Greenhouse Gases

Pin-Hole Camera Negatives and Prints

Our last project in Photography involved building and taking pictures with a pin-hole camera. Pin-hole cameras naturally distort whatever you photograph with them. Since most of my pictures (except for the first negative) were of the inside of a greenhouse with these really odd sculptures inside, the distortion was even further emphasized. I ended up liking the negatives more than the prints!

Negatives:
This is a tree which I think ended up looking like a mushroom cloud. It would go nicely with the message from my Gunter Grass arch. (see post above)







Prints:

Photography Portraits

This is the first post of a couple I plan to make of photos I thought worked out from a Photography class (manual not digital) I just have to scan the rest of them!
Portrait of Someone I know well

Portrait of Someone I don't know very well

Digital Train-Photography

While I was in Florence, I roomed with my Romanian alter-ego, Maria C. She was at SACI for photography, so she had an amazing digital camera (a Nikon HR? I'm not all of that familiar with digital cameras but it was a snazzy one). We took a train from Florence to Monterosso, one of the five villages which makes up Cinqueterra. I borrowed her camera on the train took some pictures during the 2 hour journey and came up with two images I especially liked.

Maria on the Train (2008)

Open Window (2008)

I've never seen a human being look as uncomfortable as that man crouching away from the two matching German tourist women. I thought it was interesting that he was watching them look out the window, but not looking out of it himself. He talked on the phone later in a language I didn't recognize, so I think it is safe to assume he was either an immigrant or a tourist. There were so many African-Italian immigrants in Florence, hawking illegal purses on the streets and working in various other low-paying jobs. So many of them earned their living catering to the tourist's experience of Italy, tourists who were seeking the superficial thrill of a cheap David apron in stark contrast to their struggle just to survive. However, I must say that it was really annoying how aggressive they got. I must really look American, because I couldn't walk two feet without a vendor invading my personal space in order to aggressively push their product. Nevertheless, I took this picture after watching the scene for a little bit because I thought it was a moment which really captured the man's feeling of displacement and reflected my own metal picture of the larger social displacement of immigrants throughout Italy.

Frescoin' in Florence

I studied abroad this summer in Florence, Italy at SACI, Studio Art Centers International. During the first half of my time there, I took a fresco class with Mario and Luigi, two incredibly kind and knowledgeable Italian artists interested in reviving the fresco tradition. They also couldn't have resembled the Super Mario Brothers more; They both had enormous mustaches, spoke heavily accented English, and to top it all off, Luigi was Mario's assistant.

I really enjoyed making frescoes, but found a difficult medium for a number of reasons. The first was that once the plaster is laid, there is only about three hours before the plaster is dry, at which point no more pigment can be added. The second was that colors dry a slightly different color than when they are applied. Since the pigments build on themselves, it is also almost impossible to cover up any mistakes, especially if that requires covering a dark color with a lighter one. We created cartoons for our work, meticulously drawing the composition of each piece and preparing it to be easily transferred before laying the plaster. I tried to focus more of my attention to line and composition because I knew that the colors were tricky and often dried to be much more bland than what I am used to. Although I probably wont return to the medium for a while, I really liked the pieces I made.

Oneiroi (2008), fresco
I based this one on a beautiful tombstone that I saw in the Camposanto, a Pisan graveyard bombed during WWII (see below):


Baucis and Philemon (2008)

Botticellian Lady (2008)
This was my first fresco. We were supposed to pick a famous fresco or painting detail and use that as a template in order to practice the fresco technique. I love Botticelli's Primavera, so of course I opted for the detail from that! Detail of My Detail of Botticelli's Primavera

A Cohesive Portrait Series

This portrait series is the most cohesive ten-piece collection that I have completed so far, which is why I have chosen to use it for my Professional Seminar Project. It began because I wanted to practice working in the oil medium. I had people that I know fairly well sit for me for about an hour (people I know well enough to make that request at least) and painted them in a style that could probably be described displaying Fauvist and Impressionist influences. I didn't ask my subjects to pose for me or to dress up and I liked how that made the portraits seem more intimate. I used a lot of color in these, with the backgrounds just being seemingly random colors blended in. The project was fairly unstructured for a reason. I didn't want to limit the pieces by attempting to be to faithful to what was there, especially as given my time frame, that wouldn't have worked out that well anyway. I think that the subconscious decisions I made ended up reflecting these people much better than a photo-realistic portrait of them could have.


                               Tiffany (2008), oil on canvas


Nick (2008), oil on canvas

 
                               Rob (2008), oil on canvas


                         Thomas (2008), oil on canvas

                                 Tyler (2008), oil on canvas


                          Meghan (2008), oil on canvas


                                Kelli (2008), oil on canvas


                               Jeannie (2008), oil on canvas


                              Delaney (2008), oil on canvas
              (the first portrait in the series)

The Start o' My Art

I just thought I'd post these older works. The "Mom and me" painting is actually my first real painting, the one that made me first consider attempting art as a career in the first place. The "Flower and the Snake" and "The Glass Madonna" are both from my first painting class and are some of my more successful experimental pieces.

Mom and me (2006), Acrylic on canvas, 20x14 inches, received the Congressional Art Award for this one

The Flower and the Snake (2007), Acrylic hard-edge, displayed in the 2008 Spring edition of UNC's literary arts magazine The Cellar Door

This piece is supposed to be an abstracted representation of the Garden of Eden. My choice of color was deliberate, with red representing something bad, temptation, pride, lust etc. and green representing innocence, nature, and goodness. The flower represents woman, so I made it green on the inside, but its exterior is red, implying that woman is unfairly maligned as she is good at heart and only perceived to be bad. The snake and the apples are represented as temptation, seeming to be good (green exteriors), but that is deceptive as they are actually bad (so they are red on the inside). I like working with trees, symbolism, and myth and this was the first piece in which I did those things.

The Glass Madonna (2007), Acrylic base with Oil Glazes, displayed in the Spring 2008 edition of The Cellar Door, 3ird place in the Cellar Door for images in general (including photography) and 2nd in painting

Hi! This is the first post in my artist-blog. I am a undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill , where I am majoring in Studio Art and Comparative Literature. Although this blog is an assignment for the Professional Seminar I took this semester, I am going to try to keep posting regularly about my art.