Hotel of Secrets

Our class's theme for the hotel show was secrets. We each interpreted them in our own way. What I wanted to do was make an interactive piece where the audience could pick through and touch and read in any order and however many they wanted to.

I chose the refrigerator as the house for secrets that I gathered from a website that posted anonymous secrets (postsecret.com) and from my own followers on tumblr. I asked them to send me their own secrets and was able to gather a lot! I then sifted through and took out the ones I found most interesting, printed them out, sliced them up, and put them in glass jars. This way, people could pick them up and look at them.

Site-Specific Installation

 I have a a hobby of going by or near spooky places at night. I like to do amateur ghost hunting because even though I am usually afraid of the dark and I don't like being alone outside (because I am a small woman). I have a deep fascination of the afterlife and have had a lot of strange encounters with the paranormal before, so whenever I can incorporate something scary in my work, I will.

The site I chose was one I pass every day. Markland house is the oldest plantation home in the area (or so I have heard) and has been around for a very long time. It was build in 1839. The original owner of the house died of the yellow fever epidemic. Though nothing comes up about there being any actual slaves living there, or anything else for that matter online, I had heard rumors of it being haunted and it has always given me a creepy feeling.

I then decided to just do a reaction piece to how I feel about the house. I made little simple ghosts out of black model magic and posted them in places together. I wanted them to look like they were oozing out of the structure or out of the shadows. The idea is that they slowly come out after dark and just chill out there. Their design came from a piece of photo manipulation I did a while ago for fun.

With all of this in mind, I made a bunch of little ghosts, using glow in the dark paint for their eyes. 

Communal Art: Peepholes

Working with Sphere was a pleasure. After I was unable to trust my first choice to allow me to put art in their window, I found an older store that didn't have the same strict rules put upon it. As someone who is spiritual, herself, I found getting inspiration for this project- with the idea of Sphere and their new age theme- extremely easy and serendipitous. My first thought was to do something that was very obviously connected to Buddhism. But the way I saw it in my head was so fabricated and not natural that I didn't like it and didn't work on it for a long time. When I started to slowly move away from the idea of my own religion and just create something that used nature and my own personal meanings to it, I was able to come up with a whimsical shrine that I really loved.

One artist that inspired the initial shape of the hole for the peephole itself was Andy Goldsworth who used repeating shapes and places them in a gradient in nature to make these pulsating, curious earth works. Specifically, the piece that inspired me directly was this one:

I just really like the visual idea of it. But I wanted to make mine more chaotic. As if it was put together by something other than human, in a way. Something not manufactured. 

Work in Process Images:
I started placing twigs around the mouth of he black box I made with foam board. I used black because I wanted it to be less obvious in the dark. It definitely looks better in the dark.

I also added mulch to the sides to keep the color scheme and all over theme. The cloth inside is saffron that I had in my room. The pastel, vintage pink goes nicely with the light coloring of the twigs. 

The lights are LED lights that I had set so that they would twinkle. It ended up turning into a small fairy nest which pleased me a lot. I just let it evolve itself and went with what it told me to do, if that makes sense.

Philosophy On The Way to Ecology

I started with what Phenomenology was and then wrote a poem about a situation I went through as a child and how my memory presents it to me. How I relive that memory is not correct (because I always see everything from the sky and I obviously wasn't floating when all of this was happening) and  that is phenomenology.

I remember seeing it from the sky.
Fire on the stove.
My little sister sitting underneath.
My mother screaming.
My step father, not there.

I’m at the backdoor watching two men run in.
They are our neighbors,
Refusing to stop,
Bringing in jugs of water.

My mother cries and hugs my sister.
I am in the air.
The fire trucks arrive and everyone is relieved.
I saw them coming from my seat up high.
I knew it was going to be fine.
The breeze was very soft.

Ecology of Magic

This chapter was a beautiful mix of a person learning and understanding nature and an unfamiliar culture. It was filled with layer upon layer of beautiful imagery and words and it was difficult to come up with something solid until around the end of the chapter. After he found the "house spirits," and after he watched the spiders make their webs during the monsoon, he mentions something about real shamans understanding nature on a more serious level than westerners who are just trying to achieve that same level.

I started thinking about how many different ways one could get closer to nature and how it could be shared. I then remembered that there is a tea site where you can make your own blends and sell them for points so that you can continue buying teas.

I made an account and then chose tea flavors that complement each other. I chose tea because it reminds me of the natural. It's a way to ingest it.

http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/blend.html?blend=62521

Painting II: Finished Works.

The first painting was of my friend Logan and his favorite Celtic deity, Cernunnos. But that isn't even entirely true because I also took inspiration from another deity, Herne. Both of these stag gods come from Northern Europe and are similar in the fact that they are both deer and that they both protect the forest.

Herne was a man who killed a stag and as punishment was turned into a white stag and made to protect the forest for the rest of eternity. His punishment being mortality and through that, he grows to love and respect nature. 

Cernunnos has inspired art in modern times. In the Studio Ghibli film, Princess Mononoke, the literal Forest Spirit is a deer with a man's face and horns with many more spikes than a normal stag would have. 

The same imagery can be found in video games, the latest Pokemon game to be exact. Where the legendary for Pokemon X, Xerneas, is a stag with the same horn structure. 

Logan told me about both of these myths and where we see them today and that was how I was able to come up with the composition and color scheme. I wanted something that was cold and snowy and serene. Basically, I wanted to turn a human into a stag without actually painting a stag. I chose a photograph of my friend that made me think of something proud and powerful and then I put acorns in his hand to represent his connection with nature. He is holding seeds that will grow into trees as if he were about to plant them. I showed Logan his painting and he wants to put it on an alter he has for nature and that is probably the best place for it.

At this time, I was getting fed up with oil painting and decided to switch mediums. I had a kit of really cheap gouache from another class and chose that. It was way more challenging than I thought it would be. I made the illustration of my friend and her favorite deity, Ganesh. She sat me down and told me about his entire mythos which was way more interesting than I thought it would be.

Ganesh was originally the son of Shiva and Parvati. Shiva didn't recognize him and cut Ganesh's head off in anger. His head was then replaced with an elephant head and he became the god that removes obstacles, the patron god of the arts and sciences. Because of this, I drew Ganesh holding my friend's head. She has transformed into this god in the same way he was transformed into the god he became.

The iconography I used is a majority of the ones he is usually depicted with-- an axe, a trident, a mouse, his grand throne, a lotus flower, the om markings on his face and down his trunk, his original head, and his jeweled crown. All of these things hold significances to either what he does or what he represents. The only major thing I left out was the snake which represents death and rebirth. Honestly, I just couldn't choose a place to put the snake. But I have everything else there. I even placed stars on the back of the throne and in his stomach to represent the universes he creates. It is said the reason why his stomach is so large is because it holds every possible universe ever in it.

Ganesh is basically the best god ever created, in my opinion.

I also found out that Hindu Sutras were painting with gouache. My choice of using that to paint this was completely on a whim and also a pleasant additive to the final piece. 

The last painting I did I actually started before I began painting the Ganesh. Gouache was more difficult than I remember it being and I was scared I was going to ruin my illustration, so I started a self portrait that turned into a type of fake deity as well. The color choices I made were more because I love that teal with that salmon pink. I've made a bunch of paintings with those two colors. It's become basically subconscious to use them when I paint. 

I am also a fan of surrealism and I was able to show that in this painting. 

Basically, until this semester, I have had trouble drawing people and having them be recognizable. I was able to get over that little bump and now I can change what my portraits look like by other means and be happy with the outcome. 

BA Portfolio: Sukeban Series