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Carbon Footprint

Proposal

Ashlee Mays

Art of Crossing the Street

November 19^th, 2009

The city of Chicago is a lively place. Each street has it’s own story and inspirations flows throughout them. It’s an excellent place for art to flourish.  Nevertheless, there is always a positive and a negative side to everything. After living in Chicago for a short period of time, the city has instilled many thoughts and emotions.

Without a doubt, Chicago has opened my eyes. I come from a very small town in Ohio, and the city is quite the change. Don’t get me wrong, it has been a good change but there is a cold side to the city. Everything here moves at such a fast, almost inhuman, pace.  The streets have an unfriendly side; the competition that fills the city taints the air. You lose all sense of community and often feel alone. Much of the surrounding art becomes overwhelming and you have to be cautious of getting lost in society.

Just as Thoreau had Walden, every artist needs to escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Like I started previously, Chicago is full of inspiration. What good is all this inspiration if we never gave time to digest it? Meditation is key. I feel like I need some time to recollect on what Chicago has provided for me, and what better way but to get back to my roots.

Ohio is basically the opposite of Chicago. Everything is slow, and there isn’t much more to the state besides cornfields. The towns are small and everyone knows everyone. There isn’t much competition; there is a feeling of contentment.

Of course balance is needed. An artist can quickly get bored and lose inspiration out on a farm for too long, but in the city the artist is in danger of losing him/herself. Harold Arts provides an excellent solution to this need for balance. Artists from Chicago are able to escape to the woods; get back to a more human, more realistic pace of life. A pace where you can have the time to think, have the time to reconnect with yourself and live in an actual community.

Not only does Harold Arts provide a way for artists to escape, but it has also created a unique type of learning environment. In this environment, each individual acts as both the teacher and the student. Everyone has something to share, and everyone is welcome to learn. With this promotion of exchanging ideas/skills/etc, the stale taste of competition is absent. Artists are welcome to live in harmony.

If I were given the opportunity to stay at the artist’s residency at Harold Arts, I would want to focus on these things. I do not want to enter in with a set plan because I want the woods to help me through the art making process. Here in Chicago I have completed a series of sketching, and I would like to do the same in the residency. I want to see how the city affects my drawings verses the farm. Nevertheless, I accept that this is just an idea, I am welcome to the farm inspiring me in new ways causing me to change my mind.

youjeong’s insallation

My altar is for my grandmother Jea Sok Shim. She was a teacher her whole life and passed away when I was in high school.

The four paintings that I painted represent many things such as the four seasons, the four cardinal points, and four characteristics. Through this installation I intend to explain my grandmother’s personality when she was alive. The ume flower, on the very left, blossoms in early spring when it still snows. It represents my grandmother’s personality such as how she muddled through the bitters of life. Next the orchid stands for summer, the aloneness, and the deepest smell from the deep forest where it grows. This relates with my grandmother because my grandfather was away during the war period. Third, the chrysanthemum morifolium flower represents fall, which blossoms in the chilly weather that represents the power of survival. When my grandfather was away she took care of three children all by her self, and they all grew up to be professional and giving. Lastly the bambusoideae stands for winter because it stays green all winter long and it shows the personality of the man of honor. Like the bamboo she was very straight forward, stable, soft, and giving.

The apple that I set in front of the paintings represents my grandmother herself. She loved apples and to me it seemed like the apple is red, however it had the white inside that shows the pureness in my grandmother.

The four paintings that I made show time passing away within the four seasons, and also it represents my grandmother’s personality.  Moreover, the apple is the symbol of her pureness to me, her granddaughter.

Installation

The idea of individual identity is something that I am constantly conscious of. It is easy for one to feel minute and insignificant amongst such an immense population. I made my installation about identity because when I first came to Chicago, I was very uneasy about my own identity. Back in Michigan everyone in the metro-Detroit area was entwined in a very tight-knit network. Everyone somehow knew everyone, and I had always been considered very fashion forward and unique. After settling into a large city like Chicago, I was terrified that I would get lost in the masses of people. I was worried that I that my identity would slip away.
Many people experience this same trauma, and it’s become a prominent theme in s lot of contemporary art and literature. My piece is composed to resemble to a vanity with a mirror surrounded by personal objects including photographs, a camera, books, cigarettes, jewelry, a hair accessory, and makeup. Painted upon the mirror is a black ambiguous figure, but the belongings indicate that the subject is a female. The subject can be interpreted as any female who looks in the mirror only to see an unrecognizable reflection because she is unclear of her own identity. From afar the objects seem ordinary, but they all relate to the idea of the lack of a concrete and true self.
Cameras allow one to record one tiny moment of personality, which can be altered to however the model wants him/herself to be captured. It has the potential to create a false idealistic image of the person being photographed. In the photographs displayed, many of the subjects are actually faceless because they are cropped out or hiding their faces. Some of the photos give a narrative that the subject had scratched her face out of the photos with a razor because of dissatisfaction.
The pile of books includes The Secret Language of Birthdays, a book that informs one of his or her personality based on date of birth. I also added the Andy Warhol Diaries because he was an artist that dealt with the idea of fading identity. The fact that it’s his diary, and not her’s, may show that she is being influenced by celebrity figures and cares more about his life than her own. Crick Crack Monkey, Neuromancer, and The Metamorphosis are all works of literature that are based on the theme of searching and questioning oneself. Then finally there is the Holy Bible, the most influential piece of literature ever created, and it is responsible for large quantities of people throughout history identifying themselves as masses instead of individuals.
On top of the books is a prescription bottle with the name blocked out, which goes along with the idea of unknown identity, and a tube of lipstick that looks like it had been recently used. I included make up products because they can be used to conceal or alter the self that the subject is portraying to the public. The jewelry and hair clip also correspond with the idea of the subject having the ability to modify her image. The cigarettes are test cigarettes, which shows a lack of self-respect to willingly become the subject for harmful substances. The entire piece is placed in front of a window separating the subject from the less intimate outside world of the city of Chicago.

