Monday, July 13, 2015

What's in your Heart?: Getting to Know You via Tattoo

Chiara Bautista's work
What's in your Heart? Really?
Yes, really. One of the biggest issues for me when I work with a new group of kids is names. I want to be able to learn my students' names faster but I also want to know them - know what their passions and interests are. I think I will be a stronger teacher if I learn to get to know my students and what they care about. Personality is a huge part of my teaching - personality of both the students and myself. Honestly I want to do this project myself -  on a lighter note - I plan on developing a selection of samples that feature my great love, pizza, and an addition of dragon scales which are what cover my mushy insides.. friends and family know this to be true. I have other ideas and I will post my results when I have some time to actually work on them!


Objectives
  • View and discuss work of contemporary illustrator Chiara Bautista
  • View anatomical studies of the human heart
  • Work from reference images/objects
  • Create well-rendered drawings
  • Incorporate humor and personality into final piece

 
Key Concepts

  • The heart is a common symbol in our culture
  • The heart is associated with passion, love, life
  • What we are interested in can become a part of us, our personality, and how we present ourselves to others

 








Essential Questions for Lesson

  • How do the things we love influence who we are?
  • How can we be identified by our interests? Is that a good or bad thing?
  • How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?

Lesson Plan

What's in your Heart?

Visual Culture: What associations do we make with images of the heart? As part of an inspiration board we will individually seek out images of the heart used in advertising, television, tattoos, iconography etc. We will discuss how the heart is used as a symbol of love, passion, caring, and life. We will also discuss the historical significance of the heart as an organ in different cultures.  
Example: "The Egyptians believe the heart, or the ieb, is the center of life and morality. Egyptian mythology states that after death, your heart is taken to the Hall of Maat, the goddess of justice. There your heart is weighed against the Feather of Maat. If your heart is lighter than the Feather, you join Osiris in the afterlife. If you fail the test on the scales, then the demon Ammut eats your heart, and your soul vanishes from existence." 
Example: "The image of the heart becomes very important in Christian theology. The Sacred Heart, which is usually seen emitting ethereal light and suffering from wounds, is seen as a symbol for Jesus Christ and his love. Devotion to the Sacred Heart reaches a high point in the Middle Ages, where it is seen in works of art and is mentioned constantly in prayers and doctrine. It remains an icon even today."


Symbols and significance
How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?: Consider illustrations by Chiara Bautista and how the artist has created her own language of symbology. Think about the use of different natural and man-made elements she incorporates into her work and how they communicate with the viewer. You are required to depict 2-5 areas of interest/personal symbols/images in addition to drawing a framework of the human heart as a base image.
Identity: How do the things we love influence who we are? Write a list of the activities you love most. Think about ways people describe you to others, conversely think about ways you may describe yourself to others. Examples: reading - books, working on cars - pistons or exhaust, riding horses - items of tack for riding, hiking - mountains or trees... you get the picture. You can use different reference objects/images for each image if you choose. Quality of the image will be judged based on the attention paid to detail, rendering, and time spent overall.
  

Artists and Resources
(Also do Google image searches for her work...)
Timeline: Heart in History 

Gather
Gather objects associated with your passions, interests, or hobbies. Do observational drawings of your objects - study them closely - notice their details, textures, shapes, and scale. Brainstorm ideas about ways you can incorporate your objects into the preexisting structure of the heart. Think about the function of your objects, if applicable.
Enlarge and Engage
Students will transfer their drawings onto standard drawing paper. After creating the framework for their compositions, students will begin drawing, rendering, and filling in with hue structures. Students should keep in mind the use of color scheme, texture, arrangement, etc..
 Elaborate
Students are required to create a statement about their work. Conversely, if they have somehow incorporated text into their drawings, that would also be accepted as a statement.


Moving Forward...
I am really excited to see the results of this lesson plan when I work on it with HS/MS kids. They have some great ideas for how to combine and reinvent existing objects. This lesson could also be adapted into a printmaking project or even screen printing. I would easily be able to modify this project for younger students by decreasing the amount of objects/alterations, simplifying the framework of the heart by using a less complex rendering or even a template, and incorporating writing more by requiring a statement or text. I would probably only require one image because it would also take them a bit longer to complete their drawings... 
Either way, I am eager to create my own samples and hope to showcase this lesson during student teaching in the fall :)

Until next time,

Ms. Kanak

 
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Sunday, July 12, 2015

403 Install and Updates..

So can we all just pause for a moment and take in the fact that it is already almost the middle of July!? Am I the only one who is starting to freak out a bit...... hopefully not.

