Artist Blog Post 11.25.10

Shepard Fairey

Born in Charleston, SC in 1970, Shepard Fairey currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Fairey received his B.A. from
Rhode Island School of Design in 1992.
Shepard Fairey has been developing his iconic street art and graphic designs for 15 years, and his collaged and stenciled paintings have been exhibited inmany galleries including New York, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. 

His first Retrospective exhibition was at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in February, 2009. 


Shepard Fairey is a Los Angeles based graphic designer, who is very much present in today’s art scene. He is most known for his Barrack Obama “Hope” portrait. This poster became the iconic campaign image for the first African American president of the United States. Early in 2008, Fairey produced his first Obama portrait, with a stenciled face, visionary upward glance, and the caption “Progress.” In this second version, Fairey repeated the heroic pose and patriotic color scheme, substituting the slogan “Hope.”

            In fact, this piece came to the museum through the generosity of Washington, D.C., art collectors Heather and Tony Podesta, in honor of Tony Podesta’s mother, the late Mary K. Podesta.  This large-scale mixed-media stenciled collage is on view in the “New Arrivals” exhibition, on the museum’s first floor. The image however went “viral” as Fairey puts it. His intentions for this piece were for it to be widely reproduced and made salient in the general public. The campaign sold 50,000 official posters; a San Francisco street wear company produced T-shirts; grassroots organizations disseminated hundreds of thousands of stickers; and a free downloadable version generated countless repetitions. Although the reproductions rarely convey the elegant surface patterning seen in the original collage, they forged an unprecedented and powerful icon for Obama’s historic campaign.

            Shepard Fairey’s artwork is not contained to paper and posters. He has recently placed his mark on a Miami restraint, the Wynwood Kitchen and Bar, via murals on the internal walls throughout the building. Though the majority of Fairey’s pieces do have political connotations, he revised and redid some of his pieces for the mural, removing the political aspects and leaving strong images that are visually appealing and not political statements as well.

When I stumbled across the article of this restaurant’s murals, I was intrigued because I too have made a mural. Fairey’s ability to revise his pieces for the needs and desires of those who are commissioning him is intriguing.  In the last project we did, which actually resembled Fairey’s work, I too revised my work from what I envisioned my finish piece being to what was actually feasible and more powerful in conveying the point I wanted to get across. Unlike Fairey however, I am not very knowledgeable of the political parties of this country or any other. Because of this, I do feel some people may pay him more attention if he had pieces that were not entirely run by politics. This point can also be a positive though. Fairey’s artwork is known for his visual interpretations of political situations. At least he has made a name for himself, that’s more than I can say for myself.

Artist Blog Post 11.15.10

I found a digital artist named Arnon Moscona. A large amount of his work is described as a “space to celebrate the spirit”. Arnon Moscona has described his art work as focused mostly on computer art, using Painter, Photoshop, as well as a ariet of computer based tools. He also incorporates and displays some of his photography in his pieces on the website. Moscona is a cross-medium artist. He has recently started using traditional media such as oils and pastels again.

The website, Art on the Net, is a site dedicated to hosting artists studios online. This use of a website to display artwork made me think of our own websites we have started creating. I would like to possibly take some ideas for my website homepage from this website. I like the idea of making the viewer explore and interact with the page before they locate or figure out how to navigate my website in order to view my artwork. I would like how I have the viewer interact with their computer to view my digital pieces to somehow reflect some of my personality, and this way the viewer can learn more about me and my pieces unconsciously just by interacting with my page and learning to navigate the page the way I thin and would have navigated the page.

The website, http://art.net/Studios/Visual/Arnon/, is the organized virtual studio of Arnon Moscona. It presents both electronic and traditional media pieces. I want to discuss some pieces specifically, as well as the site. I am experiencing the site as a whole separate art piece. It helps the viewer experience the pieces in a way that is not overwhelming, and uses isolation of each piece so that neighboring pieces don’t influence the read. The home page is simple, yet creative. It is inviting with a “Welcome…” written in yellow. You have to explore the page to figure out how to enter the site. Once your mouse floats over the old time knob tv with a screen of white noise, it transforms into an admit one carnival ticket.

            Once you click the ticket, you are directed to a simple screen with a black design background, with four links on the left side of the screen in orange; Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.  After clicking each link, you will see a number of small colored circles. Click these to guide you to the next image in that subject matter.

