Pop Goes the Artist!

These photos are of an art project I did sophomore year, in printmaking/3D arts, but that I’m thinking about redoing someday. It’s inspired by the the U2 song All I Want is You. The cover is at left. I used black matboard for to give the front and back covers stiffness, and braided black and gold embroidery thread for the wrap-around to keep it closed. I really wanted to find a good star button or something for the cord to finally wrap around, but I never found something that suited, so it just tucks. The moon is a stamp, since we had to include something of that sort to tie in with the printmaking aspect. I went a little crazy with the gold stars on the front; the back cover and some of the inside pieces are better, although I didn’t bother photographing them. This is the inside when you unfold the whole thing:

The white blob in the lower right hand corner is my toe. It wanted to fold up, so I had to step on it to keep it flat. This is a detail of the inside:

I really like my inspiration for this project, but I think I could do a lot more with the imagery in the song and generally make the whole thing more complex. The song has a ton of excellent, tangible imagery, so the challenge was to keep the piece coherent and unified. Perhaps I could make that the theme of one of the altered books I’ve been planning on doing forever, with a few lines on each page. That way I could have the freedom to explore each of the images seperately, which might work better. Maybe Lanciotti would even let me do it as a free project in class. The next one I’m going to do is a landscape painting of a view over the water from senior retreat, but perhaps after that I can try something completely different.

The hated still life. I’ve been working on this since probably the beginning of October, maybe a little earlier, and I’m thoroughly sick of it. However, I won’t deny that it turned out really well and is probably among the best things I’ve ever done. Certainly the best pencil drawing. That said, I’d be perfectly happy to not look at it for another couple months. I think I’m going to mat it and give it to my track coach at the end of the year. He’s put up with me for four years. He deserves a reward. This is another picture I desperately need to get a better photo of. (pencil, 18×24 but needs to be cropped some)

Update: At the end of my senior year, I entered this drawing in the senior art competition, and it was one of two winners. It’s now on display in the gym, outside my former track coach’s office.