Auditory Pictures

I have had a lot of time to listen to the radio, driving to school or practice, to a friends house, to church.  I always listen to the same radio station, 88.5 YES FM, mostly as a result of a missions trip I embarked on this past summer.  They play so many different types of music--heavy metal, rap, hip-hop, melodious, alternative--but they all have one thing in common.  All of the songs they play are christian.  Sometimes they take non-christian songs and make parodies of them to give them a great message along with the beat that attracts its listeners.  But what is it that makes music so appealing... so artistic that we quite simply can't live without it?


Songwriters, lyricists.  They both have one goal in mind--to appeal to their audiences.  For many, it is through interesting beats, much like the one you have stuck in your head right now. That is what they want--to create a beat and rhythm so intriguing that you want to listen to their work at all times.  


It's evident you run the show so let me back down. 
You take the leading role, and I'll play the background. 
I know I miss my cues, know I forget my lines 
I'm sticking to your script, and I'm reading all your signs. 
I don't need my name in lights. 
I don't need a starring role. 
And why gain the whole wide world, if I'm just gon' loose my soul. 
And my ways ain't purified, I'll live according to your Word. 
I can't endure this life without your wisdom being heard. 
So word to every dancer for a pop star 
Cuz we all play the background, but mine's a rock star. 
Yeah. So if you need me I'll be stage right. 
Prayin' the whole world will start embracing stage fright. 
So let me fall back and stop giving my suggestions 
Cuz when I follow my obsessions I end up confessing. 
That I'm not that impressive, matter fact I'm............ 
A trail of star dust leading to the superstar. 


In these lyrics, the narrator has given up his life and handed it over to Christ.  He no longer has complete control over his life.  He knows that with him he does not need to be famous (i dont need my name in lights.  i dont need a starring role) and he does not need to have all the power in the world because he knows that it will just corrupt the ways set for him in Christ (and why gain the whole wide world, if im just gon' lose my soul).  He has conquered his fear of trying this new faith, and wishes the world would do the same thing.  He is accepting his role, realizing that his new place has made him a bright extension of Christ himself, and he is no longer the same.


When I hear this song, the picture is so vibrant in my mind.  I see a very bright, luminescent man (Christ) standing in the middle of a huge stage, speaking his word for all to hear.  I myself am small in the corner, going unnoticed by almost everyone in the room, and that is okay with me.  I have stage fright myself, so I relax when I see this man in front of me, taking up all of the attention.  Although I am small, I have a light glow that resembles the bright blinding light of Christ in front of me--proof that I am following in his ways. 


It is a great song, and I suggest you look it up on YouTube.  Search "Background by Lecrae."  Listen to the song, let the emotions you feel flow with the words and pictures you generate in your mind.  Here's the second verse... comment to let me know your own paintings in your mind's eye.


I had a dream that I was captain of my soul.
I was master of my fate, lost control, and then I sank.
So I don't want to take the lead
Cuz I'm prone to make mistakes.
All these folks that follow me gon' end up in the wrong place.
So, just let me shadow you. And just let me trace your lines.
Matter fact just take my pen.
Here, you create my rhymes.
Cuz if I do this by myself I'm scared that I'll succeed.
And no longer trust in You, cuz I only trust in me.
And see, that's how you end up headed to destruction.
Paving a road to nowhere. Pour your life out for nothing.
You pulled my card, I'm bluffing
You know what's in my hand.
Me I just roll to trust you to cause the dice to land.
I'm in control of nothing. Follow you at any cost.
Some call it sovereign will, all I know is you the boss.
And man I'm so at ease. I'm so content.
I play the background like it's an instrument. 

My Own Art

I myself have dipped my hand in the art world.  Mostly in drawing and painting, until this year when I took ceramics.  I have pictures of what I have done so far below.

These two are just semester projects I had my freshman year in Beginning Drawing & Painting, where we had to stipple an animal of our choosing.  I'm not really a fan of cats--I just liked the pictures.