The past few weeks/months have been so packed full of events and exciting news and other things that I often forget to sit down and provide updates - it's something I'm working on. I wanted to do a follow up/finishing post about my senior show before everything was totally crazy and I had no time at all :)

The seniors who were displaying work on the walls only received 5.5 feet of wall space - that's not a lot to cram in 9 different drawings, an artist statement, and some Foldscopes to play with! But luckily my experience and time in the SAG* prepared me very well for the inevitable panic that sets in when you are encountered with a big, huge, white wall. To be honest I was too busy being excited to notice the scary scariness of installing my final show at Northern - I was finally hanging my senior show!

I felt really bad for my boyfriend who was watching me struggle through the calculations of hanging the work. I worked hard diagramming the layout, measuring, scaling down. I am NOT a math minded person so I made a lot of drawings.. and then re-drew, and then re-drew again! I wanted to stagger the images in the space and (always and) wanted to hang the frames at an angle to create some visual contrast from the many many rectangles and squares in the show. Plus, I liked the diamond shape of the frames in that position. I do what I want! Especially when I have full control over the outcome, process, and display.

the master plans...
I made sure to reserve a shelf. I wanted to have the Foldscopes on display with the work - kind of an invitation to visitors to play with the technology and experiment like I did. I also wanted to showcase the sources of the images in a mix-matched way. I loved the idea of keeping the image sources a secret and having viewers try to decode what the drawings are or what their sources could be. 

 


We were given nearly a full day to install our work and the person next to mine.. took nearly every minute of that time. He had large printed photographs in frames and measured and re-measured a bunch of times before settling on an arrangement and making space for me to put up my drawings. I worked from one end to the other and rearranged a bunch of things more than once, but finally it was done!


One of the coolest things I was able to do during this process was sharing my work with a group of my peers and professors and members of the community. Museum members and a few of my invited guests were able to attend and a select amount of students shared and explained to their work to a panel. Some of the attendees were also in charge of judging the show for final awards and other honors - pretty awesome opportunity!

If there is one thing I love more than creating my work it's sharing it with others. I was able to explain my process from start to finish, the experimenting I did with the media and technology, my personal teaching philosophy... super exciting :) I was also able to see some of my former professors and that meant a lot.

The next few weeks were a whirlwind before the big night - senior show reception! My family and one of my best friends drove all the way up from Illinois and lower Michigan to see the work and visit with me. I truly have some of the best people in my life and I wouldn't be able to do what I have done without their guidance, patience, encouragement, and sometimes reality checks!

My family are the most matchy-matchy and attractive people ever. Obviously

I count these friends as family and these family as friends. So much love in that room!

I stayed next to my work for the majority of the evening. I encouraged viewers to come try out the Foldscopes and to see if they could match the images with their slides/sources. Some of them figured it out! I had a couple of doctors come up to me with concerned faces - mainly because they weren't expecting such accurate renditions of bodily product. I was overjoyed to hear that kind of feedback and it was fun to watch people's reactions when they got close - really close - to the work.

there were a few experiments with the Foldscope by visitors - this one was a nosebleed slide! I am very strange.

After the senior show... you guessed it.. things got crazy again! I had to start moving out of my apartment of four years, spent some time at home, went to some baseball games, said goodbye to the boyfriend who was off to Oregon... busy busy busy. I traveled to Tennessee and spent some time in the Smokey Mountains - which was beautiful and fun and amazing and I want to go BACK.
I passed my Michigan test for Art Education Certification and I can now OFFICIALLY teach Art! It only took, what, 7 years?! Worth every painstaking, dedicated, stressful, and crazy minute! I am so excited to move on to the next steps in my life - you know, after camp, student teaching, and graduation. No. Pressure. Oh, and the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and I started moving to Wisconsin and and and..
I managed to squeeze in some time for shameless self-promotion as well and applied to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids! AAAaaaand I got in with my 303/ArtLab work :) SO EXCITED!

