Drawing Research and Ideation

This work is a continuation of the study of a home. For these drawings I chose to draw from photos of my childhood home. I traced the photographs as contour line drawings. Continuing from the Inhale project, I wanted to focus on ideas of decay and loss in relation to the home. The idea of a trace implies that something which once was present is now gone. I think that idea can be very poetic. I began layering and re-tracing the drawings to abstract them. The result is a progression from something fairly recognizable to abstract line drawings. The resulting drawings are abstract but labored over. The lines resemble a framework or the bones of a house. Tracing the house felt like I was simplifying it and stripping something away from it. The drawings were arranged as a book to emphasize the idea of progression. A book is a way to for the drawings to require a more close-up view. Since it cannot be seen by everyone at once, the book demands an intimate experience. There is a delicate quality to the material of the book that reflects the idea of the potential fragility of a home.

Throughout this semester I have realized my interest in the ideas of what a home can mean. I am particularly interested in the complicated relationships we can have with the places we live. I think that homes have a lot of the same qualities we have as people. We project ourselves into our environment, but that environment also projects on us. Personally, my house has a distinct personality. For something as solid as a house, it can be a fragile thing: foundations get cracked, ceilings start leaking. This fascination with the anthropomorphic qualities of a house is something I want to keep pursuing.

As field research for this project, I took a trip up to Craven’s house on Lookout Mountain. Craven’s house is a house from the Civil War era that has been preserved as a historical site. While Craven’s house itself has been relatively taken care of over the years, the houses on the edge of the lot have been pretty much forgotten. The path to these houses is overgrown and nearly inaccessible. I chose to take a close look at these forgotten houses rather than inspecting the main attraction of the area. Vines covered the windows, a tree grew through a chain link fence, curtains in the windows were left half-drawn. The site is known for having a Civil War battle fought on it. Gravestones surround the hiking trail right above the houses. The entire area speaks of loss, decay, and the ways we remember the past. 

In the beginning of this process I created a doll. I used this doll as a reflection of myself to talk about identity, or what I thought my identity may be. I can’t be completely positive of what this drawing is, but I know feels like a step in the right direction. There is another version of this work where I was working really hard to plan an environment for the doll that would show who I was in an abstract way. This approach became problematic because of two reasons; I am only twenty years old, and you cannot plan life. Of course, there are variables that I cannot change that inevitable make me who I am, but that is not everything that identity encompasses. I hope to have only lived a small portion of my life thus far, making my identity almost inconstant at this point.  

For my trip, I went home. I went to the variables of my identity that are concrete. I talked to my family and friends, as I often find myself doing, about how they grew up comparing it to my own experiences. I talked to my boss at work about how she grew up and what her experiences were like then compared to now and how she thinks those things affected who she is today. I asked my grandparents about how they raised my parents and then looked back at the way my parents raised me. These things won’t change because they already happened and have made an impact on me. How do they play a role in what I am interested in and doing now?

This exhale drawing holds a sense of immediacy and quickness that feels more related to the idea of figuring things, or problem solving instead planning. It feels like a direct observation of my own thoughts and concerns about myself and how I am going to deal with that. It isn’t the solution to the issue, it is part of the process. 

Transitioning from my “Inhale” portion to “Exhale,” my subjectivity of sleep paralysis began to widen its focal point from a very specific and abnormal psychological phenomenon to a more relatable notion about the disconnect that accompanies it, defined as “breaking the connection of or between.” This disconnect I often feel between my dire need for sleep and my brain’s ability to carry out the action is an idea that can be applied to something as internal as the termination of human connection with another person, or even something as physical as the inefficiency of frayed electrical wires—my object of choice.

During “Inhale,” I chose to macro-photograph the ends of frayed copper wires from an alarm clock to enhance my observation ability. However, the shallow depth of field in the macro lens left only a few thin wires and focus and the majority of the frame out of focus. I decided to work from this image for “Exhale” in accordance to my archival research in using photography as a tool for drawing, this time through the employment of the macro lens. I then chose to push the concept of disconnect further by cutting up the labored drawing into a grid-like structure and rearranging the pieces to break apart the linear quality of wires, thus rendering the new composition unrecognizable. I am still continuing to try and find the dividing line between mindlessly replicating photographs by hand, and using it as a tool while also expressing the materiality of drawing, substrate, and importance of the hand as I rendered a large portion of the drawing using my finger, coated in graphite, as a drawing tool. I chose graphite as my medium for its metallic quality, and I incorporated subtle hints of copper colored pencil into the wires, both as a bit of an homage to the original object as its form was visually lost in the physical manipulation of the paper.

