k00287270

[k00287270]

Roof/Wood and Lamp/Wall

[k00287270]

🩶

第68回　東京藝術大学卒業・修了作品展

「生きているところ　breathe with nature」

2020.1/28-2/2

私は私の絵はどこから来ているのか、知りたいと思っています。 イメージを見るには、思い浮かべたり、夢に出てきたり、そういう方法で見ることができます。 しかし描くということを通さないと、絵にはなりません。

地面の近い取手のアトリエで、まず畑に野菜植えました。 それより前にそこで土を耕した人がいたと知り、実際に会うこともできました。 野菜の育っていく様子を見て、食べたり、意味もなく引き抜いたり、集まってくる虫や猫やアライグマに出会いました。 フレスコの技法を学び、自然の素材を使用し、完成したら石になる絵だということを知りました。 窓辺の草むらや畑を見ながら、同じ光の中で絵の具を触ることができました。 畑にしている部分の地面を掘ると、粘土がたくさん出てきました。 それを集めて細かくすりつぶして乾燥させて絵の具を作りました。 育てた芋を掘り、収穫したものを友人に贈るととても喜ばれました。 木を熱で輪っか状に曲げる技法を学びました。その方法で、木枠作りに取り組みました。 育てた芋の茎が、冬になり立ち枯れをして乾燥して硬くなりました。 それを刈り取って、じっくりと煮ると、茎の中のスポンジ状の部分を取り出すことができました。 細かく粉砕して、丸い木枠の中にたらしこんで乾燥させると、紙ができました。 今年の誕生日に畑だったところに寝転び自分の形を地面にうつしました。 そこに小石を撒いてその様子を春から冬まで観察しました。 秋に小石を退かすと、草むらに自分の形のあながあきました。 そしてその場所の絵を描きました。

地面を掘ると真夏でもしっとり冷たい土があり、 真冬でも草むらに伏せた板の裏には無数の幼虫が蠢いているのを目にしました。 手で穴を掘れば爪が剥がれて痛いし、雑草を引き抜けば根のはる力に及ばずに足を取られて転んだりします。 夜の暗闇の中で月を探して歩くと、光の届かない木々の隙間から、向こうの空の明るさを思い知ります。 体験は私の身体を経由して、イメージになって現実に絵となって現れます。

世界はわからないことだらけで、そのわからなさは怖くもあり、希望でもあります。そしてわからないから絵が描けます。

今、出てきた絵を見て、誰かや自分の生きているところを感じて、 呼吸をするじぶんにきづいたとき、「作品」はそのわからない故郷に帰還していくように思います。

すべては　生きていること　に尽きるのではないかと。

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That one vogue article yapping about 2014…

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Photoshoot for my festival poster with @k00286723

For the Forever Twilight festival poster photo shoot I wanted to make subtle references to the book series and their themes, here we have our figure, wrapped in a white sheet to represent Bella Swan’s innocence, in the most forested part of the college as visual allusion to Forks National Park.

@k00283773 kindly let us pose in front of their work, its light reflecting lending as reference to Edward Cullen’s sun reflective skin.

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Early Poster Development - Sketches, Thumbnails & Notes

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Artist Research - Laura Catherine Soto

Born in San Diego, now working in Los Angelos, sculpture and combined materials artist Laura Soto holds a deep connection with the alien of the ocean, clearly seen throughout her large body of work.

Soto’s appreciation for the tangible and utilisation of organic material is admirable in the dystopian age; her collection of fibreglass and seashell cover hardback books read as pure and involuntary mangnimanity.

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Semester 3 GDC Lego Icon Icebreaker

As an icebreaker for our GDC class we were instructed to blind pick Lego pieces and create an icon using a simplified version of the shape of said Lego pieces.

I blind picked a piece of Lego that I thought resembled the shape of an animal hoof. I sketched different concepts which my peers voted on and made a couple of refined versions of their favourite.

I incorporated circular shapes into my icon to reference the Lego piece’s studs. The icon had been developed into a sort of robotic cyber-hoof.

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Primary Research - Couch Location

For my primary research at the start of this project, I took some photos of the different locations I lived at during summer 2022.

I looked at the colours and atmosphere of the photos and drew inspiration from them throughout my project.

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Artist’s Statement

In response to the Movement brief for our project this semester, I began by exploring my movements thought the summer of 2022 through couch surfing.

I looked at the environments I lived in during this time and thought a lot about how I felt in those spaces.

After collecting primary research through taking photos of the different spaces I lived in, I made a painting in Eoin’s tool making workshop to try and showcase the journey I went on in an abstract way.

Through work in the graphic design workshops with Lorraine and later on my own in studio, through different methods I explored the travelling aspect of that summer, creating my own missing person’s poster and serpentine train tickets.

Guided by Michael and Sarah in studio 2, I loosened the grip aesthetic value has upon my view of art and how to pick and choose when a piece of arts needs certain colours and textures as they are not always necessary.

When it came to putting together my project display I initially felt dissatisfied. I wanted something that felt more cohesive and full, but I remembered from my time in sculpture that the aesthetics of our art is only one of many things that gives it value, the meaning was there throughout all of the pieces and I understand better now how that’s also very important and I’m glad I didn’t let myself lose my project in my hunger for visual pleasantness.

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Cardboard Snake Compass

After the icon design workshop, I wanted to include my travelling snakes idea into my sculpture elective.

I cut the snakes out of cardboard and pieced the zig zag design together with masking tape and painted over them in varying muted shades.