This is not one of my favorites--I could probably fix it now that I am more experienced in the arts and how I want to use colored pencil.  I actually might, now that I am really looking at it.  But we just had to take a pop can and draw it any certain way on a table with some background.  It's alright.

This one, along with the rest of the images, are from my sophomore year.  This is a colored pencil drawing from sophomore year, it was also a semester project, if I recall correctly.  We just had to use an inanimate object such as a game piece, or keys, as I chose.  It was right around the time I got my car, so I used my brand new set of keys as my subject.  And my favorite color scheme--orange and blue.

To the left, the combination of watercolor and marker, was a project we did where we got to choose something from our childhood.  I showed horses for about 5 years, and it was a big part of growing up for me.  Don't get me wrong--I am still a child, but this time in my life was one that made me who I am today.  I first used watercolor to  lay the base for the colors, then used marker to get the finer detail that I couldn't achieve with a paintbrush.

To the right is a colored pencil drawing.  We were given a picture, then told to create a frame to place around the image to find the spot we wanted to recreate.  I took the liberty of adding a little something extra in drawing the face not once, but twice.  This is one of my better pieces.  In the image below, we used acryllic to create an abstract painting. I painted a ring that was given to me when I turned 16 years old from my mother.  The opal in  the ring was a part of the ring my grandmother gave to my mother when she turned 16, and the sapphire is my birthstone, so the ring meant a lot to me.  The red in the image was a random color chosen to offset the colors in the opal.

The brightly colored image below is a watercolor also done in my sophomore year.  I really like this one, especially the use of warm colors in the flowers contrasting with the cool ones in the background.  We were given a large vase of flowers and told to paint a blocked recreation of what we could see form our perspective.  I usually go for making my pieces untraditional, which is why you don't see a simple vase on a counter full of flowers.

We also got to experiment with pastels in my sophomore year.  I personally had never tried them, I actually had no idea how to use them.  But I was quite satisfied with my first attempt with this forestation seen below.  I really like the left side of the piece, the long tree trunks, as well as the path below.  The leaves need some definite work, though, in my opinion.

And finally, here to the right is also a first attempt at using charcoal.  I love everything about this piece.  Even the background, which, I must admit, was drawn quite haphazardly.  It was a last second thing the instructor requested I add.  But I especially loved the easy way charcoal blended beneath my fingertips to get all the shadows, the smoothness of her sweatshirt, and the different textures seen.  It was my first drawing with a live subject.




Hopefully once I get through this year of ceramics I will be able to add to my collection of art.  I intend to enroll in a photography class as well as creative drawing & painting, so look to see more in the future!

Picking Apart Pixar(t)

As a result of a recent knee injury followed by reconstructive ACL surgery, I have been laying around watching movies as I recover.  I have been visited by my best friends and relatives, and as of this moment, my best friend, my Mom, my brother and I are having a Pixar movie marathon.  With Wall-E, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo under our belts, we are settling in for the second half of the day with Toy Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and A Bug's Life. 

It is amazing the depth of the art industry today.  To have come from drawings on cave walls, it is truly a novelty.  While I sit here and watch the free forms flitting across the television screen, beautiful, brightly-colored fish swimming through an animated ocean or rusty, dilapidated machines slowly saving the planet or ferocious, intimidating monsters releasing the screams of little children, I can't help but think of all the work that was put into the making of the film.  These movies are not just millions of drawings slapped together to create the illusion of movement.  I mean, sure that is a huge part of them, but the art behind it, to me is the manipulation of these drawings to conform to what appeals to the viewer's feelings.  I mean anyone can put a few people up on the screen, make them fall in love and that is that.  But with these Pixar movies, they stray from the normal human figure and think like machines.. or monsters.. or fish.  Then, they take those thoughts and weave them into drawings, which eventually get put set to motion, and finally, to music and words.  Sometimes, as in Wall-E, they don't even have words.  That, to me, is a fantastic art--one that is somewhat taken for granted in today's world.  But then again, most things are.

