blog 5

I have always enjoyed working in a collage medium and working in photoshop is reminiscent of that process, adding, subtracting, cutting, layering meaning, implying other meanings. Investigating contemplation in this medium has offered lots of challenges technically but also lots of growth. My most significant accomplishment is my increased comfort level in photoshop.

Working efficiently with layers has been an ongoing process, most challenging but I am making progress. I have mastered  basic techniques while improving my efficiency.

When I look back at where I began with the first two quizzes, the magazine cover and my grand daughter dancing, in both images I see how my use of technique was interesting but rough, the text tools on the cover awkward, the neon effect with the environment of the dancers still relatively undeveloped, but the seeds of meaning are there. By the time I got to the left side of my final, the Indian scene is well integrated with technique and intention, directing the eye to the right and blending into the kaleidoscope

final image to ad

images for final

artist statement

My final series develops the expansion of the scope of contemplation to include more of the human experience, constructed perspectives of buildings, human activity. The focus draws the viewer to the center of the series, a mandala, at the center the human experience, then the eye moves upward, up and out to the cosmos.

Blog 4 contemplation

For my final project my intention is to expand on contemplation by including three new images. One will be a mandala image to be placed at the center of the axis for the other four images. Top and bottom diptych will remain the same, one above and one below the mandala. New images will be placed at the left and right side of the mandala.

The 4 surrounding images expand the dimensions of the concept of contemplation through height and width. The center mandala defines the need for a central focus to ruminate on.

I do not have a direct influence for this work. The source of my inspiration is previously taken photos and my interest in mandalas. A photoshop technique that I incorporated was a download of a new filter to allow me to more easily create the mandala, or kaleidoscope as the center image

Kaleidoscope link will take you to the web site where I downloaded the filter.
Kaleidoscope

Contemplation diptych

My midterm combination from bottom to top

Artist Statement

Mary Provosty

Diptych Artist Statement #1

 

My Big Idea is contemplation. My intention is to evoke the act of contemplation on a local immediate level and expand the notion of contemplation to a cosmic level. Contemplation on the most local level is sourced from the self, the act of pausing, reflecting, gazing beyond, inward and outward.

            My visual strategy is to use my own source of photographs  because they produce the most memory from which to work, both personal memory and reflection and memory for the computer. I also have a lot of images from which to review for ideas.

            The ideas and inspiration for the images are drawn from my active dream life and my metaphoric perceptions of experience. As an artist and a visual thinker I find the origin of my image sources to be diverse, sometimes accessed through memory, sometimes through dreams, sometimes through research of an artist or topic. An example of this experience would be the way I found the idea for the stairs in diptych bottom. My intention was to have the eye of the viewer travel up the image. There are lots of ways to do this however the metaphor for rising up and out of the body, rising up into larger consciousness, is easily described through a stairway. I had flashes of Esher’s stairs, some going up but the illusion of some going down. I had a dream about choosing stairs with a select tool for my mother to walk up as she transits from this life to the next. I found an acceptable photo of a stairway to work with.

            The self sits at the bottom of the stairway surrounded by green life and decayed monuments in the form of columns. The reflection/shadow of the self rises up behind the self in the flesh. There is a portal of light filled with sky, the portal to the next layer, the top dipthych.

Images I began with included a Buddhist cave in India, an ocean wave, a cosmic swirl, a shell, stairs, sky. The predominant movement for the viewer should be to travel the eye upward and spiral out at the top.

I need to update my web site. I am not actively working on this assignment for myself but the concepts I am exploring will no doubt help me organize my next series of experiences for my new web site. I have new work to promote.

Brainstorm-Modulating meaning

Big change!

I am all for simplification. The thumbnail grabs could not be expanded so I looked at the overall themes, ocean, figure, expanse of environment and I went back to the web to grab a big wave, a natural spiral, and a cosmic environment.

Two artists

John Cage performing "Water Walks" Jan 1960

John Cage music for Duchamp's fragment in film by Hans Richter

John Cage interview

Synchronous Objects at the Wexner

I recently was re-introduced to John Cage because of an exhibition at the Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati. Merce Cunningham has recently passed away and tapes were running on both Merce and John. As I reflect about Cage's work I find he has isolated some key "big Ideas" for me.

What was he known for in a nutshell...Experimental music, wanting each moment to be something "I don't yet know". He utilizes a language of sound rather than a search for music, stripping down music to its original sensorial experience....sound. What does this mean to me...stop catagorizing, mapping, sorting, identifying, remembering, and be in the moment with what sounds are there and what they have to offer.

