What Is Art?

I randomly created these figures for fun, but they have rapidly become a fascination for me. I believe everyone is lacking something, no one is perfect. I believe the main 3 are heartless, mindless, or gutless. To some degree, I think everyone is missing one, or all of these aspects. I, myself lack a gut, which inhibits my ability to make friends and take chances that are absolutely essential when it comes to making art. What do you lack?

One of my finals for this semester. I worked super hard on this, and I am VERY proud of how it turned out. Enjoy!

Newest, weirdest thing I just did.

It’s amazing how much more positive life becomes when you remove the most negative aspects from it. These last few weeks have been wonderful. This is a photo taken from my performance art piece that I performed last week. I have never done anything like this, and to accomplish this and feel good about it is just fantastic. My classmates wrote everyone letters after their performances, and when I got mine, I was so touched by what everyone had to say. This was a calming sequence that I did every night for 2 weeks, and during my performance i had my classmates breathe deeply and focus on something negative they wanted to get rid of. All my letters were thank you letters telling me about how they felt so much better after my performance; one girl even said that I reminded her that negativity can only affect you for as long as you give it time. I am very proud of myself for going outside the box on this one, and for helping remind others that negative energy cannot affect you if you choose not to let it. 

My latest photo project! I was really inspired by triptych's, so I decided to essentially make a photographic altar piece. The photo was originally 44"x30", so I had to cut it into these pieces, and I also had to make its mount out of cardboard. I didn't have a lot of time to make this because my inspiration was so last minute, but I think this is AWESOME. But the extra time would have been nice to make the piece more refined and concise. It just goes to show how much inspiration can motivate you to get it done 🎨

Tried my hand out at PhotoShop and ended up with this image. I think was able to add more attention to fingers (which was the goal) so enjoy this!

A Pumpkin Spice Latte in its natural habitat.

My latest work, which is a self portrait that was unintended. I’ve been trying to take my professors advice by using my art to therapy myself first, before I become an art therapist. I took that to heart in this project, but i started by throwing paint on a canvas to see what would happen. This was the result. I stepped back after all the paint had been added and said to myself “fuck, this is me”. I have a lot going on right now, a lot of stress that I am not quite dealing with. This was my way to deal with it. I tried to mimic what was going in my head at the moment, and I think I succeeded. In critique I discovered I was able to successfully incorporate the feeling of confusion so that the audience could pick up on it almost immediately. The glow in the dark feature is my personal favorite, it says “ALONE”. One of my fears is to be physically alone in any kind of space, so I constantly have a headphone in my ear, or a fish living in my room so I do not feel like I am completely by myself. Incorporating that into my self portrait will hopefully help me overcome this fear, since I have now formally come to terms with it. Overall this was an interesting project to take on, but strangely I feel better, and that’s all that matters. 

The point of this blog is for me to self-evaluate myself, so I can become a better artist in my own eyes. I've struggled with the phrase"what is art?" my whole life. Because, frankly, anything and everything is and can be art. And "good" art is based on someone's opinion, like if they like the meaning, or if they think it is aesthetically pleasing. I love to create art, anything and everything basically, but like every other artist, I pretty much hate everything I make. "This doesn't look right", "the color scheme is all wrong", "that's not even CLOSE to being straight" and "that is terrible" are phrases I hear over and over again in my head. I'm not really sure if I have a style, or if I will ever have one, but maybe with this blog, and feedback from this community, I can start to find mine. Am I meant to create art for the rest of my life? Who knows. Maybe one day I'll find out.