Topic #1: Creative Impulse

First 3 pieces  

     For the first week of WARP I received my first assignments. Our assignment was to get inspiration from household objects that we considered art. Below you will see what I used as my inspiration, a wooden decorative skull mask and a deer skull. Those were the elements I wanted to incorporate into my pieces. 

 

  I made four pieces instead of three for the first assignment, mainly because I disliked the first one I made. One of them is a small acrylic piece that shows two decorative skeletons, the other three are done in water color. The larger water color piece has a blue skull to match the household object which the other two pieces were colorful deer skulls. The feedback that I received for my pieces is that they had an illustrative/storybook style and that they were kind of small. 

Two small works

   The next assignment were the two small works. Everyone was

 supposed to bring a material, doesn't matter what it was. Then all the materials were placed on the table and everyone had to grab three materials; a material to draw on and the medium to use. I grabbed acrylic paint, oil pastels and wood to paint on. For my pieces I kept with the theme of the colorful deer skulls (especially blue). For my round piece it had a plain wood background and the creature had black fur, for my feedback I notice that non of those aspects were liked so I changed them, I gave the creatures body more texture and color and I painted the background yellow. For the second piece the only feedback was to rust the nails so that it matches the piece.

In-Depth Project.

    The In-depth project was supposed to be our ambitious piece. I wanted to keep the theme of the blue deer skull and flowers so I did. My piece is made using watercolor, acrylic, string, ink, and glitter. When it came to critique my piece was not very much liked, there were flaws such as the color and the placement and that it was hard to understand the emotion, but I very much liked my piece and I will still accept their feedback. 

Response to: “The White Bird” by John Berger & "‘Jerry Saltz on the Outsider Art Fair - and Why There’s No Such Thing As ‘Outsider’ Art ." by Jerry Saltz.

"The White Bird":

John Berger brings up the point of aesthetic and how that affects us in its own way. Humans do focus a lot on what is beautiful instead of what is unappealing. Similar to the difference of life and death. When John Berger writes about the wooden white bird it opens the idea to philosophies. The white bird is a tradition that was passed down creating some sort of waterfall affecting of creating an image of nature.

Humans see the beauty of life and nature of what comes before and after death. John Berger states “art imitates a creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify, to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature.” Many artists do take inspiration from the living, from nature and many times alter it in their own way. We incorporate our emotions to the art. Aesthetics go along with our emotions.

"‘Jerry Saltz on the Outsider Art Fair - and Why There’s No Such Thing As ‘Outsider’ Art ."

     Categorizing outsider art apart from mainstream art is not okay, just because they are self taught or they didn't go into an art institution. I believe that all art is considered art they may have their differences but you still can’t look down on it just because its self taught or because that artist did not attend an art school. 

I agree with Jerry that outsider art should also be placed in museums. Art is a way to express yourself so all art will be different and never the same but they all also have their own different emotions to them. The art community should be accepting of the different artist and art that is out there before it is too late.

WARP In-class paper folding

             On the first day of WARP we were given the unexpected task of creating a 3-D art piece out of paper. We were given no materials or equipment, we could only use what we had. I used some glue and scissors but it still didn't help especially under this time constraint; which was fifteen minutes. 

          The point of this assignment was to see if we knew how to use our art skills to make something. We talked about how you could fold the paper in different ways in order to keep the paper together. Folding, ripping,  and crumbling the paper were different ways to give the paper forms. We used art skills but we could even use skills we learned as kids, such as origami to create figures. This paper folding exercise was an intense way to demonstrate skill.

WARP First Post

Labels Help You Organize

All blog posts must be labeled with two keywords, which blogger calls Labels. When faculty visits your blog for evaluation purposes, we will use the labels to quickly find your work. If you do not use the keywords properly, we will not be able to find your work. Proper set-up and maintenance of your blog falls under the Research and Participation part of your grade which counts for 30% of the overall semester grade. 

Topical Keywords

The first set of keywords correspond to the module we are working in. We will refer to these as topical keywords since they correspond to the topic we are exploring over the two-week periods. Your first group of posts will be labeled under Topic: Creative Impulse since this is the first topic (Topic #1). Here are the topical keywords you will use through out the semester:

Topic: Creative Impulse

Topic: Pattern and Ornament

Topic: Rhinoceros

Topic: Narrative

Topic: Landscape

Topic: Zine

Categorical Keywords

The second set of keywords will organize your posts according to kind. Here are the Keywords you will use for Labels:

Exercises - tag for posts documenting all assigned exercises. The first one will be the paper folding exercise from the first class. 

Readings - tag for posts containing your two paragraph responses to the assigned readings. The first ones will be for "The White Bird" and the Jerry Saltz article from Vulture.com. 

Small Works - tag for posts documenting all assigned small works. The first blog post labeled Small Works will contain images and accompanying descriptions of the three small works you complete for the Creative Impulse Module (Topic #1). 

In-Depth Projects - tag for posts documenting all assigned In-Depth projects. The first blog post labeled In-Depth Projects will contain images (or video if appropriate) and accompanying descriptions of the more robust work you produce in response to the Creative Impulse Module (Topic #1).

Outside Visits - tag for posts containing your two paragraph responses to all required visits outside of the classroom. These include visits we do together as a class [during class time] or individually outside of class time. 

Please be sure to use both a topical and categorical keyword when labeling your posts.

Next Steps

1. After copying and pasting this text into your first blog post, create your labels from the keywords we listed above. In the Edit post window you will find an area titles Labels where you can add your own custom labels to your blog. This is where you will add the keywords we listed above. Please be sure to add all keywords to the Labels window for this first blog post. 

The easiest way to do this is by copying and pasting the following text into the Labels window for this blog post:

Topic: Creative Impulse, Topic: Pattern and Ornament, Topic: Rhinoceros, Topic: Narrative, Topic: Landscape, Topic: Zine, Exercises, Readings, Small Works, In-Depth Projects, Outside Visits

Here's a screen shot of what that looks like, and where to find Labels when editing a post

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