Post #6

I don’t even want to think about how late this post is. The week that my deadline was up was the week that I was living in a cabin with around 6 Elementary Music Theatre Campers. Shortly after the week was over I completed what I thought was going to be my post but realized that I hated the outcome.

My original idea for this post was to created a somewhat abstract painting based off of the photo that is now my post. I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like in my head, but soon discovered that what I had painted looked nothing like what I envisioned. The original idea was to breakdown the different pieces of the chandelier and layer them in different levels of grays. It simply it not work.

After fretting over what I should do next, since I did not want to post something that I thought looked awful and a piece that I did not enjoy at all, I talked to Rachel about it. She reminded me that I could simply post the photograph that I took as my piece. I had forgotten a basic thing: photography is art.

This photo was taken while I was attending an a capella concert at UMF in Nordica Auditorium. My attention span was wandering (imagine that) and I looked up and thought that the chandelier was a really nice imagine, so I decided to try to get a decent photograph of it.  The camera I used was an old film camera that my theatre tech professor gave me to use. It’s a 35mm Praktica film camera, made in the German Republic. I have been trying to get used to how to focus the camera and handle various light levels.

I enjoyed how this photo came out. It has an older feel to it, I think due to the fact that it all isn’t in focus and has a slightly grainy quality. Additionally, I love how you can make out some the texture and details of the ceiling around the chandelier. That was a complete surprise for me when it was developed. I did not expect for the ceiling details to even remotely be in focus.  Using this camera has really reinforced for me that I truly appreciate film photography and feel that it has so much more meaning and depth than digital. There really is much more thought and work that goes into just getting one picture!

I apologize again for my lengthy tardiness. Hopefully the photograph was worth it!

Deadline: September 20th

Post #5

I know!  I’m late!  With my trip to South Korea I just felt that I couldn’t finish in time so I did file for an extension with my sister.  Of course, without a deadline things get pushed aside… part of this whole project is to give me deadlines!  No more excuses.  Here is my newest piece.

As I mentioned before,  I loved how Rebekah played with color versus the white flower in her last work.  I though about waterlilies originally.  But when she and I were out taking photographs a few weeks ago I saw some graceful delicate magnolia blossoms and decided that they were just perfect for a response to my sister’s piece.  Of course, at that point we were out of film… so I snapped a few pictures with my camera phone, with is no iphone and does not take a good picture at all!  Working from that, I came up with a drawing in black ink and colored pencil that I really liked:

I thought this would be a great preliminary drawing for a whiteline print or painting.  This project has gotten me thinking more about collage, so i decided to uses this image as a base for a collage

I am pleased enough with this final result.  I think it would have been stronger if I had paid more attention to the direction of the text on the petals to emphasize texture, shape and movement.  I should have paid more attention to what the text is saying, as an artist always should when using text in a piece because a viewer is always going to try to read it.  I had an opportunity to pair words and an image to come so some kind of meaning or statement or idea.  But I didn’t, I was for this artwork only thinking about making a beautiful image, which can be argued is not a unworthy goal. I think I think this image may be stronger as a print or a fabric piece, as maybe the magazine paper is a little too distracting.  It is also very interesting why I wasn’t satisfied with letting the original drawing be my finished artwork, as I feel it may be stronger than the collage.  Or in that matter, why is the cell phone picture not the finished work? That is the most modern way most of the public communicates with pictures now, replacing the digital camera which replaced the film cameras with replaced paintings in a way.  Why is that not finished art, too?

Deadline: July 13th

Some Photography

Rebekah was given a Praktica MTL 5 SLR flim camera.  When she came to visit me in Portland we spent some time taking photos with it and learning how to use it.   Here are some pictures she took in Vienna before she came to visit:

And here are some we both took at Fort Williams Park today:

Post #4:

From Rebekah

First of all I want to state that as this project progresses I am finding it more and more difficult. Working in such close connection to my older sister who has a degree in art makes me constantly worry that what I am going to post is automatically quite inferior. I admire my sister’s raw talent as well as the amount of work she has put into developing her passion.

My sister’s last piece posted on here was by far my favorite so far. There are many portions of it that I absolutely loved. The colors all corresponded wonderfully and flow right into each other. Oranges and reds are a color that I tend to shy away from. They are such strong colors that I almost feel as if I would not be able to control them once I started using them. Additionally, in looking at our pieces I have noticed that my sister steers more toward the warm colors while I stick to the safer cool colors. I promise that in one of my future pieces I will explore using those more frightening warm/hot colors. Rachel’s last piece had such a strength to it that I want to be able to capture eventually in a piece of my own. I love the texture shown in the wooden spoon and I could almost feel the glass of the Pyrex bowl (albeit it helps that both are things that I have used many a times in the kitchen with my mother and sister).

The main piece that I loved, well the two main components I loved, were the the painted fabric and the color of the background. I’m not even sure what color to call the background, but it was such a soothing color, that I tried to capture pieces of it throughout the fabrics I choose to use in mine. The pattern and boldness of the fabric shown both within Rachel’s painted piece and stretched on the the accompanying canvas just simply drew my eye. I love those types of patterns and I love that Rachel had the idea of simply showcasing the beautiful pattern in the accompanying pattern. It was this fabric and the use of black and white that inspired my next piece.

