Crunch Time

There are only a few more days until major things need to be done and turned in to the gallery. Right now I am in the process of revising my map so that I can get it into printing. After that, I will finish drawing my faces, put them up, take the pictures and print those. I know this is a lot to do, but I figure since I have the frames I am going to use, I can give these to the gallery as place holders on Tuesday. I am hoping to get as much done as possible this weekend though. It is really frustrating, because I have another class project which is a site installation and there is going to be an opening of that next Wednesday, so my professor is being especially naggy and making us all work really hard up until the opening. Then, on top of that, some personal problems arose the past few days. Not trying to make any excuses, but if I look like I want to punch anyone in the face in the next week or so, this is why.

What I Did:

5 hours revising my map
15 hours drawing facial features
1.5 hours planning gallery set-up
2 hours getting frames from Ikea

first love face

eyes for first crappy apartment face

4 AM face (the eyebrows are underneath the eyes because I ran out of room, but I'm cutting everything out anyway)

sketches for gallery space

What I Discovered/Encountered:

Even though I liked how my card looked that I made last week, it didn't have the right feel for my project. I agree with Hannah that it looked like a different project. I could have gone in the direction of making faces in Illustrator, but I didn't so I needed a new look for my card. I still like the way the card opens up to reveal the inside of the mouth, but we came up with a new way to fold it that makes that a little more apparent. Therefore, I need to draw a mouth, but I want it to work in almost the same way as the previous design, it just would have a different feel because it is hand drawn. Then, the way the stack of cards are going to be placed in the gallery, they are going to pair up with the eyes that are going to be above them. Together they will make up my final worried face, which will be included in my map.

I went to Kolossos, and they seem to have the cheapest prices and the best quality for what I want to do. The price, however, is way more than I intended: $300 for 500 cards. I might have to bring that number down to 400 and fold the cards myself, because I do not have that kind of money to spend, even if I want to make a good impression for my show. There is even a special that the owner gave me, and this is still the price. It's crazy. 

Drawing the facial features that I will paste out in public has been going smoothly. It is my favorite part of this whole process. I can get immersed in them and not even realize that so much time has gone by.

What I Plan To Do Next:

I will draw the mouth for my card and send in my design to get my cards printed at Kolossos this weekend. I will then finish up drawing my faces and try to put them up before Tuesday. I don't think putting them up that soon will be possible, but I will try. I have a lot of motivation now that I am hoping will push me to get as much done as a can these next few days.

time to start making

I know where I want to have my pieces installed and I know how I want to transform the spaces with the faces I want to make. I know the kind of map I want and what I want it to look like. I know how I want my gallery space to look also. Now that I know everything that I want to do, it's time to start making.


What I Did:

3 hours planning out last site
15 hours revising map/card, getting information on printing
3 hour trying to get permission for various sites
2 hours measuring sites to know how big to draw the faces

the front cover

inside

back cover

What I Encountered/Discovered:

Things are going well, but I am realizing it's crunch time and I am going to have to kick it into high gear if I want to get everything done. But that's okay, because I work better under pressure. It was nice to get feedback from Stephanie and Juliet about the faces in my sites. I think there are a lot of valuable ideas that I can use to tweak faces, but I am not doing anything too drastically different from what I have planned.

I was very upset to hear back from the community center manager that I could not use the gate in East Quad, because I was not a resident there. They seemed up for it at first, but regulations say because I am not a resident, I can't do it. I think that's kind of bullshit, because what I would be doing wouldn't affect anybody or anything and East Quad is usually an artsy place. I wish I would have just done it without permission... but now they have my information. It makes me wonder if I should try to get permission for any of my projects...? I got permission for the one on the exterior wall of my studio, however.

Hannah gave me some good advice for my map and for my gallery space. Incorporating one of my faces onto the wall of the gallery and possibly interacting with the pictures is something (for some reason) I had not thought of before. I always figured the only option I had to putting a face in the gallery was to bring a structure in to transform. I went to Mark about this new idea, though, and he said it would be fine. After all, this project has brought up extreme emotions for me, and I will definitely remember the stress it brought upon me. So a huge stressed out face could be a perfect addition to my project.

As for the map, I had previously thought that I wanted an 8.5"x5.5" postcard, because I wanted it to be more intimate than a big fold-out map. I designed the postcard to what I thought had been personalized to my project, but it still seemed a little generic. The idea was presented that I incorporate one of my faces into the map, and to possibly make it more like a folded card, with the front having a face so that people want to take it, but the interior being the map and the important information. This makes it more intimate yet, and I like this idea.

