Capsule of Time

As the year comes to a close, we have begun a project to make a time capsule that is representative of ourselves in this given time period. As we grow older, we all change and evolve, and I love the idea of encapsulating the person you were earlier in life.

In my personal time capsule I have placed many items I feel are representative of my life and I. As I move on to my future life in a few weeks, I feel I will be appreciative when I find this capsule in a couple of decades.

Within the capsule I have placed pictures of myself and my friends, my horse, some pictures of fun high school memories, a few pages from some of my classes, a list of my favorite bands/ songs, a few of my doodles, the list goes on. The picture of my horse is of the day I received him as a birthday present, or one of the happiest days of my life. The pages of my history notebook are so I can remember all the great history teachers i've had (my favorite subject next to art), and so I can see what my handwriting was like. Everything I placed within the capsule has a certain meaning to me, and I am hoping it will make my future self smile as well.

Now onto the outside of the box. I decided to paint the box rather than collage it, as I am not the best collagist. On top I painted the scene I feel best represents me, my typical mountain sunset paintings. I just love the beauty of both sunsets and the mountains, so why not combine them? On the sides i painted a number of different designs, each representing one of my years of high school, starting with freshman year and ending with senior year. Im leaving it up to onlookers to think of which side is which year.

I am sincerely hoping that this time capsule survives a few decades. Maybe it will, and if it does, I hope it makes me smile to reminisce all the memories i've had in my four years at HTHS.

A Final Goodbye to HS

Well, it seems this next week I will be walking to get my diploma, saying goodbye to high school after four long years at HTHS. Within those four years, I spent two years in Mrs. Kiick's art class, which were probably two of my favorite classes of the entire high school experience.

These classes have provided me with a way to learn and grow in art, an opportunity to access my usually hidden creativity. In these two years I truly believe I have grown as an artist. When I came as a sophomore, I only knew how to shade with a pencil. I knew nothing of depth, or shading with light. Through these two years I have learned how to use acrylics, watercolor, transferring images, and colored pencils. I have also learned that I can draw more than just horses, and mountains, although they remain my favorite things to draw. I have truly benefited by coming to art classes these two years, and I wish I had taken them all four years.

Both years we did different projects, but I do wish we had had the opportunity to work with metals this year. To this day my metal piece from sophomore year remains one of my favorite works. However, the bike drawing we did earlier in the year has taken its place among my favorite works of art. Yet, next year the art program is once again expanding into several different classes (I'm jealous!)  so people will have several chances to work with what they want to do in the art world.

As I step into the world and head off to college, I will always remember my creative arts classes with Mrs. Kiick. She pushed me passed my perfectionisms and made me see that going with the flow is sometimes the better way.

Thank you for being a great teacher Mrs. Kiick, and goodbye HTHS - I hope the future is great.

Story Sculpture

After a cold harsh winter if fighting the elements, one last snow storm threatens to berate the land once again. This winter has been one of the worst in a decade, with over 13 snow days and multiple snow storms.

Bundled up, I walk into the barn in the early hours as the morning. a safe haven for the soul, this place is quiet, the only noise is the sound of horses waking up, the only sight is the riding sun radiating light off of the windows, and the breaths of the animals.

As I punch in the code for the alarm, I remember all the pain, sweat, and hard work it has taken me to get to this place.

My horse, Shotzee, is a rescue, with a complicated past of his own. When I first saw him, I fell in love. Even though he was dirty, untrained, starved, and somewhat psychotic, I decided to take him on, mainly because no one else wanted to.

Through the 4 years I've had him, we've gone through everything. I've helped him realize he will no longer be abandoned and left to starve, and he has been my faithful companion through friends, relationships, and just the journey of high school.

But that's not where the story ends. We used to be horrible at our sport. We would go to shows and get laughed at by judges, or kicked out. My horse developed a behavioral problem no one could figure out, leading me into a back brace for a few months. When it got bad, we decided to leave the barn we had been at forever, leaving behind a painful past in order to move forward.

Today, as we come out of winter, we are training to show all over the east coast, under my professional trainer. We are more keenly trained, more fit, and my horse has the most weight and muscle mass he has ever had in his life. We are on top of our game, and ready for a summer of intense competition, hopefully beating those who always doubted us.

Art x3

What is this dark image you ask? This is the result of my tumultuous Art x3 project. We received this project in the middle of the marking period, and I was happy when we were told we would be making a collage based on the Theme of Celebrities and what it means to be in the spotlight. However, I was not so thrilled when we were told we were going to have to share our works of art with 3 other people, working on the first two projects for only 2 days each. Honestly, I was confused by this concept, but decided to go with it and try it out.

