Happy Holidays, and Happy Break! Finally!

Thank you DMF 201 for a wonderful digital art intro.

Happy Holidays!

For my last blog...

I would like to discuss how disgusted I am with this photograph. Compositional it is absolutely terrible. Law of 2/3? Not adhered to... Too much back light? Yes a bit... Lack of interesting subjects? Definitely, except for the lovely background ocean maybe... There's some odd A-symmetry going on here, and definitely this looks like its taken right before any possible decisive moment. So what happened you may ask??

What's amazing is the fact that I could take this photo this morning, with my computer, may I add, as I was getting coffee at Lava Java. And to think that yesterday I was in a sunny, but 14 degree Seattle boarding a plane.

Disgusting I know.

:)

You have no idea how happy I am to be home...

Mele Kalikimaka no hau'oli makahiki hou!

Don't worry, this makes people feel better when I tell them I'm in Hawaii...

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/hazards/maps.html

A small town music revival: Ashland

I started working on a documentary last year about the music scene in Ashland. It was a blast going around and filming street musicians, the open mic nights at Alex's, Stillwater, and a little at Northwest Pizza, and the school's music concerts.

However, my group got lazy and we never really finished it. It was a huge undertaking and we ended with a 10 minute project out of 6-8 hours of footage.

So I had a dream the other night involving this old project and Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" and my first thoughts upon waking were that I needed to finish this project once and for all. Now I feel like I know what I need to do to make it better and it might involve Beyonce's music video somehow.

But what I really wanted to do after I woke up the other morning was do it as an ethnographic study. I might have been delirious from studying for 6 hours straight the day before for my Anthropology final, but that's what I decided. I talked with my friend, who's an anthropology major later that day and she started to get excited about it, too.

So then I mentioned it to my Anthropology professor, Dr. Anne Chambers and what she thought of it as an ethnographic study of the community of musicians within Ashland and she thought it was totally cool too. So that got me even more excited, and THEN on top of all that, my friend who I was talking with, Melissa, already proposed it as her ethnographic study...

So now it's beginning to have this snowball effect, that I'm totally digging. Just in time for winter term I guess... (I know bad pun...)

So I'm going to upload some of the footage I have on my computer at the moment from the Guitar Ensemble concert that I went to last spring. Please forgive the choppy audio and the rough cut (I'm uploading from imovie...). I'm not going to talk technical, because it's terrible but I really like this segment of interview, because I was really impressed with how candid these guys were with me. I had never met them before, but I went to the concert with my friend Kacey and made her hold the boom mic for me... Afterwards we did a couple of interviews with students and this was some of the footage I ended up with.

:)

Post-post modern maybe...

I was talking with my sister about different art styles because she is starting to put together her portfolio for art school submissions. She's working on varying her styles, and trying out things from different movements and I told her she should do something in the style of dadaism. Dada was way more punk rock and anarchist, void of meaning but really trying to piss people off than surrealist. Check this out:

And she wants to do more surrealist?

"This is not a pipe"

Well then: what is a pipe? The image and the words are both symbols for the object that exists. It is within our own world view that we see a "pipe" as it is. But what does it really mean?? What do all of these words and symbols really mean?? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Actually I can't even remember if this is a dadaist piece or not, but it cracks me up. Hah. crack pipe. Ok not funny. These two pieces are my favorite modernist works, the first one by Marcel DuChamp, "The Fountain". I can understand why some people might hate the movement. (Especially if you live near the Tate Modern in London) But come on! It's like a good joke. Albeit an inside joke. Sometimes like those ones that are so inside that everyone is kind of looking around at each other waiting for the first person to laugh so they can pretend that they get it too...

So basically, I told her she needs to do something that makes me laugh.

Tattoo Art

DON ED HARDY.

Yes that's right. It seems as if you either know of this guy, and think he's a legend, or you don't. And if you don't then you're like the girl I saw in the bathroom the other day on campus wearing his art on her sweater, that didn't know who I was talking about. Yeah, that was a little awkward.

But apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this. (not that that was awkward, but that Don Ed Hardy has an interesting reputation)

A documentary came through the doors at the festival, and I got real excited. I was like, YES. And he wants to come to Ashland?? Uh... I very much hope so. It would be Very Cool. If he comes as a guest speaker, I feel like there needs to be an art show...I'm just going to throw that out there, and hope... who knows?