End of Griet's Journey

I have finished reading Chevalier's "Girl With A Pearl Earring."  I was astonished, honestly, at the knowledge Griet's character gained throughout her time working as Vermeer's maid.  By the end of the novel, though she was not a painter, she could look at the painting of her and know exactly what it was that needed added or changed in order to make the painting complete.  She paid so close attention to details in his paintings that she knew exactly how to describe them to her father throughout the book before his death.  Griet was able to understand Vermeer better than he seemed to understand himself.  Several times she would look at a painting in his studio and see something she thought should be changed, and she would just change it.  Regardless of what Vermeer himself may have thought, she knew by that time that it was going to make his painting better.  One time it was changing the tablecloth.  Another it was eliminating a large crowd.  And of course, there was the earring, though Griet waited for Vermeer to discover this one for himself.  When the maid first began her work in the studio, she was skeptical and hesitant about what to do and when.  Then she slowly began to immerse herself in Vermeer's work, and by the end of just couple of years she knew the techniques and way of going about a large painting just as well if not better than the painter himself.  Honestly, i found that quite shocking.  I myself have trouble looking at a painting and noticing all of the detail.  I actually tried it when I looked up a few of his other paintings, and I could not quite remember everything.  Griet's character was a very complex one in just about every way.

Unique Use of Paint

I came across an article not long ago with images of a man who had his entire body painted to blend in with his surroundings.  Not simple, as in camo, but complex, such as seen to the left.  I couldn't believe how difficult is was to tell the difference between the man and the picture!  Who in their right mind would want to do this... let alone take the time to do it?


As you can see in the top photo, he is blending into a theatre of sorts.  All one color, different shades and tints in order to accomplish the desired effect.  I imagine this man, who's name is Lui Bolin, has a statement to make.  To the common eye, this statement could be that Bolin wants to prove a point.  Maybe he feels invisible to the outside world, or as if he is not being heard.  


To me, these works of art shout out a message so strong it is hard to ignore.  Bolin chooses complex pictures to disguise himself in, not simple ones.  The simple pictures are the ones that are the hardest to hide in.  The cans picture is one of the busier images, therefore making it easier to miss where he is standing.  The same goes for several of the images.  But if you look up some more of his work, there are simpler ones of him against a graffiti wall and in the middle of a street that it is not at all difficult to find him.  Bolin is telling me that in today's day and age, an age of hustle and bustle it is easy to forget the things that should be most obvious.  Someone may be standing not far away, but it is easy to be distracted by people too caught up in the detail... to caught up in what is going on around them.  


It astonishes me the degree some people go to in order to get a message across.  Art does that for people.. it allows absolutely anything, be it recycled or reused or completely fresh and new aged.. to become a piece of art with meaning.  Some people use paint to paint a picture of a landscape, some use paint to draw lines on pavement, and some use paint to cover walls in a house.  But Bolin has a unique use of paint... a use for something entirely new, and different from what has been done before, and my hat goes off to him for it.  His art is brave, is new, is courageous... and it shall be neat to see what others do with this step in the art world.

Tiles Telling Tales

I continued reading Chevalier's book, and noticed that the narrator, Griet, has a very strong tie to her father's Delft style ceramic tiles he made before he lost his eyes in the kiln explosion.  Her father painted scenes of daily life, of Griet and her siblings, or of landscapes and many other things.  Ships, you name it.  In the 1600s, that was how her family was able to keep themselves fed and whatnot.

