Artist research #3

Artist research on Takashi Murakami

            Takashi Murakami is a Japanese artist dealing with sculpture, digital media, performance and even factory-produced textiles. He is a well-trained artist receiving degrees in Art from The Tokyo National University of Fine Arts. He is world renowned and especially famous in Japan.” Takashi Murakami's work has been exhibited in prestigious museums all over the world, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and a recent solo retrospective exhibition at the Bard College Museum of Art”  In class specifically we have seen two of the ads he worked on as well as a few sculptures. “In 2000, Murakami curated an exhibition of Japanese art titled Superflat, which acknowledged a movement toward mass-produced entertainment and its effects on contemporary aesthetics.” It seems like in all his work I have viewed there is a mass production, industrialized side to it. He is most famously known for his collaboration with Marc Jacobs to create hand bags for Louis Vuitton.

http://www.takashimurakami.com/biography.php 

            He is known for his main character Mr. Dob. This character appears in many of his works digitally and in physical form. This character as well as others appear in the line he created for Loius Vuitton and in the advertisements for the new hand bags. The New York times reported in 2003 that the handbags were flying off shelves and that the supply was not keeping up with the demand. “Waiting lists in stores from San Francisco to Berlin still number in the thousands, and People magazine recently lamented (or celebrated?) the fact that the only humans who actually seem to be able to get their hands on his totes which sell for more than $5,000 apiece are ‘A-listers’”. Murakami was not exactly happy with all the hype that had happened as a result of his collaboration. He saw himself as an artist not as a fashion designer or hand bag maker. He was quoted by the New York Times saying:  "I need to rebuild the wall between the commercial art and the fine art I do," he says. "I need to focus on the fine-art side of me for a while." He knew that his new found fans knew him as a hand bag designer, not as the artist he wanted them to know him as.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,452870,00.html

I find this very interesting because even though he was a famous artist prior to the collaboration, the Louis Vuitton gig made him famous world wide. He even thought that his artwork was selling for too much now that it was not worth that much. He enjoys being an artist not a fashion designer and seems to me like he is not in it for the money. I myself have been struggling with the whole idea of doing art for me and doing art to put food on the table so to speak.

Murakami’s sculptures and artwork is very striking when first viewed. It seemsto appear childish at first but when looked at more closely you begin to see the puns and darkness of his work. Big bubble characters with large eyes and bright appealing colors eat other helpless characters in the scene. Or a sculpture of an anime looking man holding on to his genitalia and a stream of white spiraling around the person. Although his work appears to be geared toward children because of the colors and bubbly figures, it is not something I would show my eight year old sister. The New York Times said “Murakami purposely engineers a neo-Pop Art universality to his work, making his art both effortlessly accessible and intellectually provocative an ingenious feat. His sometimes sincere, usually ironic, often disturbing plays on the empty smiles and bright colors of cartoon cute are designed to appeal to the preteen in Tokyo”. I wonder if the preteens in Tokyo have seen his sculptures of anime people such as “Hiropen”?

http://www.takashimurakami.com/art.php

I like his work but also am still trying to figure out a lot of it. I also like working with very bright vivid colors. I know that bright colors are often associated with children and pre-teens, but I still use them. I am not directly trying to target that age group with my art and I feel that Murakami is not either. I am also getting in to the fashion side of art more recently and Murakami is best known for his collaboration with Louis Vuitton. I wish to target a different type of fashion. Rather then a $5,000 handbag that only “A-listers” can get their hands on, I would like to design graphics that will go on athletic clothing. Under armour my main inspiration.

Murakami seems to be a very interesting person and artist and I do want to explore further into his different types of work and see what he will come up with next.  

revised rant

So revised idea: scarf printed with white moss print.

continue with the after effects
- light streaks coming in
-light streak saturating photo
-moss image
-shapes showing in to design
-designs on clothing

good portfolio style

final project rant

So I am thinking as of now to create a new ID design from a macro photo much like I did from the last project. Then compare that design to the light design I created and the moss one that I put on a white background. I want to print two scarves and hang them like a tapestry on the walls for presentation. Also, I had the idea of projecting the original photos on the scarfs for the crit. I don't know if I will have time to do all of this though so it is a work in progress.

