Art 3 Final Portfolio

1. My most successful project was my perspective project. I really loved how it turned out and the message it sent to the viewers. The theme was to show how one person's outlook on everything can be completely opposite from another's. I wrote out LIFEISNOWHERE and some people perceived this as "life is now here" and others "life is nowhere". To complete this project, I used a large piece of finished wood that I think was actually from a bookshelf at the school. I wanted it to be big so the letters would really stand out and be clear. I wrote the letters as block letters and painted them in a green-black gradient. I did this gradient green at the top to represent those who saw the words as "life is now here" and black for those who saw it differently. To enhance this project even more, I sanded the wood to get rid of the shine behind the letters. I did this so the letters would catch the viewer's eye better. Overall, this project turned out better than I had presumed, unlike some of my others. 
2. One project where, at some points, I just didn’t know where to go with it was my vodka bottle with goldfish in it. I was going to get an absolut vodka bottle and take off the word vodka and write "catch" in its place and then put goldfish in it so it read "absolut catch". I had planned on just taking off the label because I had done so before but Mr. Sands gave me such a high-quality bottle that the words were engraved into the bottle. I tried everything from sandpaper to rubbing alcohol to trying to grind it off with a knife. At this point, I was so frustrated, I was about to just use another one of my ideas. I thought there was no way I was going to get these letters off. After a couple of days I decided to go on Photoshop and try just making the label and gluing it on. So, I did, and once again, I was stuck. I didn’t like the fact you could tell it was just paper. It looked tacky, unfinished, and unprofessional to me.  Mr. Sands then showed me if you photograph it with a white background, you can't tell at all. In the end, I loved this project and I think it helped me grow as an artist and learn new techniques. I'm glad I stuck with this project because it turned out great. It just took a lot of problem solving.
3. Two pieces of art I did that I really thought showed my growth the best were my interactivity project (fingerprint mountain range) and my perspective project (LIFEISNOWHERE-above). In my perspective project, I felt I grew as an artist because of the ideas behind my project as well as the physical appearance. I decided to use a wooden shelf from a bookshelf because of the ties it had to what I was trying to get across. The wood stood for life and death because trees can be an image of a long, healthy life. Then again, the wood had been cut up, sanded, painted, glazed, stabbed with nails, and thrown around--dead. My vision in this project was that people could kind of get a reality-check with themselves. A lot of people read the letters as "LIFE IS NO WHERE" thought about it, and tried to "correct themselves", they said. I told them that there is no "correct" answer, just the thing they think is acceptable, what they want themselves to think. This showed me just how many people want to look at the world in a positive manner, but really just aren't programmed that way. In my interactivity project, I think I really showed some of the things I've recently learned. I think  it helped being my last project, so I really had some time to think about it and make it what I wanted it to be. I've really started to love the look of things when they are done on wood, so I chose a wooden board to do this project on. I used children's fingerprints as leaves and trees to create an abstract forest scene. My vision grew for this project because as I was watching the kids, some of them would get frustrated because their fingers would smear and the paint didn't dry fast enough for them to go over it. All I could tell them was to be patient, which led to the next part of this project. I knew from the beginning I wanted to write a quote or a couple words over it that meant something to me about this project and brought it together. I decided to do a quote about nature and "her" patience. This made sense to me and really opened this up to so many interpretations because patience relates to so many different things. For me, it comes off as how we all need to be more patient because in the end, we have about as much time on this Earth as an untouched tree (or shorter). It made me think about how special and beautiful nature really is and it doesn't get that way in minutes, days, or months. It gets there in years. Nature has patience. Maybe it's just because nature has no one to meet or anywhere to go, but that shouldn't matter to us either. We will all get somewhere one day. This piece takes me to a different mindset- that we should just live our lives in the present, not the past or future, and not to rush things that will eventually come to us naturally.

4. In this semester, I really felt like I got to explore many new things in the art world that I didn’t even consider doing. I remember at the beginning of this class I was so surprised by Mr. Sands when he told us our topic was "culture" and that was all the rules he gave us. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself because I had never experienced that kind of freedom in an art class before. I definitely liked the idea that we got to make a lot of the choices in the class. I don’t think anyone would have (or could have) created the art they did if we didn’t have that kind of freedom. I never would have used a vodka bottle in an art class or painted a project on a piece of wood from a bookshelf. I never would have seen someone paint on a tree, make a fish out of spoons, or make their project out of thyme. I think this kind of teaching opened everyone's minds and maybe even pulled them a little out of their comfort zone.  I think everyone grew as an artist, student, and most importantly- everyone grew as a person in the process.