And now we're on to camp: I was promoted this year to Assistant Director. I feel like I have come a very long and far away way from Rockland and googly eyes -- but that whimsy and love for learning and teaching is still at the heart of what I do now as assistant. In fact, it's even more important because every day I am teaching new staff what I have learned over the years and trying to pass on my knowledge and patience to them - sometimes that is the most important skill to have. Especially with campers - and even more so with adults! Camp is a challenging but also a rewarding experience. I am often presented with problems and have to either find solutions or help those involved come to a meeting place - and it has not been easy going fun-fun camp life so far, let me tell you. I have had a fair share of personnel meetings and policies to re-write. Every day starts with a list and ends with a hearty and honest 'thank you' to everyone on staff and I do my best to keep my head and sanity in tow. You can only fix a toilet so many times before it explodes, people... think about that next time you visit a campground!
Every day is a new and unknown adventure from start to finish - good or bad, I learn from the experience and I try to put my best foot forward the next day. And my rule is to always clear my desk of work and papers by the end of the night before I go to my cabin and pass out. I like to start fresh in the morning - that goes for all aspects of the job. I feel like my experiences at camp are going to make me into an even better learner and teacher and that's why I keep coming back. I know that I am learning valuable skills for in the workplace and for my career with kids. It's also super fun to wake up to smiling faces who just can't get enough of your grumpy morning face before you've had your breakfast, or the way you have to consistently and repeatedly walk through the archery procedures, or even the way they roll their eyes when you tell them - even if they've been a camper since they were four years old - how we ALWAYS have to wear close-toed shoes unless we're at the beach or in our cabins or sleeping. All in all I am waking up and going to bed with a huge sense of purpose - to provide staff with direction, motivation, and a feeling that they have helped or learned or taught someone else. I make sure to thank them all every time they accomplish another item on the to-do list or if they offer to help a coworker, camper, or counselor with a project or problem.We are well into the season now and with only 4 camps left... it's kind of scary to think it's the middle of July already!
And on that note.. I am gonna sign off. I have the day off tomorrow and hope to accomplish a large (LARGE) amount of lesson planning, curriculum review, general life planning... like how the heck I am going to be able to drive all the way down to Chicago and hop a plane to Portland in a month!? Cannot wait for a bit of vacation mixed with adventures with my mom and the boyfriend. Rewards are important. I have learned to be kind to myself and recognize when a break or time away is needed. And I will leave off with this quote that I put on my board in the office yesterday:


I am grateful for every day I am given to learn, live, teach... all of it. Everything is very good right now and I hope that wave of good things will continue for a long time; I'm kind of loving the ride.

Ms. Kanak
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Friday, June 26, 2015

Foldscopes and 403: Round 4 of Images

One of the most challenging things for me with my 403 was timing. I had a lot of things happening in my personal life throughout this process and that would often coincide with my work time and motivation. I have learned it is most definitely ALL CONNECTED. If I am feeling low or stressed or upset my work ethic generally suffers... anyway!

Second to last batch before critiques... looking awesome in their frames!
My dad had the beyond awesome idea to have round mats created for the drawings to mimic the appearance of the images through the scope. So. Awesome. For the sake of being difficult and thinking out of the realm of normal displays I decided I would display the frames at an angle. I was real real done with hanging squares by that point after working in the gallery for so many years. Square shadowboxes get old, people. Over spring break we purchased frames and mats and affixed hanging brackets on each frame using a hand drill and wood glue. Never a dull moment when it comes to making art. After spring break I was ready to get back to work.

My first subject was earwax. Yep. Earwax is technically a product of the body and is produced to catch debris that could otherwise damage the delicate organs inside the ear. Kind of like boogers - boogers are for nose dust, earwax is for ear dust, dead skin.. you get the idea. 

attempt 1
attempt 2... getting closer
These images were really being heavily altered by the patterning on the scopes themselves. Earwax or dust or ear...bits? is really fine and hard to collect. I am picturing your faces as you read this and it amuses me
starting to get somewhere...
love that dark negative space from the shadow of the scope and lens..
bingo
This was, dare I say, a fun image to draw and work on. I started with a neutral gray and then worked in the green and yellow hues in the background. There were some really interesting hue structures in the foreground from the combination of the camera light and the scope light.

