a r t w o r k : d i g i t a l c o l l a g e
Exhibition Text:
Inspired both by the self-focused aspirations of artist Cindy Sherman and intensified tones of artist Katrina Apostolakou, my piece "Remembered For" explores my fear of being abandoned and left behind again by the individuals of every day life. It singles out my hesitant self while friends are heading into a distant future with eagerness. I am lost in a cross road between un-readiness for what life has in store for me and the lurking apprehension of being forgotten if I don't move quick enough.
[ Meaning of My Piece ]
When I was younger, I never found it a challenge to gain a friend who I couldn’t gradually become closer to. It was actually harder to keep them around. Best Friends became laced with confusing connotations and friend groups were made up of people I was too afraid of letting go. I soared for any bit of attention and appreciation from those around me. I went from a 10 year old laughing at unfunny jokes for keen smiles as a reward to a 13 year old with the fear of her friends drifting off into the future without her. My kid self wasn’t ready to grow up or take risks. Maybe she wouldn’t be fast enough to catch up. So, why try?
I grew fond of the concept where one would rise above all barriers and become a full-fledged adult, but that didn’t mean I was ever ready to do it myself. That’s why I encouraged friends around me to defeat all odds and conquer. Who knew that I was only feeding myself to the dust of the past? A part of me couldn’t even picture a distant future where I’d be an older version of myself. It was just too difficult to configure, so I stuck on tightly to the thoughts, beliefs, and minds of my past. I made the mistake of letting friends, who used me as a metaphorical step-stool on a daily basis, continue to do so, and suddenly I was prone to an unsure stance on the future.
Around the second half of my seventh grade year, I ended up meeting someone who would regain my trust in friendships as I knew it. My current best friend opened doors I wasn’t even aware of myself closing. Eighth grade came around and the nervousness of High School crept up like the water I’m unable to swim in. I never did learn how to swim. That same negative state of mind from years behind about being left on my own did arrive closely to the doorstep of my new life at Ronald Reagan, but it wasn’t so bad as it was. I was growing, maybe inching myself into a futuristic version of myself without even knowing. I made friends with people I could never picture myself acquainting. Everyone connected on the same stresses, and my aloneness in a relationship slowly fell into its own defeat.
Even as a Junior at Reagan, a past of uneasiness about moving forth and acting on my own still whistles at me every now and then. I still feel the lingering temptations of self doubt beside abandonment in my fingertips. This time, however, I’m trying to put more trust on what the future has for me rather than taking a fearful guess and retreating back into my shell. Of course, everyone moves at different paces when excelling. It’ll just take me some time to find the balance between not giving in to pressure and conquering all with the ones I love most at my side.
I grew fond of the concept where one would rise above all barriers and become a full-fledged adult, but that didn’t mean I was ever ready to do it myself. That’s why I encouraged friends around me to defeat all odds and conquer. Who knew that I was only feeding myself to the dust of the past? A part of me couldn’t even picture a distant future where I’d be an older version of myself. It was just too difficult to configure, so I stuck on tightly to the thoughts, beliefs, and minds of my past. I made the mistake of letting friends, who used me as a metaphorical step-stool on a daily basis, continue to do so, and suddenly I was prone to an unsure stance on the future.
Around the second half of my seventh grade year, I ended up meeting someone who would regain my trust in friendships as I knew it. My current best friend opened doors I wasn’t even aware of myself closing. Eighth grade came around and the nervousness of High School crept up like the water I’m unable to swim in. I never did learn how to swim. That same negative state of mind from years behind about being left on my own did arrive closely to the doorstep of my new life at Ronald Reagan, but it wasn’t so bad as it was. I was growing, maybe inching myself into a futuristic version of myself without even knowing. I made friends with people I could never picture myself acquainting. Everyone connected on the same stresses, and my aloneness in a relationship slowly fell into its own defeat.
