Happiest Moment

Cheesy as it sounds, my proudest/happiest moment has to be the day I made the Varsity Girls Basketball team at Granada Hills Charter High School as a freshman.  Basketball is a huge aspect in my family, my aunt played for USC, my mom was All City in high school, and both my brother and dad still play.  Starting from the age of seven my life consisted of basketball practice, clinics, games, drills, weight training, and tournaments.  All this preparation was intended for the day I entered high school.  I was determined to make the varsity level team as a freshman no matter what it took.  It may seem trivial to others, but in a sense I felt like I had to prove something to myself and others.  When I want something specific, I will do whatever it takes to get it.  Now, I am not talking about materialistic items, or friends, or boyfriends; I am talking about issues that have to do with myself.  Making the team was a test for myself about how good I really am or working to become the person I want to be.  Basketball is a reflection of myself, an identity, and not making the team would mean I wasn't good enough.  The way I think usually doesnt make sense to others, but I truly believe that if I try my hardest to attain a goal and fail, it means I am not good enough.  Over and over I have strived to attain my dreams, making varsity my freshman year, getting into my #1 pick school, and maintaining at least one 4.0 in college.  This moment was, so far, the one and only time in my life where I gave it my all and came out on top. It was literally, a dream come true.

Embarrassing Moment

 During PE at Nobel Middle School I decided to play on the "jungle gym" during free time with my friends.  At my school we had metal horizontal bars at varying levels, pull up bars against the wall, climbing pole, and rope.  Attempting to execute as many tricks as we could, I decided to try and show off my acrobatic skills and do a fancy flip/tuck around the horizontal bar.  Keep in mind our PE uniform consisted of a baggy white t-shirt and mesh basketball shorts.  While spinning around the bar my PE clothes got stuck and literally wrapped themselves around the bar.  I could not get down from the bar because my clothes were holding me up and I hung there while my friends fell to the floor laughing.  In a struggle to get down my shorts eventually ripped and freed me.  During the rest of PE I had to walk around with basketball shorts virtually ripped into a semi skirt.  Maybe you had to be there.

Looking back at my most embarrassing moment I realized that as a middle schooler my self consciousness was not as big of an issue as it is today. As embarrassing as this event was, it did not scar my self confidence at school or around my friends.  At the time I thought it was hilarious but in retrospect I made a huge fool out of myself.  Nowadays even speaking up in a classroom can make me flustered and embarrassed.  I guess this story can take on the quote, "ignorance is bliss".  In middle school I could care less what people thought about me or what I thought about myself.  Sometimes I think I am my biggest critique.  Before I had an idea of what my ideal self should be, I acted without thought, without worrying what does this action say about me or how will others perceive me.  This all has to do with self consciousness, image, and personal strength.  

Art Show Review: SRB Women's Center

http://www.sa.ucsb.edu/women/VisitourSpace/ArtGallery.aspx

For this week's art show review I decided to visit the SRB Women's Center Art Gallery.  This art space holds workshops and displays pieces related to gender and social injustice.  The work on display is usually done by locals or created from the workshops.  The Women's Center Art Gallery has their own art curator that "updates the gallery quarterly, hosts art openings, workshops, and related events.  

One piece in particular stood out to me, which consisted of some type of ink on wood panels.  The detail in each face and the emotions it provoked was quite powerful.  The women on the panel to the right are portrayed as broken, lost, beaten down.  But the face to the left is the essence of power and strength.  It seems as if this work reveals some type of transformation.  How all around the world women are seen as the inferior gender yet it only takes one to emerge as an icon to others, invoking hope and a future.  

It is nice to know that students have a place to put their art up for display.  I also like how the theme of this art gallery revolves around gender issues, something I take great interest in.   

Confessions

Every time I go to the bathroom I read confessions and secrets on the walls.  Sometimes these confessions are deep and serious, as if the stall acts as a secret therapist.  Surprisingly, chains of conversations take place with girls giving advice, support, even criticism.  I immediately thought about a project involving documentation and participation of confessions and secrets inside the girls' bathroom.  I think because these comments can be anonymous and the writer will never know who exactly will read the writings on the wall, true feelings come out.  These are real confessions that take place everyday in a public area, with the proper documentation and artistic details, these stalls can evolve into works of art.  

Influenced by a prank on TV, I thought about suspending objects inside jello.  Because jello is a solid that has the properties of a liquid, objects have the ability to float.  For this project I thought jello could be a metaphor for a state of mind.  I would put objects that represent problems in my life inside the jello.  These objects would be suspended through out the jello representing my current state of mind.  Sometimes it is hard to talk about problems and art can act as a form of catharsis, an outlet to express our inner most thoughts in ways words cannot.  

