Curatorssss

Last Thursday during the hours of our critique we had the curators from the McMaster Museum of Art come in and talk to us about what pieces each of us wants to put in the show and whether or not we would all fit :P

I was the one that organized where everyone would be setting up and when and that all went down smoothly. I was in the 'second round' in the gallery space so once the first round was finished they had to take their work off the walls and 'round 2' had to set up asap before the curators were finished in the other rooms. I put up my two large pieces for them to look at: the 6x4 piece with the growths and the 5x5 piece with the circles. They considered them both, stating that they liked aspects of both of them and wanted to squish them into one piece however they could only take one (which was what I was expecting). In the end they chose this beauty:

One tiny detail that I changed after this photo was taken - the greenish line along the bottom was replaced with a green 'ribbon' of knitted yarn which brought the whole piece together beautifully I think :)

So all I had to do was add D-rings to the back so they could hang it up an deliver it to the Museum on Monday. Technically that's it. All I have to do now is hand in my art thesis paper next Thursday and *poof* finished my undergrad. o.o

Now for the show. :)

So now what?

So the news came in today that I was not accepted into the Web Design program I applied to. I had braced myself for this so it wasn't as huge a blow as it might have been. So now I am making plans to get a more permanent job somewhere and save up some money to get the things I want so badly. On the upside it means I won't have to spend $10 000 on more education and I won't be starting my life in debt! woot!

Also I worked some more on my 5'x5' piece today. I doodled this in my moleskine and decided that that was what I wanted to with the lines on my large scale:


So I did:




Still need to add the small circles but it is coming along.

And then my studio mate took photos of me painting :)



EDIT: I added a small detail to the whisps later on and here are the pictures from that:




And that is that piece finished :)

Two More!

So I took on Graham's (my professor's) challenge. I have been working these past few weeks on building and starting two more large scale works. The first one is 5'x5' and the second is 7'x2' so they are quite large and two very different layouts.

The first one I decided to continue with the theme of knitted pieces on the canvas. This time I incorporated crochet instead. The design started out (keeping the colour of the crocheted piece in mind) with this step:


After that I attached the crocheted piece. Here are some close-ups:






After the crocheted piece was on I added a wispy line graphic in ink in the bottom corner. I intend to continue this with other colours, which I need to go purchase (as it is ink and not paint) so that step will have to wait until then. Here is what it looks like now:



And a close-up of the wisps:

So that is the 5'x5' piece. The 7'x2' I'm completely improvising as I go. I decided not to go with the plain white background and instead started off by staining the canvas a browny orange colour. Then I added a darker brown on one end with thick paint to give it some texture. I have no idea where I am going to go with this piece next...


With both of these pieces I will be playing around with orientation but that is how they look for now. Over and out!

Critique

I really should have posted this right after critique or at least earlier than now. But that's okay. Thursday afternoon was my final critique in which I showed my piece to all four of my professors, two art history professors and over 30 of my classmates and art history students. In my opinion it went really well!

I started off by saying a little bit about my piece so I explained how I had ventured into the large scale for the first time since second year and how it made me really nervous. I also pointed out that I felt I should have stained the canvas before starting in on it because the white made me really nervous. The green line was also a small irritation I pointed out to them. I included in my presentation some small plasticine sculptures that I made to resemble the abstract shapes on the canvas. One of my profs, Graham, replied to these statements with "This is great, make two more". In layman's terms at least. At which point I was like 'oooh shit'. I really don't have time to make two more AS WELL as my multimedia thesis :/ Doesn't hurt to try I suppose.

So here are a few pictures of my painting on the wall in out gallery space with the sculptures I made up as well.




So we shall see if I can pull off two more large scale works. I think I'm going to have to start organizing my days again... :/

Art Fail

My critique is tomorrow - so naturally I spent most of my day working on my peice. Oddly enough I basically got absolutely nothing done. I tried a few different things that looked aweful so I just ended up painting over them. Turns out I can't paint for the life of me. So I stopped trying. I guess I can show you some photos of my fail.





The green had to go. So I took ANOTHER step back and am now feeling quite unaccomplished with this work. Shitty feeling btw. >(

Tomorrow should be interesting.

Not Sure About This

Here is my progress from today. The studio closes in about half an hour so I will be heading home soon. After eliminating the green glob I turned to a doodle I created the other day. I scanned it into the computer and worked on it a bit on there. Using a tactic suggested to me by my printmaking prof, I printed my digital work onto rice paper and chine-colled them to the canvas. Here is the progression of that:



A couple close ups:



So far I am not a huge fan of the repetitiveness of the prints at the bottom. The globules (or whatever you want to call them) will be connected to the bottom of the canvas using the same design that the small ones are but it will be hand drawn or painted in. That will be my job tomorrow. Also I need to figure out what to put in the top corner and how to bring the whole composition together... Hmm.

Two Steps Forward, One Giant Step Back

So yesterday I went in to the studio to work a bit on my piece, and I got the opportunity to discuss it with a few classmates. They gave me ideas and tips on what I can do with it and where I might go. I decided I'd like to outline the green with purple first, just to see what it would look like. Turns out it greatly resembled what I thought was the Nickleodeon logo (in my mind). Their logo is orange in reality but in the subcockles of my brain it is green and purple, and that is what my painting reminded me of after I added in the purple line.



So after that fiasco, I decided to concentrate on the knitted squares again. One of my classmates commented that it kind of looked like the swatches were falling into a pool of acid and that maybe if I rotated the canvas it would give a different feel. After rotating the canvas (which just made it look like the acid was oozing onto the swatches) I decided to add more knitted squares to the canvas to make it look less like a diving feel.


Then I decided it was time to deal with the acid pool. I like the green on its own, but I felt (and others agreed with me) that the green was doing nothing for the composition of the piece, and the knitted squares did not agree with the colour. So this is what I did:


Hence the two steps forward one giant step back. I feel better about the piece now. It doesn't bother me as much as it did :P

Now to figure out where to go next!