"I'm giving my body to science." - Grandma

   Sometimes it takes almost silly and foolish actions to keep each other sane. Like holding wig parties! Ever since Grandpa has been in home hospice, Grandma has unfailingly stood by and kept watch of him. Mom as well stays out at the farm half of the week to keep an eye on the Eye. Things can get hard when solitude is a daily staple in the diet.
   Well this afternoon as we congregated together to celebrate life with a "wig party", the conversation turned a little sober. . . hospice, senior centers, will's, family duties... and such. I stood up to get more lunch as I kept half an ear to the conversation. All of a sudden I realized that grandma was explaining in all seriousness what her plans were for herself and grandpa after the two had passed away.

   "Oh ya, they come and pick your body up and everything."
I started to snort and laugh... Everyone around the table began to joke, "Well you know with the gas prices these days, what else can you do?"

Grandma is serious. Grandma is refreshingly genius. All for the cause of science right?


It's been a very busy and tiring week getting used to manual labor again with my job, but it's been lovely to be able to be outside getting dirty. Must stay focused though. Memphis drifts like fog when I return home. Focus, focus... keep thinking art thoughts girl.

I Need to Start Creating Light

I think the richest part of this project was centered on one girl who walked by my house while I was shooting away yesterday afternoon. Now being a student who continually racks her brains for ideas, some incredibly hair brained, I don’t often think to much about what I do in order to get to the end project. It’s always that end product that weighs so heavily on my mind.

  I guess I didn’t think too much about the fact that I had plastic tied around my neck, arms, and waste and was flinging myself around bright flashing lights.  Well I guess this girl didn’t think too much either for she certainly didn’t look at me. With blaring country music playing on her eye pod, she almost zoomed walked past my house directing her gaze a mile ahead down the road.

            I wanted to finish this last assignment using the idea of my shadows and drop sheets. I had loved being able to visually pull myself away from darkness by directing the light upwards. This I had done a few weeks earlier with a simple flashlight. But yesterday the magic wasn’t ringing and I was stumped. Then the idea began to change through my hour of frustration, and I began to look differently at what I was doing. Ok, I was trying to created shadow. This really needed to stop. I needed to start creating light. Ya?

 Thus the end product.

And an end to a perfectly good piece of plastic.

            It was interesting meeting up with Suzie today at school. I always seem to belittle my concept and make light of my ideas. I ended up laughing and saying things like, “Oh, I ran around the yard and threw plastic around.” But I stopped when I thought about it. “It’s almost like my photo 4 class with my cutouts… you know, things are not always as they seem.” “There you go” Suzie said.   “That’s your concept!”

And it is true. I take materials and use them in very different ways then what they were intended for. 

And very true for my own life. 

CURAD

This morning, I sliced my finger with a razor blade. A good half inch I would say. Luckly today, I had to do a commercial project for studio lighting! And I was assigned to advertise band-aids.

This project was very fun for me. I love adding text to pictures. 

 

 

“I’ll string up your individuality to talk about my fictitious public”.

As I readied myself for school on Monday, I almost unconsciously opened Facebook to glance quickly at my newsfeed. I stopped and looked again. A friend of mine had posted a quote the night before, and as I read it I was shook:

 “Since there is no such entity as “the public” since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of “the public interest” with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interest and wishes of others” Rand

Now I have to reiterate what my project is about. I wanted to talk about personal space and how in some cases, it gets wrongly abused and unnoticed For my data collection, I went around to big box stores, recording the actions of people as I got a little to close to them while pretending to shop.

            As I read this quote, I suddenly felt a hint of embarrassment, because I knew that this somehow related this to experimentation in my data collection. Though it related not in a way that I had been talking about all semester.  The words, “The public” and “merely a number of individuals”, have stuck out to me. Where have these four months taken me? Why have I oddly started thinking of experimenting on a collective group of people, my so-called public, expecting results like scientist would expect for a science experiment. I was assuming that everyone would react in a similar way, a way that could be recorded as data.  

And I do remember while doing the collective data assignment last Friday, and thinking to myself as we drove to the stores, “Don’t we have to get a group of people ready?”  I was feeling odd that I was simply going to try my personal space project on just anyone. My actions deleted individuality.  

Since you have all been in my group for a while, you knew that I was going to experiment again with people and personal space. This never happed. Instead, I decided to take photos from my collective data and make them into paint transfers. After doing this, I connected them with string and hung them up together. The string separates each person, but still connects the art as a whole.  The wall of transfers is like a wall that people can simply subjectively observe.

And I really want to make a awareness call on this class in general. I know of no other kind of school that celebrates individualism so strongly as a visual art school.  Let us all remember that we will receive as much as we give to others. This assignment was a lovely rude awakening.

Transfers are becoming very dear to me. They remind me of home. I came back to Memphis in January really desiring to continue to play with this idea and it never happened. This is my way of reopening the pages. Giving myself two days to work something up, this is as good as it got. Last night was a visual nightmare, but I think that the arrangement with string helps. 

Signe Johnson

“I’ll string up your individuality to talk about my fictitious public”.

Paint Transfer

4/30/2013

"Do you do like landscapes?"

I was posed many questions tonight, attending a house concert. Going to things like that is so fun,  but I am always faced with the position of having to keep conversation going with many people I simply don't know.  And I always have to look sure of myself and my position in life... So questions were asked including one about my degree, "Do you do like landscapes?"

 And I drew a blank. What the heck do I do here? How do I explain myself? How do I explain the fact that I jump in front of drop sheets at night, or make contraptions out of rulers and string and walk around with it on in public. I um... "It's more like fine art".  I said this, as I mentally banged my head against a wall. Sheet, that sounded horrible.

Tonight I have found myself making company with paint transfers. Nearly fifty total. Then to piece them together. Pictures of people walking around in stores. . .  And how do I explain that. Ahhh... the need for an artist statement is so needed right now.

Home

Today just may be the most tiring day all semester for me. Home is calling. And it's scary, cause I'm starting not to care. Same thing happened last semester. I gave up two weeks too soon. Suzie and I drove to the mall today so that I could do my performance piece for IPC.

But I couldn't do it.

I've had enough of being the fool.

So we left. 

Holy cow. 

For my final in Digital two, I am going to print these babies off, throw paint on them and sew um together as a collage. I feel like my mom, whipping together supper out of leftovers from the fridge. She would always say, "Anything is good with cheese on it."  So I guess I see it as, "Anything is good with paint on it." 

Love you ma.