If I lack the desire to paint seven or so individual faces the size of a quarter, then I don’t do it. I simplify figures when I’m sleep deprived; yes, hands and feet, this means you! I WILL develop female figurines who have NO hair, small boobs,  healthy hips & thighs and ample buttocks! Take that, Hollywood beauty standards!!

Art pushes boundaries and breaks rules on a constant, near religious basis. And if I don’t feel like it, I won’t follow the rules when it comes to mixing media, either! Water- based media and oil-based media don’t mix?! Tell that to Caran D’Ache and their Neocolor water-soluble crayons, or to a good 2/3 of my paintings and at least 1/2 of my prints from last semester! (Don’t tell Beidler I printed them right on top of each other, though; she’d have a conniption. SHHHHH! )

Ahem.

I sort of just attacked a canvas with some black paint. It used to bear a image of the Earth crying from a couple years ago but I had never completed that picture and decided in the end to just scrap it and start over. So I turned Earth into a random blue planet, and EPIPHANY! Why not have women figures supporting/shaping and forming the universe? According to my African traditional religions class last semester, women are divine sources of ccreative energy and wisdom. (And some folks said they never learned anything. Hmph.)

I did something minor and huge at the same time. I had these globes which were supposed to form cool patterns on the surface of my planets–but how to duplicate it?

I had to make the acrylic run and drip in a couple of smears and directional lines. Acrylic  (a water-based paint a molecule or two away from plastic–or straight plastic)  + Corn oil = separation of pigment and its binder, which leads to really brilliant effects when mixed on tissue paper.

These glass globes inspire the planets

This “illegal” mixture is best seen on Aoi (Japanese for blue) and Verde. Yes, I named my planets; they’re my creation and definitely cute enough!

In retrospect, I could have let the blue planet remain detailed (It was much more green than blue) and allow the silhouettes to remain unfilled. Perhaps in the future, I will create this image again, much larger and with more details in the cosmos, including comets, stars, and other astral bodies. I may even add stars to the work presently done…so the planets don’t seem like vague, random spheres.

Que sera, sera. I think it’s brilliantly executed for an all-nighter.

(A photo cannot, CANNOT do this piece justice. It’s not 2D, for one thing. It’s super shiny, for another. But that’s just me.)

For certain holidays, I create custom pieces tailored to the personality of whoever made the request or is being thus given a present. It’s a process that has its own rewards…

For Mother’s Day this year, I was asked to make 2 portraits, one for my maternal grandmother Nana, who turned 70 May 13th (!), and one for my cousins’ mother Ms. Monica, who turned 50 on June 7th.

So my cousin Jo was to send me the photos I was to work from at least a week and a half in advance in order for everything to be done on time (I had finals, ya know). I made 2 portraits of Ms. Monica, compelled by the strength of the two images.

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What I learned:

•  Portraits can be tedious because they are done in layers. I painted the lightest layers first before blending in darker and more subtle tones later.
• Because of aforementioned tediousness, it is EXTREMELY helpful to work on multiple pieces at the same time. I was doing 4 16″x20″ paintings at the same time.
•      Faces, with all their nuances, highlights, &shadows created merely by bone structure and age, are fascinating. Older people are fun to draw/paint! Wrinkles and gray hairs are signs of wisdom and character
• For me, in order to capture the likeness of the person, the eyes are SO IMPORTANT!!

New Media!! I officially LOVE tissue paper!!! Yes, tissue paper, tenderhearted gift wrap, the lining of shoe boxes and packages! It can be manipulated with mere paint, glue and a paintbrush–or fingers–and layered to recreate the textures of clothing. Or anything, really, including feathers as was the case here.

“Ethereal” is possibly one of the best pieces I have ever created, if only because it’s beautiful AND proportionally correct 36+ hours of work, some frenzied hours of pasting, twisting, brushing and hot-gluing aluminum foil, silver beads, plastic gemstones and wire to create an earring, swirling black, bronze, gold, yellow ochre, red and green to “curl” hair on her head.

ahem. Enough clowning.

I was privileged to be a participant in the 2012 Fine Arts Music Extravaganza presented by the Stone Mountain-Lithonia Alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. (what a mouthful.) It was both a public event and a scholarship competition:

The Stone Mountain-Lithonia Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. is sponsoring a competition targeted to Art/Art Education students.  The competition is open to Art students currently enrolled in your institution who are classified as freshman, sophomore or juniors.  Participants are required to submit one (1) piece of artwork (painting, sculpture, etc.) that must have been created solely by the artist (team art projects do not qualify).  The artwork must be accompanied by an index card that is no larger than 5”x 8” and includes the Title/Name of the piece and the name of the artist.  The participants will have their submissions showcased during our Chapter’s Arts & Letter’s event entitled, F.A.M.E. (Fine Arts Music Extravaganza) scheduled May 6^th, 2012, from 5:00PM-7:00PM at The Greater Travelers Rest Church, located at 4650 Flat Shoals Parkway Decatur, Georgia 30034.