I made different snakes for north, south, east and west. I used wedding to cover up the snakes, something to add a struggle to their travels, I wanted to imply to the viewer that the snakes had emerged from somewhere else.

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Artist Research- Laura Passalacqua

Laura Passalacqua is a director working in both illustration and animation. Her work is carried out traditionally on paper using bold colours creating an authentic and warm, yet visually striking aesthetic.

Her 2022 short film Eyes Wide Open follows a teenage girl, on a summer’s day as she moves through different emotions, such as boredom and infatuation, surrounding a man she spots by the local pond.

Passalacqua has also done commercial work for brands like Chanel. She implements her art style and rotoscope animation in this work to create advertisements that are visually appealing and draw the consumer in.

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Artist Research - ASMA

Wander & Pursuit, 2022

ASMA is the artist duo comprised of Mexican artist Hanya Beliá and Ecuadorean artist Matias Armendaris. The art they create together reflects the inherent collaboration of a duo, their pieces being the merging of mythology with contemporary, a hybrid of fantasy and the mundane.

CHEST, 2022 (right) 'Le Roman de la Rose', 2022 (left)

Their creations sit between our world and the other, objects with life and life made into objects.

Stranger Reflecting Animals, 2020 (left) Venemo, 2020 (right)

I really appreciate the range of materials used in the duo’s work and the ethereal transformation they preform upon otherwise natural subjects.

Gárgolas Temporales, 2021

Their sculptural work stops the movement of reality into the inconceivable in a way that I feel reflects the elements of movement in my own couch surfing concept.

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Milk Carton Sculpture Piece

Thinking further after creating missing persons posters for my project, I thought about other ways in which the emergency of a person going missing could be visually communicated.

In the 1980s a common way of publicising missing children’s cases in the US was to print their notices on the sides of milk cartons, though I wanted to abstract this idea rather than just recreating it.

Firstly, I scaled the milk carton up. I measured a 1 litre milk carton at home and scaled it to 6’2” tall. For materials, I recycled cardboard sheets from another student in the college. As the cardboard had already been painted over with original art, I decided to spray paint over them. I chose a light grey paint to spray over the cardboard with to give the piece a cold and apathetic feel.

I assembled the pieces using a combination of gum tape, soaked and zip ties to hold everything together.

Thinking back and forth on the idea, I ultimately decided to have the back of the piece removed as to give the sculpture a level of interactivity, I am quite pleased with effect given from this choice.

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Artist Research - Kyle Thompson

Kyle Thompson is an American surreal photographer based in Portland Oregon.

When researching artists to help inspire me for my couch surfing concept, Thompson's work stood out to me immediately and I felt my concept understood within the context of his 2017 series Spaces Between.

In haunting and abstract ways, these photos give a sense of movement, as well as holding a sense of otherness and unbelonging.

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What’s In My Bag / Satchel Bag Piece

Exploring my concept of couch surfing through the Summer of 2022, I relied on a leather satchel bag to keep all of my essentials and I wanted to create a piece to give that bag a spotlight.

Something that immediately came to mind were the all too common “What’s In My Bag?” YouTube videos of the late naughts - 2010s, popularised by video bloggers such as Gigi Getty, Kandee Johnson and Zoe Sugg.

I studied the thumbnails of these videos and felt that the soft and swirly font used by Zoe Sugg for her video What's In My Bag | 2016 was the perfect font to reference for my piece as it contrasts the harsh concept of the project itself.

I measured my bag and scaled it down to fit onto an A3 piece of white card and started sketching.

I was originally planning on making this piece as a risograph but unfortunately the room was full on the day I planned on making it. I decided instead to finish the piece with bold coloured markers.

While I would have preferred to make this as a riso, the markers achieved a similar effect and the bag being left as line-art only really lets the drawing stand out and hold its own, which I am quite pleased with.

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Icon Design Workshop

Today I took the Icon Design workshop for my GDC elective. We were tasked with creating an icon that clearly demonstrated a concept related to our project. I chose to create these snake ticket icons as it related to my project concept of the movements I made couch surfing throughout the summer of 2022.

I started the icon design process by sketching out various shapes of train tickets in black, grey and white.

Icons must be easy to read from a distance and stand out. I took the outline of a train ticket and cut the silhouette of the side profile of a snake weaving through. I was travelling a lot last summer and I felt like a snake for finally speaking up more about my home life.

I also sketched out some concepts of my a figure surfing a moth. Thinking further about deceptive and generally disliked animals, moths came to mind. I especially liked the idea of using a moth in my icon as they are often drawn to lights tuned on at night during the summer, much like myself last year. A figure surfing the moth like a wave as a more literal reference to couch surfing.

I ultimately scrapped this idea as it felt like more of a reach in terms of metaphor, and was visually unappealing.

Here is a clearer close up of some of my snake ticket icons:

I appreciated this workshop for how it made me think about readability and communication within icon design. The workshop also inspired me to explore the snaking aspect of my icon, and the emotions felt during this time.

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Missing Poster for Graphic Design Communication Elective

After attending the Illustrator to Riso workshop by Lorraine I decided to use my new Illustrator skills to create my very own missing poster for my project. I am exploring my movement(s) made throughout Summer 2022, after quitting my job and leaving Limerick without telling anybody. To most people who knew me at the time I was, in a sense, "missing" so it only made sense to create a missing persons poster for my project.

I used Rachel Amber's Missing Poster (2013) by the Life is Strange design team as both inspiration and reference for my own poster.

Date taken from the date I left Limerick and additional info section filled out with Lyrics from Knuckle Velvet by Hayden Silas Anhedönia.