Community Connection #6
5-31-11
- Cutouts
- Backgrounds match the image
- Flying Birds
- Neutral Colors
- Dense areas
This artist reflects the type of art I want to do. Similar to myself, he uses birds and trees in his images. I am not sure how he makes it but he has cutout, where underneath the image is shown through the cutout with a color similar to hte background color.
In almost every piece of art the birds are flying in a flock. In some areas the flock of birds are dense and as the piece goes on the birds become more spread out. He uses colors such as medium and light browns, dark blues, forest greens, and gold.
Community Connection #5
5-10-11
- Primitive
- Contrasting colors
- Bright
- Thick strokes
- “Finger paint”
- Repeated figures in several pieces
Her pieces tend to look very primitive, so primitive it looks like she want back to pre school in a stage of “finger painting” techniques. She uses a dark colored background on every canvas, with colors like brown, black, dark green, dark blue, and deep orange. With those backgrounds she will use a bright color to make her images out of such as bright orange, hot pink, sun yellow, baby blue to contrast the dark backgorund.
This artist will also do the opposite with the canvases where she will paint a very bright colored background and use dark paints to make the images over the bright background. Her images usually contain simple shapes that look like cones, rectangles, and clouds. If you can make out an image sometimes it looks like a table with a hanging lamp to the side. This sort of image is repeated several times throughout her pieces. Some images also remind me of cells going through mitosis.
Community Connection #4
4-12-11
- Black and white
- Portraits
- Crisp, defined
- environmental
- darkened corners
- personality within facial expressions
- unique people
- Mostly very young, and very old people
This photographer takes close up portraits of people, mostly really young children and elderly people with unique faces. He takes his pictures in black and white with a defined look to all of them. Some of his pictures he puts a vintage shadowed border around his photos.
If they aren’t close up portraits he does them in environmental portrait. What makes the pictures so beautiful is the defined wrinkles adding to their individulity. The pictures of the faces express sincere emotions of joy, sadness, fear, concern. The young children have looks of innocence and sadness leaving the story open ended. In some pictures he puts captions of the stories of people.
Community Connection #3
3-15-11
- Reds
- Oranges
- Yellows
- Fast strokes of paint
- No face except for dark strips across eyes
- dark thick lines over the paint strokes
- Beauty and vanity sketchbook
- blurred
The artist makes swift fast brush strokes as background for her painted images. She seems to paint only women looking beautiful in dresses. Their bodies are very blurred in with the background that looks like fire due to the red orange and yellow paints. The women don’t have faces, though, they have dark bands of a thin black mask across their eyes.
Her other pieces in her sketchbook seemed to deal with vanity. often times looking at the beauty of the objects the person wears and the shapes of them rather than the person wearing them. With most of the pieces she uses a technique in which she paints a red background then blending white into it and then drawing the image in the white areas.
Community Connection #2
3/1/11
- Completely made of crayons
- The tips of them
- Black white and grays with lines of rainbow
- Shading very detailed
- Photographic
- Vintage pictures
His concept of using crayons, not to color, but structure is very interesting. The pictures are composed of the tips of crayons forming and image. He uses different shades of one color to make it look like the original photograph, I can imagine that it would take many of the same colored crayons to make one image.
They look like they were taken or inspired by a photograph. Some are very colorful, while others are only composed of black, white, and grays. On the black white pictures he will have random lines of bright rainbow colors scattered through out. From afar it looks like a photograph that is just very pixilated, but you can tell it was a painstaking process putting it altogether.
Community Connection #1 (2nd semester)
2/15/11
Artist: Jim Sojavic
- Body observational pieces
- Bold and bright colors with clashing colors
- Prints
- Transfers
- Movement
- Painting
All of his pieces no matter what media deal with the nude body. The people displayed in each piece you can tell are showing movement. It looks like he paints a bright intense color on the bottom layer and on top of it sometimes paints a very realistic figure. Other times in a bright color uses the same transfer of a simple figure without detail. When he uses the transfers he uses colors that match, yet clash with the background color. Some of the pieces uses multiple scenes in one that display emotions.
