Unexplored Territories - Interim Blog Post

Unexplored Territories - Statement of Purpose

For this project I hope to adress the theme by using maps and the lines in maps as my medium. After searching around for inspiration and reference photos, I found the artist Ed Fairburn, who uses maps as the canvas for his art. I liked his use of line and the detail in the faces that he drew. I hope to replicate his style in my own way using maps of California or the US. I plan to experiment with topographic maps as well, as those will provide more natural and curved lines to work with. The end result will look like a realistic face that works within the lines and countours of the map. I plan to work directly on the map possibly with pencil and paint. I am excited to see where this will go. (Preliminary ideas shown below)

First Week's Work - Unexplored Territories

I started by jotting down all the different ideas I had for this project. I tested a couple on a small scale, and narrowed down my choices. I sorted through some of the maps in the digital media lab, and found some of California, Chicago, Alaska, and France. I took tracing paper and tested out more of my ideas. I then went online to find a map of the US (shown below). I then experimented with line and negative space to get the second photo pictured. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because it is somewhat disatisfying. I printed it out and attempted to work with it more. Going forward I would like to recreate it in pen or ink and see where I can go from there.

Final Self Study Reflection

For inspiration for this project, I did what I typically do, and that is look up art I've saved previously on Pinterest. This offers me a wide basis of inspiration to work off of and often I like to emulate the ideas that I see. There weren't any specific artists that I looked at, however the project that we did to start off the year really helped me to find my end goal. If we hadn't worked with different materials and tried collaging, I might have taken a different route. In the beginning I did a lot of sketches and was unsure of what direction I wanted to take. These preliminary and less structured explorations of the self-portrait ended up being a large part of my final product.

In the beginning, to address the idea of a self-study, I did self-portraits, focusing mainly on certain features like my eyes or lips or hair. I never thought that the sketches would end up to be important, however as my intentions changed I found myself reverting back to earlier work I had done. I was able to explore my authentic voice as an artist by trying out many different mediums. And with the changing of mediums I found my intentions also changed. I was set on embroidering an image of myself. Unfortunately, once I got far enough, I realized what I really wanted to do was to accurately represent myself, and using the medium of thread, I couldn't fill that purpose. Maybe, subconsciously, I always knew that I liked the sketch that I drew very first day better? Luckily I gave myself enough time to allow myself the opportunity to change my medium and direction. In hindsight I wish I'd taken more time to define my purpose for the project, I also could have spent more time thinking about how difficult it would be to work with thread. I learned that I typically strive for accuracy and realism in my work, and that's something I can remember from now on. 

The critique at the end of the project was immensely helpful because I wasn't quite sure what my intentions were until other people defined them during the critique. Hearing people's responses and gathering their insights on my work made this project meaningful to me. I felt like I was having a real conversation between other people though my art. This connection through my work was gratifying and intriguing to me. The observations other people made helped me to see what other people see when they view my art. An example of this is how Audrey and Mr. O picked out themes of growing up and transition through the formal aspects and small details in the final collage. These are aspects that I hadn't considered, but had still consistently portrayed. This project was very meaningful to me because I was able to go through a process of editing and then starting completely over, instead of just settling. I learned what I like as an artist, and how unattached I can feel to work that I don't particularly like. 

I really enjoyed this project overall. Even though the end product was far from what I started at, I think it exemplifies how one person can be interpreted many ways is self-study.