Grit and Beauty

Mission: Create an image using found textures to reflect a feeling of grit and beauty within in the city of Philadelphia.

So naturally, I made a godzilla. RAWR.

My original concept was to make him out of garbage to make a statement on the total grossness of this place, but there were too many other kinds of textures that were too perfect to make a godzilla.

He's gonna meet some friends at Parc for a late brunch and then go play his guitar in Rittenhouse because he hopes that someone will start a conversation with him. Maybe meet a nice girl? He's shy. Unfortunately, all he knows how to play is Death Cab covers.

And a bit of a late post, but here is my screen print design. I haven't gotten a chance to upload the prints, but they should be around soon.



Tapirs! And baby tapirs!! Hoorah!

Tuesday Lecture

I thought this lecture was pretty interesting. Rob is always telling me about how Tyler's curriculum is based off the Bauhaus school and I usually just nod and say, "Ok" without really knowing what it meant. How rad would it have been to have been taught by Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee? Hint: very.

That said, I really don't like Bauhaus architecture. It's so cold and almost Orwellian to the point of being practically unlivable. I do like the chessboard, though.

The second part of the lecture dealt with connecting your art to the surrounding community. The idea of involving my art with Temple as a whole, or even the entire city of Philadelphia is very exciting. I was thinking that perhaps since Tyler and Presser share a building, yet we never make any real contact, we could collaborate with the music students more often in some sort of multimedia whatchamacallit. Neato!!

Tuesday Lecture and Photoshop Painting

It was really nice to hear some upperclassmen giving us advice. I won't be a sophomore until Spring 2011, but the "10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Sophomore" presentation is still helpful as a freshman. I think the biggest bit of advice that I want to use is to get a bike. I still don't know how to ride one (auuugh embarrassing) but I'm making it my mission this spring to learn how. I can't stand sitting around North Philly as it is, and SEPTA is just about the worst thing in the world, so a bike would definitely help me out a lot. And this way I can be some sort of arty hipster with a fixie and a tight hoodie and I can talk about "bike culture" and typefaces in the most insufferable way possible.

And now the part that everyone (mostly just my mom) has been waiting for, my photoshop painting:



I still hate painting in photoshop, btw. Mostly what a did is smooth out the colors on the dragon and the fawn and clone stamped some messy spots in the grass. I wanted to keep a lot of the original texture of the watercolor because I think it works well with the oriental style of the dragon.

And now I'm going to go to my midterm critique and then try to shove as many naked juices and bagels down my gullet as I possibly can.

Some nerdy arty youtube videos

Robert and I have been showing each other a bunch of arty videos on youtube lately, so I figured I'd post some of my faves.

Rococo Puffs!

Neutra Face
Neutra Face: An Ode to a Typeface! Robert's a nerdy graphic designer and I want to be Lady Gaga, so he was all psyched to show me this.

70 Million
The members of this band just dress up as various famous art works throughout this video. Rob and I kept on just shouting out the artist or the title while watching this. He was quicker than me =(

Chip Kidd
Chip Kidd presents Form and Content. Baby hamsters <3

Luke Jerran
HIV Sculpture
Luke Jerram makes glass blown viruses. They're really bizarrely beautiful.

Sweaterman
We're starting our super hero costumes in Nichola Kinch's class and Mark Newport aka Sweaterman was one of the artists we looked at.

what

Ok, two lectures to go over!

First is last week's Philographica lecture! I'm kind of glad that we went to this one, even though it was a lil bit boring. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to get to some of the exhibitions. I'd especially like to go to the one with the toilet seat so I can get "Abandon Hope All ye Who Enter Here" printed on my bottom. That would be my favorite thing ever. I'm going to try to make a point of going to the PMA this weekend to see Oscar Munoz's work.

And then this week Lynda Barry came to speak! I want to be her when I grow up. Not only was she absolutely hilarious, she also had some really insightful and interesting things to say, especially those about images. I think most of them went right over my head because I was exhausted, but that probably just means that what she said was really smart and probably very important, right? Right. She gave me a lot of really neat ideas for my folios; I love her style. Furthermore, HOLY BALLS she sang Hey Jude without moving her lips! Lynda Barry, please adopt me. Sincerely, Maureen O'Dwyer

Hopefully I'll get the photos of my 3D projects from Nichola Kinch soon. I've been getting some pretty positive feedback on them so I figure I'll post them here and be all, "I don't wanna toot my own horn or anything BUUUUUT CHECK ME OUT!"

I also need to get my texture pictures off of Robert's camera so I can finally get them uploaded.