My field research consisted of me attempting to draw straight lines in my sketchbook while riding passenger in a moving car. I wanted to put myself in a similar situation to my original struggles with occasional sleep paralysis where no matter how hard you try to do such a menial task, it is impeded by some sort of complication. The unpredictable, unavoidable swerves and jolts of a vehicle in-motion proved to be a worthy opponent to my previously steady hand, dragging the pen in unintended directions and occasionally breaking the line off altogether.

During the ‘Inhale’ portion of the ‘Inhale-Exhale’ project, I created an abstracted model of my hand with a combination of wine and fabric that was separated into five parts: one for each of my fingers, and one for my palm. It felt important to me to create the object rather than find it, because it created a connection between me and the object, and it could also be freely altered over time. When it came to drawing the object, it began as observational drawings; some were contour, some were rubbings, and some were made with the Camera-Lucida. As time went on, it was brought to my attention that the created objects looked somewhat voodoo. I was interested in that line of thought, so  I gradually altered the objects, making them look more gore-oriented and deteriorated. I added various signs of damage, starting with blades and staples, as well as using red ink to represent blood. After the alterations, I responded to the lined contour drawings the most visually, and then attempted to proceed with that concept, leading up to the in-progress critique.

After my in-progress critique, I discovered an interest on the idea of ‘Freudian pain,’ or pain caused unintentionally, and I wanted to create a drawing that would enforce that center of unconscious self harm. As far as influences, Otto Dix was recommended for his paintings and prints that would traumatic experiences during World War I. I looked for any sort of abstracted style that would portray that sense of impactful, yet  unstable pain that was emotionally exaggerated. I looked at some Surrealist artists like Dahli, that would use the unconscious mind and human mentality as the main point of his pieces.

It actually took a while to determine a foreign place that would inform my research. After some comments from classmates, I decided to take a look at a place that dealt with these sorts of unintentional pain regularly: a nearby hospital, Erlanger Medical Center. As expected, I was unable to visit one of the operating rooms without being injured myself, so I scoped out the limited interior and exterior of the building. For a place that frequently dealt with painful experiences, places like the front lobby felt surprisingly calm at first. The longer I stayed in the lobby, I could begin to feel uncertainty and impatience building in some of the patients. That idea of unconscious pain began to combine in with the idea of uncertainty, which created an abstract blend of  the unconscious.

When it came to the ‘Exhale’ portion, I decided to attempt to use ink wash as the main medium. I had never used it for a drawing project before, so I was not used to using it. However, I believed that was an effective approach, because it felt calm at first, yet it was very difficult in dealing with the uncertainty with working with such a steady, wet medium. I decided to abstractly depict only one of the pieces instead of the entire hand, because I was more visually interested in the abstractions created by one of the pieces standing by itself.It was interesting to see a relationship between the uncertain physicality of the brushmarks I made intertwine with the abstracted perspective of the unconscious.The end result were two abstract pieces made with a combination of the random application of the ink wash, as well as the finger. Overall, it was an interesting approach that evolved into more unconscious choice rather than pain. This discovery will be influential to future works revolving the ideas of consciousness versus unconscious thought.

At first with the Exhale project, I wanted to explore the idea of telling a narrative without adding a figure. However, that changed after I went on my field trip.

 My trip was to various antique stores around town. Since my original object was something I found at a booth at a festival, the closest experience I could get to that was searching through booths at an antique store. I went to The Refindery on McCallie and then to the Antiques Mall in East Ridge. I was looking for old Japanese items because I assumed that my inspiration would come from something similar to my original object. However, what I found as my inspiration was a bag with a monochromatic leaf print. This print reminded me of one of my drawings where I focused on the negative spaces in my object rather than contour lines. This made me think that the drawing I made would make a nice pattern on fabric.