First for my piece I decided that I wanted to continue exploring using fabrics within a piece. All of the background and color used are pieces of quilting fabric. In fact all of the blue pieces are left over triangles that were cut for my most frequent quilt that I finished. The greens are two different shades of fabric, and the purple just one fabric cut into many soft, round shapes. All of the fabrics were chosen because I loved the colors and the patterns within the fabric. I loved the pattern in the black and white fabric that Rachel used and made me pay more attention to the patterns I chose. The flower I decided to paint only using black and white paints. I was not as successful in painting the flower as I had hoped. It became more an abstract image that I had originally intended. I feel that I need much more practice in painting before I can complete a more realistic rendering of anything really.

In the two pictures taken I could not a decent spot in which to capture a photo of the piece. Each spot had very different light and places where I could place it. So I chose to put up both.

I guess my main concern with the piece is if it is too simple or two busy. Also, I simply wish I was more capable of adding the flower.

Deadline: May 12th

Post #3

From Rachel:

There were a few things that I really loved about my sister’s last piece.  I like how she broke up the image into the three canvases.  I think they look great together, but maybe more interesting I thought they were really strong as  individual works.  In the individual pieces you cannot see the tree image, and the composition of shapes and patters create three beautiful abstract paintings.  The use of pattern was another thing I really keyed in on.  I have used pattern a lot in my work, so that is something both familiar and powerful to me.

For my own piece this month I wanted to play with the multiple canvases and uses of pattern seen in my sister’s piece, but do it in a different way.  I started with a still life of a shiny red pyrex bowl and one of my patterned napkins.  I added a wooden spoon just to balance the composition.   I originally tried to zoom in so far that the objects are unrecognizable, like in Rebekah’s paintings, but what can I say, I love beautiful objects and just had to paint them as objects.  I did zoom pretty far, though.  I liked the strong colors of the bowl and napkin, but choose a softer purple for the background to balance the colors.   Once I got going on the painting, I found the the beautiful bowl I started with was much less interesting to paint than the spoon and napkin.  I then decided to simplify the bowl by taking out some of the shadows and reflections to let the spoon and napkin be the star.  I am still not 100% happy with the bowl and may tweek it here and there some more.

For the second canvas, I wanted to focus on pattern.  Originally I thought about mimicking the napkin pattern in the color palette of the first painting, but then decided simpler would be better.  The second canvas is the napkin from the painting sewn onto the canvas.

So, this brings up some interesting art questions.  Is it art?  Certainly the first painting is, but what about a borrowed design presented in a new way?   If may not be art on it’s own, but is it art when both paintings are considered together as one piece?

Deadline: April 12th

Post #2

From Rebekah:

It’s been a month and my deadline officially ends in about five hours, so I guess it is my turn to post.  A recent method that I have started doing and love the look of is decoupage. Until this piece I always used colored paper or tissue paper, but this time I wanted to try fabric. The green and pink areas of the piece are scraps of paper that have been cut and decoupaged on. The pink pieces I simply let lay flat on the canvas, the green I created and allowed wrinkles to form to give more texture. After allowing the fabric pieces to dry I used acrylic paints to paint the tree and blue sky. The tree contains three different shades of brown. The sky in comprised of a repeated pattern of blue oval shapes.The effect of combining the prints of the fabric and the different textures of the decoupaged fabric and paint creates, at least to me, a pleasing effect.

For this piece I enjoyed the idea of taking three canvases and putting them together to create a large image. The canvases do not exactly line up, but instead look as if they were extracted from a larger painting.  In response to Rachel’s first post, I tried to make a connection between her piece and mine. The first thing I thought of when seeing her print was the colors around you during autumn. It was this concept of nature that I carried through to my piece as well as using the smaller shapes (her’s sequins, mine the sky).I have to admit though that lately I have been stuck completely on painted or drawing trees. I love the flowing forms and movement in trees and also the strength.

Deadline March 12, 2010

Post #1

From Rachel:

Let’s start this project with a recent collage made from magazine scraps on paper.  I created it to experiment in a new medium when I was (and maybe still am) in a creative rut (see http://artgirlrachel.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/success/).  The one inch square where cut from a highly textured magazine ad showing a gold gauzy fabric with sequence.  They were then repositioned into a square using a grid, a favorite tool of mine. In the pictures you can see how the texture of the fabric is focused in some squares, and more fuzzy in others.  I like how this creates many different textures and patterns in the collage.  I was pleased with the result, which feels very lush despite a being created from only a simple monochromatic image.

Deadline: February 12, 2010

The Sister Project

Artists: Rachel & Rebekah Church

Where: Portland, Maine & Farmington, Maine

What: A dialog between sisters, in art. One sister posts artwork,  with words about inspiration, content or process, and a deadline for the other sister to make and post artwork in response.

Deadline: 1 month from original post.

Medium: Unlimited