Even as a Junior at Reagan, a past of uneasiness about moving forth and acting on my own still whistles at me every now and then. I still feel the lingering temptations of self doubt beside abandonment in my fingertips. This time, however, I’m trying to put more trust on what the future has for me rather than taking a fearful guess and retreating back into my shell. Of course, everyone moves at different paces when excelling. It’ll just take me some time to find the balance between not giving in to pressure and conquering all with the ones I love most at my side.
My Main Inspiration:
My mind had a clear idea of placing myself in the center no matter what, being very self expressive in itself, so I thought back to the ways artists like Cindy Sherman creatively expanded the meaning of “self-portrait”. She inspired the way I’d use all of the surroundings in my final product to produce an overall feeling of everything else around me, the focus, being a little to rushed.
I ended up basing my posing off of her style with self placement in both pieces “Untitled Film Still #59” and “Untitled Film Still #48” to show me looking forward or signal my persona searching out for something with hesitation. I also used the color schemes of Sherman’s “Untitled #129”, red and blue hues that signal a worried and rushed emotion in itself. I truly wanted to express that feeling within my Digital Collage, so everything came together to signal thoughts like “Being left behind” or “Stuck”. |
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Minor Inspirations:
I also used elements from artist Katerina Apostolakou and her painting “Insanity”. The name in itself already demonstrates a hard core feeling, plus the way she uses colors red and blue around dark paint placement had me intrigued. I decided to incorporate that idea again of colors signaling a rushed emotion so that came in heavy with my Digital Collage.
A final bit of inspiration that I thought I’d like to add in this was the lyrics from “Remembered For” by the band Colony House. In general, I admit that music definitely picks out the concepts and expression I’ll sprinkle into my final product when working with art or writing or anything. The lyrics in the song like “I was born trying to prove that I could be someone” or even the longer line near the final moments of the song “I want to be somebody, as long as I am with somebody who knows I can be somebody” were strong messages I based about myself into the piece. This song's title "Remembered For" is also the title for my piece! |
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Planning:
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My Planning SketchesMy three planning sketches to the left, seen on two pages from my sketch book, all hold very similar ideas yet give myself, the focus, a different position. Each concept has me as a focus, that’s something I was initially planning on doing. I also stuck with the notion of my friends running forward or moving ahead in some way, shape, or form. I wanted to nail in the feeling of everything around me being so eager to grace into the future with ease while I’m left in the dust.
My first sketch, in my opinion, executed the idea well enough. Since I’d be facing away from the camera, it demonstrates the quiet and “nobody” approach I give myself. You can see a lot of personality ahead in the way my friends would run and the way they’d approach the railing of the building. You can tell a story with their adrenaline-fueled careless attitude while I’m stuck back here in the past, alone and hesitant. My second sketch has a larger focus on my face, which is great, but didn’t exactly aim for what I wanted originally as much as the first planning sketch. My friends are taking a slower approach to the railing, one of them is even trying to wave me over to join. I think it eliminated the fear I had about people turning away without thinking back on my participation in their future. My third sketch takes place in a whole different location, and this time I’m holding onto my cellphone as if I’m trying to uncover some unseen help. I think this sketch, although very seriously showing my fear towards later life, sort of decreases the intensity overall. The friends, the people passing over the bridge as a group, aren’t moving along as fast. It’s a different approach to my fear. |
To the right and left of this text, I wanted to include the notes from my Art Journal that I took before and during the project's completion.
The second page of notes focuses more on Photoshop, since it was my first time working with it. ( Again, you can click on each of the images to get a closer look at my notes, if needed! ) |
Experimentation:
The following photos ( and so on ) are from my personal experimentation with getting pics for the final product...
( these first nine are the ones that I'm going to play around with to get my final product )
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Experimentation Within Taking Photographs...
The photographs to the left were used to test out my camera's abilities and check if the lighting was right enough to start taking projects for my final product ( hence the photos above this ray of text).
Towards taking all of these photographs, I used my Canon Rebel t6. The camera was set up using my tripod and I ended up tweaking the positioning for a long portion of my time before getting the area just as I wanted. You can see how far I wanted my subjects to progressively run forward in the first nine above. |
Experimentation Within Photo Shop...
