process post - abstract expressionist work

I've definitely gone through a bit of a struggle with this piece, and have progressed through the "finding it-losing it-finding it" pipeline to the point that I have, unfortunately, lost it. I really enjoyed it up until I started adding white, but I think I added too much and need to reevaluate how to create a figure-ground relationship more clearly. I don't really have time to work on this before the end of the year, but luckily the acrylic medium here makes it much easier to go back later and make changes, which I'd love to do at some point!

awareness post - ellen van dijk

When searching for an artist for this awareness post, I really wanted to find someone working in glass and ceramics, especially after my fantastic experience creating glass and recent work in sculpture, both of which I really enjoyed. I'd absolutely love to do stained glass in the future, and incorporating it into my Art 4 work is something that really interests me, if possible. So, for this post, I am focusing on Ellen Van Dijk. I found Van Djik through Instagram, just as I find many artists, but her work immediately stood out to me. At first glance, very few of her pieces look like stained glass - I could imagine countless other mediums, but creating something that detailed out of stained glass is insane.

Many of her pieces incorporate softer shapes, often in the form of figures, portraits, textures, and shading which would normally not be possible with glass. Essentially, she will create a stained glass piece and subsequently paint on it, incorporating small details which I would never have thought of as something that stained glass could be - I typically think of stained glass as very isolated shapes, so her usage of shadows and textures is particularly interesting. Her Instagram account (@glasatelierellen) is helpful to look at because it really details her process in an effective way, showing each step to her audience - I'd love to try out painting on stained glass at some point, especially because I have such an interest in general glass work in the future!

experience post: lunchtime lecture with oura sananikone

Although I did not have the chance to attend the lunchtime lecture in-person due to a mandatory meeting, I really enjoyed watching the video back afterwards, and learned a lot more about what it's like to actually work in the arts from a source other than people I personally know or more objective career post research. I found it really interesting that although he chose to work in multiple mediums like comics, toys, etc., he was really able to keep up a unified and interesting style. That is definitely one of the things that I want to focus on this summer leading into Art 4 - I really love working with all kinds of mediums, but I don't want next year to be a situation where I find myself restricted to one. Instead, I really want to find a theme, style, or motif and work within that, as our guest artist did.

It was especially interesting for me to hear about comics because of my experience taking our Pop Culture elective with Mr. U! We learned extensively about the history of comics, the different comic "ages," and the evolution of comics since the 70s and 80s, and I found myself able to connect changing themes and art styles in comics to our lunchtime lecture in a really interesting way.