Let me say that I really liked this idea of art, I feel a connection with this and what I hope to pull off in my show, kind of at least. The hardest part of this assignment was to draw the biomorphic shapes with not looking at the front. This as an artist I felt left too much for chance. Yet on the other spectrum with past assignments too many constraints felt like my hands were tied. I think its funny because we want the right amount of chaos and guidelines in making art. Well at least I do. New vocabulary learned was 
Biomorphic
Unity
Chance operation
Repetition
Fragment

Below are the photos I took of myself with one close up that I would use as my base. I used 3 other photos and turned them over and created my biomorphic shapes and then cut them out. I did this in black and white and in color.

The images above were my black and white iterations that I created with my shapes. By doing this over 3 times I found one that I preferred over the other one.

The image above was the one I used and used double sided tape to hold my shapes in place.
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The photos below are my color iterations.

This was my last final iteration that I liked and used. The following step we took the next day was to paint each image uses a color scheme. Below are both of my painting that I did.

This was an assignment I conducted with Amanda. The project was in relation to Max Ernst's "Mechanism of Collage" essay. Amanda and I were given objects that we could use to create a form of installation art. We photographed several iterations and discussed several ideas and we came across these main four photos. Once we chose a location, we began taking a chair and objects that were provided to create a surrealism piece of work by taking two or more objects that do not belong with each other to make an assisted readymade piece of art. The piece ended up being a site specific piece of work, just because it requires a background. This idea relates to how Max Ernst placed things that do not normally go together to see what he could create. In reviewing this assignment I think the value I got was trying to think outside the box into how can two or more objects could create art. How this relates to me would be something with an urban perspective. Thinking off the top of my head would be taking a fire hydrant and placing it on its side on a wall.

This project was a collaboration with Megan Serin, Jeremiah Davis and myself. This is my first iteration of our sound suit concept.This seemed like we could not cover the entire suit with wheat and tortillas. I felt that they would dry out and stink and could not think of a way to adhere it to the suit.
Some of the concepts in creating this to consider was Variation to the suit, how to cover it and yet have some sort of Unity.
Our overall theme was that of one race using our backgrounds from our three races. As we have heard that in the future we would be a mixture of all races, not sure how far in the future but our idea was for that to express time, how long would it take for all races to be blended together. We were all looking for a way to cover the entire suit from top to bottom. We came up with the idea of using Corn husks. The corn husks gave us the unity to the over all suit. In using the Wu-Xing chart our use of the body using the large intestine as rope with it covered by noodles. The Corn husks also gave a Texture that helped with creating sound.

This is our 2nd iteration, our ideas with crossing all three of our cultures into the suit would help to cover this completely. The materials that we decided to get were:
Corn Husks, fabric, rope, wheat, macaroni noodles. black tooling to cover face and backdrop material scrap to cover head. Some of the things to worry about was it possible to make it durable to hold up to testing it out and performing in it once in a dance performance.

Of the five categories of Wu-Xing and our theme of one race with using the concept of time and that happening in the future.
Wood - Flowers
Fire - Burned wood
Earth - Saturn's ring
Metal - Large intestine
Water - Corn husks
This was a fast project once we chose the corn husks, we were easily able to apply it to complete the pants and front and most of the top. We were still figuring out how to present the head with Saturn's ring. 4/5/2018

The music, I came across at first was a native american instrumental being performed by Alexandro Querevalu, the last of the Mohicans, which is another symbol of time passing because of another lost type of people. Then we looked at what our suit represented we felt the need to express the destruction of the suit like the destruction of people over time. Below you will see the images of the suit and images of the video we ended up using in performing with the suit on, by Megan. The interesting thing of watching Megan perform this was you could see some of the corn husks falling off. I think this was very symbolic to the video as well.
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URL to video is https://youtu.be/JIlpk7GHlOA
​I collaborated with Jeremiah Davis and Megan Serin

To conclude after you have been able to review the video. I would like to say that the Figure to ground relationship seemed to work well. Even though several parts we not to scale. Megan was in the foreground and was able to give the vantage point from looking this from a distance or from an angle. Megan gave a performing art narritive and during moments was part of the video. She occupied the space well and by the third video she really became part of the video which presented a nice overall Performance art piece. You could feel the time passing as destruction was occurring in the video, along with seeing part of the suit coming apart. 