I ended up getting the free Photoshop 7 day trial on my computer so I could follow along their personal tutorials and get a hang of what to do.
( Click on the Photos above & around this text to get a closer look )
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In these first two images, located easily to the left of the text, I started out by making a blank white canvas to crop and edit things on. I made the image 24 x 36 ( inches ) with a resolution of 170, and then got straight into conspiring up ideas.
I took a photo straight from, what I thought would be, my final product for my Digital Collage. I lay it out on the white canvas, from earlier, and created a second layer to place this image onto for further inspection. I became way more familiar with the cropping tools of Photoshop in said process, and soon enough I was prepared for the completion of my final product. |
Process:
[ the image to the left of this text ]
This is where I began. This picture was used as my original base for the entire product as a whole. It'd be the main background used for my project, having all kinds of photos both cropped and added onto its surface. I started with this image because I'd be easier to overlay other figures on it, rather than starting really close up and trying to process it that way. |
[ the image to the right of this text ]
My next step was to start all of the cropping I was originally planning on doing to reach my final product. This included me intricately snipping each figure, my friends in the photos, out of their original images to be place in the base image ( the one above ). An example of me doing this is to the right of this text, where I first completely took out the female figure from the image and replaced her with a blank space by using a few other Photoshop tools. I did this process, cutting and pasting, over and over again til I sort of had a full house of people running towards the edge of this building. |
NOTE : This image is actually one of the many I did for my final product. This is also a prime example of me carefully cutting her out and getting ready to do something with her ( the figure in focus on said photo ).
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[ the image to the right of this text ]
Next, I directed focus on each little layer of people so I could play around with their personal filters and the ways they look. I wanted to remind myself back to the Red and Blue colors used in both my inspiration Cindy Sherman's " Untitled #129" and also in Katrina Apostolakou's "Insanity". I also used the Motion Blur function quite a bit when editing their running, so it'd take a more intense effect in the final run. It would look like they were actually running up to the edge, rather than just frozen in the moment. |
[ the image to the left of this text ]
All of my earlier created and tweaked layers were then placed together as one big picture. It started to look like a clear image of people running and moving forward increasingly over time, but around this time I started to put Photo Filter over Photo Filter to get the dramatic and intense side of it in the piece. You can see this to the left where I put a red square over this part of the piece to make it a little more colorful and bold looking. To the left are small snippets of two pieces, one piece by Sherman and the other Apostolakou, that I based hues off of. |
[ the image to the right of this text ]
I was onto my next, and last, photo to crop into my piece. This was a photo of myself, having myself posing with slight hesitation and including one version, rather than many selves layered on one another, so it'd show that I was "stuck" behind. After cropping myself to the best of my ability, I pasted this version on top of my final product from earlier and then played around with the filtering to get myself looking more out of place. |
[ the image to the left of this text ]
As you can see to the left, I ended up recoloring the background so it looked more intense, and then began by making myself that color. Although changing it a bit after this, it's interesting to see how I almost went with this as my final product. I just didn't look too out of place. I ended up adding a black line into my final product, even though not initially being scripted in my Planning Sketches, for the idea of being behind. I thought it would look more like my friends, the others running, were crossing the metaphorical "line" in life and that I was still behind nervously, anxious enough to just stand back in an unsure stature. |
[ the image to the right of this text ]
Finally at a place where I felt completed, I tweaked the background one more time with a few intensely tinted hues of both Red and Blue. I then made myself black and white, which I commented on a bit back in my Planning Sketches in case I'd want the idea of being "left in the past" more clear within the final product. It ended up looking a lot better than the image above, which again, almost was my final product, so I kept it. |
Critique:
When drawing back into both my Major and Minor inspirations, you can see a pretty broad difference between style. I originally intended to be using darker reds and blues as shown in both Sherman's and Apostolakou's artwork, but my style ended up having still very intense hues, but they were more warmly invented than the opposing artist's were. I still kept the focus on myself, however, just as Cindy Sherman did in her photographs where she'd be a very solid difference than the rest of the piece. I actually ended up using a black and white filter over the person of focus, myself, just like Cindy Sherman has in her following pieces: Untitled Film Still #48, Untitled Film Still #59, and Untitled Film Still #21. Two of her pieces actually show the main character in focus from their back side, which is the same with my final product where I'm facing the camera backwards. A clear difference from my inspiration and final product comes in the people amount, as my inspirations didn't have really more than one person in the shot while mine has a whole lot going on. This one done to get my original point across, however, so I'm glad my piece had this.
