The goal of this assignment was to find objects on South Congress that would create a harmonic piece.
I walked down the street and looked for objects that would fit the theme of stress that comes with college.
1. The strongest aspect of this piece is the accents of red, turquoise, and navy blue that tie the composition together.
2. The weakest aspect of this piece is that the objects look like randomly scattered objects with almost no correlation.
3. The composition can be improved by organizing the objects to make the viewer actually think about the theme.
4. To improve this piece conceptually, I can rip and cut the objects to give a deeper meaning to the wear and tear stress has on your body.
5. To improve this piece technically I can physically alter the project using scratching and scoring to give it a more damaged look.
The goal of this assignment was to find Gestalt principles or apply them to pictures you took along South Congress.
I took this picture to show continuity, closure, and identity.
1. The strongest aspect of this work is the digitally altered tile.
2. The weakest aspect of this piece is when printed the photo functions better with color than black and white how I originally printed it.
3. The composition can be improved by me using a DSLR instead of cellphone to take pictures. A DSLR would give it more definition.
4. Conceptually I could take away a tile and leave the girls eye revealed to further the concept of identity
5. Technically I could do another print of this image with color to give it more of a 3 dimensional quality.
The theme of my collage is stress. I walked down south congress and noticed that there were a large amount of cigarette butts on every street. Along with those cigarettes, I found the cartons they belonged to. I even came across a few beer bottle caps and a stress relief ball. The ball was shaped as a heart and I realized how people use alcohol and drugs to get rid of stress but those external factors can also put stress on ones health.
LINE
VALUE
SHAPE
TEXTURE
COLOR
VOLUME
MASS
PLANE
BALANCE
SCALE/PROPORTION
RHYTHM
EMPHASIS
MOTION
SPACE
TIME
LIGHT
For my final photos I wanted to stick with a more consistent theme of absence, presence, and symmetry.
In this photo the Gestalt principles that best apply are closure and symmetry. Even though the tile runs through her face you still recognize that by the shape of her head, if complete, would make an oval. Symmetry is consistent throughout the tiles giving you a prediction of what they may look like behind her hair.
This photo represents closure and containment. The chairs legs close to make a shamrock figure while containing the cement within it.
The candy store and the candy within it show proximity. There is a variety of candy from a distance it is grouped together for their similarity. The store is aligned with others of different styles. Had the candy store been placed randomly it would not fall under the category of proximity or similarity.
The white gate shows strong contrast against the black background and is symmetrical on its own. By flipping the images and adding a person you are still able to see the equality throughout the photos.
I categorized this under past experience. Not only does the graffiti hold value but by adding a person and fading them out it gives the sense time intervals.
My senior year of high school I decided to take an Advanced Placement Studio art class that pushed my artistic ability. Senior year was a very significant milestone in my life because it was the year I began to find my true artistic identity as well as my identity off of paper. I was more aware and involved in the world of feminism and other equality movements like Black Lives Matter. I began to express my passion for these movements through my artwork.
This was my first art piece that I did in AP Studio Art it was an identity project. The woman’s hair is shown as leaves and flowers to represent natural hair flourishing.
I chose to make her skin a darker chocolate color along with exaggerated lips and nose because those are the characteristics that are usually frowned down upon because of European beauty standards. The The turtle neck is a representation of how white America tries to constrict these beautiful natural features.
My concentration for the AP portfolio was focused on women of color. I tried to incorporate our hardships as well as our triumphs. This assortment displays that in society black women are often silenced about our experiences. How we are sexualized, fetishized and ignored. If we speak out about these issues we are painted as the angry black woman. Despite the negatives the same art pieces display how beautiful we are regardless of how society wants us to act or conform.
The law of Gestalt that best applies to these succulent plants is the law of symmetry. The plants are aligned on the board as well as equally spaced. They follow the line of the cut wood to an equal vantage point.
The law of Past Experience is present within this photo. The “i love you so much” is graffiti that we can assume was sprayed on the wall to convey feelings toward something or someone else. I like that the red lettering and sign in the bottom left corner contrast with the green building.
The wooden crate like structure display closure and containment.
Closure because the crates follow a pattern that suddenly stops in the bottom right corner but you can imagine another crate in the empty space given the previous pattern.
Containment because all of the crates are symmetrical creating a large outlined rectangle.
The ceiling fans and light fixtures fall under the umbrella of similarity as well as symmetry.
Each ceiling fan is different and each light is rusted a different way but they are still grouped together because the objects leads to the specific vantage point (the white sign)
This photo is busy like any street in Austin. I wanted to capture how much is thrown at us while simply walking down a street. The advertisements are meant to catch your attention to buy a companies product but they don’t succeed due to their competition. The photo is a blur because that is all busy street life is, a blur. I chose to put this picture under the category of common fate because you can assume where the two women are walking and where the photographer (myself) is heading.
