Sydney Rowles

Week 12

My cake by the fire!

My experience during this pandemic has been far from normal or even close to convenient. From not having proper functioning wifi, to a broken computer, to having an extremely loud household, to being close to people that don’t respect public health guidelines. I have travelled far and wide from Guelph to St. Thomas ON, to Toronto, to Kitchener, all with the intention of finding a better living situation and being able to properly focus on a full school course load. Unfortunately for some projects, I have not been able to fully participate which makes me incredibly sad. From living in unfinished basements, to couch-surfing, while continuing to travel back to Guelph for work, the pandemic has definitely been one of the hardest and most frustrating times of my university life. I hope these photos express my tireless efforts but also my gratitude to such an understanding and accepting class. Thanks for everything!

Week 6 Notes

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Zoom Video Project Week 7

Class Notes

• 

• 

Bread Week 8

Class Notes

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

My bread!! It turned out denser than I would have liked, but I though it resembled a baguette texture, only fatter! I am not a baker at all but I found this exercise of not having to bake for anybody but myself very liberating. I was so happy and surprised with my result that I shared a few pieces with my housemates. We all had a piece with some herb and garlic cream cheese spread on it! Yum! Next time I will try incorporating different spices or maybe chocolate chips inside the dough to give it some extra flavour. Overall, I loved this week and felt so connected with everyone in class with this super simple idea of making bread all together!

Week 9 Notes

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Week 10/11 Video Project

************************************************************************

Sorted Books Stack Project Week 1

By Sydney Rowles

Katchadourin, Dyment and Park, the 3 artists studied in preparation for this assignment, all used interesting techniques when selecting books for their final works. One strategy I believe was commonly used was choosing books by interpreting them as sculptural objects; looking at their weight, size, mass, their wear and tear, even the font sizes since all of these factors have major impacts on the overall finished look and message of the work. Another technique that was mentioned that I, personally, tried to include in my sorted book stacks was to align all of the titles on top of one another or ‘flush left’ in order to increase legibility and have the message of the work come through quickly and easily to the viewer.

I specifically enjoy the book stack A Day at the Beach from the Sorted Books project, not only because I am drawn to the stacks that tell a story through a series of words, but the repetition of the sharks (Shark 1, Shark 2, Shark 3) is so simple yet helpfully adds to the suspense of the short story and creates an image in the mind. Above all, the Sudden Violence book is what stands out the most among the other books by not only being the climax of the story, but with the added colour and scary font. I believe the effect would not have been as great if the book were the same font and colour as the other books.

The second book stack that inspired me was (I believe it is called) Cult of the Cat, again from the Sorted Books project. Not only am I a personal lover of felines but I also loved how this funny stack was created simply by a group of books all with a similar subject. The fact that they are all different colours and fonts adds to the individuality of the cats themselves and helps create images of real cats with these names in the mind.

The three book stacks I have created are all comprised of books that came from my mother’s book collection. She is one of the biggest, widely-spread genre book readers I know and I thought it would be interesting to look through her collection for the first time. To my delight, she was happy to share her collection without any fears of judgement and by the end she became equally interested in the project and was finding and adding books to what became my final stacks!

For my first sorted book stack, I first found the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and thought to myself “and what would it do?”, so just like the A Day at the Beach short story stack, I created a story about the heart. My favourite part has to be the irony of the small and almost missable Mostly Harmless as we all know what the heart is capable of.

For this sorted book stack, I looked for books in my mother’s collection that had a unifying theme of eating and food. To my surprise, the final menu cam out pretty interesting… Bon Appetit!

For my third and final sorted book stack, I randomly discovered a trend in some of my mother’s book titles that surprised the both of us! Books with numbers in their name! I wanted to continue the theme but the only other numbers I had to deal with were 7, 10, 50, and 101! Sadly the pattern had to end here but if I get the chance, I would love to add on and repost a larger and longer stack someday soon!

