Creating Some Stuff.

Recently in art class, we've been working on a new project.  Its possibly one of my favorites –and the  most difficult, so far.  Ceramics.  So for the past couple weeks I have been rolling and patting and marking slabs of dark gray colored clay, and somehow creating it into (hopefully) beautiful cups, bowls, plates, and platters.  So how do we do this?  First we roll out a slab of clay with a rolling pin (like making cookies, but harder).  Then we drape it across a plaster form of either a bowl or plate, and form it to the mold.  Cut of the exess, dry the clay, and take it off the mold.  Voila!  You have a half-finished product.  Then you fire it up in an oven (it really is like making cookies!), and paint it with a colorful glaze of your choosing.  The possibilities are endless.  Our shelves are already piling up with hundreds of artistic and imaginative creations!  And for a good cause too.  Next year, all these will be served with soup at our school for anyone to have, and all the money send to a charity for the homeless.  And it makes me glad to realize that doing something that I love can actually help someone!  It's pretty cool actually.

The Efforts Of Metal Design: Accomplished

Oh god, the metals, the metals.  How long it took to create this one little metal tree I couldn't tell.  My sweat and blood went into this piece – literally.  Well not completely literally, but my blood did go into it after I cut my finger multiple times (with a hairs width saw).  Clumsy.  But we've moved on from that now... and look at the result! It's actually quite amazing to think back to the beginning of making this piece, when it was just me and a plain sheet of shiny copper.  It sure went a long way! And it's not very shiny anymore is it. That's because when I torched it to fuse the pieces together, some kind of scientificy thing went on and turned it into this!  Very cool.  Anyway, I love this design.  And it's actually quite funny, but at first I had a completely different design planned out for it!  A rose!  Now that would have been about ten times harder.  Let's keep it 2-D for now.  Maybe next year when I'm a little more advanced I'll try something trickier.  But for now, I'm happy with this being this.

my 'me' collage

another accomplishment that i have finished in art class: my identity.  no, not really my identity identity, but the closest thing i can get to it on a square of cardboard.  all the things that make me, well, me! all the feelings and moods and emotions that i cant put into words, but can be transposed into visual art. everything that makes me up, except for the physical traits, (that was the self-portrait.)  to be honest, i actually thought that this version of my identity was actually more me than my self-portrait was! of course, when you look at the collage, it doesn't automaticly scream SAM! but to me, i can see every little layer and memory of me in it.

making a sheet of metal into art

have you ever thought that you can saw through metal- and i mean real, hard metal- with a saw the width of a hair? well, its possible. during this past week, my art class' room isn't, as usual, filled with Frank Sinatra, but with the sound of near twenty little saws working in synch. and its quite loud. but the result is already starting to pay off! my design is about halfway done, and its looking pretty good if i may say so myself :) but thats only the first part of it all. after i've finished sawing the complete design, i have to sodder it together, hammer it to death to leave artful prints, and then torch it to give the metal a final touch. once thats done, hopefully, i'll have created my very own decorative metal piece! wish me luck!

My Newest Inspiration and Wonder Woman, Frida Kahlo

 "I never painted dreams. I only painted my own reality."

      These are the words of Frida Kahlo, a passionate and influencial artist who lived in the early 1900s, and who is my new inspiration for art.  I've been starting to admire her work, looking at the intense emotion and care and anger that she put into her paintings.  The symbolism and the sad parallelism that they have to her life astonish me.  It's hard to believe that one woman can put so much of herself onto a single canvas.

     Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, in her parent's house, known as La Casa Azul, or The Blue House. This house now holds many of her paintings, and you can go visit it today to admire some of her work that's there.  At the age of six, Frida's life long medical problems began when she developed polio, which caused her right leg to look much thinner than the other.  It was to stay that way for the rest of her life.  In 1925, when Frida was a teenager, a bus she was riding in collided with a trolley car and she was severely injured.  She suffered from a broken spine, collarbone, ribs and pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, and a crushed and dislocated right foot and shoulder.  These continued to pain her for the rest of her life.  Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which made her never to be able to have children.  After the accident, she had to stay indoors for about three months, where she started to paint.  She realized how she could escape from the pain by this.  The result were many beautiful and haunting pictures.

      Most of Frida Kahlo's paintings were of herself or of fruit. The ones of herself were much more intriguing to me though. (the fruit weren't as haunting, though they were quite beautiful) It surprises me as I look at one of her paintings when I see how striking the composition is. It always has a hint of a darker mind behind it, even if it's supposedly an initially happy painting at first glance.  Here is one of my favorite paintings of hers.  (it's above ^^^)

In this self-portrait, called Memory, Frida finds a pictorial way to show the anguish that she suffered during the affair between her husband, Diego Rivera and her sister Cristina.  Her broken heart lies at her feet and its enormous size symbolizes the intensity of her pain. She illustrates her feelings of helplessness and despair through her lack of hands. Her face, though tearful, is expressionless.  The foot placed over water wears what looks like a tiny sailboat and may refer to her recent foot operation at the time. The hole left by Frida's extracted heart is pierced with a steel rod and seesawing cupids sit on either end. The greater the pain Frida wishes to show, it seems the bloodier her self-portraits become.  And they do get bloodier.  Here is another, called The Suicide of Dorothy Hale.   (it's above  ^^^)  Now, this one, isn't of Frida, but of a well known actress and stage-girl of this time, Dorothy Hale.  And apparently this woman didn't have a happy life, because, as Frida paints it, Mrs. Hale throws herself from the top of a very tall hotel, and dies.  Frida turned the event into a beautiful, heartbreaking and bloody painting.  This is another of my favorites of hers, I guess I just find it really interesting that one can paint another's death and turn it into a masterpiece.

        Well, I don't really know how to end this report, except to say the obvious:  Frida Kahlo's images will probably stay with me forever.  Their haunting faces and alluring compositions aren't the average painting to hang on a wall in your house, but that just means that Frida wasn't a normal person.  She had a much harder life than I ever thought was humanly possible, but she did not let it ground her whatsoever.  She soared in and through all her art, and the result... Well it was magnificent.

Self-Portrait? Check!

So I have finally finished the giant portrait of my face that i was working on all last month.  The art room is filled with many different, colorful versions of teenage faces, and I'm quite satisfied with my own result.  Purplish-lavenderish-perriwinkle would be the color I painted my face.  (I don't know the exact color, but i do know that it's some shade of purple :P).  The overall experience of creating the painting was very interesting.  Through this project I think I've finally figured out how to draw a face and make it look– well, human.  But above all, during this experience, I've realized just how intricate and detailed faces really are.  And I've come to respect those who can simply take a piece of paper, a pencil, and a mirror, and make an exact replica of themselves.  Now that takes talent.