To me this is another example of past experience. Seeing the iconic red, white, and blue stripes wrapped around a cylinder is the national symbol of a barbershop. Seeing this on any street corner I automatically imagine people sitting in chairs with black capes on their laps as the barber snips away loose ends of hair. There might be idle people talking about world issues or music playing in the background. Based on your experience with Barber shops you can paint a picture in your head of the activities that take place where this cylinder is mounted.
The fence and vertical flower pots make this picture symmetrical. By changing the photo to black and white it helped balance all of the objects in the background as well as the foreground.
I decided the Gestalt principle that best fit this photo was common fate because the gold streamers hang against the wall making glimmering lines that go straight down. You can also assume that the wall is not curved because the reflection on the streamers goes straight across.
This colorful wall reminds me of gummy candy in a container at a frozen yogurt stand. With that being said in a container of candy can often come in different shapes and sizes but they are still grouped together because of their similarities. This wall to me displays the law of proximity.
This wall isn’t as colorful or unorganized as the previous one but it does share the similarity of of having a pattern. The pattern in fact is highly consistent and repetitive which is why I chose it for the law of continuity. No matter what place you look in the photo it will have the same sized tile.
I also chose to take this photo because the tile was a shade of black that tricks your eyes into seeing the blurred reflection as the surface.
“The Turquoise Door” had these contrasting colors that were in the middle of white brick walls. The white contained the color of the door. Since the door is a rectangle it gave the right illusion for the law of containment.
The name of store floated above the entrance only connected to an iron rod making 3/4 of a rectangle. The brown ceiling provided the missing 1/4 of the shape giving it closure.
For this project the object I chose was a statue of the Virgin Mary that my grandmother gave me the day that I moved to Austin. When she gave it to me she said it will watch over me so I took her words and tried to incorporate them into the photos by placing the statue around students in their everyday lives or placing it in the nooks around campus.
While walking around campus I was searching for areas that displayed a lot of symmetry. I decided to center the statue in that area to balance the lines and draw the eye to the center of the photo.
I absolutely love any form of golf cart. No matter where I positioned the statue it didn’t fit in which made it fun.
With these three photos I tried to focus on perspective and shape
1. The main points of each article were artist and entrepreneurs are unbelievably similar when it comes to our work ethic and journey to achieve our goals. We both have that drive to succeed.
2. Artist can learn from their “entrepreneurial cousins” how to take advantage of our resources. For example networking and getting feedback from support groups on the work that we are doing everyday.
3. I do agree that artist are entrepreneurs because both of us have to swim upstream to get to where we want to be. We start off with a blank page within the process of trying to build upon that paper we advance and overcome hard obstacles that other professionals don’t generally have to go through when they start their career.
4. Out of the 12 characteristics of an artist I agree that artist are humanist, act like children, and are craftspeople. We are very observant of human emotion. Like a child our minds often wonder about the possibilities of anticipated work and design. As craftspeople we put our all into making that vision become real matter outside of the brain.
5. I would add to the list that as an artist I know that we are our own biggest critics. We spend so much personal time working on our work and if it doesn’t turn out the way we envisioned or we know we did not meet out full potential we can be very critical and hard on ourselves.
Grit Test
1. I do have the grit according to the quiz I’m in the 80th-89th percentile of the users that have taken the quiz with a score of 4.13
2. To increase my level of grit I can work on staying committed to my projects that I sign up for. I have been pretty good about the projects that are spaced out but I know there will be a time that everything will be hectic but that still means i need to stay committed.
As I walked up the street of South Congress I carried only a water bottle, a backpack, and cell phone. The assignment was to take creative pictures along the road while finding a focus point. I decided that my focus in the photos would be an abundance of vivid color with generally similar surroundings or backdrop.
When I took the pictures I tried to keep the slogan “Keep Austin Weird” close to my concentration because the people, festivals, and cultures are the gems within Austin that enhance that slogan. Finding areas that weren’t surrounded by trees was challenging at first but when I did spot that random pop of color it was like finding a gem. Once you come across something peculiar you’ll carry that memory with you for the rest of your lifetime.
If I saw this building with ample amount of red accents as a child I’d definitely remember the area that surrounds it if I came back to Austin 10 years later. I’d use the building as some sort of anchor in a memory timeline.
Opening a gate to an emerald garden is an invitation for exploration and just another adventure that could be embedded into someone’s memory bank that they will look back on and smile.
These are photos of out of place objects that fit in so well because of their contrasting environments.