 In an ideal world where I had all the time I needed, I would have printed or drawn my pattern onto fabric and possibly made something with it. Thankfully, I did not have time for that because I don’t know whether or not I could have argued that it was a drawing. Canvas, however, is fabric, so I decided to translate my drawing on a larger scale using several canvases. The decision to separate the picture into individual canvases was a way to allow it to be seen many different ways. It may not always match up or look like the original object, but that is fine. I did not want to limit myself in that regard.

 This is a case where I am glad that I deviated from my original idea. I keep coming back to narrative in this class, but then my work does not really show it. I think I was less interested in exploring narrative this time than I thought. Instead, I focused on something basic that my work lacks: shape. Shape based drawing is very important for illustration, which is what I am leaning towards. If I develop those basics, I will feel like I have made a large step forward in my art.

Here we are featured on the UTC blog!

In this drawing, I changed directions in a lot of ways. I wanted to talk about how women and textiles are linked because of domestic roles in history. I also wanted to talk about the inherent undervalue of domestic art making and handicraft because it was associated with domesticity. However, I wanted the drawing to be abstract and allow the texture of wool to be more metaphorical for the things I wanted to talk about. Because I didn't fully establish these relationships enough before I started my drawing, I set myself up for a frustrating process. 

I did many ink drawings to try and include all of these ideas, but I feel like it didn't work out. The drawing itself isn't "bad" but because I chose the wrong drawing to communicate this concept, I don't feel like it was successful. What I do like about my "exhale" portion of the project is that it still focuses economy and textile, things I that were in my archive already, as well as bringing out concepts I didn't know how to word well enough before this project, like the idea of all-overness, using value to communicate physical weight and density, and introducing abstraction into my work. 

I focused too much on the formal qualities of my object and the formal qualities of ink to realize I didn't connect the rest of my ideas enough for my viewer to understand what I was seeing. 

With the feedback I got in critique, it helped me organize my thoughts a little more. I think expanding from wool to a range of different textiles will help use ink to mimic fabric will help me establish the relationships I was trying to create originally, while still incorporating the knowledge I gained from the original drawing. 

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For the first part of the project, I chose to draw from a music box that was given to me as a gift. I thought it would be a nice challenge to draw from something small, yet still intricate. As I drew the music box from different forms of observation, I found that what I wanted most out of it was the satisfaction of figuring out how something works. The feeling of everything snapping into place and finally understanding something that you've looked at and studied for so long.

I was originally going to do a scientific illustration of the music box to illustrate this, but instead of making it look like an examination I wanted it to look more like a blueprint or puzzle. 

For my field research, I went to a record shop in northgate mall with friends, one of which happened to know a lot about records. He began telling me about the types of records I should buy, to be weary of closed packaging and records, etc. I enjoyed hearing about the care that goes into making records and buying them and how my friends when they finally get home to play it for the first time, are careful with it and put it in the record player, and hearing a sound of satisfaction when it finally starts playing. This is where I also drew the connection of things snapping into place and the satisfactory feeling you get from it,

As an ecologist my observations from Guild trail were scientifically rooted. I began my observations from the ground up. However, I only began observing when we got to our site. When I met with the art students their observations began as soon as they got to the beginning of the trail. They were more detailed in their notes, but it was from a different standpoint than the ecologists. I noted the vegetation that was out during the time as well as collected the data for that day (time of day, temperature, wind, humidity). I tried to observe the ground cover and looked for any signs of life. I collected soil and leaf samples whereas the art students made sketches and rubbings of the things that they saw.

            After meeting with the art students, it became obvious that I could learn a few observation techniques from them. They noticed small, delicate things that I didn’t even take into consideration. Their methodology of recording their findings was narrowed to a small viewing area. Although, compared to the ecologists they were removed physically from their surroundings. The ecologists flipped rocks and old decaying logs whereas the art students studied from afar and saw the rock or log where it sat. When we first met with the art students I didn’t think that we had anything in common when it came to observations. When we discussed Guild trail and our findings nothing matched up. It wasn’t until the second meeting that I realized we are much more alike than I initially thought. I came to the realization that we are driving towards the same goal, we just achieve it diverse ways. We are striving to complete a scientific paper with which we will have to choose a topic, collect data, and then compose all the data and information into a readable and understandable format. The art students are asked of the same thing, but in a different format.

