This semester has been an interesting one for me in terms of production of work. Due to the restraints of my schedule as a senior I was only able to take one studio class so I became more about me exploring my work strictly through painting. This happens to be where my biggest interest is so it was not necessarily completely negative.

I find in my work I am constantly drawn towards depicting individuals, in a generalized manner that is less intended to portray a specific person and more to speak to an overall concept. I found this semester I was attempting to move the figures out of an empty space by relating them to surrounding figures. I also wanted to address this by altering the shape of the canvas I am working on.

This piece is my most successful of the semester. I am inspired by the notion of passing people in the world. In a fast moving society we often brush by each other and become numb to the splendor of one another. In this piece I attempt to pause life for a moment to view the blur of passersby. It is ultimately simply nothing more than an instant due to the fleeting nature of life.

The best learning moment for me was when I came to the understanding, that regardless of outside factors, schoolwork always needs to get done so I should always plan ahead and work ahead of schedule. I was sick with various things for the better part of the semester. I was able to get other class work done from my bed but I cannot exactly paint from there. It was the first time that I truly experienced there not being enough time in the day to produce the way I expect myself to. Regardless of this being a set back, time was a good motivator for me. Ideally this piece would have one more piece on either side but because of time restraints I felt it was more useful for me to spend my time focused on the center three.

I am currently taking Barbara Wisch’s Northern Renaissance Paintings class, which has inspired my alteration of the canvas. We have looked at diptychs and triptychs and I feel they are ultimately extremely affective and interesting ways of breaking up the space. One of my favorite artists for about a year has been Storm Tharp. His ability and method used to develop characters is really inspiring to me. I have also looked at artists who address multiple figures within a crowd like setting. I find some of Kate Kendall’s work does this nicely.

Having worked with a lot of the same students for a while now, it allows for a really nice exchange between classmates. I often find myself coming to them for assistance on things and because I value them as artists I am able to trust their opinions. I also think that being surrounded by students who produce strong work is motivating in itself. I have also really enjoyed watching their processes and their own work develops as well.

I would have to say that my best critique moment came from a class where we were not in a formal critique but where we discussed our ideas for our topics. I really enjoy developing the conceptual aspect of work and I felt that in sharing my ideas I was receiving great feedback and stimulating discussion about my ideas.

I plan to next semester really focus on painting and devote a large chunk of my time there. After next semester I will be going on to get my masters in Art Education and hopefully work in a high school someday. So I am excited to work next semester as the teaching assistant for Lori’s painting 1 class. I am really looking forward to learning how she approaches students with developing concepts for their work and learn her methods of teaching. I have always felt that her style of educating has been very affective for me individually, so I feel I can really personally grow from this experience.

I feel that my perspective on the arts has changed this semester in that I am more interested in other peoples work than in my own at this time. I love the exciting time when a person is developing a new idea and hearing them discuss it. I feel that I am finding myself uninspired by my own work at this time, yet increasingly excited about the work of others. This seems to be reinforcing, at this time in my life, that teaching is the route I should ultimately be taking.

final essay

Although this semester was a busy one for me, it has been a great semester for new developments in my work. This fall along with my ceramics, I have been working on some painting. Being a ceramics concentration, I like to try and connect my ceramics with other mediums that I am working in and this semester I have been working on, what I call, clay paintings. The piece pictured above is one of the first pieces I created. I use the minerals that I normally mix with water to make clay, with acrylic medium and a gel molding paste. Through many experiments with the new material, I have learned the best ratio of clay to medium, which gives me what I want when the paint finally dries.

These paintings are a play on special relations as well as an expression of chaotic emotions. Looking at them, a viewer can get lost in the series of small cracks and extreme textures that sometimes you forget how small the painting actually is. Being painted on small 10x10 squares also causes tension because the material seems as though it should expand beyond the edge of the actual painting. The 10x10 square form of the painting helps create tension, but also contains the chaos.

I believe that my best learning moment of the semester was participating in directing the shows that have been in the Beard Gallery on Main Street. Being president of the art club for the first time this semester, I have learned a lot, but most of it has taken place in patching and painting walls, hanging artwork and vinyl, and writing press releases. I think all of what I have learned from working with the Beard Gallery has been extremely important and beneficial for my future and myself as an artist.

I have attended the Girl and FAX exhibitions in the Dowd Gallery, along with FLASHBACK, the Dingle show, in the Beard Gallery and Tara Evens BFA thesis show Down to a Science at the Corset Factory.

The most inspiring artist that I found this semester is Barbara Nanning. She works with a lot of different mediums, but it is her ceramic work that I am most drawn too. She works with extremely abstract and organic forms, and in relation to the wall hangings I am working on with clay; I believe she is a great reference for me to be looking at. I accidentally found her when I was surfing the web for people who do paintings with clay. When I saw a picture of one of her ceramic works, I followed it to her website.