Community Connection #6
1-3-11
- Toilet paper rolls
- Scenes
- Silhouettes
- Detailed
- Mundane
Usually using toilet paper rolls aren’t typically thought of to be used for art. This artist has taken left-over toilet paper rolls to make scenes on the inside. She uses paper, the same color as a paper roll and makes cutouts. The cutouts are typically everyday scenes. Some examples of the scenes used are: beauty parlors, aw trip to the zoo, painting the wall and walking a dog. She delicately cuts out the figures in the piece, and with tweezers places the cutouts within the paper roll. The way she places the figures within the roll is in such a way that it is layered, some farther back than others. When you turn the toilet paper roll, you see the scene form, and with a light in the back the pieces are spectacular.
Community Connection 5
12-13-10
- Thick people
- Made of curving/ blocky lines
- A moment left open to interpretation
- Brown tones
- Everyday acts
- mysterious
His style of painting reminds me of picture book I read when I was young. The ways his characters are painted seem familiar to me. Despite the way they look the subjects and acts are of the mundane, not something you would see in a children’s picture book. The people have simplistic shapes and don’t really have curves, but you can still see the emotion of the people. They are painted to look wide and you aren’t really sure of where something ends and begins in his art.
All of the characters look depressed and bored towards whatever is going on. Geometric shapes seem to be used frequently within his pieces. All of his pieces leave you confused and questioning what is going on.
Community Connection 4
11-16-10
- Photographer
- Uses models
- Very saturated
- White and brown earth tones
- Strong shadows
- Some Street Photography
- Happy
She uses mainly female models for her pieces. The photographs are often very dull and saturated looking. She makes them were white clothing in most of the picture which allows you eyes to look at the models more than the clothing. The surroundings she takes her pictures in are often fields or cobblestone roads. There is a sense of white and clean to them, nothing is scattered or imperfect.
The people in her photos are always happy and never show a hint of really any other emotion. She also does some street photography of older people. Her pictures are all very detailed and show all of the shadows.
Community Connection 3
10-12-10
- Sculpture
- Long Necks
- Objects incorporated with sculpture
- Painted on sculpture
- Cubistic sculptures
- Exaggerated facial features
- Some sculptures are built off like a wall
- Paintings are bright
- paintings have lines and repeating bold shapes
His first set of sculptures are people from the neck up mounted on other pieces of clay. The people’s facial features, such as the nose, lips, and cheeks are exaggerated to either be much more defined or smaller than what the real person would look like. His other sculptures will feature their whole body but without arms. Other pieces he has flat pieces of clay and built off to make the figure stand out from its background, as if it were hung on a wall. The artist’s paintings are abstract primary color paintings. He uses repeating shapes in his paintings. Some of the shapes make up simple figures of people.
Community Connection 2
9-28-10
Artist- Lita Cabellut
- Portraits
- Ancient-look
- Paint streaks
- Dark colors
- Slightly distorted
- Close up
She mainly paints close up portraits of people. The way it is so close up makes the people look unattractive and none of the people in her paintings look directly forward. Some of her pieces have what looks like an actual photograph was used underneath. The portraits don’t look directly like a real human would though. She distorts the faces to be wider or skinnier than what the features really are. Many of the portraits are of what could be considered “unattractive” people. The paint colors are also quite exaggerated and aren’t “within the lines”. She goes over the drawn portraits with the paint in long, wide strokes. The artist does something with her portraits to make them look like they were from a few centuries ago with a cracked image.
Community Connection 1
9-13-10
Artist- Steve Sas Schwartz
- Black lines on white
- Thin marks
- Multiple bright colors
- Repeated lines
- Portraits
- Wooden
- Circles
- Real objects incorporated
This artist has a couple of different mediums that he uses for his art. He uses black ink on plain white paper. for all of these pieces he uses thin shaky lines to make portraits of people, many of which are nude portraits. The portraits he makes of people are often times everyday people doing everyday chores, such as vacuuming and sweeping. When he makes these portraits on the sides he uses real objects for texture on the sides and are painted over with white paint to blend with the rest of the canvas.
The other art he makes looks very different from his black and white portraits. These pieces of art are also just portraits, but made with very different materials. The portraits are drawn on wood, or what looks like wood. These lines are not shaky like the black and white portraits, but are very defined. Around the people he makes repeated layers of different colored line. He surrounds the repeated lines with circles with what looks like contain texture within them.