I have always taken an interest in photography and while learning the elements of a camera, such as shutter speed and aperture, I also learned about long exposures.  When you set a SLR camera to a slow shutter speed time (seconds) another person can write or draw images with a light and the effects result in  the picture above.  This technique would be a good way to incorporate the confessions project because the person writing with light cannot be seen in the picture.  This project can involve many people, in a sort of photoshoot, the participants can write or draw a word or image that represents an inner most secret.  With these pictures I can create a collage or some type of photo book that can display all of the confessions.  

Understanding Comics: Chapter 3&4

Chapter 3 focuses on a key element in understanding comics, closure.  McCloud defines closure as "the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole".  In a sense closure acts as a cognitive function in our brain that fills in missing information based on prior experience.  A prime example is a comic book, and how a narrative is conveyed through this medium.  McCloud describes six different approaches to panel to panel transitions in comics (comic narrative).  The first is moment to moment.  Here a picture shows every move with great detail.  The second is action to action where there is a single subject in distinct progressions.  The third is subject to subject which stays within the scene or idea but involves a greater degree of reader involvement to create meaning.  The fourth is scene to scene.  This requires deductive reasoning to understand the transitions.  Here the panels transitions transport the reader across significant distances of time and space.  The fifth type of transition is aspect to aspect.  This bypasses time and sets a "wandering eye" on different aspects to create mood.  The six and last type of transition is non sequitur.  Oddly this final transition offers no logical relationship between panels.  

The main theme of chapter four focuses on the idea of comic frames and how these frames can evoke time and motion.  Scott McCloud points out that time in comics is a very complex notion that can be executed in many techniques.  A single comic panel can be seen as representing a single moment in time and between those frozen moments (or between panels) the readers' minds fill in the intervening moments which ultimately creates the illusion of time and motion.  McCloud emphasizes the fact that the frame itself is an important icon, it acts as a "general indicator that time or space is being divided".  Panel shapes can actually make a difference in the perception of time, thus real time is altered and can be controlled.  To show motion, McCloud explains that idea that a single panel can "represent a span of time through pictures", this can be called a 'motion line'.  Different comic styles to evoke motion have evolved around the world, for example, between America and Japan.  

Function of Art

A non art object can easily be transformed into a work of art.  Through the medium of photography and the dark room, an everyday object such as a baby fence, can turn into a crisp black and white image.  With the correct use of shutter speed and aperture artistic techniques can be applied in the photograph to change a mundane object into something visually stimulating and aesthetically appealing.  Photography can capture a moment in time, document an item, even tell a story.  An artist can manipulate an object and have it be perceived as whatever he wants.  Just because the creator calls it art, does it make it so?  What constitutes art and who verifies this claim?  Is photography even a form of art, or a form of documentation?  These questions have arisen through out the art world debate and yet no answer can be concluded as "the one".

On the other hand, can art be functional?  Recycling last week's project I made a bow tie out of game dice.  This "tie dye" actually acts as a bow tie that closes a button up dress shirt.  Here a piece of art becomes functional.  At first I thought it would be hard to find art that is also functional, but when taking a closer look and doing some research, I actually realized that many utilitarian objects in life can also be called art.  Furniture, electronics, clothes, houses, and much more, are all designed by artists.  Creative thought goes into the creation of each object, it has to take into account who uses the object and how they use it.  In a sense, the creators of utilitarian objects go through the same process as an artist creating art work.  And just as art is put on show, everyday objects are critiqued and scrutinized when going on sale.  Both art and functional items are determined successful by the public's reaction.  Whose to say that art and utilitarian object are all that different.

Everyday Activity in a Public Space

For me, personally, sleeping is a very private activity.  I get very uncomfortable if there are people in the room who are not sleeping when I want/try to sleep and I can never fall asleep in public places.  This assignment seemed to test my public space consciousness and personal awareness.  Self consciousness is a big issue in my life, they way I am perceived and how I present myself to others.  I guess I always felt embarrassed when sleeping in public or infront of other people because you cannot control what you look like or if you drool, snore, talk, etc.  While attempting to sleep outside on the sidewalk, it was very hard to just lay there with my eyes closed in the first place.  I felt awkward and out of place, out of my own environment. 

 This assignment help me understand my personal space boundaries.  I had to break the barriers of the comfort zone and just go for an out the box idea no matter what it took.  In the end I didn't get to actually take a nap, I would doze off here and there but kept waking up.  Self perception, or rather self image, is a big issue in today's society.  We attempt to give off a certain "look" by the way we dress, walk, speak, act, style our hair, etc.  This assignment in particular reminded me how big of an impact society puts on "images".  From selecting our profile pictures to posing a certain way to take pictures, we consciously control every aspect of how we want others to see us or how we want to be seen.  Ironically the only time we cannot control our "image" is when we sleep.  By sleeping in public I hope to break the binary of the controlled "image" and all its underlying meaning.