Project #3 Guidelines

Project #3: Narrative Digital Collage

DUE: 10/28

The goal of this project is to establish and reinforce your understanding of the visual elements and the design principles. This project will focus on compositional design and on the visual element of space.

To make this digital collage, you will need to utilize the program Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is available for you to use on any of the 8 Mac stations in the B-333 computer lab. Give yourself enough time, just in case the Mac stations are all in use. I have filmed a brief tutorial about using Adobe Photoshop for this project. The tutorial is available to watch in the Project #1 folder under the Assignments tab.

The general theme of this project is “That Reminds Me of the Time When…” I would like this collage to tell a story, or a narrative, that involves you. The narrative can illustrate a real event from your life, or it can be a pure fantasy involving yourself. To this effect, you may use digital images of yourself and familiar people & places, or you may find images of other people & places as stand-ins. One of the only parameters is that I don’t want you to include text in your collage. Instead of placing the word “Happy” in the center of your project, for example, try to make a scene that conveys a visual sense of happiness. Because this collage explores how things visually appear in space, you will use the principles of overlap, diminishing size and vertical placement. Consult the diagram “Cues to spatial depth” for ways to use to establish this illusion.

Begin your process by collecting images. Try Google Image searching for key terms. Do not to settle for the first acceptable image you stumble across. Starting a project like this with as much source material as possible actually makes it easier when it comes to designing your composition. Trust me…yourself as Photoshop designer will thank yourself as Google detective!

You will need to create an 800 x 600 pixel Photoshop PSD file (as outlined in the tutorial), and save it as (your) lastname_firstname_collage. I want to see at least 10 separate layers in your collage. This includes the background, extra landscape elements, individual figures, etc… You will use the Lasso tool to cut-out images that need to be cut-out, and you will use the Edit->Transform functions to resize the scale of images that need to be resized. Save the file often to ensure that nothing gets lost.

To submit, convert your document into a .jpg file (as outlined in the tutorial), and save the .jpg as (your) lastname_firstname_collage. You will then create a new post on your blog entitled “Narrative Digital Collage”. Upload the .jpg image to this new post and write a brief paragraph describing the scene that you have created. Label the post “Digital collage” along with any other relevant labels.

Materials:

-Access to a computer with Adobe Photoshop

-Digital image files

-Flash drive for saving files

Field Trip #3 Reaction

Field Trip #3: The Sculpture Center

DUE: 10/21

The Sculpture Center is one of the premier non-profit art spaces in Long Island City, and it is just a stone’s throw from campus. Although they have only been in their current location (a former trolley repair shop) since 2001, the organization has been a contributing member of New York’s art community since 1928. We will be looking at the various exhibits on view, including “Sanford Biggers: Cosmic Voodoo Circus” on the main floor and “Short Stories” downstairs.

The physical space of the Sculpture Center is very unique. Artists who exhibit there need to consider how their work interacts with the surroundings. The term “Site-specific” refers to artwork that has been made to be shown in a particular space or venue. When an artist makes a site-specific work he/she must consider a number of different factors related to the space. These include the dimensions of the space, any unique architectural elements, and even its history and location.

For your writing, you will presume that all of the works on view are site-specific to this venue. Select any three works of art that are currently on display, and consider the following questions: How is the artwork affected by the space and its architecture? Does the history of the space or its location inform your perception of the work? Similarly, how does the artwork change your perception of the space? Would the artwork have the same effect in a different type of space? How do the artworks interact with each other within their surroundings?

Your writing needs to be at least 250 words. Post the writing on your Blogger page under the title, “Sculpture Center Reaction”, and label the post “Field Trip 3”.

At the end of your post, cite the three artworks that you chose in the following format. This information is generally available on the wall near the artwork:

Artist’s Full Name

“Title of Work” (written in quotations)*

Year Completed

*When referencing the work in the body of your writing, also be sure to write the titles in quotations.

Food Art (A Brief History)

The subject of food has always played a central role in the art-making process. This has been the case for artists across cultures, spanning all of recorded human history. Why might it be that artists have been so consistently infatuated with food? Could it be that what we eat helps to define our collective "humanity"? The fact that we cook, or even prepare our food separates us from all other creatures on this planet. That makes us pretty special in my book! Below is a brief history of how food has been incorporated into art-making over the last 30,000 years...give or take.

Some of the earliest known examples of human creativity can be found in Chauvet Cave in the South of France. This cave, which was only discovered in 1994, contains paintings from around 30,000 years ago. That coincides with the end of the last Ice Age! These paintings depict animals that our ancient ancestors would have potentially hunted and eaten. Here is a link to a movie trailer for Werner Herzog's recent documentary about Chauvet Caves, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams": http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/caveofforgottendreams/










Chauvet Cave, France, "Cave Paintings", ca. 32,00 -30,000 BCE




The tradition of depicting food in art has been continued through the centuries. The Dutch perfected the art of still life painting in the 17th century. Artists like Willem Kalf, made paintings that depicted opulent and sumptuous table settings. These paintings were intended to titillate our senses and to show off the presumed wealth of the painting's owner. The 16th century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo represents a specific still life painting tradition, in which the artist arranges edible fruits and vegetables to create strange, human portraits. I guess he believed that "You are what you eat!"











Willem Kalf, "Still Life with Drinking Horn", 1653

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Vertumnus", 1590-1591




The Pop Artists of the 1960's-70's were also uniquely infatuated with food as their subject matter. These artists were interested in making work that mirrored the values of the American consumer economy that dominated their time. Claus Oldenburg is one such artist who created large, vinyl sculptures of American food staples like hamburgers, hot dogs and ice cream cones. Andy Warhol's series of screen-printed Campbell's soup cans and Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cake counters embodied an optimistic spirit of never-ending prosperity. However, these same works have a darker connotation that this very prosperity results in a homogenized culture that stifles individualism.










Claus Oldenburg, "Floor Burger", 1962










Andy Warhol, "Campbell's Soup Cans", 1962












Wayne Thiebaud, "Pies, Pies, Pies", 1961



Some more recent artists have moved beyond the idea of merely depicting food. Contemporary artists like Vik Muniz and Jana Sterbak have used real food as an art-making material! Muniz, a Brazilian artist, often borrows images from classical European paintings and meticulously renders them (pardon the pun), out of materials like chocolate sauce, caviar, and, pictured below, cooked spaghetti. He then takes photos of his creations, because the originals works cannot last forever. Sterbak is best known for a dress that she created out of actual flank steak (Lady Gaga, eat your heart out!). Unlike Muniz's photos, Sterbak's dress was intended to sit on a tailor's dummy in a gallery, as it naturally decayed (Yuck).














Vik Muniz, "Medusa Marinara", 1998

















Jana Sterbak, "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic", 1991



Finally, the Thai artist Rikrit Tiravanija has used food in a more performative sense. He was known in the 1990's for staging happenings, or performance events, at galleries during which he would make home-cooked Thai meals and feed everyone who attended. These events were free and open to the public. In these pieces, the food became a medium for social interaction. When the attendees ate and socialized, they became active participants in the artwork. The ability of food to create cross-cultural dialog and to foster community is a similar goal to that of our Food Art Blog. Have fun, and bon appetit!









Rikrit Tiravanija, Untitled (Free), 1992