Current Project: Personal Metaphor

We are currently working on our "Personal Metaphor" project. As you work please keep in mind the following guide lines.

(Canvas size: 8x10 300 ppi)

1. First you are to come up with a metaphor or simile that describes or expresses your feelings.
2. You need to have a photo of yourself.
-Be very aware of lighting, background, scenery, clothing, body position and facial expression.
3. You need to take a photo of the object you are comparing yourself to.
-If this is an impossibility, and you will be borrowing the image of your object, then you are responsible for incorporating a photo you take as a major part of your artwork.
4. Text layer: verbally state your metaphor.
-Remember text becomes part of your composition- choice of font, size, placement, and color will either add to your art or take from it.
5. Remember, in this project you are metamorphosing into the object of comparison. Along with your creative and artistic ideas, your Photoshop skills will be under scrutiny here.
-Which parts of you will you keep? Which parts will you change? How best can you express through an image what it is you feel?
6. Any borrowed images you use, need to be altered and changed to fit into your artwork, you are not just taking and using other peoples work.
-Also keep in mind image size. Images that are too small will not work.

The Aesthetic Experience

Today we learned about the Aesthetic Experience. An Aesthetic Experience is often hard to define. It has been described as spell binding; You become possessed; You find it difficult to tear yourself away, and when you do you're never quite the same. It is a sensory experience that brings one to a different level of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual consciousness.
A life full of such experiences is truly a life to be sought after. However it seems that some people experience things like this frequently, while others have never had the pleasure. I would submit that the lack of these experiences is simply due to the fact that they are unaware such experiences exist, or unaware that they can learn how to have them.
To open the possibilities of having aesthetic experiences big and small, one needs to allow themselves a level of sensitivity to the world around them. One needs to allow themselves the option of being blown away, by something as small as a flickering shadow.
In class I wanted to give the everyone the opportunity to turn an ordinary experience into an extraordinary one. I wanted to help heighten the sensitivity level to the world at large.
Everyone was given a cup with clear water. The students were to try to open themselves up, to having an experience, and interaction with this water. Dye was dropped in, different colors, explosion melodically, desperately wending their way through the water. Blending together, until the water became dark. Each student was to take a photo of their cup and write about their experience in their portfolios.

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in." --American Beauty

Hybrid

An exercise found in “I’ve Got a Human in My Throat” The Worth1000.com Artists. By Chris Johnson.

In preparation for our PERSONAL METAPHOR project we brushed up our skills combining objects together. Using layer masks and the clone stamp we blended this dog and bird together.

Frida Kahlo 1907-1954

Frida was an artist who led an active, exciting and glamorous life alongside her husband, famed muralist Diego Rivera. She won recognition as a painter at a time when few women artists were taken seriously.
Frida began to paint while confined to bed, after a serious street car accident in which her spine, pelvis and foot were crushed and peirced by a metal handrail. She underwent over 30 operations and led the remainder of her life in physical pain.
Her relationship with Diego began with Art and led to marriage. He was not the most faithful husband.
Frida said, "I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a street car ran me over; the other accident is Diego."

Frida is most well known for her symbolic self-portriats and her enhanced unibrow.
She said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone. I am the subject I know best."

Diego Rivera 1886-1957