This week’s activity was called “Landscape With a Corpse.” As you can see, this picture was taken in my room. I do not really get to sleep during school that much, from ROTC and taking a lot of classes. Right now, my favorite place during my life is my bed. I chose my room/bed because it will be comfortable when I die, and get the rest I have needed.
In class we had a group called #sculptured showing off all of their sculptures. Unfortunately all of the artists were not there, so I was not able to interview Almira. Her artwork is called “Time and Money.” As you can see it is made out of a bunch of pennies stacked. If she was there, I would have wanted to ask her a lot of questions about this piece in particular. I would ask “What are all of these pennies held together by? Or are they even held together?” “Do you know how many pennies you used?” and “How much time did it take you?”
This week in class I was pleasured to meet Juventino Cisneros. Juventino is a 2nd year at CSULB, similarly to me. He went to Lindsay High School which is located up in the valley area. His family still lives in Lindsay, California; however, he dorms at CSULB. Juventino played soccer all 4 years of high school. I asked him about his art background, and similarly to me, the only art experience he has is from the high school requirements. In his free time he goes to the gym, plays soccer, and does homework. He is a Mechanical Engineering major at CSULB and he wants to take his degree and become an Automotive Engineer.
This week in class Cynthia Lujan had her drawing displayed, and it was a part of a group gallery alongside Jesse Minott. This drawing is named “Sith Lord.” It is composed of Acrylic and Wax Pencil on Lenox. I really like this drawing because I liked the colors she picked, and I like the time and effort she must have put into this piece. It looks very time consuming, and I like how she only used a few colors, yet it is so detailed to see different parts of the whole piece. This drawing is very straightforward, yet it also gets you thinking to what the meaning behind it is.
Same as Jesse, Cynthia was not there with her work. In her statement she says people are very aware of their physical appearance and the way they project themselves. She says that her inspiration is “finding the nuances of these identities through portraiture,” to capture the specifics of one person. I think that is very cool, and her inspiration does come through in her work.
I like her style of art and if she were there I would have asked if she traced it in pencil before coloring it in. I also would have asked her how long it took her to draw.
During Week 8, I was busy getting my fingerprint scanned for Army ROTC, so I had to do an extra artist interview. This is one of them, drawn by Jesse Minott. I really liked the shading in this drawing. I am assuming that this drawing is free-handed, and that must have taken a lot of time to draw something this size free-handedly. I feel like the expression on this guy’s face really makes this drawing intriguing. He looks so serious and intimidating, yet he is holding his hand out. It is somewhat contrasting and that is another thing I like about it.
Unfortunately Jesse was not there, but his artist’s statement said his inspiration was Los Angeles. He says it was his inspiration because of the fast moving lifestyle in LA, and that is a very widely known city. He says that there are a lot of paintings and pictures across LA and that they capture the “sensuality of being in these LA moments.” When I first read his statement, I thought Los Angeles being an inspiration was vague, but as I read on it began to make more sense.
If he was there, I would have asked him if the drawing was really free-handed. I would also ask him how long it took him to draw that, and if he had done any bigger sized drawings. I really enjoyed looking at his work.
This week in class I interviewed David Ngo who is a 1st year at CSULB. He attended a high school in which I forgot the name of. David also ran cross country in high school. He is a Mechanical Engineering major at CSULB. David chose to attend CSULB because there is a very good Engineering program. He received a little bit of financial aid which helped him out with tuition. David lives in Santa Ana which is a 15 minute drive every day.
We talked about our art backgrounds and David’s only art background is from marching band music. He is interested in this class and he hopes to learn more about art. He is into the Drum Corps, which is a marching performing arts. David said when he gets older he wants to work for a car company. It was a pleasure meeting David.
During Week 8’s class time I was busy doing my fingerprint scan for Army ROTC, so I did not have time to interview a classmate. This week in class I had to do 2 interviews and this was one of them. I got to chat with Charlie Teloma, a 1st year at CSULB, who had attended Oxford Academy. He played soccer in high school. After college he is interested in joining either the Marines or the Navy. Even though the Army was not one of his choices, I had still talked to him about the opportunities in Army ROTC at our school. Charlie is a Mechanical Engineering major.
Charlie lives in Buena Park and commutes to school and back every day. We talked about our favorite sports teams and I found out that he is a New England Patriots football fan. I told him that I was an all around LA sports fans team: LA Kings, LA Lakers, LA Dodgers and USC Trojans.
We talked about our art backgrounds and I found out that Charlie likes to sketch. In high school he took a few art classes, so he has a little more of an art background than me. Charlie was a fun person to talk to and I am glad I had the chance to meet him.
This was my website before this week’s activity. It was strictly Art110 posts. The only thing that I had about me were the pictures on the side of my interests. It was only for Art110 and it was obvious, so I made it more about me.
This is my website now. It has an “About me” page, a page about ROTC on campus, and a page about why I want to be a Physical Education major. My target audience for the ROTC on campus page is for people who may be interested in the ROTC program at CSULB. I feel like my website describes who I am a lot more now. Now, Art110 posts are on their own separate tab on their own section of my website. I am a lot happier with my website now; however, it was kind of difficult to do this. I still have not mastered how to rearrange WordPress websites. This was challenging for me, yet fun. Now if people want to find out more about me, they can just look at my website.
To start my weekend off I went to Ganahl Lumber, a local hardware store, and bought some cherry red spray paint for $2.69. I had left over cardboard that I used for shooting targets. I liked that I chose these because it emphasized the texture from the bullet holes. I was not very successful with doing the bubble letters part, but I wrote my name the best that I could. This was harder than it seemed, and it took about 3 tries for me to get it just right.
However, I did learn something. I learned that for $2.69 and a little piece of left over cardboard, you can have tons of fun.
This week in class Maggie Freed and Yee Li had their gallery opened today, its name being Introspection. Their art work was abstract painting, it was really cool. They named it Introspection because it was “the examination of one’s own mental and emotional state.” They were both very laid back people, and they had that “don’t care” personality. They said that the paintings express the stress and anxiety that comes with homework of college, personal relationships, and financial stressors. Their art works were very interesting, and there was something very different than what I have ever seen. To a person walking by, the art work looks like a bunch of lines and shapes, but when you look at it more in depth you can see where they put in their emotional expression in every part of every painting. I had a very enjoyable time interviewing them and looking at their art works.
Zac Ramirez 