I really like how the map/card will work how I designed it. The front will be the top of the face. The card will then open like the mouth is opening to reveal the inside, which has the sides of the lips going down the side. Then the back cover is the lower lips.  I like how the face looks right now, but I am wondering if I need to make it look more hand-drawn. I could add some more detail in Illustrator, or I could just draw it and scan it in, but I am not sure if it is necessary for the face on the card to look exactly like all my pieces.

What I Will Do Next:

I am going to Ikea this weekend to get frames for the 7 photos, and I need to start making the faces as soon as possible. I need to test them out to see if they look exactly as I want them to. I am also going to Kinkos and calling Vistaprint to ask specific questions about the printing of the card/map.

My own emotions

What I Did: 

5 hours revising my thesis paper
6 hours remembering exact emotions from the 7 moments I am going to capture and sketching out how my face might have looked
1 hour taking more pictures of the sites
3 hours researching artists that draw self portraits that contain a lot of emotion and graffiti on brick walls
4 hours beginning to plan face in East Quad courtyard

What I Encountered/Discovered:

Before I got started on the planning of the faces in the different locations, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what emotions I wanted to convey in each one. They need to be very true and personal emotions for me, and I do not want them to be so generic. That's why I took a long time writing down a bunch of words that described each period of time and then sketched my facial expressions according to those words.

Then I looked up some artists who do self portraits to see in what ways they convey a lot of emotion.

Dave Kinsey, Scream

I love this painting by Dave Kinsey. The colors are loud, and the distressed look of the black is angry and disturbing. I love how the mouth is the only thing you can see on the man's face. You cannot deny that there is so much emotion in this painting. Even though his style is different from mine, it makes me think about the different colors I can use to express the emotion, and how I don't need to include everything on the face to convey a true emotion. Maybe just a mouth will do.


It is much easier to make faces and characters out of structures that already look like they have parts of a face included in them. I am finding it harder to find structures that I can transform into a face when they have to be in a specific area, especially when I want them to capture a certain emotion and expression. I found some good spots in East Quad courtyard, however, and I liked how I transformed the 3 spots for different reasons. I like the face on the brick wall, because I did not draw on the mortar, which makes the face a little bit more hidden, it looks like it is more integrated into the wall, and it makes the mortar stand out, like it is in front of the face. The first one, I Photoshopped my just my eyes into the wall. It reminds me a lot of JR's faces on walls. After I thought about all of the emotions that I had that day I moved in, I tried to make my face look like I had all of those emotions inside me, and I took a picture of myself, so this is a true personal emotion. I am just not sure if just my eyes can convey all of those emotions. I also went back to my drawings of faces and did two other versions of the brick wall. I tried to use some of the bricks for the teeth in one face, but I don't think I successfully combined them. I really like the face in the gate, because parts of the gate really make up part of a face. It does not have a realistic expression, but it actually does get at the emotion I am trying to convey, which is excitement/nervousness. For this option, I would only need to color parts of the gate, but I do not need to draw anything, unless I wanted to add parts to it. The bench is my least favorite, because I do not like how the eyes are placed on it, but for the mouth, I realized that I could draw the bottom part on the ground, so that you can only see the whole mouth from a certain angle. It could also look like the mouth is opening as you back up.

Before I created the face on the wall, I looked at some ways other artists have used a brick wall as their canvas in creative ways.

I like in this one how the faces are just huge and unavoidable. The detail and colors are fantastic also.

The bike actually juts out of the wall in this piece, which an architect built. Obviously I wouldn't be able to do this with my face, but I was wondering if I could make an illusion that my face would do this.

 I thought this was clever by only using one of the bricks for the art, but it is a very powerful image.

Even though I have not been using patterns in my pieces, I just thought it was an interesting idea that this artist used a brick pattern to create this monster, but it is a different pattern than the brick he placed it on. It stands out a lot, but it uses the site nicely.

What I Plan To Do Next:

Now that I have some ideas that have been planned out and other ideas that are still in progress, I think I can get this ball rolling a little faster and really get into my project. I think I need some feedback on this first location, but I will get to work on planning one or two other locations this weekend.

Being sick sucks

These past two weeks have kind of sucked from being sick. I have not progressed with my project as much as I wanted, because I have spent most of my time sleeping.

What I Did: 

3 hours coming up with a plan for the connection of my faces
4 hours making the map of my history of central campus
2 hours taking pictures of the places I selected on the map
2 hours coming up with different ways to intervene in the select spots I chose

What I Accomplished/Encountered/Discovered: 

I like this idea for the connection and I like how personal it will be. I am sure it will be more fun for me to create my faces when I know the exact emotions that I was feeling at the time and when it was an important time in my college career. When I talked to my professors and GSIs, they had good insight into how to improve the map I created. If I reduced the amount of spots to the only really emotional experiences that I have had, then I can focus more on each one and the emotions expressed will be more authentic and less general. So there are 7 spots on my map, in which I will intervene and really try to express my raw emotion for what happened to me in that location.

