printed on book pages because of their want to learn and work towards peace in the future. All of the pieces are sewn together with red thread.

Artist Response: Lucy & Jorge Orta

This installation was completed for my Elements of Visual Thinking class in response to my Artist Talk on Lucy & Jorge Orta. The Ortas' work revolves around critical issues in society such as social inclusion, community, mobility, migration, habitat, ecology, and recycling. All of their work is Collaborative and involves hundreds to thousands of people. They believe in art as pedagogy– a learning, teaching experience, to create open ended dialogue about necessary issues in the world today. Their main goal is to collapse socio-political and geographical boundaries and get whole world involved in these issues. In my response I chose to address the situation of education, protection, and safety for kids around the world. Seventy-two million children world wide do not have access to education. Even more children suffer from a lack of physical and emotional nourishment and feelings of security. My goal was to make some sort of aesthetically engaging "Childhood Education Protection Survival Kit." To help me brain storm I enlisted the help of Mr. Greenawalt's 5th grade class from Midtown Academy. They drew pictures in response to the questions: If you could build yourself a place where you would be safe and protected, what would it look like? and If you could go on an adventure and make your own survival kit to bring with you what would it look like and what would you put in it? The drawings are displayed on the wall behind the resulting piece.

Home Huts

I built these for my second sculpture project which was all about activating the most amount of space with the least amount of means. They were installed at two points on campus, one being in the main plaza and the other being across the street inside the main building. The two huts were placed approximately 523 feet apart because I am approximately 523 miles from home (Edgewood, Kentucky) while in Baltimore. My goal was to activate space on three levels: physically, psychologically, and culturally/ historically. Physically the space is activated between the huts because they are facing each other, filling the space with a new energy. Psychologically I'm activating the space between myself and my home and addressing the separation issues I've faced moving away from home. The yarn in the hut inside is reminiscent of the heart outside as if my heart strings have been pulled until breaking point. Culturally and Historically the space is activated because the journey from outside, across the street, to inside the grand marble building is a metaphor for humanity's progression and technological development.

A quick catch up of my first semester and what I've been up to:

It's foundation year and my head is simply reeling with ideas and bursting with the need to make make make! I have been officially initiated into the art world and while it can be extremely overwhelming at times beauty and inspiration abound. I have met some amazing people who come from all over to share their stories and join together with me in the great experience of collegiate art making and living. Though my journey has just begun and there are so many things I have yet to try and learn I'm confident that my art and need to dream and create will help me find my place and provide for some life changing stories along the way.