I love being in the studio with friends and other classmates. My peers are the best people to ask advice and gain support from. I am lucky that there are a lot of good artists in the ceramic department, and I believe the best part about it is that we all come in everyday with totally different ideas. It is so nice to have people to bounce ideas off of and work with to develop your own ideas.

My best moment in critiques this semester was during the first BFA critique we had. Bryan Thomas made a comment that he was excited and happy to hear me talk about the importance of form in my ceramic wall hangings. In the same crit, I was also really happy with the response I received from my clay paintings. It was very encouraging.

As for my perspective on art, I am always really open to new and interesting ideas. As well as learning my history, I have also been looking at more modern artists work and really trying to open my eyes to what is out there and what is being made now.

In the next semester, I would love to continue my clay paintings as well as my ceramic wall pieces. I have an idea to connect the two, and also I would like to work on making my own molds to throw my ceramic work at. I finally feel like my ceramic work is where I want it to be right now and I am really excited to mix the paintings and the ceramics together.

The Great American Nightmare

Only taking one studio class this semester has been a much needed breath of fresh air since I have been taking multiple studios since I began as a New Media major. I believe that it gave me more time to focus on individual projects and they seem to turn out more finished than many of the projects I've done in the past. For "The Great American Nightmare," which is my final project for Design II this semester, our goal was to demonstrate "metamorphosis" in a non-literal way. I chose to show the metamorphosis of the American Dream turning into the American Nightmare through a series of animations created with Adobe Flash.

By telling the narrative of a man losing his job from the recession and the sacrifices he and his family have to make, I am criticizing the government (at all levels) and how their inaction leads to terrible outcomes for american families. I've seen first hand the effects the recession has on people close to me and it can be a very tense and emotional time for everyone - especially for the children who don't know any better and can't understand the situation. The loss of a family car or even moving to a smaller home can be manageable, but the inability to provide food, clothing or even some simple Christmas presents for their family can really cause people to despair.

Even though I am a ceramics concentration, this semester most of my focus was on the one studio class I took; Fibers. The piece I am showing is my final project for that class, and having no experience in Fiber art, I found that this project represents my progression on ideas and learned skills throughout the course. In the surface design class I started out exploring ways to incorporate my drawings into the projects. I found that using the silk screen and thickened dye techniques I was able to express my figure drawings more effectively. In the piece shown you can see this in the figures on the bottom. Not only did I develop my technique in this class, but also concepts.

In this final project the assignment was to create a design based off of a literary piece. I decided to illustrate a folktale called “The Rainbow Crow”. In the story a crow with beautiful feathers and a beautiful singing voice sacrifices himself to save all the animals, who are frozen in the snow. When he goes up to heaven God gives him fire and as the crow is bring back the fire to the animals the fire burns his feathers, turning them black, and the smoke fills his lungs, causing him to lose his beautiful singing voice, and instead he caws. In my illustration I tried to express this simple story in an awkward, dark way. Not only is the concept of this piece about a brave crow sacrificing his feathers and voice to safe humanity, but it is also about the nature and the emotion that can be conveyed through the bloody body parts that seem to stick out in random places. Also it is about transforming a light, happy child’s story, into a gruesome, disturbing piece of fiber art.

This semester I was able to TA for Ceramics 1, and I had a lot of great moments and learning experiences doing that. In the class I helped students, gave critiques, and learned a lot about running a class room. My best critique moment took place in this classroom when we went around to all the students and gave them feedback a long with questions on how they are going to develop their work. Being able to do this really helped me talk about the work of others and also speaking in front of a large crowed. I hope to take those experiences and use them for talking about my own work. Now that I am in the BFA program my focus for this semester has been preparing and developing my ideas and how to talk about my work. So in the end I find that my classmates in both ceramics 1 and Fibers; surface design have helped me and influenced those thoughts and ideas for my future critiques.

This semester the most inspiring artist I discovered was Renie Breskin Adams, who is a fiber artist. In her work she uses embroidery to express illustrative work that expresses controversial issues. I found her on a website that was suggested in our fibers class. I was able to use Adams work to create my own version of what she did, but with my own gestural animal people. I really liked how she expressed issues of today in a funny way; I find that what drew me to her work was this aspect because in my own work I try to express emotions that are private and personal.

Shows that I have seen this semester includes, all shows that where displayed in the Dowd Gallery, Down to a Science, and also I attended the First Friday of October in Binghamton.

