My highschool Art Portfolio for IB Art.

My first year in art:

All my life I always wished I could pursue art or at least CREATE things. So my senior year in high school I took my first art class. This truly was an amazing experience, for once in my life I wouldn't have to worry about freaking grades, expectations, or practicality; art was a way for me to plug in immense concentration without fear of being told "you are incorrect" or "you should invest your time more better in another solution". In IB art we were asked to do extensive research, but coming form a non-art background this was easy. I was and IB student so research, critical/literary analysis was my native language. I was so excited. Our first sketchbook entry (like research journal entries) was "what is art" and of course everyone explained art was expression. Now that the year is over I have learned one thing. While the statement may be true for many, literally Art is what ever the fuck you want it to be. People have defined it as "each person's interpretation of reality" or "expression" but in honesty, what about ready made? what about the nonsensical movement? What about contemporary music? it is whatever the fuck you make of it.

Anyway this is my art work from my first year. For our first project we were assigned to make 30 works in 30 days, and choosing one object to be the incorporated in each work, and while everyone else who had extensive training in painting, drawing, or anything else (private lessons or just was in art for all throughout school) I had.... no experience. I didn't even know how to draw!
So I chose straws (I have NO. IDEA. WHY.) but all I knew is that I worked hard and put all my concentration into my work and built stuff. So I went all 3-D all year long because quite frankly it was my first year in art and I didn't have any training in 2-D crafts.
I hope you enjoy my art and please comment. (sorry for the not so great photography I was only a student on a student budget).

Straw Wave:
(Plastic Straws, Hot-glue, and a Wooden lank)
This took me around 3 weeks of straight work around 50 hours. I had to literally plan where each straw, each contour level, glue and cut each straw to the desired height, it was meticulous, ritualistic, and generally insanity inducing, but as my first project I was proud of it.

Straw Flower 1:
(Plastic Straws, Hot-glue, and a Wooden lank)
A straw flower, it was messy but I wanted it to resemble a doodle.

Straw Eye
(Plastic Straws, Hot-glue, on a Canvas)
I wish it was better photographed but it pops out of the canvas like the contours of the face should and the balance of the picture makes it look really shoddy. Took around 60 hours to complete.

A Theme:
(I am looking for more of my projects because I only have a few photographs of a few projects hopefully people haven't destroyed them because I had to sell them all because my parents would throw them away because... well they are trying to instill in me the knowledge that art is only a hobby.)
Anyways after the first project we were told to choose a topic or theme through out the year. Some chose topics such as the environment, fashion, or even abstract topics such as light. I didn't really know what I was going to do and then I just chose the topic Creativity. It started to make sense that this was a good topic for me because I really tried being creative in all my work so far so I thought why not pursue things on the subject?

The Paper Muse
(Paper on a canvas)
What to do with 40 pieces of drawing paper: This. Another challenging assignment that I was completely excited about (oddly a lot of my classmates dreaded this assignment). I started to truly appreciate working with one straight medium such as straws, and now paper. This project was around 3 feet high and is all paper, it isn't 100% 3 dimensional and was to keep the illusion of being so. I chose the muse because it was the greek goddess of divine inspiration (creativity) in which artists asked for guidance and was synonymous with the swan. It was... incredibly hard to make the Grecian drapery out of paper. I really couldn't do it with one single sheet of paper, and yet had to make it seem like one piece of cloth. (if you were to take it apart it is just a lot layering of paper levels). Both the faces of swan and muse are to be simple and clean cut, to be ready for your interpretation, to be open (creativity huzah).

The need for the moneys:
Well scholastic time was around the bend and I was to add 2 more projects to my portfolio to enter scholastic's portfolio scholarship ... tournament of champions? (forget the real name of the "competition"). Well I have always been a good student and never had to pull all nighters and ironically enough though I have been raised to believe art is a hobby, I see myself working more intensely in my art (80 hour projects) and these two are truly an allnighter worthy. I didn't go to school to work on these babies and worked all day till I had to leave home and turn these in. Again I really loved working with one medium and chose paper but on a smaller scale to create a more intimate experience, looking closer to see what is going on. Needless to say I got the gold key in regionals (lets me advance to states) and got silver key in states (no more advancement D;) i didn't get any scholarships o well... same as in college.

These two works are symbolically based on a passage from 1st Corinthians 12, the old message that it takes all kinds, and that everyone has their worth and intimate potential worthy of appreciation and engagement not scorn:
passage from 1st Corinthians 12:
"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body ... And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?...The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Deaf Sight:
(Paper on foam core)
I apologize for the titles, they are corny and I would love to just keep them titled as "Paper project 4" but scholastic wanted specific names of each so... there you go 3 second thought=corny. Playing off of the passage, The eye can see the beautiful music, but without the ear its pointless because It can't hear it.

Making was a very interesting experience. People usually say "I usually work Big" but in my case seeing that I dont have "usually" because I started doing art now, my "before" was all i had... big (plus i think im fat so i think ive had it all my life :D). So working small was very enlightening. No need to waste... well not waste just "go through" 40 sheets of paper. I found myself redoing a lot of elements till I got it right and found comfort in the fact that I was killing trees at a slower rate. I chose to keep the pupil as negative space and the first picture does show that it makes a difference (the lighting made it "light up"). Dear lord the eyelashes took off a few years of my life expectancy but I enjoyed working with tweezers and paper glue (some sarcasm). Everything is paper and my life is almost halfway gone XD. The music staffs each are one continuous piece of paper. (once again I had to sell everything and WISHED I had better photographs of these).

Blind Hearing:
(Paper on foam core)
Again the corny title. But this is the counter part of Deaf Sight as the ear can hear the intricate city yet cannot see the complex buildings, and complex they were... I tried to make a perspective 3-D piece, not in full 3-D more of a 2.5-D? I found myself doing lots and LOTS of trigonometry to get these building perspectives right. I had to make distorted "boxes" and then make the window "box" over it which all are not in 90 degrees with each other (again trigonometry) so its 3am at this point and I have a ruler calculator and alot of paper boxes. joy.