projects

Research: Daniel Vosovic

     Daniel Vosovic although not what all may consider as an artist, is rather a fashion designer who has taken his work to the next level by incorporating textures inspired by photographs. Vosovic is a Michigan native and graduated from FIT. Most people may recognize him from Project Runway, the second season. He was a favorite then and a full career bloomed out of the reality show. He now engages in art direction as well as working in New York design houses and creating his own fashion collections. He has also written a book titles “Fashion Inside Out”. He launched his first own collection in February of 2012. This collection is where I based my research. source1

I first found information on Daniel Vosovic while looking at the First 2 Print website. This is a website that prints in mass quantities designs onto fabric. The description on First2Print.com describes simply that his collection “exemplifies the possibilities of using artistic photographic imagery created as a textile prints”. The print the site was speaking about was for the Fall/Winter collection of 2010. This was his first full women’s’ collection. He was inspired for this collection while walking through a NYC park on night. He observed the effects of time and nature on the elements of the statues and sculptures. He was exploring the idea of creative destruction. “Vosovic created completely original prints and embroideries derived from studying the aging process of oxidized copper, broken marble, and other materials in various stages of transformation.” The dresses appear to be direct prints of the photographs. He accentuated the fashion clothing by his presentation of them all. He placed the models on plain white pedestals while playing nature films in the background. Source 3

In his Spring 2011 collection he also started experimenting with digital printing again, to create what looked like an abstract print was actually a close-up photo of wolf fur, deer fur, burnt ash, and wood. He focused a lot on natural textures and made them “fashionable”. Source 4

I even surprised myself how I found an “artist” that was doing something so similar to what I did for this last project. He was inspired by the textures he saw in nature and created fabric out of these macro images. I did come up with my idea on my own prior to even knowing that fashion designers were doing this also. I took photos of highly textural objects within nature and rather then printing them in photograph form onto fabric, I made them digitally traced images. The end result of his work and what I would like to do with my work is the same, fashion. His is high class NYC fashion and the output I would like is Athletic clothing, but it is still textiles.

I am only going to analyze the fabric itself because I know nothing about high-class fashion styles. The fabrics he created were very interesting. Although, while looking at them I can tell that they are a photo or relate closely to a photo, I could not recognize and pinpoint exactly what the photo was of. Using the texture of oxidized and weathered statues is very out of the box and conceptual. Also, the use of wolf fur in his 2011 collection is even more interesting because it correlated with humans. We wear closes for warmth and wolves have fur as their “clothing”.

 

part two of project 2 self assessment

Self- Assessment

Project 2

Part 2

            The overall purpose of this portion of project two was all about experimental output. Since I have taken this class before, I knew a decant amount about some of the techniques. I knew a lot about super sauce and I knew that I wanted to steer clear of that technique for this project. I wanted to try something new and push my limits. While in Italy this past summer I became obsessed with textures. The natural textures in this world are amazing and so rich. I then after returning from Italy came up with this wild idea that combined my love for athletic clothing and my art. I had the idea to take up close macro images of natural textures and patterns found in our world and to convert them into digital representations. To then recolor these images to create designs similar to those found in athletic clothing, especially spandex material.

            Recently in the last year or so my overall theme of my work and focus, whether intentional or not, has focused around “Seeing that the eye cannot see”. Mainly I have been using my camera and its mechanical abilities to create art that shows viewers those things out eyes cant. My inspiration for this series that I have yet to name comes from many different areas of my life. I am seeing the world differently ever since my concussion and since I spent a month in Italy. I am more in tune with the world and with the shapes I see in life. I have ideas flying at me left anf right and it seems almost everything I see is inspiring and adjusting my art in some way or another. I have been thinking about these types of art for a few months now. I knew what I wanted to create and I knew a general idea of how to make it but I had yet to conduct the steps I needed to complete this project.

