Art in Boxes and More Photography!

Well, it's been a sleepless couple of weeks, but here's a brand spankin' new post! These are some box installations that I've been working on. The first is called Subvultures! and it's these two connected boxes:

The boxes are about a foot and a half tall, and they are filled with stuff that I drew, then digitally colored and printed. There are people jumping from one box to the next; people from each box seem to want to get into the opposite box. If you're curious, the text above the box on the left is Japanese for "the most beautiful butterfly of all is found in the cocoon of your heart," and the text for the box on the right is Latin for "Ah, human cares! Ah, how much futility in the world!" This is one of those projects that I wish I had better pictures of, but here are some closeups nonetheless:

At some point I'll try to take better pictures; you can't see any detail in these, arg! Here's my second box project, which functions as kind of a small cabinet, I suppose:

When you open the clasp at the top of his head, it swings open to reveal what's inside:

Aaaaand finally, something that's nice and easy to translate into a digital format because it's flat! Here's some more 35mm photography (some of which has been painted on, bleached, had the negative scratched, etc.):













Thanks so much to models Lauren, Kathryn, Eric, and Ana! Well, now that all of that is over, look forward to about a solid month of rubber sculptures. Yes, really. Moldmaking and casting, I am pumped!

Prints, Giveaway Boxes, etc!

Happy Tuesday, all; here's what I've been up to! I made 20 prints with digital photos I took combined with screenprinting; here are three of them:

In other news, last night I put up this installation of about 40 boxes. This was an exquisite corpse-esque collaboration between two other people and me; we took 40 of these little cardboard boxes, printed out a bunch of stuff, painted, drew on them, and passed them between the three of us until they were suitably worked over. Then we hung them from the ceiling and decorated a big pair of hedge clippers to hang with them so that people could cut down a box and keep it. I think this might be something that you kind of have to see in person, but I tried to get a couple of pictures anyway:



















I passed by it later today and there were only four boxes left, so I guess people were into the idea! Speaking of people taking art (although not with permission this time), if you want to see my grand television debut, you can do so here. Wooo!

I've also been playing around with Illustrator for my next project, and although I'm having a great time using it, I still have a LOT to learn. Here are some sneak previews:




What does it all mean? In a couple of weeks, hopefully it will all make sense! I feel as though this post has been a lot of stuff that doesn't really look like the kind of thing I'd usually make, but there you are. I sort of mentioned in the last post, but I've been thinking lately about including more than just finished art related things on this blog (more videos, sketches, little comics, etc.) Still up in the air about that. Stay tuned!

Magnets, Prints, Photographs, and...a Video Blog?!

Hey gang!
First of all, I recently had the awesome opportunity to screenprint these posters designed by artist Joshua Ray Stephens for the AUX 4 experimental arts festival here in Athens, GA:




So other than that, for one of my classes, I was asked to make magnets with a "springtime" theme. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I thought that was a little cheesy, so I got kind of "creative" with my springy magnets. Here's Spring, but why is there a knife in her mouth?

Because she killed Winter:

This next on was my roommate's (brilliant) idea:




And this quaint little Easter scene was mine:



Here are a couple more 35mm photographs! First, the always-unnerving Patrick:



Here's my awesome dad, working in his woodshop:



This is a photograph taken by photographer Diane Arbus:



And here's my copycat version (with aforementioned awesome roommate Lauren):



And for the last photo, a self portrait. Embarrassing. Thanks Kathryn for helping me on this one!



But what's even more embarrassing than a self portrait? A video blog. Yep, I've thought for a long time that making a vlog would be fun, if not pretty self-indulgent. So I'm going to try and give it a shot. Nothing deep, just a kind of anecdotal diary-type thing. Anyway, here's the first one:

My First Attempt at Coloring in Photoshop

Yep, pretty self explanatory title. This is just a quick late night post; this is what I did today! I scanned in four drawings (three of each different person and one of the pig and chicken), and combined and colored them in photoshop. This is the first time I've tried this, and it took forever!

Click the picture to see it in a larger size!

The Evolution of a Poster, and a Birthday!

Hello everyone! Happy Valentine's Day! Although it's actually after midnight, so I suppose I'm a bit late. I'm just going to go on pretending that it's still the 14th and tell you all that today is my 21st birthday! So to all my friends and family that helped me celebrate, thank you all so much! I got super-awesome art tools PHOTOSHOP and an awesome DIGITAL CAMERA that not only takes pictures but HD video! Expect movies from now on. Oh, there will be movies.

But for now, here's the evolution of a poster I made. To start, I googled one word ("propaganda") and made an image using only google images from that word:

Then, I printed the image out, and drew/painted on it, added paper and cardboard, etc, to get this:

I then scanned the new image, opened it in Photoshop, and added more things (because it didn't have enough dragons the first time, apparently.)



After that, I (you guessed it) printed it out yet again. At this point, I was getting kind of tired of looking at this image, so as my final product, I altered it quite drastically. Once it was printed out, I cut it all up and painted and screenprinted all over it:



So there it is, my final product...a 22x30 poster of this guy's head!

Abaca Paper Coptic Book, Photograms, and David Bowie

Hello everyone!

Yeah, I know it's been awhile...this is due, unfortunately, to the sad demise of my trusty digital camera. But never fear! Although I am still devoid of my camera's sweet, metallic embrace, I will post nonetheless. Here's a little coptic book I made before Christmas with samples of all of the handmade abaca paper I'd been making:







It's amazing to think that all of the paper in that book is made from the exact same fibers; the pages near the end have just been beaten a lot longer. Aaaanyway, last Friday, I made photograms for the first time! A photogram is when you take a sheet of photo paper and expose it with objects sitting on top of it. The light shines through certain items and it's blocked out by others, and it makes quite an interesting effect. Here's the one I made:



You can also take a piece of photo paper, place a finished photogram on top of it upside down, and create an inverted image, like this:



In the "what mediums are next to try" front, I'm soon going to start doing 35mm photography! Hurray! I'm also finally attempting to learn photoshop, that most elusive of beasts. I've just started, but here's a picture that I think accurately shows my progress; I made it using a scanned drawing, old scanned money from Honduras, and pictures of David Bowie from google:

If that doesn't show progress, I don't know what does.