Monday, May 4, 2009

THE MAGIC OF EXTREMES BOOK AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ON ISSUU

THE MAGIC OF EXTREMES BOOK SPREADS

In the beginning my experience with making this book was a rough, but towards the end proved to be valuable.Throughout the year I felt sort of scattered and lost, holding onto a solid concept. The more I sat around and thought and stretched for ideas the more I got the impression that I should NOT have the book be anything but a fluid stream of my own experiences over the year. Before this realization, I felt trapped within different aesthetics, i didn't know where to go in terms of color or overall look. It was more a mash up of randomness and frustration. It was also pretty difficult at the end of our four years at Ringling to dig within myself and pull out imagery and content that meant something and said something about me as a person and designer.
However, the more I fought letting go, the less content I had. It was only when I stopped really CARING about the profound meaning of things and just let my concept of the parallel between humans and nature BE that I found my images, phrases and colors. Everything then sort of started to fall into place. My whole look and feel of my book started to come together and I ended up with a piece that I am very proud of. It was a stressful and frustrating experience at first but in the end became liberating.

















ARTIST TATTOOS CONT.


This section of the book was made using the tattoos pics my friends gave me. Since all of them are artists, I made the background ink, like a paint brush stroke. Also this ties in with tattoo art itself. I think that tattoos are very mysterious, soulful and personal to the people that get them. Everybody as a reason behind why they want to display a particular message or symbol permanently on their bodies. Btw, the boyfriend wasn't too happy I made him front and center shirtless for the whole world to see:)

SEA SURVEY




For this last section of my book I posted a question online asking my friends what they thought about the sea. Whether it was a good memory or a bad one, or just adjectives or words that reminded them of the water i asked them to respond in a sentence or short story. I then compiled them all into an old sketch book and scanned them in.
I had found while doing some reading, two sentences close to each other that when combined read " The sea and the rhythm with night descending." and thought it fit with the theme of my book since it is all about parallels and light and darks of nature. The blackness of the waters represented the night in my studies and the swirls in the beginning were done using a wacomancient and non polished.
tablet. I wanted them to look very ancient.

Monday, March 2, 2009

THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN HUMANS AND NATURE


In today's society, communication through technology is connecting people from all over the world. With the computer, phones and technical devices, there is literally no information or person we cant reach. On a daily basis we are concerned with our personal lives, going to work, paying bills, worrying about the future etc. In fact the only time we feel the need to think of more then ourselves, for most, is on Sundays when we go to our places of worship to consider the spiritual. That's it. As for the rest of nature and the natural world, it is never given hardly a second thought as being of any importance at all. I believe there are two reasons for this disconnect. Long ago people had to feel connected to the environment, there was all the time in the world to do so, but now with so much going on in our lives, the natural world is a fading memory. Another of the reasons for the disconnect is popular religious belief.

In the beginning Adam and Eve were given dominion over all the animals and plants in the Garden of Eden and the world. In essence, the Judeo-Christian world view is that nature is at a lower status then humans. Christianity states that man's spiritual home is in heaven and not on earth. People want to rise from the earth and its imperfection and be with God above in heaven. Whereas the majority of religious views are that man has ultimate domination over the earth and its creatures to do with as he wishes, many point out that the earth is "the visible sacrament of God".

The earth and all of the universe is the physical, bodily presence of the divine, and if God is transcendent as a spirit, then he can be present in all life. Ecotheologist Sallie McFague states "Would an infinite God have created all parts if he did not value them? We must assume that God created all life for him and not us." Everything is connected, valued and needed. Most people are too busy to imagine that they have anything to do with the natural world around them and only barely accept ( mostly through bringing up) that there is a heaven or God. We have to learn to listen and pay attention to the world we live in and not think of it as a backdrop for our daily lives. Everything has its purpose and we have lots in common with our natural surroundings whether we know it or not.

Quoted excerpts and philosophy from Ecotheologian Sallie McFague.

Monday, February 23, 2009

WILDERNESS OF MY APARTMENT: THE FORBIDDEN REALM OF SQUIRRELS

For this experiment I chose to document this awesome patch of forrest inside my apartment complex. I go there to think a lot of times and wondered what all was really out there if i looked closely. Actually, as i found out, it is the territory of lot and lots of territorial squirrels! I'm not even doing anything and literally at least 4 separate times, a squirrel decided to crawl half way down a tree and start squeaking at me! They didn't even seem angry just like " Hey, Heeeey, who are you? Watch it buddy." This sort of inspired me to think about nature's perspectives. We often are afraid of nature because it is unpredictable, but often forget that we are just as much of a danger and threat. Very inspiring for my book's topic. Thank you squirrels of Summer Cove!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

EMMANESS: STUDYING PEOPLE


I choose ( pretty much because it was hilariously awkward) to observe Emma. So this is what i have observed based on what i saw. Not like this isn't totally useless, I am exploring details and usually unnoticed things/ qualities in people. Most of the time we don't study people as closely as this and it was kind of interesting to see how much i could learn in a short period of time. I felt like an awkward scientist.