            My process started with my root focus in photography. I first photographed the bottom of one of my pet turtles. I am amazed by the patterns created in their shells and skin. I have three pets and have come in contact with over ten Diamondback Terrapins and amazingly every single one has been different. No two that I have seen in life or in pictures look alike. Each one has their own designs and patterns. I find this fascinating and knew that these natural patterns would make really interesting graphics. So I photographed the bottom of one of my turtles. I then converted the image to black and white and increased the definition as well as the contrast. This made the silver/tan shell appear whiter and the dark grey/black markings even deeper black. I then loaded this image into Adobe Illustrator. I live traced the image and set it to the default setting which creates a black background and the once black marking are not white and closed paths. It is then that I select each path individually and recolor it to my liking. I chose to work with only three colors and black because I felt if I used more colors that it would create a graphic that was too busy and no longer aesthetically pleasing. For this image I chose female oriented colors. It did not take too long for me to figure out the process and how to work in illustrator. What took me longer was trying to figure out how to make the remaining white paths, turn black. Once I figured this out, I was done. I printed out test prints and placed them on my wall, I also made the graphic my backdrop on my computer and phone. This is a technique I use often when I print tests of works. I am then forced to see the works and stare at them analyzing them multiple times through out the day. This is how I discover if I am done or not. After a few days of staring and analyzing the test prints, I was happy and ready to make it to the next step.

 I decided from the start that I wanted to print on the stretchy fabric. Although not like the spandex that I imagine my graphic to be printed on practically, this fabric is very interesting. Once printed, I taught myself through experimenting and trial and error how to construct a canvas wrap out of the printed fabric. It was surprising very successful and looked professional enough for me to be pleased and content. I hung it on my wall and honestly stared at it for a few hours while doing homework and I was still pleased and loving it so I knew I made the right choices.

A few days later I was walking around and saw this moss like plants growing on the brick wall on the way to Anne Arundel. I though it may make an exciting graphic so I took an up close photograph and followed the same process as before. With this image I finally learned more specifically how to convert the illustrator document into Photoshop and make a plain black background. Once in Photoshop, I could move the colored shapes around in order to create a new overall lay out. I took a very portrait orientation image and made it circular and squared off. I printed this the same way on the stretchy fabric but the printed decided to go crazy and mess up over half the print. So I had to improvise and only use part of the overall image. I created a much more panorama landscape looking canvas wrap.

From this project I learned even more about Illustrator and Photoshop then before and I learned how o create a canvas wrap. I also learned what textures can and cannot be created into art this way. My work habits were different then in the past. Since, I have a Macbook Pro now with the Adobe creative suite. I have the products I need that I once had to walk to the Mac Lab for. I like being able to work from home and whenever I want. It is less stressful and I am able to jot down or fix a little thing whenever I want. Much like in the remix project I feel like I spent less time then I have in the past on this project but I say I spent about 15 hours in total on this project.

             I am extremely happy with my two graphic prints and will absolutely reprint these images as well as create more. I think this project has lead me in a direction that will not only help with my SMP but also in looking for internships and jobs in the future.

            When people see my images I want them to wonder what they are and what they are pictures of. People who have already seen them hanging on my wall in my house have already been asking what they are. Most guess that the large work is of a turtle’s belly. No one has guessed the moss one though. I have to tell them. I think in the pure nature of the fabric and the graphic design of it people will image it on clothing. Yes, it is presented as a canvas wrap but with as much clothing and advertisements we are exposed to today, I think people will make the connection. Formally the colors in contrast with the black background create a compelling image that supports that it is not a photo but rather a graphic. Aesthetically the color combinations just fit and compliment one another well. A downfall to these pieces is the transparency. I want to create more and print on thicker fabric more closely related to those that clothing is made out of.

            As I have already said before, I am actually very pleased with my work and my effort level matched with my creativity and end product. It all played out well and I think I have created some of the best art works I have ever made and I am thoroughly inspired to create more in the future. I again think I deserve an A plus. 

self-assessment remix

Kristin Seymour

Self-Assessment

Project 2

            Part one of project two was a collaborative project with Colby’s Advanced Photo class. This project was called the “remix” project and was a reflection off of remixes in the music world. The task at hand was to exchange an image with our partner. We then were free to “remix” it as much as we wanted; however we wanted. My partner was Mimi and the image she gave me was on a negative slip. It was a naked girl with flowers over her breasts. The image I gave to her was an image I took this summer while shooting for a photography competition. I chose this image because I had been wanting to convert it to black and white and do something interesting with it. Since, the class she was in was a darkroom class that worked primarily in black and white, I knew she would remix it into something interesting.