When it comes to my perspective on the arts, I find that I have changed my ideas about that greatly. Especially after joining the BFA program I find that I have a new idea on what I want to do with my future and how important my learning experience here will be for that. I find that more than ever I want to make the best of my stay here at Cortland and think before I didn’t take advantage of my options here. Also this semester has opened up new possibilities for me in the future and for next semester.

Next semester I hope to develop my ideas in ceramics for thesis. My goals are to know exactly where I’m going with my techniques and concepts. Also I will be participating in the BFA critiques, so I also hope to do well and learn as much as I can from them.

The greatest work of art I produced this semester was that one my teammates and I made in Raquette Lake. Being assigned the project to construct a “flotilla” out of the organic materials that could be found in the environment was intimidating, mostly because I had never made sculpture out of anything before this. I knew this was going to be a difficult task and was relieved when I found out that we would be working in groups. During the first day our group went out to survey the area and find a good spot for our work of art. As we walked through the brush we brainstormed our thoughts on the concept for the piece and creative ways we could represent it. Being inspired by the growing land around us we ended up reflecting on ourselves and in this mid-life “growing up process”. We thought it would be a good idea to show our perspective on the progression of life and its stages. In essences we wanted to portray the chaotic and carefree life of a child and its development into the settled down and the expected “well organized” life of an adult. We thought that the best place to really show the childish part of the piece would be through the use of water. Water has a unsteady surface that changes with the wind, constantly moving about. Placing colorful leaves on the water would represent the fun times of childhood and also draw attention to the natural motion of the water. We strung the leaves up to the dry surface of the land in the shape of an arch made of branches and grass. This funnel shape represented knowledge and stability that seems to be gained as we age. We made the leaves at the top all the same color and weaved an additional piece of string, horizontally, through them in order to illuminate the mundane and orderly aspects of the mature adult, in comparison to the child.
The impacts of my classmates began with my first project of the semester in Raquette Lake. I am sure each of the girls in my group, like I, had an original idea of what we thought would be the best “flotilla”. Working with them and hearing their thoughts made me realize how important it is to take what other think into account. Often they see things differently and can give constructive criticism that will ultimately enhance the look and success of the piece. Bringing these ideas back to class, I began to openly take the ideas of others into account; I asked what other people thought of my ideas and tried to incorporate their constructive criticism into the piece. Talking to others also helped me gain a better understanding of what message I was trying to get across and the most effective way of doing so. My classmates also introduced different artist of the week, one person showed the work of
I think my best critique moment was one given to our group by Lori, she gave her opinion of the piece from the first moment she paddled up to the piece and as she got closer. Lori gave a completely different idea of what the piece meant to her, she said that she saw the piece as a sort of next coming from the ocean, the fish’s way of keeping the humans out. This was the best moment because It also changes the way if viewed art. I realized that art is what you make it, everyone can be affected by art in a different way, no matter how hard the artist tries to portray their concept the creative mind of someone else is something rather uncontrollable. However the acceptance of the piece is often based on how the artist explains their concept, you can create beautiful pieces but with the wrong words may make in unsuccessful. I think this is a delicate balance of how much you say and how much you want to leave up the too the imagination of others.
This semester I went to go see the show Fax and the Girl exhibition in the DOWD Gallery, it featured a few artist I didn’t know, but more interestingly some the Art departments faculty at SUNY Cortland. It was nice to see the work of the professors who are teaching you, it gives you a better understanding of who they are outside of the classroom. In addition I had the opportunity go to First Friday in Binghamton; there I saw a few different shows that I can’t remember the names two, the quality of the work ranged from place to place, some even showed the work of high schools which was a pleasant surprise.
Reflecting on all that had happened within this semester made me realize that there no particular moment that could be labeled “the best learning moment”. The entire semester was a learning experience each day adding on to the next, aiding in my growth as an artist and as a student.
Next semester I look forward to studying art in Italy! I want to learn about the Italian culture and the trends within their art, with the hopes of gaining a new type of perspective on life and what it means to be an artist. I am also excited about meeting other artist from different schools, learning from them like I did with my group in Raquette Lake. Lastly, I can’t wait to be able to see firsthand, the inspirational works of art from so many famous renaissance artists

