The context of my life is a short book of drawings, photos, journal entries and quotes form artists. These reflect how I and other artist precise the art world and how in such a open ended world, art we create has so many expectations as well as us as artists.

The main idea that drove my collection and will continue to help it grow is that we as artists are constantly being influenced, pushed and pulled to fit into this world where everything should have a place. This book is a compilation of my questions and some answers I have for the art world and those who occupy it.
These are My Concept is My Concept

The context of my life is a short book of drawings, photos, journal entries and quotes form artists. These reflect how I and other artist precise the art world and how in such a open ended world, art we create has so many expectations as well as us as artists.

The main idea that drove my collection and will continue to help it grow is that we as artists are constantly being influenced, pushed and pulled to fit into this world where everything should have a place. This book is a compilation of my questions and some answers I have for the art world and those who occupy it.

These are the visuals for my book and I am finishing up inserting my journal entries and interviews

 For my project, I am going to create a book. Each page will have a different contortion pose corresponding to a letter in the alphabet. It will also become stickers so the poses could spell out different words. I am planning on having each photo done in the same style so it flows as a visual language. I’m still debating on doing black and white or color. My influences for this project was the artist Cindy Sherman and how she creates different costumes for each of her photographs. The idea of her transforming into different people is really interesting to me, and I was inspired by that idea in regards to my own life. My ideas for the different poses were inspired by snakes and the concept of transformation. Influences for the piece were inspired by multimedia artists like Erika Lemay and Cindy Sherman, whos work has themes of transformation. The title of the book is “Alphabet”. The piece explores how see the body and how it can be changed through contortion. The reason I chose this idea was because I believe that through contortion, the body twisting and turning into seemingly unnatural poses challenges the viewer to redefine what they believe is possible. I think this enforces the idea behind creating a “new” form of an alphabet that the viewer then has to use to make words.

Context: Mental Well Being specifically on the topic of happiness on an individual level in an age of hyper consumerism. Trying to live a “happy life” in an angry 21st century. Finding pleasure through the constant cycles of global tragedies and lingering future anxieties. 

Concept: Capturing a personal narration in one’s head and translating that process to video on the question of “What makes you happy?”. Using candid prose in combination with relatively abstract imagery to create a synthesis of how thoughts could be floating in the mind. Giving more visual weight to the spoken word by using video and creating a dream like energy.

Pleasure Junkie

In the process of questioning my relationship to food and cooking as someone who was raised as a woman, I came to the realization that I cannot subvert the role of a woman cooking simply by saying that I am. The same is true for taking on the role of a sugar baby. I cannot claim to fool older men by playing a character that is almost as easy to embody as my natural personality. To fool is to be fooled in these contexts. I seek to truly subvert the role of a sugar baby and a woman in the kitchen by compiling recipes I receive from men on Seeking Arrangement, the most popular site for breeding sugar relationships.

Context: Generational economic tensions and gender relationships in new interpersonal online exchanges

Context: The blurry line of character ownership between creator and artist, especially when the artwork is provided for free. How does this also relate to the larger phenomenon of fan art, where additional content is created by the fan artist out of love for the character.

Concept: Begin by fulfilling a free commission request of an online user’s role-play character (Ser Finnegan, a magical mouse), and begin repeatedly creating artwork of the character. Overtime move the character from their imagined world into the real world while also distorting their original concept- and see how the original creator reacts to an artist taking a larger role in creating the character’s narrative.

Emma

• Don Quijote homages in the style of mouse people
• Commision glass artist for miniatures that act as stand ins for roleplay character
• Make merch around commissioned character

Te: How are you exploring this world in a way that is informing a concept rather than just participating in the community in the same way you normally would?

E: How would artists react to their character being taken away?

One on one interaction with artist and slowly steal their character…

Ta: Is this along the lines of a marketing exercise?

E: Yes because I had the intention of joining the subreddit and drawing in return for mild recognition. 

Ta: Your approach is pragmatic in a way that is important when making interesting work. 

Ta: How interested are you in tying in historical references?

E: Historical references are more present in my glassworking. More involved in internet culture in terms of illustration. 

Ta: It’s interesting that you mention Dnd because there is so much lore there that I can’t see how that wouldn’t be a part of the canon for western art history. 

E: When drawing animals the context of objectification of bodies is eliminated to a certain extent. 