I took pictures of the sites and have thought a little bit about how I want to go about creating my emotions. I think this is a huge part in my project, however, that will either make or break my project depending on how much thought is put into each location. Even though I really do not want to get away from the illustrated faces that I have been making, I have come up with some different ways to intervene in the space, but nothing has really hit me and made me think that is the way I should go. I am thinking that over spring break I can have a lot of time to think more about this, and then these ideas will help me with my thesis paper.

Like I said, these past 2 weeks have been pretty crappy being sick, but hopefully I will get over this sickness soon and really get to work on my project. I really like where my project is heading at this point and I think I can finally see the finish line and what my project will manifest into.

What I Think I Should Do Next:

Over break, I will come up with more and different interventions that I could possibly use in my locations and finally come up with a solution to them. I will also write the second draft of my thesis paper, which is due when we get back.

Starting graffiti

This weekend, I actually went out and put up some of my art on public structures. 3 were parking meters and one was a storm drain. I used my plastic and paper mouths and also used some Sharpie and I painted on the sewer drain. I spent most of my time this week, however, on preparing for the portfolio expo, so I did not get to spend too much time on my project. I was excited to actually get my artwork up outside though.

What I Did:
4 hours putting up artwork and photographing at night and the next morning
1 hour researching things about Ann Arbor
2 hours researching paper and wheat paste artists and tips

plastic with super glue

paper with wheat paste

paint

defining the whole mouth with paint

paper with wheat paste

with eyes drawn on with Sharpie

What I Noticed:
I came back the next morning to first see if my art was still attached and I wanted to photograph my art in daylight instead of using the flash at night. All were still attached. I noticed that the parking meter that had been in the sunlight (the one with the paper open mouth) was stuck on the most because the wheat paste had totally dried to form a nice bond. The other 2 parking meters still had not dried though because they were not in the sunlight and had only been sitting in the cold all night. I tried to peel off the plastic and the paper and it was fairly easy. The paint on the sewer drain was mostly dry except for a few little spots.

I think the one that looked the best was the kissy face on the yellow parking meter, but I agree with my classmates and professors when they said that when I added the eyes with Sharpie, it was a little too overwhelming and did not need to be added. I mostly just wanted to see how Sharpie would look directly on the parking meter without having to create a whole face with it though. I think the detail that I get with the colored pencils is great and the wheat paste seems to stay on better than the super glue. Plus, when applying the wheat paste, you can brush it underneath and on top of it all over so that there is no pieces hanging off freely, unlike the superglue, which you can only cover so much of the bottom of the plastic. I think with the weather getting warmer, the paper and wheat paste graffiti will only give me better results.

Sadly, I went back to the kissy face on Wednesday and it had been removed. Even the Sharpie marker had been cleaned off, which means that it was not someone just being a jerk and taking off the paper, but it was someone who really wanted the markings off. Even though my facial features did not interfere with anything on the parking meter, somebody did not like it. I have yet to see if the others are still intact. I would be very surprised to see them remove the paint from the storm drain.

I am still trying to figure out how to connect all of my pieces. I tried looking up facts about Ann Arbor that could give me a clue as to how the spots for my pieces could connect, such as similar events that took place in the spots that I put my faces, or demographics in certain areas, but I could not find anything that I could use in my project.

Some graffiti that I have been more closely looking at is paper and wheat paste graffiti. I found that wall paper paste stays on more permanently than wheat paste. I also found that thin paper like newsprint or old blueprints work better, which is something that I figured would be true.

Pavel Puhov's "Eyeglasses"

unknown

 

 

I love both of these pieces for different reasons. Sadly, there was no information about Pavel Puhov's piece, so I do not know how it was created, especially in the snow. But I love the way the lamp post is being used. It takes a person with a lot of imagination to come up with making a lamp post into the temple of a pair of glasses, but now that he did it, it's perfectly clear, and the size of the piece is hilarious. I also really like the shark phone booth, because people have to put their head into the mouth of the shark in order to use the phone. Both of these ideas are so clever, not only in transforming these objects into different objects through graffiti, but the impact that they have is awesome, and the thought process behind them is genius.

When people walk by my pieces of art on the street, that is what I want them to think. Not only do I want them to think it is funny, but I want them to say, "wow, that is genius", or something of the sort.


