Week 1 _ Reading Response Drawings

 Project 1 _ Part 1 

 We will begin our first project with a reading from Linda Weintraub's In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art. 

It's from a section of the book called Crafting an Artistic "Self" and deals with identity, by describing the practice of three distinct artists. You may find the scanned PDF in CANVAS (located under Files>Project 1).

Choose one of the following thematic categories and read the related essay. 

Then create a set of 3 drawings in response to the prompt associated with the essay that you chose. You may approach this by creating a set or series of three drawings that explore a single idea. Or you might explore three distinct ideas within the umbrella of your chosen prompt.

Universal Guidelines:

• Work representationally 
• Employ tonality. By this I mean that you should use a range of values in your drawing. This can be modeled tonality based on lighting and/or simple value shapes assigned to distinguish planes and surfaces from each other.
• Spend at least 1.5 hours on each drawing. 
• Fill the frame! Your drawings should activate the entire picture plane. (No "islands" of image in a sea of white paper.)
• Use the provided paper: 8.5 x 11” Stonehenge. 
• Medium is up to you. (Black&White / Monochromatic)

Disclosing Biography – Unabridged and Uncensored

Nan Goldin (pp. 198 – 205)

Create a set of drawings using “candid” photos as sources/points of departure. Select photos that speak to your sense of a true self. Look to “unmasked” photographs of you, your friends, your family as opportunities for disclosure. (By this I mean that in the photo-saturated culture of smartphones and social media, people are very conscious of their “best” self or how they wish to be perceived. We come to have a “camera face” that may represent only one aspect of the self and often pictures that don’t achieve this ideal are deleted.) Note that the essay describes Goldin’s artistic self as “a compound entity comprised of tightly knit relationships.” i.e. The photos you choose to work from might not all include you and might not all be singular. It might be illuminating to consider the meaning and aesthetic of the “snapshot” as it is related to pre-digital film photography…

 

Inventing Biography – Fictionalized Fact and Factualized Fiction

Kim Jones (pp 208 – 213)

Use drawing to investigate the statement, “the human self need not be singular.” What happens when you allow “yourself” to expand into “ourselves”? Manifest an alternative being with its own personality, mannerisms, physical form, trepidations and desires. Develop/describe a true and complimentary being and explore ways in which this alter-ego expands or simplifies the range of behaviors and values available to you.

 

Transcending Biography – Woman of Allah, Resident of Chinatown

Shirin Nishat (pp 214 – 221)

Create a group of drawings that explore “the contradictory self,” those places of cultural complexity and juxtaposition that result in feelings of in-between-ness and tension. Many of us consider ourselves native to multiple social, geographic, and mental spaces that aren’t always harmoniously demarcated. Investigate pictorially, the ways in which compound loyalties may result in both internal and external conflict.

 

 

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

By Weds., 8/27 = complete the reading and brainstorm/sketch ideas in your new sketchbook

Project 1 Part 1 drawings should be complete and ready to hang at the beginning of class on Wednesday, September 3. We will start class with a discussion of your work before moving on to the second part of the project.