The stakes? 1st place: $300, 2nd place: $200, and 3rd place: $100, awarded to the student’s account at an accredited institution of higher learning.

The show itself featured a series of dance and song performances, pretty run-of-the-mill. The emcee was a tad annoying, making pitiful, winded attempts at comedy interrupted frequently by her own peals of laughter and random anecdotes. I couldn’t really follow the program, plus I really just wanted to know who won what.

Surprise, surprise! I was in competition with Gala Cude from my art classes at Agnes! It was pleasant surprise to see her there…

Contestant number one was a guy named Taurus Tucker, from AIU, who “painted” on a 15″x 19″ canvas with invisible solid deodorant, M&Ms candy, and a number 2 pencil! The finished product looked nice enough, but the oddity of his media was what everyone really marveled about!

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Prepping for Kilgore defines burning the candle at both ends; I haven’t been so busy with multiple art projects since AP Studio senior year of high school! It definitely means no sleep! I am doing touchups and/or complete re-dos of projects I pulled from my portfolio in the last four years, mostly high school. A lot of the assignments in Art 160: Visual Thinking were rough studies; finished works were mostly done on Lennox paper (more fragile than rag papers like BFK and thus in need of framing to sell). As for Liquid Media, well, Nell is still holding onto my midterm birdcage and my purple mononchrome head from last semester!!

Here is my task list after various retouches:

• Size the paintings and drawings. Jot down their dimensions.
• Make brief descriptions for each, including size, media, possibly where inspiration came from
• Price and then create small price tags added to the bottom corner of the work

It’s the LAST  part that’ll be the kicker! What am I to use for price tags, adhesive labels? Printed out tags? Old’fashioned pentagans tied with string and stapled on the piece? When will I have time to get this done when I have to be finished with everything before 4 p.m tomorrow—and I HAVE CLASS AT 3:30??!!

My estimated time of arrival must come before 7:30 p.m., so as to have time for set up–and getting lost, accidents, traffic, incidentals–everything must be wrapped up no lter than 5 p.m.! I have the strongest inclination to attempt to make maybe 1 or 2 more paintings tonite…

There was hilarity all night between getting lost and tons of inside jokes, great food and of course GREAT ART!! The exhibition featured artwork created by or about Africana women; common themes were historical objectification, embracing their beauty, position within the working class, and traditional roles within the community. An English professor at Spelman was having a discussion on that last subject, linking the artworks surrounding us with the book and the film entitled, “The Help,” and her research into the backgrounds of  Africana women who worked as domestics in post-WWI America.

We perused the exhibit after the talk was over:

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I was inspired!! Looking around at all those various paintings, mixed media, sculptures, photographs, silkscreens, digital imaging, I found the subject of my art paper, which accompanies our third painting:

I am interested in you doing some deep looking
at the works to see the way these artists use color as planes to structure
the work. Specifically, write about the idea of SUGGESTION vs. (&?)
DESCRIPTION.

Part 1: INVESTIGATE: As you look at the work consider the
following questions: What sort of color palette is used? Are the colors
bright or muted? Primary or tertiary? What is going on with value? Is there
strong or limited contrast? What is the flow or navigation of your eye
across the page? Can you describe the visual hierarchy or “pieces” of the
painting? Is the way you navigate the page the same as the subject
depicted? For example, does your eye stop and stay contained when you come
across literal objects? If there is a boat, for instance, what is the
relationship of color and value where the edge of the boat (or whatever
object) to the ground that meets it? Is there a variation in the color and
value of the object from one place to another or is it all the same? What
would you say the unifying formal principles of the work are? Is there a
relationship between how the artist is using color, texture, value, light,
line and space to the literal subject he/she is depicting? For example,
does a dark or low contrast value palette inform the visual experience of a
figure with her head bowed? If so, how? “formal”=Form

Part 2: WRITE: Write a paragraph about the idea of suggestion vs description in your painting.
[depending on the conclusions you reach, the word “versus” may become
words like: or/and/but/with] Use your investigative material evidence to
come to a thesis about how these two words interact in your work.

I chose “Out of My Blues” by Lucille Malkia Roberts to be the subject of my paper…I also decided that the topic of  my Africana studies paper would revolve around these women artists’ experiences and how those aspects of life impacted their work: art imitates life=missing voices from American history..so yeah, lightbulbs flicking on all over the place.