A few works from spring semester....

....which is finally OVER with, thank God.

(Not that I didn't like my classes, but I had some issues resulting from several illnesses. Not fun, and I'm going to have to retake a couple classes for excessive absence. Ugh.)

First: my Drawing final. We had a few things that we needed to include in it (text, color red, animal, etc), and it had to be larger than 22"x30", but conceptually it was open. Mine is "Nocturnal Descent." I intended it to hang with the bottom cascading onto the floor, and directionally everything moves downwards - as it does so, order and reality dissipate. It is supposed to chronicle the loss of sense in one's mind through a night, be it through sleep deprivation, drinking, or simply the general unraveling of the world as night progresses into the wee hours of the morning, until daybreak, or an waking from an unintentional sleep, or the sobering point, at which point we reenter the synthetic order and routine we impose on our waking lives. This cycle is also something that I tend to go through on a larger timescale, as I am addicted to insanity, chaos, and self-destructive tendencies (in the mental sense, not physical.) The text is composed of bits of conversation from all-nighters, drunk convos, etc, but woven together, increasingly so to the point of little discernation towards the bottom. Also, it is hard to see in the pics, but the pillar morphs into a robust female figure, subtly to mimic sleep deprivation-induced hallucination. Size is about 7'x4.5' I think. Sorry for the image size/quality.

Second: the second-to-last project I did for Body in Time. The prompt was to use a very personal memory to design a "product" that could be mass-produced. I created a wooden 3-dimensional puzzle in which several figural pieces form one large figure (yeah, like Power Rangers!) Basically a metaphor for trying to find a single identity from several simultaneous - and often contradicting - versions of oneself. Paint job isn't as good as I'd like. I did design the box as well.

Third: one of the first projects I did for Narration. A Photoshop image, single-frame narrative, using the composition of a specific Renaissance painting. I worked from Artemisia Gentleschi's "Susanna and the Elders" - which depict the Biblical Susanna being sexually harassed by two old men. Gentleschi's painting was somewhat of a feminist paradox - though it empowered the woman by depicting Susanna as the resisting victim (many depictions often subtly placed some blame on Susanna by giving her a manner of enticing the attention), it also perpetuates the idea that a woman's strength and worth is directly related to her "purity." My version also deals with contradictions in femininity, but as they occur internally via the feminine identity. Also, just a fun image to make.

I think that'll be all for now. I may post some older works from a few years back very soon, as well as a stop-motion work I am working on from my Body in Time final (due to some asshole city officials, I was not able to shoot the animation in time for the final, so I submitted an alternative project version. But I will be shooting it for my own purposes next week or so.)