Visiting Artists (Day 2)

Alec Acevedo is an Illustration major in his senior year. Alec showed us his work, which mainly consisted of assignments he did in school. He focuses on fantasy illustration, and wants to work on graphic novels. I wasn't aware how heavily the major was reliant on painting. Looking at his collection of work, you can tell that Alec leans more towards a darker style of animation. The most interesting thing Alec showed was his sketchbook: it really showed his skill as an artist and how he worked through his ideas before creating a final project. The level of detail in even his sketches shows that Alec is passionate about what he does. Graduating this semester, Alec emphasized the fact that illustrators have to promote themselves in any way possible, whether it be a website, postcards, email, or getting connected with a local gallery. Alec plans on working freelance after he graduates, but he is also going to be working on a graphic novel with the company he did an internship with.

Shimpei Shirafuji is a graduate student in art photography. Instead of setting up scenes, Shimpei instead shoots from the hip: taking pictures of anything that might catch his eye. His work didn't really appeal to me because it looked like not much thought was put into the images, which Shempei even admitted himself. Shimpei said that sometimes when he is going through the pictures he has taken in a day, he doesn't even remember taking some of them. This makes it seem like anyone could have the same level of work as Shempei as long as they just walk around shooting pictures. Before graduate school, Shimpei said he mainly took pictures of objects, and didn't particularly like photos of people, but he now has a balanced work of both. Shempei recently had an exhibition up, and he showed us a smaller scale of how the photos were arranged on the walls of the room. His work is printed on normal paper, and tacked to the walls, not mounted or framed. This is because Shempei says that the individual photographs aren't really worth that much to him, and I agree very few of his photos are things that are overly interesting.

Video in Better quality

Visiting Artists

Kat King is a fourth year industrial design major. She showed her current portfolio of work, which concentrated on work for the community and enhanced environmental design. Kat's work shows the amount of time and research is put into each project, yet she loves what she does. Industrial designers have to think of every possible problem, and create a design that will enhance people's lives. As an Industrial Design major myself, I was very interested in what Kat had to say, and the fact that she was actually a student here gave me an idea of what I could be doing in 3 more years. Following her love for kids, after college Kat hopes to get a job creating toys for the community, such as for playgrounds. In her most recent project, she designed a set of gears that children could play with at local playgrounds; later that day she was headed over to a local school to have children play with her prototypes and critique her work. The criticism from children, Kat said, is more severe than that of adults.

Varvara Mikushkina is a art photography undergrad whose passion is to photograph her family and Russian girls. Just because she's a photography major doesn't mean that's all she does. Varvara also paints and draws, which keeps her creative. She has found a way to combine her love for photography, painting and drawing by combining the three in unique ways. In her photographs, Varvara takes slightly staged photos, trying to capture the small moments in life that many people may not focus on. Most of her photos are portraiture which focuses on her life and heritage: the clothing of her models gives us a sense of her Russian heritage. Looking at her photos from mikushkina.blogspot.com, you can see that Varvara repeats the same models in her work, but although the subjects are the same, the photos are all different, giving a view into the mind of the artist.

Personal Soundtrack

This assignment was to create a soundtrack to your life using pictures, and sound clips. The images had to be different things such as self-portraits, things that identify you, friends, etc. The images I chose were those of places I've been, important times in my life, and also just some random things that I've done, like coming across a live beaver at 2am on the side of the road. A few of my sculptures are also shown in the video. We had to chose three songs that we felt best represented ourselves at the time: I chose "Hysteria" by Muse, "The Fallen" by Franz Ferdinand, and "Run" by Snow Patrol. Muse and Snow Patrol are two of my favorite bands, and the songs that I chose are ones that I feel connected to the most. "The Fallen" was chosen because I feel like it has the tempo of my life right now: upbeat. Together the pictures and sounds create a soundtrack to my life.

SQUIRREL! (street art assignment)

What did I think of when I thought about what to create for the Street Art assignment? Squirrels made out of trash bags of course! By putting magnets in the front feet of the squirrels I was able to stick them just about anywhere.

Water Tower

Response to Style Wars

It's understandable that graffiti creates a lot of controversy. In one respect, it is a way for the youth and young adults to express themselves and feel like they have made their mark on society. On the other hand, graffiti defaces public property and the efforts against graffiti and in the removal of it cost the government and transportation system hundreds and thousands of dollars.
Graffiti becomes a problem when the subway system and sides of buildings are covered with tags. One person who was interviewed said that he only cared about bombing as many things as possible, he didn't care about making his work the biggest or best looking. This mindset is when graffiti becomes a nuisance: its not an art form, but just a way for people to mark where they have been. Graffiti just becomes a jumbled mess, and the areas that actually have graffiti that looks good are painted over by people who just want to be d-bags and go over other peoples work.
Graffiti has the potential to become something other than a nuisance. Taggers can put their work on a canvas instead of a subway car and sell it instead of having their work tagged over or removed. This allows the work of artists to last far longer than it would have on the streets. Graffiti artists could also be hired out to decorate sides of buildings, subway stations, and trains. This way, artists can leave their mark for all people to see in a way that will last, instead of trying to bomb every single train, leaving work unfinished and doing things that are potentially dangerous. The government should not totally shut down graffiti artist, but promote it in a way that will be beneficial instead of detrimental to the community. Some amazing art can be created if artists are given a chance by the public. If artists are commissioned to work in the interiors and exteriors of subway cars, other artists would be less tempted to vandalize the public property because there wouldn't be a blank canvas for them to work on. This would also give each train an individual presence, turning graffiti into a public art form rather than a destructive pastime.
There should be a way for the public and graffiti artists to come to an agreement to make graffiti less of an issue in the city. Now that it has surfaced, graffiti will never disappear, it will only evolve.