What I Plan to Do Next:
I really want to come up with a creative way to tie all of my pieces together. I have been racking my brain for a while about this, but have not come up with any plan that I truly want to run with. I also want to revisit my storm drain mouth and add more detail now that the paint has probably fully dried (and is hopefully still there). Since I found out that somebody took off my face on the parking meter, it actually only makes me want to put more up to sort of retaliate. So maybe I will add more paper and wheat paste (or wallpaper paste) to other kinds of structures.

painting directly on the objects or not?

This week I have been really sick, so I did not get to accomplish as much as I would have hoped, but I did figure out a few important things.


What I Did:
1 hour getting more supplies
2.5 hours researching graffiti artists
5 hours creating plastic and paper faces to put on parking meters

What I Accomplished/Encountered/Discovered:
When I bought my paint pens, the man at the hardware store told me that painting on metal outside was going to be hard because it will take forever for it to dry, and he was right. I tried to paint on metal indoors and that even took forever. When trying to paint white on top of red, it basically ruined the white pen by making the tip forever pink. It turns out, if I want to paint on top of a different color, I will basically have to wait about a day for the underneath paint to dry. I also thought about using Sharpie markers on top of paint, but it is the same situation.

Therefore, I decided to think up a few different ways to apply faces to the structures. I traced the dimensions of the details of a parking meter, and I made mouths out of Sharpie on plastic and colored pencils on paper. I am going to attach the paper with wheat paste and the plastic with super glue onto different parking meters and I am also going to paint directly on a parking meter and possibly use Sharpie directly on one in order to find the best solution to the problem. With the paper and plastic mouths, I created both the open mouth and the lips because the surface to put the open mouth is a flat surface and the one where I would put the lips is rounded and also has indents. This will allow me to see if the plastic and/or paper fails on bumpy surfaces compared to flat ones.

With the paper, I can get the most detail, with the plastic, it will look more seamless but with a little less detail, and by painting directly on the object, I will get the least detail of all but it will look more integrated into the object and less like I just stuck it on.

There are some graffiti pieces by unknown artists that I have been looking at that involve paper and wheat paste. These pieces are found on the ground and contain an unusual content that is very surprising. The first piece with the fake money on the ground catches people off guard because one of the best surprises is to find money on the ground, but you don't usually find it. You have to get close to this piece to realize it is not real. The second piece is more surprising like my ideas where the person took an everyday object on the street and added some imagination to it.

This is another piece of street art that I found and really liked.  The artist, Anna Garforth, took an everyday object, created a face out of it, and placed it on the street. She made it into a plant holder, however, so it makes sense to put it outside. I don't know if it relates to my idea that much, but I really like how she is reusing an object, bringing more plant life outside to an area that looks like it does not have much to begin with, and she is doing it in a creative way to bring imagination and child-like pleasures to the public.

What I Plan to Do Next:

This weekend, I am going to attach my plastic and paper mouth onto parking meters, and I want to paint directly on parking meters as well to see which one works the best. I want to know exactly what my plan is for attaching these creatures to the structures for the rest of the semester.

Different experiments on different objects

What I Did:

4 hours taking more pictures outside and then drawing on them
1 hour thinking up and researching 3D objects, adhesives and paint to use
1 hour researching artists
1 hour getting supplies
3 hours cutting metal teeth, painting them, and sticking them to a parking meter
2 hours coming up with ideas on how to connect my characters

What I Accomplished/ Discovered/ Encountered:

The critique that I had today and the comments and suggestions that I got were very helpful. Everyone seemed to respond to the objects that I liked the most. Those were the objects that I spent the most time on with the drawings and the details. They were the ones that were most clever and that incorporated things from the site into the face and whose personality matched the site best. I also realized after talking with people that the ones that had the mouths integrated the best were the best solutions.

I thought adhering metal pieces would be a good solution compared to drawing directly on the object, but it was the other way around. There was also comments about making a connection with my characters so that people will know that they are done by the same person and that they want to move on to the next character. Making a bunch of different characters on different structures makes my work surprising, but having a connection between them that makes the people want to see the next one brings about suspense.

I got a few ideas on how to connect my characters, such as only drawing mouths on openings, naming my characters by placing gallery tags next to them, writing hints on where to find the next character, and an idea that I had previously was to maybe create a poem or story by giving each character a word or a line in the poem or story.  

6emeia is an artist who also makes characters from things on the street. Sewers are the main things that he uses. And not only does he draw characters, but he also creates other objects from things on the street, such as a watch made from a crosswalk line. I like how resourceful he is with the surrounding structures, such as the post becoming the cigarette. And I also like the detail that he uses as well. They are not just plain circle eyes that he draws. He really makes specific characters that have a personality.

What I Think I Will Do Next:
I want to try to draw directly onto some objects so that I can contrast it with adhering something else onto the object, like I did with the teeth on the parking meter.