This assignment had a few set backs, I was lucky to print this right at the start of this assignment and citra-solv it at the start of class. I was fortunate to also use the right printer to get a good transfer. The design concept to creating this image was from learning about Wu-Xing, a Taoist theme but creating it in the style of Robert Rauschenberg's Yellow body.
I had to find two elements from each phase of the five phases in Wu-Xing.

Wood - Gall bladder, Tears
Fire - Small intestine, Pulse
Earth - Anxiety, Dna
Metal - Venus, Old age
Water - Fear, Death

After I found two images on the internet I then printed three different sizes of each of the total 10 images to have 30 total images to Citra-Solv
*NOTE, That all images should be reviewed and consider if the should be flipped horizontally if words or numbers were showed. That way everything would read correctly on the transfer was completed. 
The meaning had to be our own and we must avoid using copyrighted material, if we did it must be used in a new meaning that we could explain, If we did we must be able to cite the source with some sort of labeling to give credit to the original artist.
The use of pre-existing work should be avoided but using the style of another artist with your own meaning is better to do.
Before creating our Citra Solv transfer we had to examine Robert Rauschenberg's Yellow Body (1968)
In reviewing the Yellow body
There is a travel theme that seems to be a glimpse of a memory. In this piece you see a Plane a semi truck a woman singing which was Janis Joplin. You can see a 1960's rock band a Credit card, Wilt Chamberlain and a bicycle. All of these images refer to travel that he must have done. A lot of these images are iconic like Janis Joplin and Wilt Chamberlain. It was very interesting how he framed everything in a Yellow and centered it. The lines that go across from the left to the right, which gives this image movement to go along with the theme.

After all of this was taken to account I picks different images that expresses time through beauty and aging, along with pain. I used images that had eyes in some of them. This would give a sense of unity but not wanting to have eyes in all my images. I was very focused on how I citra solved my images because of pain they had to go pressed with different angles and semi circular strokes. I was trying to express pain. Juxtaposition was an easy thing to arrnage my images at first but them after 5 images it became more difficult because of using the space correctly and making sure I had a vision of the end result ahead of time. I was worried about the overall balance and knew that I wanted to express the pain by having one side free of images to express the pain of not being able to stand upright because of pain. My perspective was straight forward, which is why I didn't use my last image. It was angled with a deep perspective and did not use it. Peter said that I did not have to use all of my images, so I chose not to use it. Lastly when it came to repetition I used my images and spread them out based on a triangular composition. This seems to be something that I try to see with my graphic design process and it photography. 

This is probably the first thing I have created that I will frame and place in my work room!
Artist: Steve Gonzalez
Title: Gall Bladder
Year: 2018
Citra Solv on 15" x 22" Deckle Edge Stone Hedge paper.

  

The timeline inspired by Herb Lubalin was what I had to create to show the different time periods of art that we have covered in Art107. We had to make a rough draft and a 2nd draft before moving on to the final version.

The biggest challenge was to fit all of this within a 5.5 in by 30 in piece of paper. The book would be an acordian folded book.The timeline began from the 1600's to 2050. The difficulty was that there had to be balance even though from 1600 to 1885 the only period was the Boroque Period. The time line had to be represented equally across the entire 30 inch long piece of paper. Towards the end of the timeline there were about four periods that were very close to each other but still thinking about visual balance and always considering the Style of Herb Lubalin.