PS. I still don't like painting in photoshop. Real paint is messy and sexy

Vecter Portrait

Ladiesss...



...watch out for yer husbands.

...yeahhh riiiight.

Anyway, I think that this is defintely an improvement over the last time I showed this in class. I'm still not sure if the skin is too rainbowy, though. Mostly I was just thrilled about getting to scan my face into the computer. New facebook profile pictures, anyone? Oh yes.

Floor Plan and Warning Label

This floor plan doesn't come close to showing the state of wreckage that my room is currently in. It's pretty destroyed. Also, it's covered in rubber dust. Oh well.


My warning label, on the other hand, does indeed represent the fact that my room has dirty underwear strewn all over the place. Grosso.

Text Drawing

I used one of my favorite photos of me, Drew, and Olivia. Unfortunately, I didn't leave myself enough time to get Drew and Livers in there as well. I feel like I should have allowed the text to stay more recognizable. Otherwise, I'm happy with my results.

blog blog blog

Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands
I love the idea of digital designers re-learning to use their hands to create. In many of my experiences with using adobe programs, I have become frustrated with the way the programs work, and have angrily thought that the designers must not know what I want out of them. I personally love using my hands to work, and being able to hold the physical product of my efforts and carry it around on something other than a flash drive and showing it off. I do, however, understand the importance of digital design in today's world, and hope that the designers get the best out of their experiences working with their hands. I have several friends that are designers, architects, animators, etc., and they all have to design heavily with a computer. However, I also know that some are more adept with their hands than others, and I wonder how that effects their work.

Alison Chang's lawyer, Ryan Zehl, is interviewed on CNN
Welcome to the future, I guess. I do think that Virgin Mobile was in the wrong and that they took advantage of this girl. They're a huge corporation, and you would think that they would be able to shell out a few bucks to take a few photos on their own instead of taking somebody else's image. Then again, they do appear to be in the legal right. I'm probably not gonna learn much from this, though; my photos are all over the internet, some of which are terribly embarrassing. Oops.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth
I LOVE TED TALKS! This demo was pretty mindblowing. The fact that they were able to create a composite environmental image of Notre Dame de Paris simply out of flickr images with such gorgeous results is incredible. Why can't technology be used for such fun things more often?

Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity
This is sort of the other side of the issue with Virgin Mobile. I've been following fair use issues on youtube for about a year now, and I do believe that creative and informative content should be allowed to be used others to create their own creative content. I think that allowing young people to make videos such as the Bush/Blair love song the Jesus: The Musical, presents an engaging opportunity for us to learn the technology and programs that have become available to us over the past few years.

Tuesday Lecture

Study abroad!! I wish that the speaker had been on time so that I could have learned more about going to Rome; on the bright side, I got to have a delightful conversation with some dudes about uncircumcised penises while we waited. Hopefully I'll be able to get to Rome within the next couple of years. A few of my friends are there now, and I'm completely jealous. My minor is Italian, and I think that being forced to practicare la mia lingua would do me a world of good, not to mention I'd be surrounded by so much influential history and art that changed the world. After visiting France and London in July of 2007, I have been dying to get back over to Europe and have some adventures.

However, I have to get my GPA up in order to be eligible to go. The past two and a half years of taking classes that I don't particularly like has hurt me a bit. This is definitely an achievable goal, though, now that I'm excited about the work that I'm doing.

Amarei andare a Roma!

Ciao ciao,
Maureen

Walk, Ride, Bike

I really enjoyed going out and taking photos the past week. I started out just photographing people and things in my neighborhood, thinking a lot about archaeology, my old major; I was interested in people and the traces they leave behind, such as the beer cans and spray painting left in my basement by the previous tenants. On Saturday, Sarah and I trekked out down to South Street and then to University City as she tried to sell old clothes and books and I followed, documenting weirdo lil things along the way, especially street art. I started to realize how much I take for granted in this city. As much as I love this place, I never really seem to look, but on Saturday I really started to notice the things that I've walked past countless times and what they imply about Philly.

I wish I had had a chance to get into south Philly (NOT South Street), one of my favorite neighborhoods and where I've spent a lot of my time the past year. I was interested in breaking into the abandoned house next door to Nick and Fernando, but that never happened. We always see the outside of these places, but never think to go inside of where people lived their lives; Nick and Fern told me that they've found eviction notices and a little kid's old homework. I dealt by sketching the abandoned house down the block from me.


I had a hard time finding objects that I wanted. All of the ones I found are plastic, and I wish I had been able to find some made of other materials. Oh well.

HI MOM!!!!

Maureen O'Dwyer

And the rest...