.Community Arts.

Hello all!

As promised, here are some pics from last week's CREATE event:

The set up :) I drew out a grid with highlighters! 

 The numbers on the grid corresponded with numbered paintbrushes and cups (this was to help keep the painting random and the image a secret from participants).

Detail

Participants were instructed to pick a number on the grid and paint it in with the corresponding paint brush.

First few squares!

A little drip :)

The finished product!!

So, I'm not sure if I explained this project before, but I'll explain it now :) My boyfriend and I (Jay is pictured above holding the painting.) co-run an arthouse/coffeehouse event once every few months. We usually call in visual artists and bands to come play. For myself, I just love creating an atmosphere of inspiration and also an atmosphere of learning for those not familiar with the art world. This event has grown over the past few months, but I've always wanted a way to get everyone involved. So many times people come in, they see the artwork, and they appreciate it, but never get involved or go any deeper than a visual appreciation. A friend of ours had us over for dinner and told us about this project and I thought it would be perfect for our crowd! Basically, the message behind the piece was about building a better city and community. If we all just focus in one area of service that we are passionate about, it will in turn better our community and build a better city of Tampa. Many of us don't know how to work together either. It just takes finding a place where you can serve and plugging in and then supporting each other in our service. It was so great to get everyone involved and I learned a lot by watching the participants! Thanks so much to those who were involved!

..Happenings..

Hello! Life has been crazy, as usual, as the semester is in full swing! All of my classes are really pushing and competing for my time and energy as we are past midterm and hopefully rolling quickly to the end of this crazy semester I am in! Since my last post, I have been involved in two pretty awesome events! Last Saturday I was in a show called the Indie Craft Show run by a fellow friend! I'm not much of a crafter, but it was great to be involved in this show to see everyone's creative gifts! Here is a picture of my booth!:

The lovely girl sitting next to the booth is my dear friend, Sara! She helped out by making some jewelry to sit at our booth :)

And here's a better picture of the booth itself :)

I have had a lot of fun stuff going on. Last night we had one of our most successful CREATE coffeehouses yet! My friend Jay Aden's band did a live recording and we also had lovely art there! Both of my friend, Femke Jenkins and Amy Menendez brought original art work :) It was so nice! To spice things up a bit, we also did a community art project to get everyone involved! I will post pictures later... I can't seem to find my camera cord at the moment :(

On top of all of these fun things, school has been super stressful. I understand that once I'm out of school, I will miss these days! I will definitely miss the community that I feel in school. There's nothing like having constant input on your work and where you are going in your ideas. I have grown so much over the past couple of years while attending college and wouldn't trade it for anything... except maybe sleep and more money haha!

Well, that's all for now! More pictures to come :)

.do you copy?.

Hey friends!! I am sorry I haven't blogged in a long time! I am totally buried in a pile of homework that will never end... But I thought I'd blog since a lot has happened! Here are some photos of what I've been doing the past few weeks since my last post:

So, this image above is my latest printmaking project. Didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, but it was fun to experiment! This one is titled "Lady Liberation"

This is the first drawing from my intermediate drawing project. The project is called Copy, Synth, Morph. We have to copy two artists works, then synthesize their style for the third drawing and then morph their styles into our own personal style. This first image is by Shahzia Sikander, titled "Fleshy Weapons". I learned how to tea stain paper :)

This is the second copy I had to create. This was made from a piece by Wangechi Mutu. I learned lots about collaging and working on Mylar! Fun!

And here is my third Copy (This is for the second group of the project). This is from a section of a work my Neo Rauch. It's really not finished yet, but after putting tons of hours in, this will do for my first deadline.

So, that's pretty much it. My brain feels like it's going to explode right now from all of these projects!!! Started a new printmaking plate today, using color reduction theory, so we'll see how that plays out! I will also post pics of the Synth and Morph images from round one of the project later... I'm tired of taking pictures! 

Oh, and here's my other copy.. utter fail... hah!

from a work by Jesse Bransford... this is terrible and I am embarassed!