I am taking a ceramics class right now, and in that class we had a semester project that allowed us to choose our own time period and create anything we chose.  I traveled to England over the summer, and I wanted to do something involving my zillions of pictures I took.  So I looked up the Delftware that I saw in museums and things while overseas and I loved the blue and white style used in tilemaking, so that is what I chose to do.  I thought it was ironic that a huge part of Griet's life was something I had been reading up on for the past few months.  At the moment I am still painting the Tower of London onto my panographic tiles, meaning that my tiles are all different sizes and shapes in order to include the whole picture.  It has taken me a long time to paint, so I can relate to the tediousness of Griet's father's tiles.  And with as much work as I have put into my own, I shared Griet's remorse for the breaking of her favorite tile given to her by her father.  When it is fired, the blues will run together to create a picture that I cannot imagine, and I can guess that is how Griet felt about her tile: it is priceless.  I have included some examples of what I am trying to accomplish, found through:
Second Image

Third Image

The first two are images of the pre-fired tiles.  The last one is a picture of a drawing before I started the project.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

I began reading a book the other day, Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, which is set in the 1600s.  So far, what has struck me the most is not a major part of the plot or characters.  When Griet is introduced to the 'camera obscura' for the first time, she is completely shocked.  Never before has she experienced such a thing.  Isn't that amazing?  Something so common to us today in our present time being so new and foreign? 

I personally love taking pictures.  I take pictures of random things I see that intrigue me... trees, fields, landscapes, my friends.  Mostly my friends.  The majority of the time I don't take random regular pictures, but I try and go for a new angle rather than straight on.  Maybe from above the subject, or below it.  We as a people often take the technologies we have for granted, I feel, in that pictures were not taken for fun in the 1600s.  Nowadays they are used most often for memory's sake, to scrapbook with, to frame, to giveaway as a gift.  All to preserve a special moment, a special time in one's life.  My camera helps me remember the faces of those I love and the memories I share with them.  The next time you see a picture, take in all of the details... every last part, not just the main focus.  It takes every part of the photo to tell a story.  Try and figure out what was happening when it was taken.  I myself am often surprised at what I come up with.

All Journeys Start Somewhere

Journeys are adventures people ignite that do not only include extravagant ones, but they also include the ones encountered in everyday life.  Every day you step out your door, you are embarking on a new journey.  All journeys start somewhere.

Most recently, my professor has introduced me to a new way of thinking about and viewing art.  Not only that, but also what exactly art is.  Is it just paintings, drawings, pictures, statues?  Or is it everything you see?  The blanket you are covered in... the rug in the middle of your floor... the trees in your backyard... the stars in the night sky.  My journey begins, and ends, in and around my home.

To me, everything is art.  Everything has its own design, its own voice, and to me that is what makes it art.  The blanket I am using right now was a direct result of my grandmother, who sews us grandkids special blankets for Christmas.  She knows I am a student of art as she was, so mine was created haphazardly, delicately, dangerously, as only one with a creative eye could appreciate.  The rug in the middle of my floor matches perfectly with the walls in my house, designed to pull the colors together in one single location.  Separately, having a green wall, a tan wall, and a darker red-brown wall would seem scattered and as if it had no theme.  The rug serves that purpose--the one that brings each part to become a whole, each becoming a part of the other.  The trees in my backyard were planted along a property line.  Each branch was placed a certain way in order to make those trees look so magnificent.  Each branch, currently covered in ice and snow, hold their own in making the trees intimidatingly tall and ominous together, as one.  Finally, the stars.  Every time there is a meteor shower, my grandmother comes over at midnight to watch the sky with my until the wee hours of the morning.  As I lay and count the 'stars' shooting across the dark expanse of sky, my grandmother reads me the tales behind just how certain constellations came to be.  Cassieopia and King Cephus has been one of my favorites.  Each and every one of the stars in the sky has a story.. each and every star was placed just so in order to form a large, beautiful picture for us as humans to interpret as we please.

That's the beauty of art.  It is everywhere you look, and you don't even have to search for long.  Just look up from the computer screen and you are bound to find something that has value, something that has a point and a purpose.  Art brings people together on a common journey, publicly known as life.