            I look forward to using some of their observational strategies in the future to help with my own research. Listening to the different methods of recording data was and will be beneficial in mending the gaps in my own observations.

I put myself in the uncomfortable position of representing humanity, eager to understand the world through invasive observation and analysis. Homo sapiens has been imposing its own point of view on objects from time immemorial, constructing or detecting images of its own reflection everywhere it looks. Continuing this tradition, I am employing materials that have been in use since prehistoric times, materials that I started exploring for my daily drawings. I now combine powdered charcoal and sanguine powder with medium to apply them onto plexiglass, which signifies both the present time of twice-removed artificiality and the act of looking/observing through a mediating surface. The Icelandic rock I started out from has become part of the work, as both victim and witness to my cruel interventions. Is there an anthropomorphizing elf inside there that preys on the rock’s perfectly complete existence? Or is it just me?

For the first part of this Inhale-Exhale project I was exploring the mixture of 17th century projects and 21st century objects using a proto camera (camera lucida). For the second half of this Inhale-Exhale Project I decided to explore a topic commonly depicted in Vanitas paintings: folly. For this project I am using folly to mean a mistake. We are all human, we make mistakes all the time. So I am wanting to highlight the mistakes we make in drawing, or trying to represent something perfectly and can not quite get it right. I realized that even though I am using the camera lucida to “trace” the object, I was not able to trace the still life correctly. I could not see certain shapes/lines, I saw some details of the objects and other details I could not, or the camera lucida was slightly tilted so the picture came out a little crooked.

It was important that I did not try to fix any mistakes in the lines that I drew, that I did not try to fix the camera lucida if it was crooked, or if the objects in the still life were not correctly placed. I wanted to try and get a more authentic set of circumstances for these drawings.

I originally was going to do a large drawing of my still life, but since I used the camera lucida so much in the preparation for this final piece that I decided to scale the drawing down and do multiple drawings with the camera lucida.  

Overall, I am pretty satisfied about the end result of the project. If time allowed I would love to do more drawings like these because I think that it would make the idea even stronger, but the nine I have now still conveys the idea. I also want to explore this idea further, and doing the research for this project was an experience and I want to continue doing more research on this subject.

For the field  research we had to do, for the longest time I could not figure out where to go. Then, looking back at my notes, I realized the very main concept centered around life and death. So I decided to just take a stroll around the cemetery sitting just off campus. It was an almost calming experience. It was not sad, I just felt almost at ease. I looked around at the different tombstones that popped up out of the grass. Some of the stones you could hardly tell what was chiseled into them, some were almost taken over by plants or had started sinking into the ground, and others were cracked or downright toppled over. I found it interesting that we try to put some sort of beautiful marker to let us and others know of the life that person led, but sooner or later, mother nature takes back what was man made. 

As an ecologist, my approach to making observations was very quantitative in nature. I utilized measurements such as temperature, seasonal variation in light levels, and humidity to make observations about the Guild Trail environment. The art students looked at the same environment I did, but their observations were more qualitative in nature. They looked at aspects of the local environment such as form, shape, and color. The most interesting overlap between our two perspectives was in light level. While I was looking at light levels as how it affects temperature and, by extension, activity levels of poikilothermic species, the art students used light levels to study how a change in the position of the sun in the sky changes how the environment around them appears. Changes in light levels, especially in winter months, can make colors duller and shadows sharper. I thought it was very informative to see how both an ecologist and an artist can use the same aspect of the environment to make very different observations.

Overall, I really liked seeing the different viewpoints that came from both sides of the spectrum. Some of the artists had images of different fungal specimens and I really liked being able to identify the specimen to species. This collaboration is very useful for seeing things on a qualitative form. By the end of the collaboration we learned we looked at similar things and conducted similar research in different ways to yield similar results. I have really enjoyed the collaborative qualities of having two different field backgrounds come together. We have similar initial processing steps to understanding what we are seeing. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/184Tha5rKoBeKFCHPrmHfVDqUUP0kiV6o

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/184Tha5rKoBeKFCHPrmHfVDqUUP0kiV6o

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/184Tha5rKoBeKFCHPrmHfVDqUUP0kiV6o

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/184Tha5rKoBeKFCHPrmHfVDqUUP0kiV6o