Final Paper

While I am primarily a painter, I feel that I had definitely progressed greatly in ceramics. Working with clay has been an uncharted territory for me for a long time. While I had taken introductory ceramics in the previous spring semester, I found working with clay difficult as I felt that it was near impossible to create something that I was satisfied with. When it comes to ceramics I appreciate a very utilitarian style and anything and everything that I created looked less than useful. But this semester my opinion of clay was changed when I began taking Ceramics 2 and was introduced to the throwing wheel. It was definitely challenging at first but after logging away many hours in the lab I soon found that I began to finally produce the utilitarian items that I had always wanted to learn to make.
In my pottery, I drew a lot of inspiration from American folk art such as old crocks and bowls. I enjoy the clean lines and rounded forms and I tried to emulate that. I also looked at the work of Jonathan Woodward, a local potter from my home town who runs an extremely successful business Clinton Pottery. His classic forms and brightly colored glazes are very pleasing to the eye. My basic concept was to create functional items and I feel that I did create some satisfactory work this semester.
The best learning moments for me this semester was the times when I could come into the ceramics lab during non class hours and receiving help from Jeremiah or any of the extremely helpful and knowledgeable teacher's assistants. I felt that I really benefited from the one-on-one time and really enjoyed learning their techniques.
This semester I went to the " Fax" show and the Steven Barbash Collection. I found both to be very interesting. I thought the Steven Barbash collection really emphasized the importance of relationships with your fellow artists.
I'm continuously inspired by impressionistic artists such as John Singer Sargent, Manet and recently I've been drawn to Mary Cassatt. I have a love of the human figure and I love the way that these artists portray their subjects.
My classmates have definitely helped me through critique. I really enjoy hearing their feedback and what their thought process is and any advice that they have to offer. Sometimes your own judgment can become clouded, its always beneficial to have fresh opinions. I haven't had a critique moment that has stood out, but they have definitely all been helpful.
I wouldn't say my perspectives have changed exactly. I think I have a better appreciation for the time that goes into creating satisfactory work. And I definitely have a better appreciation of clay and the careful delicate touche that is required for elegant works. My goals for the next semester are definitely to develop better time management skills and try to produce a more steady output of pieces.

Final Paper

This semester, I have really surprised myself. I transferred to SUNY Cortland from Buffalo State College. My major was Fashion Design, and I didn't have a passion for it anymore. I knew that I loved designing, but I realized that a career in fashion design would not be as practical as media design. I am coming into New Media Design with no previous experience, except for art classes in high school. However, I have more of a creative mind than scientific, so I knew design was right for me. I have improved my drawing and craftsmanship skills immensely, and am proud of what I have accomplished so far.

The image below is my favorite piece that I have constructed in my design class. Before this project, we did previous work using four squares inside of each thumbnail. We had to represent playful, order, increase, bold, and congested, each in 25 different thumbnails. Once we completed this task, we needed to pick five of our most potential squares from each category, for a bigger composition containing 25 squares. We needed to think of a main theme between our different squares that would unify our new composition. For my piece, I chose a main theme of depth. I played with the size of the squares in each thumbnail to emphasize depth and make it look like the squares were popping out from the background. My next step was to make a border around each thumbnail using the contrasting color. Where there was white, the border was black, and vise versa. My last step was to matte my piece on a black background, in order to make that pop out from the black background. I really enjoyed this project, and spent a lot of time constructing it. Over all my design class has been very inspiring. I have learned more than I have learned in any class before. I am genuinely interested in the concepts of design and am excited to learn more.

I have seen a few shows at the gallery this semester. I saw "Shared Experience, the Steven Barbash Collection," the Fax show, and "Girl". I enjoyed Steven Barbash's talk about his collection. He was very inspiring and funny. He explained that a lot of the work in his collection is done by friends of his from school. I found this to be very inspiring, realizing that we may all be able to see each other's work in the future. We may also be able to collect each others' work and get inspired by each other. The Fax show was different than most shows in the gallery. It was pretty confusing to me, and I wasn't sure what the purpose was. I noticed that each piece was different from the next, and couldn't figure out the over all theme. Then I realized that that was the point of the show. It was meant to make people think about communication and what that could mean. It was also emphasizing the fact that the Fax machine is becoming outdated, and information may be lost. This was an interesting learning experience. "Girl" was also unique compared to other shows I have seen before. Each piece was unique in it's own way, but they all emphasized what it meant to be a girl. It was interesting to see all of the aspects and viewpoints about being a girl.

I have come to realize that critiques can be a very helpful learning experience. My classmates have given both facts and opinions about my work that helped me to realize what I did right, and what I could have done better. Classmates are a great resource. The more viewpoints you receive on your ideas and your work, the more you learn just how much you can really do to accomplish your best work.

I have even more appreciation for art than I did before. Now that I understand main concepts about design and drawing, I have the ability to look at a composition and really understand why it works and why it doesn't. I would like to start attending more shows at different art galleries in my free time to expand my learning and appreciation for art.

My goals for next semester are to keep my learning momentum going, and to stay inspired. I would like to continue to improve my design and drawing skills. I hope to keep working hard towards a good GPA. I have always been a hard worker, and I strive to do my best in every class.