Amethyst Sky

.. Is what I currently find myself shouting more and more often these days. As the end of the semester quickly marches towards us I'm scrambling around trying to tie up loose ends. At the beginning of this year things went so smoothly and slowly. (Apparently a little too much so..) I had no worries. Now, I find myself with a large amount of work but nothing finalized. I need to get it together and focus! Focus and finish! That is my new motto. Graduation is May 20th, I have the Text and Image arts area show in the bag gallery to think about (Ritual Show! Go See it... If we get it finished in time...Ha!) , the cyber arts projection show, Our postcards (ahh!) A book to make pages for ( The ritual gallery show will also be made into a book... if we get it finished in time...Ha HA!) Plus!! There is the senior show, AND Review boards. God help me!

Overnighting.. here I come!

I suppose I should be getting to it and leave this blogging madness for another day. I dunno if any of you even still read this, I haven' seen an update in a while. Nevertheless, I leave you with is...


Oh SHITE!!!

Beauty, What Is It?

".. that quality or group of qualities in a thing which gives pleasure to the senses or pleasureably exalts the mind or spirit."

"Beauty is the result of the harmony between the size and shape of whatever is being viewed."

"Each of us possesses the fertile soil in which to plant and enjoy either beauty or its antitheses, ugliness, as we see fit."

Humanity's primary concern when it comes to the term 'beauty' is the visual impression of a woman, who through all the fickle changes of tastes and standards has forever been the ultimate object of beauty to artists throughout the ages. Whether soft round and pampered or lithe slender and windblown, whatever contemporary standards or personal tastes dictate, woman is synonomous with beauty. Creativity would probably be nonexhistant if everyone agreed on what was beautiful.

I have been musing over my obsessions with the female form and specifically, glorified and flawless images of women. I have a few ideas of why I maintain this obsession and why it only seems to grow larger as the years past. Firstly, I find the shapes of the female body asthetically pleasing of course. Curves in my mind are far more visually stimulating than straight lines. The nude female to me, is the ultimate beauty.

More importantly I think, it partially has to do with my upbringing. Alot of the time I am referred to as "fatty",overweight, unattractive, or other various insulting words by relatives. This is probably because one of my sisters is as thin and tall as a model, and the other is super skinny because she is obsessed with dieting and is a marathon runner as well. Both of these women pass for a certain race. Though we have the same mother, a woman from Barbados (a carribean island) and a father that is irish, we each look different. The model clearly seems to be an African-American woman, the other a white woman.

I am a strange mix in between. People have always asked me, "what are you?". It is a difficult thing to answer. I do not know that I have ever been able to find my place, or claim to be more of one thing than the other. In elementary school people described me to be African-American because I look closer to that I suppose. In high school girls would make jokes and call me a white girl because of the way I speak and act. My personality and the way I carry myself caused their idea of me to be a white woman. On forms where you may only mark one ethnicity, it has been engrained in me that because I look closer to an african american than a caucasian, I am to put that. I have however stared at that section of forms many a time and thought "Should I just put other?" Other just feels unfullfilling... Anyway, outsiders usually ask me if I am from a spanish or portuguese speaking country or area. But that's not even close.

In some of my reasearch from past projects I found I am not the only person of mixed race that has issues with beauty and identity. There is a whole hidden culture in the united states that seems a bit lost about who they are and have trouble with their self image.

From the time that I was small I was always show images from magazines, or movies of beautiful flawless thin graceful women of one race or another and I think I started to idolize them. I collect images of models and pin up girls and put them on this unreachable pedestal. It's only most recently that I have begun collecting those of women of mixed race. (Adriana Lima) These women are no longer women, they almost become these pieces of art that you hang on a wall, admire, and wish you could reproduce yourself.