I loved the doc. It was a perfect portrait of the artist. I don't know if I should give this much away in the blog...

But anyway, it was interesting for me because, I love tattoos. I don't have any, but I think that seeing the kinds of tattoos people get is one way of learning more about them. That whole saying, "wearing your heart on your sleeve" gets taken to a whole new level...

And tattooing as an art! It's incredible. It's moving art. There are so many variables working with people, on skin ( and its imperfections), the fact that it's not a flat surface, and the pressure on the artists that the artwork has to be done perfectly the first time.

Seeing the kind of massive body work that people have done is incredible. Seeing it after 30+ years is pretty incredible too, but for other reasons.

The other thing about Hardy that I find interesting is how his popularity has shifted over the years. Back in the day he was famous on the underground for his tattoo work, but specifically his incredible colors that he worked with as well as the huge designs he would do. He was the only guy to go to Japan at the time and study their traditional methods and bring them back to the states.

And NOW, he's more famous for the tattoo art that was commercially bought by Christian Audigier... and yet people still don't know... yes that bag?

Check out some of this commercialization:

http://edhardyshop.com/

And yet for some reason, because as a tattoo artist you get paid on a regular basis so to speak... I mean, it's not like how an artist does a painting and lets it sit for a while maybe before it sells... You do a tattoo on someone, and they pay you. If you don't, they could potentially spell something wrong, or just mess it up some how and yeah, you're stuck with it on you for a looong time.

I think that's why I don't feel like he sold out so to speak. It's good, whether people know who did it or not.

Book: Page 1

I want to explain a little about the book and how it came about.

I had been listening to some music by Interpol, and decided that I really wanted to do a book of Haikus. Partially because it wouldn't be a whole lot of text, and partly because I want to be like Jack Kerouac. But secretly of course.

And I really like collaging... So here the story goes:

After my grandmother died, my sister and I inherited her left over art supplies so to speak. I know, an odd thing to get, but we're a crafty family. Sarah got her oils, and acrylics and I got some of her watercolors and sketch pads. What we didn't know at the time was that there was still a lot of her art work still in the sketch pads. Mostly unfinished sketches of boats, nautical things, buildings, landscapes, bird houses. Some really random, but interesting stuff. Boats were her thing, however.

So quite a few of the sketches were hers. The boat in this drawing I just outlined roughly and colored in one of her pieces, as well as pages 2, the corner piece was hers, pages 3 and 4, the landscape was her outline, and the last page was her sketch of the "end of the trail".

What I did as a homage to her, was use these pieces in my book with watercolor backgrounds I did, or color things in. It was a neat project to work on though.

Book: pages 2-7

Book: page 8

I shall call him...Monsieur Chapeau

Hee hee hee

Viola, my final product with the Cubee project. Now that I've done one, I think I may need to do more...

I have a really hard time thinking in 3D so I really feel like I have a better grasp on this type design. There are a couple of things I would have liked to fix, like giving his hands more definition or something. But I think that's for next time!

My sister showed me this this summer when I went home and I got a kick out of it. I really enjoyed the subtle humor of it

and I liked how it was filmed. Simple, but different. It played at the AIFF speaking of which a few years ago

and I discovered that when I was going through the archives.

See? It doesn't have to be extraordinarily visually stimulating to be good. Sometimes the best things are

simple and have a good story or the content is just interesting.

My thoughts on the "Twightlight" Saga

I was watching the beginning of Twilight the other day when I was doing some babysitting. I had seen the movie in the theaters when it first came out, but I haven't seen it since then. I'm not going to lie. I enjoyed it. :) But I left it at that.

So my roommate is obsessed a little with the new movie that came out, so I got excited too. The new movie is out as of NOW and I think we'll go see it this weekend.

However, after analytically watching short films for the AIFF, I decided after re-seeing the first 15 minutes of Twilight that it was really bad... Pretty, but bad...

The acting was mediocre, and everything was way..."Overprocessed" so to speak. It was fluff... and people are watching stuff like this and thinking that this is what cinema really is...

I guess as long as I don't expect anything but something visually interesting it'll be ok. But I'm glad that I'm involved in the film festival and have an opportunity to see a variety of films all along this span...

Here's Me.

And Here's what I see....

Alphabet Soup Project

Some scratches I did... :)

Ze French Dinner is over!