creating a ground
White spots of details and for 'halo'
I spent a few days on this image. Working and stopping and going back to it multiple times. I turned it upside down and on its side and changed the color palettes to experiment with shadow and patterns.

starting to add some darker hues... creating depth

I really wanted to focus on the outer hues in the halo
and done!
This image turned out much darker than originally intended. The photograph was much lighter and hues were less pronounced - but that's the great thing about drawing and adapting an image into a drawing. I can do WHATEVER I WANT. Really though... I wanted to push the limits of the media to add details and create the illusion of depth and textures for different parts of the drawing. This one was met with a lot of praise during critique - again people were reminded of stars and nebulas. When I told them earwax they made a face - I'm pretty used to that by now. But it's all for the good of science and exploration of self.. all the nitty gritty bits. Speaking of bits - or I should say BITES. The next images were taken from a slide made with a hangnail. 

I think we can all safely say that we have some bad habits. One of my nervous habits is biting my nails. I have been doing it for as long as I can remember and it's something I have been working on - mainly because teacher hands are dangerous things haha! I was getting really stressed out from all my work and life things and school things and... basically everything and started biting my nails again. Hair and nails are made of the same stuff (keratin. Nerd points for anyone who knew!) so I wanted to see if they would look similar under the microscope. You be the judge.

first shot
looks like a kaleidoscope almost..
striation lines from the nail. So cool!

I loved the distortion and smattering of colors on this one. 
This experimentation was a little bit more relaxed. The color palette was more predictable and controlled but I wanted to emphasize the violet and blue hues. I also saw a great deal of peach or 'flesh colored' highlights and details which were added later.

establishing a ground.. messy messy!
The image I chose to draw from was much less saturated and more grey and neutral in color scheme. Again I had the problem of the patterning on the scope interfering with the photograph, but this time it seemed to work much better with the overall composition. It created a much needed break from the heavy and busy patterning made by the light reflections and interference from the scope. This drawing was more relaxed and I enjoyed filling in the gaps with pattern, line, texture, and shadows.




The last step on this drawing was to add the dark values and shadows. I used brown and even greens as a complement to the purples and yellows. I wanted to focus on the interaction of the darkness with the sections of the photograph that were clear and in focus. What they say is right - practice makes perfect. This drawing quickly became one of my favorites as I added more details and textures which created depth and points of interest. Many people saw 'space imagery' in this drawing and when viewed from afar they did begin to look like the surface of planets... clouds of dust swirling and particles colliding with each other in some kind of atmosphere. Things only got better from here because then I put them in their frames....

and MAGIC happened :)
The next post will be a life update about all the things!
ALL of the things. Within reason. There are far too many things if I am being completely honest.

Ms. Kanak


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Monday, June 1, 2015

Foldscopes and 403: Round 3 of Images

My goal for the next couple weeks: finish up these 403 posts! I have been crazy busy between traveling, packing, storing, and driving all over everywhere. Add on a promotion at camp and a move-out date of July 7th and you have a recipe for a very stressed out Ms. Kanak. 

Anyway... Part 3 of 4 begins now!

One of the first images I experimented with was a photograph of a hair follicle. As stated in the first post I wanted to choose products of the body. In the past few years I have realized that my stress manifests through periodic hair loss...it's an issue I have tried to prevent in various ways and that is starting to be resolved.. I went back to revisit one of the photos and started with a light purple ground. I wanted to make the purple and yellows more saturated than the original photo to create interest and highlights.


I was really pleased with my end results - the highlights and white spaces started to resemble electrical currents. If I had started with a grey background I may have been able to achieve the periwinkle/ light purple hues in the original photo. I did not want to lose any of the details so I chose to keep the hues mostly pure and not blend them.


This next set of images is one of my favorites. The photograph was from a slide of tears. I remember reading articles in the last few months about the appearance of tears from different emotions.
Looking at Tears Under a Microscope...
The Topography of Tears

As I took photographs of the slides I did notice slight differences between images, structures, and lighting. I made the slide after a heated argument and took the images two days after during class. This was one of the first images where I really noticed how the pattern on the scope itself could interfere with the colors in the image.