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2009 – 2010 School Year
Community Connection 4
5-10-10
Audra Weaser
- Seismograph
- lines
- single colors
- straight drips
- shading/ smudges
- whole canvas
- Spaced out
Audra uses large scale canvases that are filled with lines. This artist has a unique approach to splatter and dripping art. She uses lines to create a repeated shape, but differing sizes. The best way to describe her repeated lines style is what looks like a seismograph. When she uses this technique the line will continue from one end to the other, but the lines could be a skinny band just covering part of it. I many of the paintings she uses symmetry by copying the lines above. Along with the line there are paint smudges, but they don’t really look like mistakes, but rater part of the art as a whole. In some paintings this effect almost makes it look as if they are clouds and the drips looked like rain going to the bottom of the canvas.The colors she uses for the paintings are very simple. Usually she only uses one color lined with black for the drips.
Community Connection 3
4-27-10
Micheal Meyer
- Distorted Faces
- Bright colors
- Exaggerated expressions
- Outlines of people
- Scratched out images
- Splotches of paint
This artist has varying unique portraits of people. The images of the people are abstract figures that often times has exaggerated expressions. The smiles are often toothy smiles that show an almost evil face. There are also many scenes that he makes that are hard to see and understand with his almost childish style of painting. With some of the people the limbs are made from etchings into the paint.
There are squares painted all around his portraits of different colors.He layers these squares with the portraits of people are subjects that are not easily made out. Some of he creatures look like deer. One o the things looks like a chicken with a human face.
In his paintings he usually uses the same type of colors scheme such as dark greens and blues or oranges and yellows blending in together. For many of the backdrops of the paintings there are bland tan and brown colors.
Community Connection 2
3-24-10
Kevin Sonmor
Lowe Gallery website
- Slightly Classic
- Dark Colors
- With contrast of light colors
- Split in different sections
- Reds
- Use of nature
This artist has a sense of classic/ dark art, but with a spin. He uses very dark colors with random areas of white. When the lighter colors are used it is usually splashes and dripping down the canvas. The colors usually that are used are black, brown,red, and a beige white. Some pieces he had have a bright blue or brown/yellow.
Many of his pieces have random dots, or spheres incorporated. They are layered on top of his splashes of dark colors around his canvas in geometric patterns. Other times his subjects are aspects of nature. A couple of his pieces of art have horses but with a beautiful abstract background. Some other pieces he has made have grape vines scattered around.
Community connection 1
2-23-10
Artist: Christopher Kram
- Thin lines from Pen or Pencil
- Watercolors
- Pastel colored
- People
- Undefined shapes
This artist has all completely similar pieces. It is hard to tell if he is making a drawing or paining because of what he uses and the simplicity of each piece. Throughout his art there are multiple subjects that are hard to separate one from the other. He uses mainly brighter, yet bold colors. Some of the colors he uses are yellow, purple, oranges, and some greens. These colors are not bold in themselves, but rather all blend together to make the piece itself. It seems that he uses watercolors for it as well as pen. In other pieces he looks to be using colored pencils. His lines are very thin, none are ever bold or thick. His lines are rarely straight or perfect, but branch off to make new lines. He uses multiple different shapes to create the line, such as curls in his art, or flowery looking objects.
His subjects are hard to make out. From what I could tell he made a few portraits of children and babies. Within each person or subject there are shapes to make up the person, but not in a cubistic way. Others, do though, look as to take on a cubistic sense with parts that all fit together in the piece with no specific subject. Some pieces also have text to make part of the picture. In some pieces if you look hard enough you can make out different body parts and faded faces.
Community Connection 2
12-30-09
Artist: Erich Heckel
- Many Woodcuts
- Black and white
- Bold Basic Colors
- Portraits of people, mysterious looking
- Skewed, thin body figures
- unrealistic landscapes
- simplistic scenes
In Erich Heckel art he uses bold strokes. He also uses a technique of woodcuts, which looks like transfers. When these are displayed they look like most of them are done in simple black and white. In other pieces of his wood cut outs he uses basic colors such as red, yellow, blue, and green. When these colors are used none are darker or lighter then basics, just very bold, where no one color directs your eyes to it, but rather to all of them. In the woodcuts there isn’t much detail, but when detail is applied they are thick streaks.When he paints with just basic colors, much of the time he puts a thick black line surrounding the objects.
