When your heart races

I really love looking at all the various works of the other students in this class. I tried my damnedest not to do anything having to do with interiors but I guess my heart just loves my job/career/passion too much. I still used a window and I am really proud of myself for it. I don't think that my concept would have come out on its own as much without the window or some sort of glass.

But I always get really nervous before critiques and I just didn't know if it could stand up to what others were doing with their projects. Seems like everyone liked it. But the conversation about everyone's various projects is really interesting. I think it's good to think about more than just the art at hand but the subjects that we can make people think about when we make our work.

While we are still are mapping, I'm jacking this one from my sister's blog. She a photographer so this was more up her alley but I thought it was still funny. This artist takes little model size figures and sets them up in streets and lets them go... just leaves them there and society can decide their fate. I giggled when I saw this one and thought it was appropriate.

For more of his work,(it's pretty cool), look at this website. http://slinkachu.com/

Looks like I will be making more maps now as I continue with senior project (which is a high school for the deaf)... back to placing things where they need to be... The next project I promise to get away from anything interiors based.

I hope you are having a great life!

All the best,

Molly

When you're lost

For this assignment, I decided to combine road maps... or zoning maps and trees. Lately there has been such a problem with sustainability and I'm running with the idea that you can't see the trees through the forest but now you can't see the tree through the city. As much as I love new construction, I think I love forests and nature more. Between over population and pollution the world is getting too much. But even I forget about it and it fades in and out of my thought process. So I'm layering overhead projection sheets and using black and gray markers then I think I will take tracing paper and layer it between the zoning maps and the tree to fog out the tree. The idea is to mimic a window and blowing your breath on a fogged window. You can draw in it and it fades but you can re fog the window and bring it back again. But eventually it fades away.

It has been interesting drawing on the transparencies because I'm using Prismacolor markers which I love for rendering interiors, however, they render even lighter on this medium. It's really perfect because it ends up looking like the gray of where you have written in the fog but I wanted to make it look 3D in the end but maybe that would read kind of wrong.  I really hope to finish the tree today and then trace the maps like the artist we studied in class (I can't remember her name right now.) There should be three sheets all together of drawings. I had half the thought to draw in a bit of color but you would never see that on the window.

The next thing I need to consider is if I want to present it in a frame or not... how does the wood read? I just used the wood from the trees I'm trying to protect? Or do I use reclaimed wood? Where do I find reclaimed wood? Or better yet, do I use 2 x 4s? or 1 x 2's?

When you are here...

The child in me (not that I'm proud of this fact) thinks of Dora every time I hear the word "map." The dork in me thinks of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter...and the world traveler in me thinks "You really should book that trip to Ireland for September."

I started to think of all the different things I could map and how I could make the medium I use look older or look like a map. Also, being an interiors major I wanted to somehow avoid interiors kinds of things. Such as a blueprint or a floor plan is basically a map of a building. No "to scale," no wall lines...sections of walls none of that. That being said I thought of latitude lines and longitude lines, north arrows, and topography maps, folding of a map and burring the paper.

But then the idea of morphing, adapting, and changing came into my head. Maps do this sort of thing all the time... same as people do. My mind is constantly changing as to what I am thinking about and an idea can stick with me for a years until it is accomplished or it can be in my head at one second and fleeting the next. Mapping doesn't have to be about the world or your home state but could be about mapping out your feelings, thoughts, and actions.

That's when you are here. You are in a moment, in a time, thought processes and the present is what counts and what is in the future is still blurry but still there. I am pretty sure my project will revolve around this idea. What my thoughts are now and in the future. But I need to carefully choose the subjects of those thoughts and what is in the forefront. I know that school is in the front of my head now, graduating and moving is quickly after however, I want to abstract those and show them in a way that isn't a graduation cap and a moving box. Duh. Anyone can do that. But how to abstract those.... It's difficult. The idea of how I want to present them is clear in my head but not what to specifically draw.

So the thoughts in my head now...

School, Work, Love life - broken heart, Graduation, moving, next book I write? Children? Ireland? Sign Language - learn more?-- how sign gestures so well and you can set up a whole world in sign....

Help?