Poem/Book Visualization Final

I Want That Love by Katie Reed

My concept for this book changed completely from what I had thought of when beginning this project. I originally wanted to go with a book in a rose shape and to write a stanza of the poem on individual petals in the flower, but the more I read the poem and after receiving feedback from my classmates I realized that it wasn't the proper direction to take. This poem is about love, but even so it's more about wanting that special type of love and not having it, and that longing for that love. I think the poem is more somber than anything, and since a rose is a symbol of love I would have been contradicting the poem if I had done the rose book. I ended up going with a diary, because when you think about it most of the diaries that are written by girls focus on this very topic: love. Whether it be falling in love, having a crush or so on that is usually the foundation of most diaries, and when you think about the majority of movies and music that influence us are about love too. I thought using a diary approach would be a good way of getting my idea across of telling the story of a young girl or woman who wants to have that loving experience and is longing for it, and what she imagines this love that she wants would be like. I wanted to get the sadness from this poem across also, which is one of the main reasons that I used teardrops and petals from what should wilted roses. You get the sense from the poem that this girl is sad in waiting for this love to come along, or maybe even got out of a bad relationship and learning from her previous relationship what she really wants in her future relationships, it can be interpreted many ways. I think with the roses also it can be seen as symbolic, where a full blooming rose is seen as love these rose petals can be considered dead or detached from the full rose symbolizing either lost love or not having love. I really enjoyed doing this project and making this book, I'm hoping to maybe even do more with it in my spare time.

Self Visualization Project

For my project I wanted to get across my love for music, and how I feel different emotions and listen to different music for different moods. I put the images of an angry version of myself, because it's very rare that I am mad. You really have to work hard to get me mad, but I ended up liking that piece out of all three of my pieces the most. I'm happy with this project, but I still felt like I could do more, it was just the fact that I couldn't figure out exactly that piece of the puzzle to this project that was missing. I did enjoy making this project, even though i have to admit I'm not a big fan of incorporating myself, especially pictures of myself in my project, but I really liked experimenting and letting a little of all aspects of my emotions show through. :)

Word Visualization

Poem/Book Visualization Project Ideas

Katie Reed - I Want That Love

How can I explain how I feel without revealing 

too much about how I feel?

After all a feeling is meant to be expressed.

In an ideal world of my own utopia I would be in love 

and live to write and have the right to the above. 

On occasions I feel suppressed by myself and what I think

and what I want are two different things.

I think I should wait until my life truly begins

but I want to find the kind of love I know I deserve

the overwhelming, inconsiderate, selfish

world consuming power of love.

That little feeling that throws itself on your heart

until you give in, I want that feeling. 

I want someone who likes me for who I am,

loves me and lives for me, yet still voices their opinions,

views and challenges almost everything I say

I want someone I can sit down and watch the stars with,

someone who can't read my mind but knows when to hold my hand.

I want that love, the love that overrides your heart

and takes every piece of that feelings you have

and makes it worth while.

I want someone who will kiss me gently and mean what they say.

I want that love

My idea for my book/poem visualization project is to create a bouquet of roses, since they are a symbol of love, and to put lines from the poem on random petals throughtout the bouquet. Right now that is the only idea I have, and I'm really excited to execute the idea, but if I think of anything else I'll be sure to post about it!

Dia: Beacon Field Trip

I really enjoyed the trip we took to Dia: Beacon the other day. I had never been there so it was a new experience for me. I was surprised at the range of different artworks they had, and it was different from most museums I had been to. I liked the fact that it wasn't an actual museum, but rather a large studio building that had been put into use as a museum, it gave it more of an artsy feel I thought. I enjoyed Robert Smithson's piece "Map of Broken Glass". It was so beautiful, the hue of the glass was almost a robin's egg blue and it was very shiny and I wanted to touch the piece so bad, even though I knew it was made out of broken glass. It reminded me of a mineral rock you would find in a mining museum gift shop. The piece I had the most fun with though was Richard Serra's "Torqued Ellipse" series. My friends and I ran around on the inside which was a lot of fun! It was really neat to see and run around in a piece that I've learned about in several of my classes. Dan Flavin's work with the fluorescent lights I thought was very unique and I liked taht I got a chance to see his work up close because I have to do a presentation and paper on him for my Conceptual Art class. Another highlight of my trip was getting to sit on those ridiculously comfortable couches while viewing Andy Warhol's work. Perfect!