Ta: Are you doing research on mythology linking humans and animals.

E: No because I want to just reference internet culture with no deeper meaning other than that I’m referencing internet culture. 

Ta: There are definitely masc and femme associations with animals and the fact that you are subverting that is interesting. 

Ta: (in regards to “snake people” from DnD) If you gave some sort of reference or visual vocabulary then it would inform my experience as a viewer much more. 

E: I don’t like referencing sexuality in my art. I dont think it’s relevant to my practice.

Ta: Straying away from furry culture so radically is interesting. 

Ta: How many commissions do you think you’ll do?

E: I don’t get a ton of requests but I have found that I get more requests now that I’ve been drawing animals. I’ve accessed the market of people that want animal drawings sans sexuality. 

Ta: How many commissions will you do for the archive before the archive speaks for itself?

E: 30-50… want to find common tropes of someone who requests a certain animal

Ta: When it comes to reference (earlier comment), when you have more pieces in your body of work the reference becomes less necessary. 

Tashi

• Google search for bios with “fame” included
• Archive will be comprised of profiles that have the phrase “famous someday”
• Interviewed Boston skater about his thoughts on fame

E: Are you planning on interviewing more acquaintances or online strangers?

Ta: I am open to collaboration with anyone, but covid is limiting. 

E: Interview is very good foundation to jump off of, interviewing more will allow you to categorize subjects… are they self aware? 

Ta: I definitely want to interview someone who is not typically confrontational on the fringes of society but avoiding exploitation. Omegle interviews?

T: I think a platform like omegle will work well for facilitating the kind of conversation that you want, but you might get people who are completely fabricating every answer. 

Teresa

Ta: Are you aware of the fact that these men are probing you to reveal something particular about yourself in the same way you are them?

Te: I realize that the fact that I very easily take on this role for the sake of research reveals something about me or how society socializes afabs in general, but I don’t think they have any sort of intellectual power over me in this situation because I am self aware and they are not. 

Zoom call cut off discussion

intentions, methods and outcomes

RE: 

Intentions- To get an email back, talk about the influences of mutations and genetic defects in nature on the movie Annihilation

Methods- Email, IMDB database for email source

Outcomes- Nothing yet, moving forward with different plan

Ethan:

INtentions: Looking at archive topic from outsiders perspective, hoping to get perspective from someone whose been jaded by the community

Methods: Communicated through text and collected data through google form

Outcomes: Interviewee was far more agreeable than expected and provided a humanizing yet still disagreeable testimony

Chef:

Intendo= To discover the intentions of the owners of these brands and to get an idea of the demographics of the people who would be interested in starting a small fashion brands

Methods= Reaching out through Instagram DMs and sending a google form. Important to add that the questions are essentially the same that I would ask of a well-established brand- not trying to minimize their brand or effort. https://forms.gle/cG4cr1cubDQNYn6u6

Outcomes= Three individuals responded to my form, from two of which I got an interesting insight from DMs as well- I would have liked to have made more in-depth questions but was worried that a longer form would act as a deterrent 

TWO WAYS OF GOING FORWARD– considering the above

1. Continue with google forms and formalize a dataset of brand owners
2. Delve into personal connections with the brand owners / discover more specifics about a single or a few creators through further interviewing

Download the Relational Aesthetics readings here

Start your groups by describing  and assessing each of the projects brought by the group members. After these presentations discuss the intentions, methods and outcomes of the project. Conduct an informal critique that focuses on content and concept, and especially on the “form of the encounter”. Decide on one person to be the escribe and develop an outline of your communal critique to be posted in the class blog afterwards.

For my archive, I was interested in collecting shells. I have been collecting shells for a long time and so has my mother. Ever since I was a little girl, my mom has labeled and collected the shells from each vacation we have been on. I find it interesting to collect shells because they are really the skeletons of once living organisms. It is a strange concept when you think about as something to keep being a skeleton. It prompted me to think about what humans believe is morally right or wrong when it comes to respecting the dead.

I find it really fascinating that the more shells I collect, I have a sort of living library of what was in the ocean, living at the same time I was there. We coexist at the same time. It also made me think about how much is in the ocean that is unexplored by humans. I wonder what is beneath the surface and in areas of deep, deep ocean that humans haven’t even touched yet.