Make-Up Posting, The Book as Art

I owe a posting about the "Book as Art" exhibit at Boston College. This was an experience that I -- or "we," my mother came too -- truly enjoyed. On the lower floor (and I see that others reacted to this, as well), there was a piece by M.L. Van Nice titled, Dinner with Mr. Dewey. The display was accompanied by an artist's statement referencing the Sir Francis Bacon quote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

This seemed to be an accurate, overarching assessment of the exhibit as a whole. Many of the pieces seemed whimsical, at most, simply presenting the viewer with an unexpected novelty. Those books, which were "to be tasted," only, seemed to include Carrots Anyone?, Bon Bon Mots, The Uneventful Life of Dona Carmen y Costanza, Green Salad, Teatimes, and Eight Slices of Pie. Others seemed to require more consideration, with a deeper meaning to be "swallowed," including The Legacy of Scheherazade, Soap Story, and (I don't remember the title of this one) the book featuring excerpts from Soviet newspapers. Some few definitely deserved to be "chewed and digested;" we thought that Endangered Species, a pop-up book with images of African-American children and children from China, Brazil, Uganda, and the Balkans, certainly warranted much more attention and reflection.

In fact, some of the best art in the room came in the form of reflections from BC faculty members and administrators. Their statements, which were printed on the walls, endeavored to tie together the books by theme, addressing matters of nature, family dynamics, food and nutrition, travel, etc. In these cases, their individual expertise shone through, and achieved the most powerful and lasting impressions of the day. My favorite statement commented on the long-standing environmental struggle that has arisen from man's insistence that he is "above" and separate from the rest of the ecological web. It was great!

paint using Photoshop

put "speed painting" in search you will find more video.

for no reason love it

Since I was a little girl, I have been playing videogames. I started with classics like The Secret of Monkey Island and King's Quest. As the industry matured, I got more and more into this fascinating new way of telling stories. Games were longer than movies and had the potential to be very engrossing and poignant. Some, over the years, have moved me to tears in places. Since my father was a game designer himself, I grew up with my ear to the ground and was able to follow the ins and outs of this new artform.

One game that has long been a favorite of mine is Thief: The Dark Project which was released in 1998 during the post-Unreal hase of first person shooters. In an age of running and gunning, Thief told a dramatic story with low-edge graphics and a memorable protagonist. Since the developers didn't have the technology of other companies, they made the cutscenes of the game flow as moving paintings and silhouettes which added to the artistry of the product. This was what convinced me that games were a legitimate artform. And I still believe this. If someone can nail a toilet to a wall and call it art I will say Okami can be art too.

My own artwork is very much influenced by games, which is why I am in the game design program. My pictures are full of movement and stories, but not always readily apparent ones. By contrast, my video is intended to be taken at face-value. When it comes to my art, I frequently try to remain playful and not take myself too seriously.

Very little of my artwork prior to this class was "complete", usually they were doodles done of fantasial figures like warriors and dragons but nothing of jaw-dropping quality. The doodles were usually conceptual sketches of creatures and characters from the Dungeons and Dragons games I was running at the time. After I graduated from college, I stopped drawing for a long time. I was never officially trained in any art form, everything I knew was self-taught so I felt no compulsion to keep drawing. This class has taught me to look at things as an artist would once more and I am now considering taking classes in animation.

Artist Statement_Ke

All my works on this class are about some motorcycle riders. Why motorcycle riders? Because they are cool. I like putting different cool elements together and make some artworks could impress people.

There is a kind of movie that influenced me much. They don’t pay much attention on plot or story, all they want to do is to show how cool the protagonist is. Hollywood is making these kind of movie a lot, like Transporter series, Equilibrium, Mission Impossible series, fast and furious series… and people like them. One of my favorite director is John Woo Yu-Sen, a Asian director who is famous by his violence aesthetics (a beautiful way to present violence). He has made a lot of cool movies before he came to Hollywood, most of them are about killers, criminal gang, thieves… and he can always make them super cool. The idea of speed change of my video project is from John Woo Yu-Sen, he have used this camera language a lot.