Project 2: Self Visualization Concept

For my self-visualization project I was thinking of taking pictures of myself listening to music, making goofy faces, dancing, just trying to capture things I do on a regular basis. I'm a quirky girl, so I thought it would best fit if I was just acting natural. I was thinking of putting some type of focus on my eyes, since they're pretty much my favorite feature, so I was thinking of maybe colorizing them in some way, maybe making them stand out by making the rest of my face black and white and just making my eyes a bright emerald green. I really want to stick with something with music, just because music is something I love and that is very important to me and can relate to my life and events that have happened to me, whether it's about my friends or family, heartache or thinking ahead into the future. I was thinking of putting some type of word bubble somewhere too, and possibly scattering words in the picture that describes myself and using certain types of font to emphasize the words. I was thinking of somehow incorporating my nationalities into my project , but I'm not sure how I will go about doing that. I wanted to also include pictures that represent art, music, and film since those are some of my favorite things. I'd also like to possibly incorporate pictures of my friends and family into my project. I was thinking of making some type of collage part to the project, but lowering the opacity a little so you could still see my picture. So far that's all I have, but knowing me random things will pop up during the process of creating this project. 

Photoshop Project 1 & Illustrator Project 1

Artist Comparison

Cui Xiuwen's artwork is very ethereal and majestic. You can see she gets a lot of influence from her Chinese heritage and her existence as a woman. The color and set up are very representational in that you can either chose to picture the "angels" in Heaven or Hell. The girls in her pictures seem very unsure and lost, like many young women are. There's also a maternal quality to the artwork too. 

Cindy Sherman has a horror movie-esque quality to many of her photos that she takes, especially her "Centerfolds" collection. Her "Fairy Tale Disasters" collection is very fantasy like, and her "Untitled Film Stills" are more like centerfold pictures. All of her work though has a very realistic and raw quality to it. 

Frida Kahlo's paintings are very water color like and beautiful. You can definitely tell that she has been influenced by her Mexican and Native American heritage. Her art is very realistic but also has a surrealistic quality. You can see how her paintings tell the stories of her life, because she had many bumps in the road that she had to overcome. She accomplished a lot in her short life. 

All of the artists pieces are very strong because they are all influenced by female artists. There's also an ongoing theme between all of them of some type of struggle that they have had in their life, some type of internal hardship. Their work represents the different roles or expectations of women all around the world.

Photoshop Project 1 Final!

Illustrator Exercise!

I love my coffee! <3

Project 1...so far

Project 1 Photo

I was very intrigued by the three artists we looked over in class: Gregory Crewdon, Teun Hocks, Jeff Wall, and Cindy Sherman.

I really enjoyed Gregory Crewsdon's work, because of the theatrical feel it had to it. Most of his scenes art set up to seem like a very intimate moment that most of the viewers feel they are interrupting. I liked how he evoked different emotions with the effects of lighting, especially by putting a blue cast over certain photos to get the emotion of a certain sense of sadness or loneliness across to the viewer. 

Teun Hock's photos were probably some of my favorite, because of the humor he evokes in his pictures. I was surprised at the fact that he keeps all of his photographs untitled. I also found it very amusing that he was the subject in all of his pictures and that he wore a suit in every one of his works too. What I found especially interesting and beautiful was the way he took his photographs, but also the fact that he painted over them which I never seen before but have now become very fond of. 

I liked the realistic quality of Jeff Walls photography, and how his subjects didn't really seem as if they were set up to be photographed, but at the same time I wasn't as intrigued by his work as I was with the other artists. 

I enjoyed Cindy Sherman's work, and I have to give her credit for putting herself in her work, because I know that I would hate to have to use myself in my photos! I liked the simple black and white quality to her work. Most of her work reminded me of pin up girls from the 1950s.

Inspiration

I have always been influenced by Andy Warhol's artwork, because I'm partial to having bold colors in artwork rather than black and white.

Last year I had my first experience with screen printing and most of my inspiration for my design came from Warhol's banana design. 

Although I'm a big fan of color I'm also a big fan of black and white photography after dabbling with it last year, and I was disappointed that I was only able to do it last year for a couple of months. I hope to produce more black and white photos in the future.