Pillows, wood, and Borders

This week, I used different materials on which to put my faces according to their sites, along with finally putting my face onto the Borders window.

What I Did:

Time Calendar:
2.5 hours researching public artists and watching "Beautiful Losers"
.5 hours talking with my material culture professor about my project
1 hour shopping for and gathering pillows, cloth, wood, and attachments
2 hours drawing on different kinds of cloth with Sharpie
4 hours drawing on wood
1.5 hours drawing on pillows
1.5 hours putting up all the faces and and documenting
1 hour thinking of one site with many possible faces 

What I Accomplished/ Discovered/ Encountered

I tried to go out and put different faces on different sites that I had that I thought would make a good statement. Then I tried to discover which face and object related to what I want to do with my project the most. My favorite face that I put up was the sad face on Borders. I think it made the biggest statement, left people thinking about it for a while, and attracted the most attention because it was in the most public location and I left it up for the longest amount of time. More than one person in the art school today came up to me and told me that they saw it. I am actually going to see how long it stays up before someone takes it down.

I really liked the way that the couch pillows and the tree looked, but I do not think that people got as much of a reaction from them. Even though I had statements that I was making with them (that people don't notice and appreciate Michigan trees in the fall enough, and that students need to get sleep whenever and wherever they can), I am wondering if people just saw these faces, thought they were funny, and then quickly forgot about them.

Aside from creating my faces on objects, I also researched more public artists that James told me about and watched the documentary "Beautiful Losers" which is about mainly graffiti artists. I really like how a lot of Margaret Kilgallen's work includes images of women along with just one word of text that says a lot. Another artist that I came across was Vinchen, whose work relates more to graffiti. He makes a lot of good statements in his work that I agree with and I think it would be fun to also touch on these subjects.

                                           some of Margaret Kilgallen's work

                                           Vinchen, Live With It

                                               Vinchen, Bargain Heart Attack

                                                  Vinchen, Ivy

Vinchen's Ivy inspired me to do my tree face.

I talked to my material culture professor, but she is only filling in for the regular material culture professor who is on sabbatical, so I only got a few ideas from the conversation. She mainly focuses on food and mass media, which are important things to our culture because we experience them everyday. These are some things that could be interesting to focus on in my work as well. She also suggested that I consider doing a video documentary on the faces out in public and their reactions. I had always thought that I was just going to take pictures, but recording my process and reactions with video could be interesting and reflect even more information than I could get with just pictures.


What I Think I Should Do Next

As suggested during my critique, I will try to focus on one object and think of as many ways to formulate emotions about that object as I can. I will think about different ways that viewers can intervene or interact with the faces and object, and I will think about how subtle and how blatant I can make the faces on the object.