Theresa Brooks Texture Project

School has started and I'm really looking forward to the challenge of our new project. Inspired by Theresa Brooks, our goal is too create an organic, sculptural piece that pops with texture. The challenging part for me is that I have less than two weeks to complete this project, so hopefully my form doesn't take too long to complete! Here are a few pictures of our inspiration.
Theresa Brooks Pottery:
 

Texture ideas:
 
 


 

The things that make us proud

On this post I'd like to reflect on a few pieces that I DID, that just really made my feel proud. So many times I felt like I was staring at an empty sketchbook, trying to will ideas into my head, and yes I came up with a few good ones, but some stood out. One of the very first pages I like the best is because of the cleanliness of the lines, and I really got to try something new. I closed my eyes, grabbed a sharpie so I couldn't erase, and started drawing just--what seemed like-- random lines. Then I opened my eyes and let some creativity take over and turn it into a drawing of some unicorn-seal. I felt loose the whole time, and I felt the piece really had a sense of effortlessness that I can't easily capture. The other piece that I worked so hard on was one of my feet. I'm horrible--I mean absolutely HORRIBLE-- at drawing feet and I put so much effort into that thing that it actually doesn't matter that it doesn't look perfectly realistic. In that same drawing I was trying to capture the visual qualities of water that intrigued me that week when we were at the beach. However my quest for drawing water still is yet to be conquered.

Art from the Mass. and various trips

Before school starts up again, I wanted to take this post to reflect on some of the art work I SAW this summer. One good thing about the lacrosse tournaments this summer was that we were able to go to quite a few nice little towns. True the gas stations were sometimes a little sketchy, but it just made it more of an adventure. One of the weekends, my mother and I were up in Groton and then Peabody Mass., and we stopped to see a little part of the bay. There was a cutesy sized drawbridge and as walked along the see splash I saw a little sign off to the side advertising for artwork. I didn't realize until we got up close, but the shop was run out of a guy's house, and he was selling some of his mothers artwork. It was more of a modern style painting and printmaking that she did, with a very grim tone. The colors were mostly dull with a splash of red that spiced things up a little bit. Ironically, the first thing I thought of when I saw the pieces was of Doctor Boerth, my AP Lang teacher. The way the lines and the faces were portrayed reminded me a lot of the queer, old black and white films that we watched full of strange happenings. I will post a picture later of the piece by Coco Berkman that caught my eye. Unfortunately we were not able to stop by an art museum throughout our trip, but in Gatlinburg I got my family to go somewhere a little unique. The Salt and Pepper Shaker museum. Believe it or not, it has been featured on food network, and it was queer in a way that I was really able to enjoy the museum. The owner of all the shakers had a saying posted somewhere in the little museum; that she collects salt and pepper shakers because it astounds her how creative people can be with a simple ordinary object. It was nice to be reminded that creativity can blossom just as well and spectacularly in the small objects as the big things.