Stewart Nelson

Homework #6 (6) Research 1 artist (2 if you signed up for 3 credits) who works with scanners/scanography creatively and make it an entry on your blog. 

Stewart Nelson's scanography is captivating, although I do not love flowers in art, I love his work.

In his bio he says:

"As a longtime Florida resident, I've explored my award-winning vision of photography since 1979. My images combine traditional photography using 35mm cameras, cheap plastic 120 and 110 film cameras, digital cameras and scanners (scanography) with computer imaging in the digital era of fine art.

The use of a scanner for digital image capture is commonly referred to as scanography. The scanner becomes a digital camera from which I create my art using found objects such as leaves, fruit, paper, old portraits and other objects. These scanned elements are then composed and manipulated in Photoshop to create the final image.

My sense of color, texture and light pushes my photography and scanography beyond realism through the manipulation of these elements, changing their relationship and creating an altered reality more evocative of dreams or fading memories. These distinct moments gain importance through this visual exploration to create the final image, an image far removed from the original moment of capture."

I so desperately want to be able to make works in this style so I am including his explanation of how he creates his art.

"I use an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo scanner. Some images are composed directly on the glass of the scanner. For other images I just scan objects with the intention of extracting them from one file and adding the object to a different scan. Materials that I have scanned include paper, bark, flowers, leafs, crushed cans, some liquids, very old photos and more. I always process the files in Photoshop to manipulate colors (I have a background in painting which influences my color decisions) and create the final composition and also add warmth since the scanner always produces the same cold unflattering light with every scan. I often do multiple scans of the same object and combine them in different ways in Photoshop."

Light Painting

Homework #6 (5) Research 1 artist (2 if you signed up for 3 credits) who works with photography creatively and put up a blog post.

I was looking through the blog LostatEminor.com in their photography section and came across a "light painting" something I have seen before possibly in commercials or print ads, yet know nothing about. I began to google light paintings trying to understand what they are and how they are made. 

The definition of Light Painting on wikipedia is:
"Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera."

It turns out that this technique has been experimented with since Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demeny in 1889.

As I continued to research I found out that even Pablo Picasso did light paintings. This I found so shocking because I have been to so many museums even the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and I have never seen his light paintings.

I began to research modern day artists that experiment with light painting, and came across works by Taylor Pemberton, there is not much information about him but I found his bio on his website...

"My name is Taylor Pemberton—I'm a designer, thinker, & entrepreneur from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 2005, I've had the opportunity to work with a variety of creative individuals, ranging from renowned start-ups, to Fortune 500 corporations. I am currently interested in prospective projects."

His works although experimental are incredible, he has a graffiti aesthetic which really appeals to me because I have always loved and been fascinated by graffiti, I hope he continues to work with this technique.

Another Light Painter I found was Marius Grondahl, his bio was in another language so I was not able to read it. On LostatEminor he wrote about a series of Light Paintings he made...

"Inspired by other lightpainters, I went down to an old factory with my 50-LED flashlight waiting for the sunset. This is the result. My personal favorite is the F(art) Light. Want to do the same? All you need to do is bring your camera, lights of any kind, and set the camera to long exposure. Oh, and of course, the most important thing to bring with you on the photoshoot is your imagination. LED there be light!"

His work is very different when compared to Pemberton's, he has more of an illustrative style which translates very well into Light Painting.

I hope one day to experiment with this technique!

Open Door

Homework #6 (1) After listening to your peers and their approaches with their image; would you want to alter/redo/change some of your ideas now? If so, feel free to do so; indicate potential changes on your blog. (2) Homework #5 had you come up with ideas about what you can do with your image creatively. Realize one of them and bring the output to our next class or put it up on your blog. If your idea is not feasible in the amount of time, choose another one; stay within reason.

After listening to my peers I followed through with my original idea, if I had more than a week I would most likely have followed through with my idea of documenting a week of my life through the buttons I press.

The top image inspired the bottom image.

After doing this work I explored a little bit further and came up with this design. I still do not believe that it is done, hopefully if I play with it some more I will come up with a better execution.

Buttons

Homework #5 (1) Post the picture you took in class on your blog; write a paragraph that tells the story of this picture (what have you noticed that made you take this picture?). (2) Come up with 4 ideas (2 for those who signed up for 2 credits, 4 for those who take this course for 3 credits) where you would like to go with this picture creatively and write them down so you can share your ideas in our next session. 

           For some reason this elevator button appealed to me. After thinking long and hard about how and why this button stuck out to me I begin to wonder maybe it is because in my daily life I press so many buttons and never take the time to look at them. Maybe it is because of its perfectly round shape, dark black color and crisp white typography contrasting the surrounding metal. Regardless of why it appeals to me, the idea that we rely on these small simple buttons intrigues me. I begin to wonder how often in my average day I hit buttons. I hit the center button on my phone, the buttons on my microwave, the down button on the elevator of my building, the floor button once in the elevator, the enter button on the atm machine, the elevator button in macy, the floor button in that elevator etc. I find it remarkable that I have never thought about how many buttons I press in my daily life, no pun intended. I must average around more than ten or fifteen a day. This gets me thinking....