Finally! With a sigh of relief I am done! The dinner was a success by my standards, I was able to fully enjoy my meal and not have to worry about serving, cleaning, or plating the food. Woo-hoo! Now that I'm done I can get back to everything else in life, like making Thanksgiving day sweaters.

On one last thought for the dinner, yea I'm gonna bring it back up again...
An interesting thing happened to me today...
So on Wednesday I took ALL of the food we had bought for the dinner from my house, as well as my friend's houses to the school and carried practically all of it from my car into the SU's kitchen. Four or five trips later and late for class I was getting really pissed off that no one was even attempting to help me by opening the door. I'd get funny looks from people as I carried 10- half gallon containers of heavy whipping cream down the hill from where I parked and into the SU. One old lady looked as me and commented "that sure looks heavy" and that was it. I couldn't believe people's apathy.

So today I was walking downtown and this guy was trying to get into Tease while carrying a large amp all by himself. So I opened the door for him. He was so happy I got a personal invitation to his gig this evening.

How's that for Karma?

So along those lines this reminds me of something:
Albert and David Maysles. I'll get to them in a minute. I just wanted to reflect on this photo real quick by saying that I enjoy how it documents them documenting people. These two guys did some really powerful film that depicted the ordinary lives of interesting people (like Gray Gardens). Or the interesting projects of eccentric people (like The Gates, an instalation project in New York a few years ago). I'm always interested in well done documentaries, because it's the perfect medium for telling true stories. There is such beauty in the honesty that unfolds in pieces such as these that it makes me realize that some people in the world aren't apathetic to others. It's very inspiring.

Here's my Mime! He was inspired by my French theme. Can you tell?

Finally! I was able to find my "other" project photos. :)

This is my boyfriend Austin.

This is my best friend Kaylyn.
YUM!

So I met this guy in Lithia park one nice afternoon. He had the most interesting name that I unfortunately can't remember. We only talked briefly, but I don't like interrupting people too much when they're playing music. However when someone is playing the Sitar it's worth saying something. It's one of the coolest conversation piece ever. :)

Ok, might as well blog about the new movie coming out directed by the guy that did Napoleon Dynamite and

that stupid amish drag racing commercial I blogged about earlier.

With all the independent short films I've been watching lately, I'm actually kind of excited to see this. I won't be

surprised if I'm disappointed, but the story looks really different, the character look really quirky and I love the lady

that plays the kids mom, and the guy from the Flight of the Concords is amazing. I'm excited to see him actually act

in something.

One thing I do like about indy films is how awkward they aren't afraid to be. And Napoleon Dynamite was definitely

along those lines. I didn't particularly like that one because of its apparent lack of story, but this has some meat to it (I hope).

We'll see. :)

A restful Saturday

So I woke up this morning not feeling so good. I thought I might be coming down with the infamous flu. So I slept in. Then I went and bought a ton of oranges that were on sale and juiced them.

I've been avoiding getting the flu shot just because I'd like to think that my immune system is strong enough, and that I've already gotten it this summer. However I think the change of weather and stress from school and everything is starting to wear me down just a bit.

So then I read about "Denialism" which is the term this guy coined to describe the way in which the organic yuppy crowd wants to "naturalize" their way of life and as such deny the benefits that vaccinations or genetically altered food could present to themselves or their kids. The book is Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, by Michael Specter.

Here's the link to the NPR news article: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120139776

I can relate in a sense to not wanting to get vaccinated just because I don't like the idea of it. However I don't think it's a bad thing... Maybe I will now. In the mean time I'm knocking on wood. I would hate to get sick at this point in the term.

Web site designs

http://promotions.bankofamerica.com/mbc/?cm_mmc=DEP-StudentBanking-_-vanity-_-DP01VN000Y_oncampus-_-NA#/intro_alt


I've taken a couple of advertising classes. This is a good campaign and it's perfect for the internet. There's so much information to get out there that to advertise for Bank of America, doing a print ad or billboard, or even a commercial is pointless. In this way it's being educational, interesting, and readily available without being in your face about it.

I was glad to see that the ad agency Organic, Inc. won first place at www.webaward.org. I don't really know anything about them, but I'll definitely keep my eyes open for them. Apparently they've won an impressive amount of awards this year, and you never know what may happen in the future.

Ok, so checkout this website:

www.sanctuarybay.com

It's a website for a real estate company in Belize and it's won a couple of awards for its web design. It's user friendly and visually interesting.

