Lee's Artlog

[image:298:l]

2008- With Analytical Figure Drawing, Inventive Drawing and Sketching For Entertainment, as well as three other classes, I found my schedule for the fall to be both constraining to my free time yet liberating for my skill set. In the midst of all this, I reloaded and submitted a portfolio for scholarship review during midterms. I sat out the Summer term review after being crushed emotionally by a lack of clarity and understanding as to what I was to include in my portfolio and how to construct it.  The answers to why I had not been selected were also vague and nondescript, basically amounting to ‘work harder’- which was an even greater insult since all I had done since I had come to Art Center last year was work harder. I redoubled my efforts however, becoming much more organized with the design of the presentation, redoing pieces that I felt could be included in the portfolio and a sketchbook of my thought processes and work.

Amerika +, was one of these pieces I readdressed for portfolio submission. Originally from my sketchbook, (see America), I blew this piece up through strengthening and varying the line and purifying the color pallette.  I stretched the curves, tattered out the flag, and detailed out the face more. It has an eerie iconic quality to it and I may consider modifying it again to make it a t-shirt design.        

[image:295:l]

2008- In my Fall classes I really got rolling on figure drawing, – something that I had neglected frequently over the previous term. With luck, I got intensive scrutiny and assistance from classes that with some unorthodoxy meshed well together in similar instruction over the same week periods. I completed this conte in a bit under 20 minutes in Inventive Drawing, utilizing both the bean technique and drawing from the inside out, composing light lines and working darker, adding in specific body landmarks as I went. The triangle of the sacrum is slightly inaccurate, (as the female pelvis is shaped more like a rhomboid) but for the most part it was an initial good effort.

As America enters into a financial crisis not seen since the depression of the 20′s, we should be careful of our own imperialist ideals at this time and age. The United States needs to consider whether or not it is time to hand off our ‘idealist torch’ and join the world stage as a contributor.  Being competitive does not mean we have to be confrontational. (In fact I think it states that much more about our need to be cooperative with other nations.)  When you create so many enemies through your ostracizing behavior, a lack of mutual trust and respect festers, then fosters their cooperation against you. America has gotten to a point where we don’t understand that we are becoming the imperial minority, imposing our will and beliefs on the rest of the world, when sometimes our ideas and concepts are considered rude by other cultures.   At some point our behavior takes center stage just as much as Russia’s for our interfering notions of justice and equality. Sadly just because it may be right or it is completely right, doesn’t make it right because you are shoving your pill of intentions down an unwilling patient’s throat.

Our financial problems are not directly due to our oil dependence but it is a heavy weight on our sinking country. (At this time we actually get the majority of our oil from Canada, not the Saudi Arabia as many would believe.)  The biggest problem that the United States faces isn’t in corporate greed, as much as it is in the Capitalist system that has been so loosened over the past 15 years, that it has caused this run up and collapse to hyperactivate.

I propose at this time that collapse at this time maybe the only thing at this time that fixes our economy. True- assets combine under conglomerate pressures and names when the market falters and that is not necessarily good. But perhaps everything is so broken, that what we need is a machete to not chop- but hack down the corrupt tree of our market system, to foster new growth, and perhaps cure the ills of our economy.  When the dead roots are exposed we pair them down, focusing on the healthy and trying to save what we can, weeding out the dead and rotting that have leeched so much vital nutrients. Why should we give money to help that which is corrupt? With the AIGs of the world and the mortgage meltdown why not hand the money directly to people so that we can spend it where they want and need to. Perhaps the government should just take that money and use it to cooperatively pay down all American’s debts by $5000?  I find that much more helpful than $ 750 billion dollars callously  earmarked to wasteful companies that reaped their own whirlwind of collective mismanagement.

[image:292:l]

2008- During the Summer term I was handed an assignment to change a letterform into an embellished shape almost like the title letter from an illuminated manuscript for Expressive Type.  With little time to design since I had been under the gun from other classes, I literally came up with Alpha in about 2 hours time after looking at a few books for inspiration that had embellished fleurons and gothic design. I took the curves and elongated some of them, then changed them into hair strands, pulling out the faces from the work. My instructor looked at it and literally said, ”Holy crap!” -But it was obvious that he liked it. A few days later I did the followup piece Beta in my sketchbook.