For my beginning collage, I simply made a few transfers onto a white piece of paper, and stained it with some light watercoloring on the outsides. This can be seen below:

For my second, I received and amazing well started collage that looked complete, and I barley wanted to add anything to it. But, Alas, I had to, so I added some blue coloring, a cadillac, and a few other images to the top. This was by far my favorite image I worked on:

For my third and final project, I received a paper with several hard images glued onto a paper with sparkles. However, they were well placed and easy to work with: 

So I began working. We worked on these papers for about a week, and to be honest, I do like what I came up with, however, I must have been in a dire mood one of those workdays, As it turned out much more black and dark then I had intended. Yet, I lighted it with good old watercolors, and was  happy with the result. My favorite part of the final piece is the bottom left corner, where the shadowed girl is whispering 'gossip' out of her lips, with 'Star' above her. (Hard to see in the picture at the top)

Alas, Art x3 was a success, even though I was not too keen on sharing in the beginning.

Fortune Cookies Galore!

When Mrs. Kiick came in with a box of fortune cookies, we all were excited. A project based on cookies? Count me in! 

After eating several fortune cookies we saved our fortunes and were told to create a book page based on the fortunes we had received. My personal fortunes all involved Love, working hard, and working towards new things. So I set out to create a book page that interprets all of my personal fortunes, and added some personal flare as well. 

I decided not to use magazine images for my book page, as I wanted something soft looking, and sometimes the harsh edges of magazine images can take away from a paint. Instead, I decided to just doodle what I felt would represent myself. First, I divided the page with a tree, which is textured with modeling paste. This represents growth towards the future, so on and so forth. The two halves are representative of work, love, and the stairs of success working together to build towards the future self. Corny, maybe, but I like how the image turned out. It also helps that all the colors in the image are my favorite colors blended together. On a side note, The bird is made out of the numbers from the fortunes. It represents freedom and moving on.

Pop Prints

2nd Marking period has held several fun projects, the first being pop prints, produced ourselves by carving out of a 'Stamp'

This project was inspired by famous Pop artist Andy Warhol, whose famous reproducible prints flourished in the 1960s. His colorful prints of everyday items, such as the campbell's soup can (shown below), Were seen everywhere in the 1960s, as well as being household staples today.

Mimicking Mr. Warhol, our class chose one item from our 'Blue' collage to sketch and reproduce ourselves. I chose to reproduce a small, blue, squeaky tennis ball dog toy. I chose this individual item because I obviously love animals, and have had several of these same toys around my house for all the years I've been alive.

After carefully carving out our sketched images, we inked them and printed them, often with several different colors of paint. Shown in the lower image is my print alone, printed in black ink. The above image is the image I ended with, a colorful piling of tennis balls, which looks very much like the pop art we were trying to achieve. 

I personally enjoyed this project quite a bit, mainly because the exact image I had carved out could be reproduced again and again, in different colors, and would never lose it intensity. Yay for Pop art :)

Collecting vs. Hoarding

There are several different types of people in this world. However, most people can be split in the category of how their homes are kept, as well has how they manage their surroundings. There are those who are super organized, yet keep possessions, those who do not like possessions and throw lots of things away, those who are not as organized, yet keep a few things, and those who are not organized at all, and live in complete chaos.

When it comes to collecting, people generally have seperate opinions. I personally believe that having a collection and being a hoarder are completely different. The technical definition of collecting is " To accumulate as a hobby or for study", and this is what I believe it entails. When someone is a collector, they collect one or two certain things that are meaningful to them, such as a rock collection or a model collection. When someone collects, the items have meaning, and are clean and organized in specific way, usually being displayed by the owner on a shelf or piece of furniture. Collectors homes are usually clean and organized, and they do not 'collect' clutter. 

A hoarder, in may ways, could start out as a collector, but let things get out of hand. Usually, a hoarder will begin collecting things after a traumatic life event, gettting emotionally attched to the things they collect. However, these things will get shoved away into corners, with the individuals usually forgetting they own them. In a hoarding situation, the owner cannot let go of anything, and their homes become a mess, with the individual usually living in filth.

Therefore, the difference between a hoarder and a collector is simply that a collector takes care of and organizes their collections, displaying them or storing them properly. A hoarder is someone who collects a multitude of things, lives in squaler, and cannot get rid of anything.

To referance a collector, lets talk about Portia Munson. She is an artist from New York who makes collections of things of a certain color. She is a collector, because even if some of her collections look like a hoard, she has them organized and on display. All her collections are considered art, not hoarding. Here is an example;

As you can see, the collection is organized into a work of art.