#art project statement

For this project I spent my time looking at cartoons and their influences on children. I read articles that talked about how what children see in cartoons can influence their opinions and understanding of the world around, and what morals these cartoons teach.

From this research I looked at cartoons from my childhood and the times I spent watching them. It was a very nostalgic project for myself. After creating many pieces of cartoons ceramics I felt like I wasn’t exploring my topic enough it was too vague and wasn’t connecting with what I was trying to explore. Which got me thinking about the activity of watching cartoons and how it was like a ritual at least for me as a child. This sparked the idea of a Saturday morning cartoon breakfast. Every morning as a child I would get up at dawn it seemed like to watch cartoons. This was a key part of my childhood. I thought what better exploration of story/stories than to explore the visual stories of cartoons and that morning ritual. Although I may have done this in a simple way by simply creating ceramic pieces influenced by cartoons I think I was able to capture the imagination of a child by creating these pieces.

For this project I set goals for my self which I think I accomplished. I wanted to explore the medium of clay and what I could do with it and I learned a lot of techniques and information that will help me in my second year. I wanted to explore the meanings behind the cartoons I was researching which I did more some than others for example:

Adventure Time teaches children acceptance, tolerance, bravery, loyalty, courage, being adventurous etc

Coraline teaches children bravery, curiosity, acceptance, being great full of our parents

Disney reimagines stories from popular storytellers like The Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, changing scary warnings into cheerful stories for example to be curious, take chances, speak up, work hard and you’ll achieve your goals, you control your limits, try new things be adventurous, be kind, don’t judge a book by it’s cover, and embrace who you are.

Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki in particular wants to teach children and viewers to appreciate the little things in life and that it’s good to be alive we may find hardship along the way but we come out stronger and wiser.

When I began exploring this movement project I wanted to look beyond physical movement and find a different concept of what movement can represent. I found myself very inspired by colour and patterns throughout my general work. Below are my statements for each elective.

Painting

For movement in painting, I worked with clutter and isolation which I think is really suitable for times like these. Everyone is stuck inside their homes. So when it came to primary sources all I really had was what was in my home. This inspired me to paint a room setting or investigate these different habitats. My initial idea was clutter and the routine people have within their personal spaces and how these spaces help a person develop and grow. But later I introduced movie scenes that i could paint that reminded me of this idea. The scenes were always heavy on overgrowth and focused on nature. Which was another section of my mindmap, growth.

Ceramics

For ceramics, I was heavily focused on colour, patterns and shapes. There was nothing really deep to my ideas for this elective I was just in love with the colour and how I could use it in patterns. I was mainly influenced by vibrant primary colours. I also spent a lot of time at the beginning working with mark-making which felt very freeing for design. This was my favourite elective even though I was new to this type of art. Its something I really want to improve at.

Sculpture

At first, like ceramics, I was working with colours, bits of physical movement and videos of movement around us. I also worked with clay creating simple pieces that showed movement in their form. But with time my ideas shifted quite a bit. Where I moved onto the movement of life and how the things we experienced in our childhood have formed us as adults. This idea became the Y2K trend, as those of us from my generation grew up watching these shows. Which lead me to work with these popular characters in an abstract form, instead of their regular appearance through clay. I also spent some time working with cross stitch and embroidery where focused on patterns and an odd character.