Reflection:
Coming to a solid close, I've actually come to realize that I enjoy the turnout and the aesthetics that my piece holds overall. The vibrancy and motion combined with a clear focus on myself being stuck in the back, away from the intenseness of future endeavors, created an outcome that both sparks attention and creativity. My favorite parts of the Digital Collage has to be the color schemes; Hues that range from flashy reds all the way into a warmer blue tones liter my piece. I like the way they induce a sense of mobility rather than just a plain, simplistically themed setting. I started with a clear idea of giving my audience a quick glimpse into the anxiety I hold towards abandonment and moving into the future, into an actually visual that demonstrates those aspects in a ray of features. It's like showing myself mentally take a step back from things so I can hesitantly weigh crossing lines, and I liked that I could show it within my piece.
When it leads into things I wish gone a tad better, I'd stress on my abilities with the software Photoshop. It's a new application to me, I've only ever edited photographs on cellphone applications, so there were a lot of drawbacks in getting things to look right. Sometimes I'd copy or paste something I didn't want in an area, freak out and try to displace it, but things didn't work sufficiently enough and I was drawn back to a starting point. My patience level was assessed enormously in the production of this project. If I'd be given the chance to redo it, I'm sure I'd have a higher capability level thus marching forward with ease rather than difficulty. I did overcome the barriers stated earlier, but the time it took to understand what was happening around me was more stressful than first conspired.
Going out with my friends to explore my inner demons inside an art piece was a true adventure; It sort of made me reflect against the meaning of my piece in the first place, actually. That constant fear of being behind my peers, almost swept away in the dust, was lowered when I knew that, in fact, my close friends were being gracious enough to help me with my art piece. The fact that they were even out here with me doing this was comforting, for sure, and I ended up being entirely thrilled with my piece, "Remembered For".
When it leads into things I wish gone a tad better, I'd stress on my abilities with the software Photoshop. It's a new application to me, I've only ever edited photographs on cellphone applications, so there were a lot of drawbacks in getting things to look right. Sometimes I'd copy or paste something I didn't want in an area, freak out and try to displace it, but things didn't work sufficiently enough and I was drawn back to a starting point. My patience level was assessed enormously in the production of this project. If I'd be given the chance to redo it, I'm sure I'd have a higher capability level thus marching forward with ease rather than difficulty. I did overcome the barriers stated earlier, but the time it took to understand what was happening around me was more stressful than first conspired.
Going out with my friends to explore my inner demons inside an art piece was a true adventure; It sort of made me reflect against the meaning of my piece in the first place, actually. That constant fear of being behind my peers, almost swept away in the dust, was lowered when I knew that, in fact, my close friends were being gracious enough to help me with my art piece. The fact that they were even out here with me doing this was comforting, for sure, and I ended up being entirely thrilled with my piece, "Remembered For".
"I want to be standing when it falls apart, I want to be a shoulder for the broken heart... This is what I want to be Remembered For..."
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- "Remembered For", Colony House
( the photos to the left were all taken by my camera, and produced on the same day my final product photos were. ) |
Connecting to the ACT:
1.) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
Well, the vibrant colors that both of my inspirations, Sherman and Apostolakou, use are very alike within my pieces. They start to symbolize a forced motion, something intense happening behind the curtains, and that feeling was interpreted into my piece as well. My inspiration also effected the messages I'd be expressing in my piece, from the lyric choices of the band Colony House's "Remembered For" and the individuality in most of Cindy Sherman's work. These small decals had a bigger impact on my final product.