AIR- This link leads to spiritual images of angels. There are four blue circles to click. The third one is my favorite. This image is titled “Angel”. It has a lot of motion, and  the focal point seems to emerge out of the darkness of the background. This is both aesthetically pleasing as well as metaphorically intriguing.

"Angel"

WATER-  This tab has five green circles at the bottom of the screen, but only one is linked to another page. This is not bothersome at all, because the one image that is still up, is my favorite piece by Moscona. This piece is titled “Drowning”. It captures the colors of water (both where the sun would hit the water and change the tone and color and where the sun cannot reach at the bottom of the body of water, where it is muggy, dark and browner) using a similar brush-like effect on the colors to create the sense of a current. The movement created by the marks, is both chaotic and methodical, almost pattern like. The top of the piece is erratic, similar to how I imagine the water’s surface would be if someone actually was drowning. There appears to be a figure completely surrounded by movement, or “current”. The figure appears to be forcing the water to disband. He is creating a hole for himself. This could be a god figure manipulating the water to relieve the painter of stress etc. I say this because, it is obvious this artist is religious and utilizes religious imagery and symbolism in his works. This is obviously only one interpretation of this piece.

"Drowning"

EARTH- This link sends us to four little circles. The first image appears almost mosaic. Using earth tones, it creates the shape of an eye. This piece is titled “Mother Earth”, which can be all knowing, which makes the eye imagery a little more fascinating. The next piece is a plate of apples. This piece seems a little more amateur and more obviously “photoshopped”. The next two images are landscapes in completely different styles. The first is full of strokes and movement, where as the second one seems more strict with rigid lines and solid tones.

"Apples"

FIRE- Again, we are directed to a page with four circles. These pieces seem to be more influenced by the world and the events that occur within it. Two images come to mind right away. The first image is the second circle. It is titled “City”, and can be read as the twin towers in NYC getting struck by the planes on September 11^th, 2001. It is colorful in a way that does not create a sense of warmth and joy, but instead creates tension between the different parts of the image. The towers and background compete to be viewed as the front object. This conflict makes me go back and forth between reading the image as the twin towers before the plane strikes, and after the plane strikes. This is because the background around the green tower is an explosion-like shape. It is found both in front of and behind the building, creating this flip-floppy illusion. The second image that is influenced by a well know location is a piece title “Stone Henge”. I took this image to be the artist’s way of describing and explaining how it actually got there. There seems to be this sense of other worldly presence in the image, which may mean the artist believes the theory that aliens built Stonehenge, but again, this is just my interpretation of the image and should not in anyway influence your interpretation.

"City"

"Stone Henge"

A couple of this artists pieces, like the apple image in the Earth category, does not flow with his other images. This is not a critique of his work, or mastery of the tools he used. Instead, I wish he would have formatted the images within each group by way of importance or intensity throughout the website. The apple image just seems out of place compared to the other breathtaking images. This could have been an attempt to show the viewer the artist’s growth in this medium, but if so, I would have preferred to see it in a different setting than paired next to the mosaic and rolling hills landscape. In fact, placing the image here may have in fact made me view it as less remarkable or skilled as his other pieces. 

Final Self-Portrait 11.10.10

Self-Portrait 10.21.10

This is my most complete version of my digital self-portrait. Next, I plan to come up with a background. If you have any ideas, whether my background should continue this collage-esque style, or if I should try a different style, please speak up :)

Thanks.

Self-Portrait in Illustrator 10.19.10

This is obviously a work in progress. This is my attempt at rasterizing myself. Like it? I like the collage affect. Should I continue with this look, or do you think I should try to make it more realistic? Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Below is the original photograph I am working from.

In Class Illustrator Music Piece 10.19.10

This was my visual representation of the music that was played in class.

Digital Self-Portrait 10.19.10

           My digital self-portrait will be based of an image of me taken over the summer. I chose this image to add some level of difficulty to the project. I feel that since my hair is mostly straight, creating a self-portrait of me with my hair curled will require me to pay more attention to the actual image and less attention to how I see myself in my mind's eye. I also wanted to add some difficulty to this project because I personally feel my last project lacked some difficulty, and I think I have the ability to produce more elaborate pieces. In my representation of my self-portrait via Adobe illustrator, I want to emphasize the differences in variations in skin tone and hair color. I choose to do this as an artistic choice. I personally am in the process of experimenting with making my pieces more gestural and detail oriented, in both my paintings and digital artwork. I want to express my self through digital media as I see myself, more personality and artistic interest wise then visually. Since I am curious about color changes and variations currently, I want to emphasize them in this project, in a way that is coherent.