Started with a complementary ground to pick up on highlights and contrast... I also did a very light outline/drawing in of the basic shapes in the composition.


This is kind of funny - like one of those cooking shows where the host creates an elaborate mix of ingredients and then magically has a finished product waiting for them in the oven ha! As I have stated before each of these drawings took several hours to complete. This drawing was particularly challenging in that there were so many subtle hue changes throughout. I started with the background colors - which were inadvertently created by the pattern printed on the scope - and blended those in to  more closely match the photograph. After that I darkened the outlines of the shapes to create depth and the illusion of shadows. I took some artistic license when choosing the saturation of the different hues - I wanted the shapes to stand out and have dimension and texture. Highlights were next, followed by creating the outside halo of darkness (sounds like a metal band..). I wanted to preserve the sharpness of the lines and highlights so I blended those less - really just on the edges of where they touched darker hues.

the final result
I really am pleased with how this drawing turned out. Critiques brought in responses like "it looks like space" "nebulas" "environment" "soft". I was able to create the illusion of depth and space in a fairly simple and undefined photograph. To be fair I spent a lot of time zooming in and out to examine the image more closely and see which areas I wanted to focus on. Some were much clearer than others, but my ultimate goal was to draw the appearance of liquid on a flat surface. 

Okay.. we are getting into 'gross' things again. So prepare yourself. The next set of images may make some queasy. 

Remember how I was talking about 'products' and 'being a woman'? Well there is no product associated more with womanhood than blood - in all its gory glory. I will spare you the details but the following images of slides were all menstrual blood from various times of day and days of the week in the same cycle. This is apparently becoming a thing! I read this article about Jen Lewis, an artist who has been using macrophotography to capture the movements and complexity of her own menstrual blood. My own exploration of the images was investigative and revealing in many ways as well. 

Lewis and I had a similar mission but much different results. We each wanted to make people see something natural, but taboo and stigmatized, in a different and objective way. Reproductive health information is something women are either inundated with or completely isolated from. Over the past few years I have learned more than I probably ever wanted to about my own body and health issues - but it has been important for me to do so. I need to know what is going on so I know where to go next, right?

I photographed one slide with two different strength magnifications, from different angles, upside down, right-side up - you name it. What I found was complex structures and textures that ranged anywhere from crisp and ragged to fluid to something that resembled string. Taking into account the human element of pressure put on the slide while taking the photograph, the air bubbles which slipped into the slide between collection and completion, however my own body chemistry was that day... every single image was different and beautiful. I wish I had more time to draw more or even enlarge the images taken because most were really surprising and dynamic.  


I chose this photograph to draw from - I loved the translucence and iridescent qualities











This is right about when the boyfriend starting making faces haha!
"Look what I'm working on today!"
"Ohh, what is it?"
"Blood"
".... I only ask because I care about our relationship."
Too too funny. Needless to say he played video games while I drew. Another pink ground for this drawing, but I also included purple and greys. I started with color blocking and quickly moved into shading. I always struggle with taking the time to fill in details - I work quickly in short bursts of energy. But with this image I tried to slow down and work lots of shadows and hue changes into the structures.


Moved from color blocking to mapping out darkened areas and starting to suggest the dark outside edges. I wanted to increase the saturation of the reds and purples from the photograph to create emphasis and points of interest. The original photograph was much less saturated but provided a great deal of textural information and freedom.


Nearly completed... added some bright blues and blended purples for more contrast between the background and foreground shapes. I also made more highlights and texture lines to break up the hue structures in the foreground... they were looking too grey for me.


This drawing was the beginning of the process of framing and matting my work for display. SO exciting! My dad and I ordered custom mats that were cut and beveled in the round to mimic the display of the slides under the scopes :) Exactly the effect I was looking for! I wanted to maintain that feeling of dark uncertainty that surrounds the things we observe from our bodies. There is always that thought of "is this normal?" whenever our body produces something. I wanted to present products of the body as something that could be seen as beautiful, but still mysterious and a bit unnerving. Apparently that is my thing - freaking out the viewer and making them take a closer look. Artists are weird.


More to come! Last installment of my 403 reflections is next.. and then I will really be hitting the books HARD for student teaching and lesson planning.

Thanks for reading! Hope no one lost their lunch.

Ms. Kanak
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