The research of Herb Lubalin was easy, I could see that he focused on Typography, everything was clean and black and white. At that point once I could come up with a proper sequence to display my periods I then began to work on my final draft. I drew a ribbon and on the left side of the ribbon please notice how the line started under and then went over the line on the right. I was trying to represent time going forward from the 1600 to 2050. By using my method I was able to place a period on each fold and because there was 8 folds but there were nine periods. One period had two images on it. This was the best compromise to giving a visual balance along with showing all periods without cluttering or bunching it all together. The only part I felt that was not in the style of Herb Lubalin was the use of colorade paper. I wanted to use this to help me for my cards to show what images belong to which period.

The assignment starts off with getting a section from John Coplans  reclining figure, page 86-87.
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We painted a orange undertone to get the outline of the figure and tonal shading. The panels next to me on my left and right all had to line up so that unity was felt across all of the panels. with the body image. I was absent that day and my two classmates that were assigned on each side of me hashed marks with pencils to help me know where the arm and hands were. I then gridded my image and I gridded my medium to scale the drawing on to it to keep it proportion.
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*Note, just like with the other things we have done in all classes, we had to erase all pencil marks, to keep the image clean.

Here is the video link to the video for the Mannequin Challenge, done with Amanda Miller. I also did video with Maddie Laroy.


A story board had to be created that had enough details to understand the flow of each scene. It is surprising how much information can be added. It took 8 panels to display what was needed.

Some of the things that I learned about this type of video from the perspective of shooting was retracing my steps. Very hard because of the gallery room size and keeping proportion in a tight room was hard to work around Amanda. We had to be creative and use the ladder. There was not enough texture to get that sense of touch to hit a 3 minute minimum time. By using the ladder, it did. This made the timing more difficult. A tough challenge.



I also assisted Maddie Laroy with hers too. I did not create a story board for hers because I was not part of the initial day we worked on that. Maddie was missing a partner that day I think.

Worked on this project with Kendall. She is a good partner, just saying. So after reviewing Yoko Ono and Allan Kaprow, we created a 40 photo video with Mad and Peter's help. We created actions and did a classroom selection to narrow down the pieces we will use. The Action I was given  
Tape a fly to the whiteboard.
Then mourn.

The four actions I wrote were:

Music
Look at a pretty scene,
Close your eyes and take a picture.

Open Palm
Make a fist, see the mountain and valleys.
Open your hand and recreate.

The Camera
Look at something beautiful
find a flaw
then zoom out.

Erase the Ugly
Draw lots of lines
erase the ugliest first
until one remains.

This had to involve the human body, take less than 10 seconds to perform, be associated with life more than art, require no props or very simple props and must be able to be performed by anyone.
Some of the vocabulary learned was Frame rate, Persistance of vision, Time Lapse, Shape in reference to video work, Point of viewProportion, and scale. Many steps to this project. I could not upload my video as directed but found out in class that there were issues with Weebly. I still can not upload to view yet. I recreated my previous YouTube account and my video is still being processed as I wrote this.
VIDEO LINK BELOW

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This is a inspired piece from Hockney's Joiner. I worked on this with Kendall, we had to review how to do this and I took about 60 photos to get this final piece. I was able to take a quicker approach by setting up my Photoshop file better. I created a matte with all the 3x3 cut outs and I was able to place photos underneath that layer. This allowed me to arrange them in the correct way that looked aesthetically pleasing. That gave me more unity and variation that looked scanned across. Craftsmanship was equally important, the layout on the paper meant no gridded pencil lines could show, which was difficult because of using PVA glue. The most difficult part of this project was trying to achieve a Chiaroscurro lighting effect. We had one light source to use but others in Gallery 10 also had lights that filled in the shadows to Kendall. While I know there are many projects to do, since this involved photography, I felt very comfortable with this. Some of the vocabulary learned was:
Line, Shape and Form, Space and Perspective. All of which you can see were important aspects to this project.

​*Not knowing how to enter information and getting use to Weebly, this was not entered on time.