Reflection #6 (Cultural #2)

I went to the Morton Pumpkin festival last Saturday, in Morton Illinois obviously. It was an intense time. I have never been to it before, or if I have I don't remember so. It was quite similar to the Cherry Festival in Washington. There were a number of teenagers and young adults, with a few younger children there. I loved eating the pumpkin ice cream though! It was being served at the Morton Roller Rink, if that gives any idea of where the festival was being held at. I personally didn’t ride any rides so I couldn’t say anything particularly about the rides, but I did notice one that I don’t think we had at the Cherry Festival. It looked quite fun to ride on. Laura K. was intense about finding something pumpkin-y to eat, and she got her wish with some ice cream. Sammi P. said that there were more pumpkin foods at the festival on Thursday or Friday but Saturday was the last night for it I believe. It was incredibly tiring trying to walk around with having gone to Chicago earlier in the day, but it was fun nonetheless. I loved going to a different town and listening to people talk and seeing the crafts and eating the ice cream made by the local Morton-ites. I had a fun time breaking out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Reflection #5

Before I read this article and watched the film I felt pretty much the same way about color as I do after reading and watching the article. It didn’t tell me a whole lot of what I didn’t already know. Which is awesome; considering I learned most of what I know from my art classes! I learned some new terms for what I’ve already done before in my work but it wasn’t intentional I suppose you could say. It was just something that looked pleasing to me. Oooh maybe I have an eye for color! Who knew. I’m not sure how to explain how I use color in my own work. I mess with it a lot. I use varying shades and tints to get a good color combination. Quite often in my work I try to make the piece soft and easy and calming on the eyes, even when its reds I’m using. But I do like to have pieces that are jarring to the senses every once in awhile I can be mean like that. Pieces that aren’t at all what the viewer is expecting—it doesn’t look realistic at all but at the same time it does. I’m making them sound a lot more expressive than they actually are in my opinion. I don’t understand the author of the article’s view on wasted paints and getting the message across, exactly. If you’re painting or drawing for a specific person I understand you would want to get a nice reaction from them. I think art should be more about pleasing yourself, but I think that opinion is more only mine just because I’m not going to try to make a living off of art in the future. My color theory has changed in the past four years by becoming more complex. I (usually) know how to mix colors better and what tones to get in order to offset the other colors well. With my current project I sort of want to chuck it across the room because of the colors but Hey, it’s a learning piece for me. A new genre. Sometimes I think I would’ve rathered stayed ignorant of color theory and all its implications just because it gets so complicated in my head sometimes. But I’ve liked learning how colors blend and what they blend with to get good colors besides the basic “red plus yellow equals orange.”

Reflection #4 (Cultural #1) Chi-town!

art work--
restaurant--
back of random building--

I was in a beauty pageant over the weekend. It was an intense experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures of all of the events so I only have a few! And I made no new friends. But that’s beside the point. It was the National American Miss pageant, and this is different from the pageants on T.V. (i.e. Toddlers and Tiaras on HGTV). NAM focuses more on the inner girl, the more well rounded All-American girl. This means there is no swimsuit and no required talent portion. Miss Teen USA focuses pretty much on the outer beauty of girls. The former reigning queen for Illinois in the teen division was in Miss Teen USA and she said it was incredibly shallow. Fun, but shallow. This pageant was all the better for that in my opinion. It was easier to focus on the girl as a whole, not just if she had braces or acne. I loved the whole vibe of the place as well.
We were staying in St. Charles, which is southwest part of Chicago. There were so very many Hispanic/Latino people there it was crazy! I loved being immersed in it. The town itself wasn’t populated much with them, but the hotel was and some of the restaurants. The beauty of the landscape was phenomenal. There was art all over the town, and two murals I took pictures of because they were just that awesome. One is on the back of a random building, and the other was on the back and sides of a restaurant. The detail and depth and the colors chosen were fascinating. I rarely like work that Mexican artists produce just because it’s so unrealistic and bright colors, but I truly liked it. It spoke to me what can I say. I think you’ll see what I mean when you dig the pictures. The whole town was amazing, andI'll admit, I acted like a typical tourist and used a TON of pictures!!

I almost forgot!! There was an art showing at the hotel upstairs, and the guy they were showing had some very modern, ecclectic tastes, but also some quite traditional pieces as well. The one I have posted is the one I like the most. I'm not quite sure what attracts me to it. Maybe how vivid it is and the explosion of color. It was selling for close to 4K.

Reflection #3

I agree with pretty much the whole article. Some people I know take pictures with the explicit purpose of putting them on Myspace or Facebook (i.e., me). Some people only drag out the old handy dandy camera for special occasions such as birthday parties, Christmas, Easter, Christenings, etc. Still others document their lives with pictures and images from everything: themselves in a restaurant, the random people around them in a restaurant, at a park, in the pool, everything. I happen to like the last part, because I don’t just want to remember the special occasions, I want to remember the dull and mundane things about my life as well. I don’t think self-portraits from cell phones and Myspace is a new genre of photography. I do agree, however, that it’s a trend with the younger generation because of its easy accessibility and it’s easy to post it to the world to see. I like looking at people and seeing them in different situations candid moments or posed. It’s entertaining and can sometimes provide people with information about a person; how they feel about themselves or how they want to be perceived. I don’t happen to like self-portraiture in my own work. I don’t like to stare at myself over-much unless I have a truly gorgeous picture of myself (and to me, that’s hard to do a lot of times). It does seem slightly narcissistic, but if I were doing it for the purpose of Myspace, it’s not for me to see. I put pictures up so people can see what I’ve been doing and how I’ve changed or special occasions. I don’t normally print out pictures anymore.