In his figures they look ofter mysterious. Most of his woodcuts are of portraits of people. These portraits of the people look sometimes angry, sad, or mischievous. The people are often thin and skewed in the portraits and have dark eyes with little detail. The people are usually placed in simple settings, or no setting at all. The actions within the pieces are usually simple as well, such as talking to one another or standing.
He commonly paints landscapes as well with sunrises. These are the few paintings he doesn’t use bold, basic colors. Instead he mixes the colors to make it somewhat more realistic looking. With his landscapes he paints them with Impressionistic strokes. The colors are always bright with many reds in them, but also leaves the canvas white in some areas with a look of no intention of filling them.These paintings also have much usage of lines, such as winding roads.
Community Connection 1
Artist: Peter Foley
Date: 12-11-09
- Uses a lot of layering with square shapes
- A lot of Browns and Beiges
- A lot of usage of drip paint
- Use of Triangle shapes to make pictures
- He paints creatures from ink with very simple characteristics
- Many of his paintings deal with Africa
- Miniature portraits within the art works
Most of the time the artist deals with mixed media art works. Withing his art he uses multiple smaller pieces of art work to create the whole picture. The smaller art works seem to be vary random without knowing the meaning behind the art work. He uses pictures such as chandeliers, portraits of people, vases, and chicken scratch drawings of creatures from ink. The pictures within the art are separated by masking tape with multiple layers of it.
In all of his pieces of art work he has an image of the continent of Africa and images around it dealing with Africa. He uses scene of battle of different cultures throughout his work as well.He uses different shades of browns giving is an aged look to it and black silhouettes of different figures. Throughout his art he uses lines to form different shapes and designs in themselves. At some points in his art he also uses red paint to drip. In most of his art he doesn’t add much color past brown, black, and red. Overall I enjoyed his work for the aged look and how he used repeated images and the layering of the images.
Community Connection 2
Artist: Courtney Eid
Date: 11-4-09
- Usage of Masks
- Oil Paint textures
- Thick, heavy brush strokes
- Bright colors used in blocks of paint
- Un-detailed faces
- Plain background
This artist uses abstract ways to portray humans an their portraits. She uses heavy brush strokes with noticeable use of oil paints. The brush strokes make the faces look very bold with little detail. In the portraits the people have little expression in their faces. It seems as if their faces are either made to look like sad clown faces or masks. Their eyes are darkened as well as their mouths, while their bodies and faces are all bright colored and thick brush strokes to display the colors.
The figures are made more bold looking because their backgrounds are no interesting colors, she uses black, white, or a tan color to make the faces stand out. In many of the paintings the characters look sad, although they have little to no expression displayed. The artist shows the sadness in the people by their heads are down their elongated faces and their darkened eyes. Other than the darkness there are bright colors in their faces. The artist uses every color from lime green to pastel pink. In the paintings there are uses of oil colors that enhance the colors and the media of the artworks.
Community Connection 1
Artist: Mark Elliott
9-22-09
Amelija Sorg-Taylor
9-23-09
- A lot of blues used
- Shaved heads with back turned
- Surreal
- Obscure items within picture
- Facial traits highly exaggerated
I thoroughly enjoyed this artist’s work. His art is easily some of my favorite I have seen locally, or even completely. His work is almost what I could call the definition of surrealism. The paintings are the kind that catch your eyes, and make you think. For example there was one with a bald person with the back of his head with barbed wire in a holocaust scene, which I inferred was because of the clothing, but then there was monocle which I wasn’t sure what it stood for.
His art had other strange things that made me ponder for a bit what it was about. There had been a painting with a banana being shot through with red paint, which I think is blood. His paintings are very detailed, but at the same time it is very bold with little details. The portraits of people had exaggerated features such as the bags under the eyes, were made huge. Also, some of the portraits had slight tints of blue to their skin, which I though was very individual.
Though surrealism isn’t a new thing I felt like this artist combined his own complete individual ideas with others, though that is usually happens I feel like it was especially unique.