            My process was very multi dimensional and multi formatted. I started by developing the image in the dark room. I decided to do this because of the nature of the raw image she gave me. It was a negative, and with my knowledge in the dark rom I just felt it was appropriate to develop it originally in this way.  In the dark room was when I realized that the girl in the photograph had a very large scar on her chest most likely from open-heart surgery. This simple feature changed the whole mood of the image from sensual and sexual too mysterious and slightly disturbing. I chose in this moment to no longer focus on the flowers but rather to accentuate the scar on the subject’s chest. I also wanted to make the image appear even more mysterious and dark by increasing the contrast. I accomplished this by using a darkroom technique called split filtering. This created the high contrast in the photo as well as keeping a high texture and tonal range on her skin. The background became a very deep black and the outlines of her body were intensified as well as the scar. This process made the scar pop out even more then in the original image. I then scanned in the image and worked on it in Photoshop. I did some minor editing in Photoshop to show the scar more and increase the detail and contrast.

            The idea of this unit is all about external output, so for this remix project, I tried different materials and methods of transfer. I first tested with matte medium onto canvas with pain beneath it and did not like it. Then I reverted back to my comfort zone with super sauce and transferred onto wood and Plexiglas. I finally tried placing decals onto a mirror. I liked this a lot but only at certain angles. So I finally decided to try matte medium transfer onto canvas one more time. I liked the result. I created the non-linear border by scraping away the matte medium. This made the image appear to be more antique and creepy. During this project I forced myself to learn other experimental processes like matte medium transfer and printing on decals. I only worked with super sauce last year so it was nice to expand my experimentation this class.

            I chose to print my original image on the nubby silk fabric. I then canvas wrapped it around canvas stretchers. This is the first time I have completed a canvas wrap and I am pleased as to how it turned out. I chose the nubby fabric because the photograph itself was very textural. It was a photo of a rusty chain and rusted metal beams under a boat. The nubby fabric added a similar texture to the texture seen in the image. In the end I rubbed my fingers over the image to pull out the knots in the fabric to make the texture even more apparent.

            As far as my work habits were, I spent less time overall then normal, but my normal time spent on a project exceeds 30 hours. I spent about 12 hours on this project. I have noticed in the past that I spend more time on my projects then my classmates and I have been trying to lessen my work time. I feel that sometimes I over work and over stress myself and no better work comes out of it. I am very pleased with my two finished products. I feel that my two works were well composed and well presented. Honestly, I was very disappointed in the level of presentation of my classmates and Colby’s class. Most all of the other works were not ready to hang. People did not bring their own materials and the artworks were not gallery material as we were told to have. A lot of the prints were not mounted and the other works were rough around the edges. I made sure my pieces were smooth around the edges, gallery ready and ready for hanging and I brought my own supplies (command strips).

            I believe the message that viewers will take from my remix piece is similar to the one I took the moment I saw the images enlarged on a projector. I think people at first will just see an almost naked girl with flowers on her breasts but soon as they approach the artwork closer, see the scar. They will then wonder about the scar and how this otherwise blemish free body obtained such a mark strait down her chest. I think that the image will not be seen as sexual but more so mysterious and a bit uncanny. For my original image I think viewers will first see it for what it simply is, a photograph. But I think they will see that this photo is semi three-dimensional. I think that the normal public is not so used to seeing canvas wrapped photographs and they will want to approach it closer to look. It is then that I hope they see the texture not only in the image itself but the literal texture within the fabric the image is printed on. I know my friends that I walk by with have told me they want to touch it but they know art is usually not meant to be touched, but I encourage them to feel it.  I want them to feel the physical texture of the piece.

            I feel that my most successful areas of this combined project were mainly the presentation of the two pieces, they were very finished and gallery ready. Also, I believe that I did well at stepping out of my comfort zone from last year. I worked only in super sauce last year and this year I avoided it mostly. I used new transfer materials as well as printing on fabric. I experimented with new materials and in the end I liked the results. I also crossed many different mediums in this project. I used digital photography, dark room processing, scanners, digital processing, alternative fabric printing, experimental transferring and canvas wrapping. I would honestly give myself an A plus because I feel I pushed myself in new directions but I also produced two artworks I am very pleased with.