           For a project I could go through a week of my life taking a picture of every button I press. With these pictures in chronological order I could create a short, stop animation film documenting my life in buttons. Or with these pictures I could create some sort of collage that depicts my weeks journey through buttons.

        Another idea for a project would be to create a pop-art, Andy Worhol-like work of this button in many different colors, creating a giant door open button made up of smaller ones.

Vik Muniz

Homework #5 (3) Research 1-2 artists (2 if you take this course for 3 credits) who work with documentation as an artistic process.
         
  I believe that all art is documentation, some art is documenting an experience, some is documenting a fantasy and others document the creative process all together. Someone who came to mind who not only documents stories in the form of art but also documents process is Vik Muniz, more specifically his work for the documentary “Waste Land” which I viewed recently.

            In the film Muniz the revered contemporary artist travels from his residence in New York to his country of origin, Brazil, to the Jardim Gramacho the largest garbage dump in the world. The Jardim Gramacho was located outside of Rio de Janeiro and received 7,000 tons of garbage daily making up 70% of the trash of Rio de Janeiro and surrounding areas and employed thousands of recycling and garbage pickers, catadores. Their jobs was to pick through the landfill in order to organize the trash into recyclables, glass, plastic etc, these catadores were part of the Associação dos Catadores do Aterro Metropolitano de Jardim Gramacho (Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho.) Muniz explored the Jardim interviewing various catadores in order to learn their story and how they came to the Jardim, and how the Jardim has impacted their lives documenting it all on film with his camera crew and director Lucy Walker. After getting to know them he began to focus on seven or eight catadores taking portraits of them documenting their plights and personality in the photographs. Once he narrows down the portraits he hired the selected catadores to help him create a large scale depiction of the photographs, almost like a collage, out of garbage from the landfill. Upon the completion of the large scale portraits Muniz photographed them and auctioned them off in London with the proceeds going towards the Associação dos Catadores do Aterro Metropolitano de Jardim Gramacho, with hopes that the raised money and publicity from the documentary would help benefit the lives of the catadores.

         Vik Muniz’s project and creative process was inspiring, it was incredible watching the project form from a concept into the final photographs. It was interesting seeing how Muniz thought so outside the box, he managed to combine his skills in sculpture using found objects, photography, documentation and philanthropy in order to benefit a community of people so close to his heart. His final projects viewed from the raised platform overlooking the studio space was spectacular, it was so interesting seeing how the garbage looked close up in comparison to viewing it from up above, or in photographs. I personally loved the simplicity of a majority of the images, how even though the media used to create it was far from simple, the final product emanated minimalism. Not only did his artworks document the story and plight of the cat adores, the film documented his entire creative process. The final artworks were beautiful but the most beautiful aspect of the art was the fact that through the construction of the works the lives of the participating catadores were changed for the better and the whole process was documented for the world to see.

 

Sculpture and Documentation of a Creative Process

Homework #4 (1) Create at least 1 drawing and 1 painting on either one or two of those devices: a computer, a tablet, and/or a smartphone; using a keyboard, your fingers, or a stylus. Put some time into this and see how far you can get to make this a creative outlet. (2) In order to investigate the creative abilities of new media and new media technologies, we will work on a number of actions throughout the semester. Action #1 was to bring a piece of technology into the classroom. Action #2 is to document something. This something can be a creative process, an installation, an artistic practice, or an art object; try to stay with something that’s related to the arts. The documentation can be done in whichever way as long as you use a piece of technology, be it a camera, a recorder, or whatever comes to your mind. By asking you to document it, I want us to focus on the difference between creative practice and documentation. Bring your results to the next class or just add them to your blog.

Instead of doing a digital drawing, since I have a background in graphic design, I decided to do a digital sculpture. I figured this would be exciting since it was a way of using new media to create something that is normally done in traditional media. I downloaded a free software for students called Mudbox, I documented my exploration through this video.

I had never done 3D sculpting digitally before and although it was somewhat challenging to figure out at first, it was incredibly fascinating once I figured it out. This software has incredible potential, and I look forward to exploring it further in the future.

Painting

Homework #4 (1) Create at least 1 drawing and 1 painting on either one or two of those devices: a computer, a tablet, and/or a smartphone; using a keyboard, your fingers, or a stylus. Put some time into this and see how far you can get to make this a creative outlet. 

This is a painting I did using Photoshop. While painting people or still lives, I typically use a photo or model for reference, so it was only natural to me to use a photo as a reference while working in photoshop. Prior to painting I usually throw these reference photos into photoshop and put them through filters in order to make it easier for myself to transfer the image into a painting, so I went about this process as I normally would except selected a filter with a more digitized aesthetic. Once I found a filter that I liked, I added a new layer on top. This new layer was to serve as my canvas, yet it was transparent as if I was painting on top of the photograph until the photograph was no longer visible. It was almost as if I was tracing, which is an easy almost shortcut like practice when using paper and pen, but when taking this in photoshop it was incredibly difficult. I was constantly comparing the existing work to my new work. Although it was conflicting while going through the process the outcome was amazingly realistic. It was the first time I did anything like this and it was extremely tedious, but worthwhile in the end!