Shrine of Shriners

When I was researching shrines, the Shriners, a group of Freemasons, appeared in my search. They appeared to be old white men, who wear fez hats and drive around toy cars. They call themselves “a fraternity based on fun, fellowship and the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief and truth.”

http://www.shrinershq.org/Shrine/

Altar to Andrew

My friend from back home passed away this past summer. In his memory I decided to collect cans, bottles, and bottle caps from his favorite drinks. Then I included pictures of New York City, our home away from home. Then I included a Fox Racing T-shirt because of his love for racing. On the wall I included the photograph of him in his USMC uniform, a silver cross, and a strip of fabric from his boxers that he once tore off so I could tie up my hair.

Roxy’s altar

The fondest memories of the past three generations of my family can all be related to the smell of pie. I remember waking up in my grandmother’s house and smelling the eggy citrus scent of key lime and lemon meringue, running down the stairs to be greeted by a swarm of people speaking in some strange spanish-english hybrid, but most of all I remember those pies. my great grandmother was an amazing chef, she cooked and baked constantly never uttering a word about any of her recipes to anyone. when she died in the summer of 2008 she took with her the most delicious pies and the sassiest remarks ever made by a 96 year old woman. I made my altar to her by baking both lemon meringue and key lime pies and decorating them in pictures of her throughout the years, these are pictures of her home, her family, and her childhood, incorporating the story of her life, with the talent she was known for.

Kaiya McCormick’s Alter

Reverend Jim Jones at Jonestown- mass suicide over 900- 1/3 of massacre were children- force fed cyanide

Over 900 people died brutal deaths by cyanide poisoning and one third of that colossal number were children force-fed cyanide.  The two surviving cult members recognized that the historical event was not a mass suicide but realistically a massacre.  Personally, I was truly affected by the Jonestown innocent victims for I feel emotionally attached to all children.

The Mexican “Day of the Dead”-style alter I created is a tribute to the disaster that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana 1978.  Reverend Jim Jones’ devotees were at minimum coherent enough to recognize truth of the catastrophe around them as some willing took the cyanide by many people and children were forced to ingest the poison.  Parents watched as their children and foamed at the mouth and suffocated to death.  This alter accolades the death of the innocent children at Jonestown.

The birdcage is suspended as the top tear. The cage traps in a baby bootie to symbolize the imprisonment of the Jonestown children by the cult members.  On the second tear, the Virgin Mary minds over the memory of the children.  The babies breath on the third second tear basks around the Virgin Mary to esteem the passing of the Jonestown children.  On the third and final tear is placed a framed image of the children circling around the trusted Jim Jones to reminiscence their wrongful trust of Jim Jones and his cult followers.

Art Supply Alter

The alter I made was constructed out of various kinds of art supplies.  The alter was made to show my love of all the different kinds of supplies and materials that can be used to make art.   There is nothing more fun than getting and trying out new art supplies.  To learn new things and create new projects never gets tired.  I have always loved getting new supplies and receiving them as gifts for my birthday and Christmas.  To me it meant that my family and friends were supporting what I do and encouraging me to continue on to try to be an artist.  Many of the materials in the alter were given to me by others, so in a way this alter has a piece of them in it too.

The alter is arranged it into a pyramid shape with a semi-circle of objects around the base.   I tried to use many different bright colors through out the alter to mimic the designs of other alters. It is constructed out of a few of my chosen supplies including oil and acrylic paint, brushes, colored pencils, watercolors, oil pastels, and a sketchpad.  All of this is placed inside of a wooden case that I keep my paint in.  Surrounding my case are jars of gamsol and brush cleaner, beads, pliers, oil paints, wire, and a mini anvil.