Second artist.
Robert Forsythe and the recently exhibited work at the Wexner "Synchronous Objects". Forsythe has broken down dance and choreographer to be a 3 dimensional movement in space. Okay I talked about him in my first Blog. He comes up again. I love the language, the dialogue, the visuals layered onto the dance, I love how it makes me feel superconscious of my own movement, my axis in space.
"seeing dynamic boundaries in the action of the dance"
"Seeing the changes at the edge of the movement"
"ghost like traces"
"visual noise amplified and emphasized"
"vibrating surface of the dancer's motion"
"motion volumes generated by the dancer's pathes through space"
"alignment threads"

It is too soon to tell just how this will come together for me. I am thinking about contemplation from the core of the body, at the heart center, expanding out into the cosmos. Local versus global and beyond. How it is all connected, the inside universe to the outside cosmos. Time. Space.

photoshop tutorial

Creating a shadow tutorial
Creating a giant elephant, but I am not interested in giant elephants, especially if they start walking funny. My first choice was to go back to my golden egg since the directional lighting was sharp. For my environment, a cave in India. I cheated on my first egg by grabbing a portion on it that seemed to show the proper directional lighting, copied onto a new layer, and placed it in the environment. I grabbed a shadow with the elliptical tool from some previous shadow, applied some blur and edge softening, fit it to the space, and voila.

Okay too easy, even though I easily have been putting time into this thing. How about adding the motorcycle guys on cell phones zooming through their sacred space. White shirts with shadows... So off to select them, reduce saturation so that they look more real in the cave, and place them in.

Now to play with shadows... Make a duplicate layer of motorcycle guys and fill it in, distort it in length and orientation so it follows the light path, opacity, blur, edges.

Finally the shadow for the clothing...another duplicate layer where the copy stays behind with one layer the darker adding more blue for shadow, one layer the brighter, on top. Tweaking for the fill of the shadow colors, then erasing. Also noticed the motorcycle shadow layer could be referred to for direction of darkness on the shirts.

How much time for all this...don't know where the day went but I do recommend a break for popcorn, chewing helps clear the mind.

William Forsythe recently showed at the Wexner Center at OSU in Columbus. Forsythe is a dancer/choreographer who has been using electronic media to articulate the elements of movement embedded in his creative process both as a dancer and a choreographer. By manipulating the time element and the spacial element of dance, he transforms the audience's perception of weight, gravity, volume, dimension, and focal point by presenting the dance as a complex relationship of movements.

In his solo he presents his own unique fluidity.
Video

At the Wexner the exhibition William Forsythe:Transfigurations showcases a full range of "choreographic objects and seeks to shed light on the connections that have evolved from Forsythe's work as a dance maker and performer, developing his concepts through working from the body, to projecting these ideas into new mediums and ways of presenting"

By electronically interpreting his work he relocates the dance, putting it in galleries, public squares, the internet, grabbing viewers of all ages and backgrounds.

"City of Abstracts" interfaces with the viewer at the entrance to the exhibit. The viewer witnesses digitally altered images of their bodies projected on a large video screen, inviting interaction, spontaneous movement, enjoyment.

I invited a performer and a veteran choreographer to go to the exhibition with me and we spent easily 30 minutes playing, moving together, watching our bodies transformed like gumby, spiralling, flowing, melting. It was very easy to spontaneously choreograph a dance, accessible, delightful.

In "Synchronous Objects for One Flat thing" he uses new media to make "visible an array of expressive animations, information graphics, and other visual cues the deep structures of choreography in order to enrich cross disciplinary invesigation and creativity"
Writing about his process

"One Flat thing..." video and interview

Formal qualities denote the beauty, flexibility, and grace of dance.
The electronic projections and interactive media connotations are that we all move, we all have capacity to take pleasure in our expressive flow, dance is not for the elite.

Links

Some links for contemplation

A discussion of contemplation with a nice picture.

Another

and here for a pleasant surprise

or this

contemplation

So what is the Big Idea?

Contemplate what? Who has time...
I'm on to the next thing, thing after thing,
gotta go, gotta have it, do it, be it.
What does it look like anyway?
A "con" and an "ate" on either side of a temple.
Ah temple, my body the only sacred real estate I
can be enclosed by, the flesh my soul doth inhabitate.

Contemplation rhymes with libation
quiet, thoughtful, caring, still, the acceptance, the peace
ah appeased for the moment, mellow, satisfied,
to be in my own presence, or should it be Presence
The harmony, to be fully satiated and levitating
each breath a wisp of bliss, blessed by beauty and synergy
content, connected, slippery and satisfied,
reflecting and affirmed, brimming in synchronicity
ideas, things, balanced
not something I should have to mediate
an active flow of appreciation
please and thank you and full of gratitude
a practice the culture needs to propagate