It makes me want to buy property there.

So this is what my friend showed me the other day, and it's definitely something that I want to learn more about. That is how to do web design first of all, and then how to utilize flash...

I don't particularly see myself becoming a web designer or anything, but I'm definitely curious about the process of it...

Voila mes amies!

This looks kind of funny small...
But anyway, as you can see it's a poster design I did from scratch materials (other than the text maybe, the accent marks were my own doing however) for the French Club's annual dinner. It's coming up really soon, and I'm working on trying to figure out donations and advertising. I'll up load the leaflets I made as well... You'll hopefully be seeing them around on campus if they get approved by the French department.
I'm only doubting that they will because they're kind of silly.
oh well. :)

The Infamous "F"

Alphabet soup #1

Ok SO

I really wanted to blog about this amazing website my friend Krista showed me the other day.

It has some incredible flash video footage embedded as the background for the website. From a design stand point I was incredibly impressed with the way the text and graphics coincided. It's hard to do, and especially with video graphic backgrounds.

There were a couple of other websites along the same lines that she shared with me, as we were talking about design. I'll definitely have to post them when I figure out what their urls are. I really don't know anything about web design, but as I learn more about graphic design I feel like that's the next thing to do...

The Amish Drag Racing commercial is disappointing. For some reason, I was thinking about it the other day and needed to rewatch it. I had remembered it being more interesting...

After all the hype about it (and yes I know it's been out for a long time now) with the lawsuit between pepsi and coke, and how it was directed by the guy who did "Napoleon Dynamite," etc... With all that hype it should have been more controversial. Or at least better music... and more air time. :)

http://img.slate.com/media/27/060327_ARC_PoweradePegasus_110.asf

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113938373

So I saw this article in the npr news stories, and I was excited to see that they're making a documentary about him. I still haven't read his novel "On the Road" but it's definitely on my list of books that I need to read when I finally have the luxury of enjoying it.

I do enjoy his haikus though.

www.ashesandsnow.org

I was first found out about this website years ago, but periodically I love going back to it and checking it out. I love everything about it. The photos amaze me every time.

The message it sends of unity between humans and animals touches me. I almost get teary eyed, especially with the ocean animals. The combination of elements is also beautifully done. The poetry, the music, the photography, the video clips, and the website design come together in a perfect union of multimedia.

I just wish I could have gone to see the exhibit in person. It would be amazing...

When Aliens Attack

Here's my second collage effort... :)

Nightmares and Realities

Here's my good poster design... :P

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111899523

Check out this link to listen to the story on NPR's website.

I love Nirvana. I don't know what it is, but if I could someone back from the dead just for a day, Kurt Cobain is one of my top 5 people.

So I was going to work this summer and while I was driving I was listening to the radio for once when I stumbled upon this news story about how they decided to sand blast the word "Fuck" off of Kurt Cobain's memorial. I was shocked that after this many years they all of a sudden decided to censor his grave site. It makes sense to a certain degree why the town might want to send a more conservative message, but Cobain was not a conservative guy. Who's memorial was it anyway? The town may have to live with it, but it was Cobain's, his family's and as such a sort of refuge for his fans. Anyone else can just shove it.

However what's done is done... however I can just imagine him rolling in his grave.

S is for Sarah. She's my sister. :)

"The Unmistaken Child"

http://www.unmistakenchild.com/trailer.php



The Varsity Theater is playing host this weekend to "The Unmistaken Child", part of the Ashland Independent Film Festival's monthly film series. I have yet to see it, but as a film fan I'm excited that movies like this are shown in our small town. We've got a great resource of the arts in Ashland and this film festival is one of them.

And thus as I am excited to be working with the AIFF this year doing screenings for the film festival... I will probably continue to support them in up coming blogs, and hopefully be able to share some of my opinions on the interesting subject matter I come across and different events I'm looking forward to getting involved in.

Movie poster 1

I'm gonna try to fix this one up. Its really only a rough draft but I thought I'd save it on here because my zip drive wasn't working properly today...

Here's another inside joke...
It's a Z--braaa!

Banana Spotlight

This collage project is one of many inside jokes. However, how could the epic battle of King Kong and Godzilla not be freakin awesome?

Giraffe by request

I love giraffes.

This was a fun project using a reference photo, and some colorization tools.

And they're the best animals EVER.