2.) What is the overall approach ( point of view ) the author ( from your research ) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Going into my major inspiration, Cindy Sherman, she usually depicted a mode of self-focused messaging where she's giving an audience a view of why beliefs and society takes a toll on the ways we identify ourselves. She puts herself front and center, either glamorizing a very clear or even very subtle meaning, when working artistically. Sherman knows how a person can be built over time and decides to show a spotlight on feminine self-esteem usually in her art pieces as the norm.
3.) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I think I was more inspired by the way they interpreted certain ideas into an art piece rather than basing it off their original artwork meanings. I did, however, get to self-explore the way my inspirations made me feel thus either scrapping or moving forward; I also wished for my audience to reach the same state of emotions, that their pieces gave me when looking at it, with mine. Every artist has their own little fixes and details that truly make a piece spark, and I was intrigued by that concept.
4.) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My main theme was expressing my long time fear of abandonment, more directly being left behind by those I care about, because I wasn't quite ready to step on forward into the future. This was represented by excessive intensity, colors that pop to a viewer, and a direct focus on myself being an outsider to the overall situation.
5.) What kind of inferences ( conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning ) did you make while reading your research?
I actually found out that, other than Cindy Sherman's main pieces, she has an entire gallery dedicated to very stimulating looking artworks that surround around Media and Society's effect on people. Women were her main focus, and she was usually the model for each piece; She'd dress in different attires and fiddle with her looks just to get the viewer to understand something. I think her style of doing things is very admirable, in all honesty.
Well, the vibrant colors that both of my inspirations, Sherman and Apostolakou, use are very alike within my pieces. They start to symbolize a forced motion, something intense happening behind the curtains, and that feeling was interpreted into my piece as well. My inspiration also effected the messages I'd be expressing in my piece, from the lyric choices of the band Colony House's "Remembered For" and the individuality in most of Cindy Sherman's work. These small decals had a bigger impact on my final product.
2.) What is the overall approach ( point of view ) the author ( from your research ) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Going into my major inspiration, Cindy Sherman, she usually depicted a mode of self-focused messaging where she's giving an audience a view of why beliefs and society takes a toll on the ways we identify ourselves. She puts herself front and center, either glamorizing a very clear or even very subtle meaning, when working artistically. Sherman knows how a person can be built over time and decides to show a spotlight on feminine self-esteem usually in her art pieces as the norm.
3.) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I think I was more inspired by the way they interpreted certain ideas into an art piece rather than basing it off their original artwork meanings. I did, however, get to self-explore the way my inspirations made me feel thus either scrapping or moving forward; I also wished for my audience to reach the same state of emotions, that their pieces gave me when looking at it, with mine. Every artist has their own little fixes and details that truly make a piece spark, and I was intrigued by that concept.
4.) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My main theme was expressing my long time fear of abandonment, more directly being left behind by those I care about, because I wasn't quite ready to step on forward into the future. This was represented by excessive intensity, colors that pop to a viewer, and a direct focus on myself being an outsider to the overall situation.
5.) What kind of inferences ( conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning ) did you make while reading your research?
I actually found out that, other than Cindy Sherman's main pieces, she has an entire gallery dedicated to very stimulating looking artworks that surround around Media and Society's effect on people. Women were her main focus, and she was usually the model for each piece; She'd dress in different attires and fiddle with her looks just to get the viewer to understand something. I think her style of doing things is very admirable, in all honesty.
CITATIONS ( DONE IN MLA FORMAT )
Apostolakou, katerina. “The World's Leading Online Art Gallery.” Saatchi Art, www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/78791.
“MoMA | Cindy Sherman.” Lee Bontecou. Untitled. 1959 | MoMA, www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/.
niteworx. YouTube, YouTube, 16 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye5frPwmAYY.
“MoMA | Cindy Sherman.” Lee Bontecou. Untitled. 1959 | MoMA, www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/.
niteworx. YouTube, YouTube, 16 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye5frPwmAYY.