A lot of games give me the same feeling with those “cool movies”. The difference is you can control your character and create your own legend, more intense expirence. “Hitman: codename 47” is the direct inspiration of my composed image work and Image sequence work. I strongly feel that I should make some cool stuff like the movies and games that influenced me.

artist statement Mariam

I am attracted to image either in photograph or video. I like to use this kind of media to express my self and also to tell histories. For me, photography is magical because you kept immortal what your object is and also because instead of using charcoal or any kind of media to paint you used the light.

I have a background as a journalist and as I said I am attracted to any kind of image, either in video or photography. And I like to use this kind of media to express myself and to tell histories. My influences in photography are Sebastiao Salgado, a Brazilian photojournalist and Ansel Adams.

When I took a picture or made any angle from the camera I try to give another point of view different from the one we are used to have. I like to find forms that you never see at first or to compose images with common elements in order to create a unique piece.

For this class I created one picture that is the reflection of a tree in the puddle. The time was during the fall so you can see the leaves above the puddle. The picture recreates the tree with its leaves that were place not in the tree but in the puddle.

Based on that picture the second assignment was to do a transformation of that picture. At first I tried to find places that have any kind of reflections, puddles, pools, windows and so but I did not find any kind of transformation. So I took pictures of trees with no leaves at all and I made a composition based on 6 pictures that are connected to each other and basically I used the same object.  And there you have my book art.

Artist statement Mariam

I am attracted to image either in photograph or video. I like to use this kind of media to express my self and also to tell histories. For me, photography is magical because you kept immortal what your object is and also because instead of using charcoal or any kind of media to paint you used the light.

I have a background as a journalist and as I said I am attracted to any kind of image, either in video or photography. And I like to use this kind of media to express myself and to tell histories. My influences in photography are Sebastiao Salgado, a Brazilian photojournalist and Ansel Adams.

When I took a picture or made any angle from the camera I try to give another point of view different from the one we are used to have. I like to find forms that you never see at first or to compose images with common elements in order to create a unique piece.

For this class I created one picture that is the reflection of a tree in the puddle. The time was during the fall so you can see the leaves above the puddle. The picture recreates the tree with its leaves that were place not in the tree but in the puddle.

Based on that picture the second assignment was to do a transformation of that picture. At first I tried to find places that have any kind of reflections, puddles, pools, windows and so but I did not find any kind of transformation. So I took pictures of trees with no leaves at all and I made a composition based on 6 pictures that are connected to each other and basically I used the same object.  And there you have my book art.

Time-Based Society; Time-Based People

Within the context of human social movements, the passage of time more closely resembles a pendulum than it does a straight line. Progressive outbreaks of social thought are met by resistance -- a backlash, some might say -- only to emerge again with heightened fervor in subsequent generations. People reject a way of life as antiquated, but then beatify and resurrect it through nostalgia and revivalism, respectively.

This trend seems most significant in America; our citizens are united by common thoughts and ideals, rather than an immemorial sense of national identity. Accordingly, as an infant nation in a world of ancients, we are still laboring to define ourselves: who we are, where we are going.

All things are better with humor. In Making a Cake...and Friends, I hoped to turn a playful eye toward both the aura of domestic bliss and the darker, repressive and conformist undertones of the 1940s and 50s. I am always drawn to this era of American history -- for its wholesome aesthetic, values, and perceived simplicity -- but still very grateful for the progress we have made as a nation since that time.

This work and future works, I suspect, will center around a hope that we can combine many of the positive attributes of earlier generations (their work ethic, honesty, loyalty and pride) with the positive attributes of our current generation (open-mindedness, tolerance, and activism). This could only ever be achieved, I'd suggest, by careful collective and personal introspection.

In short, let's not defenestrate the baby with the bathwater. We can be as good as our predecessors, and much better than our predecessors at the same time.

Finally, looping in the portrait series of my brother, which will remain untitled, I'd just briefly observe that the "backlash" trend also plays itself out through the course of our own personal development. Oscillating from one extreme to another -- through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood -- we're all following the same, swaying trajectory as our young nation. Yet, it seems, we retain one steady (if complex) identity throughout.