Text as Art Week 2

By Sydney Rowles

Nadia Myre’s Indian Act is a large group-effort piece that contains all 56 pages of the Federal Government’s Indian Act, each mounted on individual pieces of cloth and sewn over with red and white beads.  The white beads stand in for each and every letter while the red beads fill the background. This was a very clever medium as not only are beads close to the same size as the documents and words they cover, but also, beads are a well-recognized material used in many First Nations art and this well represents their culture.  This work is an extreme statement on opinions of colonialism and the realities of government effects on the Indigenous population.  The fact that the artist gathered many people of her background who share the same story to help finish this work feels like a valuable group contribution to the Indigenous rights movement.  This is a great example of how an artist belonging to a marginalized population re-appropriates a document that is used to oppress them and turn it into a powerful art statement.

Barbara Kruger’s Belief + Doubt installation is extremely immersive, dramatic and makes many powerful statements.  The artist has chosen the inside of a Museum bookstore to completely cover with her photomontages.  She has covered the entire space in black, white and red vinyl, and has chosen to display her words in a confrontational high-contrast manner.  The way she has chosen to display her art is extremely effective since her messages all highlight the problems of consumerism and themes of desire.  It is interesting that she has chosen to place these words in a place of consumption, ie. the bookstore, in order to target the customers and make them think twice about their needs and wants.  I feel like if I were in this space, I would feel extremely uncomfortable and almost smacked in the face by these statements, which I believe is the feeling the artist is aiming for in viewers.

Banner Project Week 3

Notes:

• 

• 

• 

• 

After poking through the article Dirty Words: Interesting, I discovered the powerful words “depend on the feminist” and decided to turn it into a statement piece. Currently, the feminist movement is stronger than it has ever been, its main focus on the rights of the female population and the issues of equality, domestic violence, sexual harassment, maternity leave, and many others. When creating this banner, I felt that the words “the feminist” deserved special attention and chose to have them stand out in a bright sparkly red. This setting reminds me of a banner on a wall at a party and the thought of having a feminist party after the movement becomes successful would be amazing, and I believe these exact words would fit the occasion perfectly.

My 2nd banner I decided to create just for fun was the word “camouflage” found within the article Dirty Words: Interesting. I thought it would be intriguing to camouflage the physical word ‘camouflage’ and so I shot the image of the black letters in a very dark room with only a little light coming from a window.

Social Distance Videos Week 4

Notes:

I was very inspired by Adad Hannah’s 1 minute stills of people protesting and holding the motivational signage, as I felt very moved and thought they made powerful statements. Here are some examples:

• 

• 

• 

THIS IS NOT A PROTEST ABOUT ANY COMPLAINTS THAT HAVE BEEN SPOKEN DURING COVID OTHER THAN THE ONES ABOUT PEOPLE NOT WANTING TO WEAR MASKS !! As a statement contrary to the recent protests against wearing masks where people have been saying “my ears are hurting from wearing masks”, I decided to create a still video of the opinions me and my housemates share on the matter. COVID-19 is not going to disappear on it’s own and everyone needs to do their part by following public health policies and wearing their masks properly! #wereinthistogether

Housemates: Serena, Sheyda, Anna, Shelby

Serena: “Covid has been a tough time for everyone, its so important for us to follow public health guidelines so we can hopefully end this thing sooner than later!!”

Sheyda: “Pointing fingers at anti-maskers and making this a political problem is not going to solve the issue since it is against human nature to do the right thing when they’re forcefully told to do so. Instead if we want to motivate good public health decision making, we have to appeal to people’s core values. This means connecting mask wearing to the value of caring for each other in all Canadians and how it is worth the inconvenience and discomfort to wear one.”

Anna: “Think of it this way: wouldn’t you want a stranger who could possibly have COVID who comes near one of your family members to wear a mask? I just think people need to put themselves in other people’s shoes!”

Shelby: “I think the main problem is that people don’t believe they have it since it takes up to 14 days for symptoms to show up. Thats the real danger in all of it! Protect yourselves and others!”

Another still video I created regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the over-consumption of the public and how so many people are being left without their amenities or basic human needs. This obsession with the fear that the world is going to run out of paper products is so mind-boggling. Why aren’t the food isles completely sold out instead? The first wave was toilet paper. Now, WHERE IS ALL THE PAPER TOWEL?