A more recent reasoning for the photographing of my own body as opposed to photographing others in a beautiful manner is my fiance. He usually tells me how 'gorgeous' I am and how I am what he finds to be 'attractive'. Taking photos of myself and showing them to him and recieving praise is I think a bit addictive, though I would rather pull a tooth than to agree with the compliments. These figures, these photographs are to me, not really me, but whom I wish to be viewed as, a sexual, beautiful, object of desire, something to put on a pedestal, to admire and praise. Selfish perhaps, but it is this unspoken desire I believe hiding under the surface that , which each passing semester that urges me to do more and more pieces heading in this direction.

Anyway, this blog entry is getting to be a bit long. I'll talk in class further of the ideas and consepts that I have come up with because of the things I have been reading and thinking about over the past week.

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Mulatto.org Two forums for peaople of mixed race where interesting discussions happen.
Mixed Folks.Com Another site for people of mixed race who have trouble coming into their own.
Artists I was looking at - Carrie Mae Weems, Cindy Sherman, William M. Graham, Laurel Nakadate

lol I changed it again!! I went over alot of things with Chantal on wednesday. I have alot to think about, and alot of artists to look at. (Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman, Laurel Nakadate to name a few...) I have alot that I have been discussing with others as well, and thinking about and tomorrow I will post up some of my thoughts.

Late update again, oops. Well, I changed my blog to white cause I felt left out... it was peer pressure.

Anyway, I've been playing with the idea of putting my shadow images together overlapping, and also with backgrounds. These were just trials till I get the projector to do some new poses, but I think I like where these are going and might submit them to me/we.

If you guys don't know, Carl Sesto is putting together a book from the TIA area, but it will hold all different kinds of art. The subject of the piece needs to be me vs we, or you and your relationship to others/society/the world. Whatever your interpretation of that is. Hurry and submit to get your stuff published an a copy for yourself.

Anyways, here are the ones I was working on.

He needs a cover design as well. Submit as much as you want, but not everything will get in. Page size is 7 and a quarter square, but add like a half inch for bleed.

Click these images to make them bigger...

Missed my post day. Oops. Trying to make up for it. Been doing alot of sketching this weekend. Hopefully I will have something more to talk about for wednesday this week.

A link to my web site Yuzora.net: Into The Twilight

I'm doing a ton of posting on days other than mine... lol Sorry if I'm stealing the spotlight here. I just thought I should share some of what's going around in my brain right now. Here are some artists I found on www.deviantart.com of all places. Not always the best place to look for nice art.. but sometimes you certainly find things that are unique.

This artist's username is TiaPanko and the photograph is called Vision Shadow. I like how the figure fades away almost, blending with the background.

This artist's username is Lindabell and the photograph is called Dancing with Shadow. I thought the use of the color on the figure rather than the background was interesting. Also that the figure is repeated over itself again and again. More ambiguous then some of the things I do. My lines are much more crisp and clear. My color is either usually one flat color on the figure, or one on the background. Things to think about I guess.

Last one. This one is by username Furtiv and is called Questions. This photograph gives me interesting ideas about actually using text on the body rather than floating around of behind. The only other time I've done text on the body was in another one of your classes Chantal, if you remember. And I did it in freehand with paths.. This picture makes me think of The Pillow Book, like actually trying to write it on.. or maybe bring the projector back into play and instead of using it for shadow, using it to make my text fit into the photograph a little better... These are all just ideas bubbling in my head. I'm still trying to do a lot of research on other more established artists. I just thought these things were a bit of an interesting find for internet artists. I still need to work on poses and just what the message I'm trying to convey is really. But these are all good brainstorms for the moment I think. Till next time!

I've begun my research on other artists who work with text on a page. Very exciting stuff I'm looking at here. I will put up some more about it after I make my presentation I guess so you guys will have access to it all.
I also think I have some pretty cool sketches started for my project. I've been thinking a lot about using shadow and the different swing I can put on it rather than a straight up photograph of my shadow. The names of artists you guys suggested were really helpful, and hopefully within the next day or so I will have some great things to post up and share for some commentary.
That's all for now. Currently in Digital Printmaking, better get to work!