BOOK STACKING
Weather Inspiration for Book Stacking:
When this project was first announced, my immediate thought of what to base my stacks off of was a foggy night. I wanted to base my first stack after the dark gradation of what a dreary and foggy day looks like. The second idea I had was to create a stack off of a purple and orange sunset. I really just wanted to create a stack like this sunset is just so beautiful to look at.
The Process of Book Stacking and the Images
Here are a few of the images I took with the camera. I am no photographer, so getting used to using the camera was a learning curve for me! As you can see in the photos I was playing around with the lighting, the first few use the normal lighting in the library, and the second lighting was used under the “natural” lighting setting. The natural light setting gave the image a more yellow tone to it. It was a lot of fun to play around with the lighting, but I still have lots to learn about using a camera and all of its settings.
Also when stacking the books I decided to make poetry out of them and I really enjoyed doing that! Having such a broad topic allowed me to create interesting poems, but still sticking within the theme.
These images were taken with my phone. I personally think that these ones turned out better than the ones with the camera, but I think that is just because I am more comfortable and familiar with using my phones. I know what settings look good and how to properly use it. On my phone I was playing around with the regular camera mode, and also portrait mode which gave the blurry background.
This was an extremely fun assignment and has really allowed me to look at books differently. From now on when I am going to a place with books, whether it be a library or book store, I am going to start stacking them. It was a nice way to not only create art, but practice my photography skills!
NATURE WALK
Images from the Nature Walk.
Round Things, A Piece of Sky and Weed Noticing.
Also included a few that I just thought turned out well!
ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Ron Benner is a Canadian artist who was born, and still resides, in London, Ontario. He studied at the University of Guelph in Agricultural Engineering, but then switched to Art. After switching his path in life, he went to develop a practice that combines photography, installation and gardening. Benner is a strong environmental activist whose work investigates the history and political economics of food.
This piece by Benner has Three components to it, (only two are shown). The first is a wall of red pepper boxes which leads to a wall. it is described as, “Entering the installation, viewers move past a 17th-century map representing Florida and Mexico (aspect that is not shown), and stacks of brightly coloured produce boxes, through a vertically spliced photographic curtain into the simulated shell of a transport truck,” Through that wall leads to a room which is described as, “Inside, viewers find tire shards, galvanized sheet metal, and more than 200 photographs that contrast contemporary transportation systems with the ancient trade routes of the Americas.” This piece is showing the trek of bell peppers sold at London Ontario’s Covent Garden Market and tracing the root of peppers to its origin.
https://lfpress.com/2015/09/21/installation-tracks-food-back-to-source/
I think this is a very interesting piece because most of the time when buying food we don’t think about where it came from, we just accept that it is now in a store. This piece is very important as it is showing where specific peppers history originated from. It allows viewers to think about where their food comes from, and how it gets to the shelves of the grocery store, or stall at a market.
This piece by Benner is a very important site specific piece. It resides in the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (VAC) which was once known as The Cream of Barley Mill. This piece is a mixed media piece where the main subject matter includes black beans, sunflower seeds, wild rice, potatoes, maize, amaranth, chili peppers, quinoa, pinto beans, lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, wheat, barleycorn, soya beans, sorghum, flax, and rice. The meaning of the piece, VAC curator, Sandy Saad writes is, “An exploration of the entangled relationships between place and history vis-à-vis food. It employs food to map history, bringing many new places into the site and offering a more complex and intertwined narrative… At the
centre of the room lies a collection of various seeds, grains, and cultural deposits: objects from Iraq, Mexico, and Curve Lake First Nation, and London, Ontario. They are a combination of unlikely objects in juxtaposition, reflecting the vast displacement of food crops and culture through various imperial, colonial, and industrial efforts. Benner’s installation creates a room that is both united and divided. Benner suggests the dual nature of the power of food: to bring people together through social and communal gathering, and to separate communities through imperial and commercial enterprises”.
Click to access Ron+Benner+-+Trans%3Amission%3B+Barley-Corn-Maize.pdf
I really enjoy this piece because it is so well thought out and planned, and there is such a depth to it. To understand the full meaning of the piece you truly have to know the history behind it to understand what Benner really made. The grains, the location, everything is just so articulately weaved together that gives this piece many added layers to it.
This piece by Benner is an installation piece. This piece includes a small garden with a variety of flowers. The front of the box the garden sits in reads, All That Has Value. Sticking out from the garden is another plank of wood which reads, Was Then Counted As Nothing. I could not find much information on this piece (only its predecessor titled, All That Has Value, which looks very different). I think that this piece means that plants are one of the most important things we have on this planet, but we do not treat them as important as they are. Without plants we would not be able to survive, but we do not take care of them, or the planet to allow them to flourish.
ENVIRONMENTAL VIDEO
Caitlyn, Melyssa and Sam
This video we decided to be a bit more playful and have a leaf and grass fight and put the two views side by side. I think that this video turned out very successful and it is a very comedic piece. The red of the gloves I especially enjoy as it contrasts the natural colours a lot and creates an interesting composition.
This video we decided to see the contrasting sounds from the gloves, and rings against a metal bench. I think this one holds an interesting composition due to the fact as one hand comes forward, the other goes back and it holds that sequence. I also really enjoy the sounds that both of them make, and I feel that they work very well together.
This one was more so a test for us to get the idea of what a 9 video grid would look like. There was some trouble in editing, but it was a good practice video to see what needed to be improved on and what worked well. This video was a good baseline for future videos and how they would look.
This video we took what we learned from the previous video, and cleaned it up and made it more seamless. This one is my favourite video and I would love to see it displayed on a large gallery wall, with good surround-sound.
For this assignment my partners and I decided to touch different things in the environment to see the sounds they would make. We not only used our bare hands, but we adorned them with different items such as rings and various gloves. This was such an interesting experiment to conduct and I personally am very happy with the outcome of the videos. Each of the items we touched made such different sounds and all had such interesting textures to them!
Some screenshots from the videos (more to come)
PHOTOS
I did a trip to Elora and walked the Elora Gorge! Here are some photos from it.
BOOK/MAGAZINE
I really enjoyed having the opportunity to create an Artist Book with the class! I learned a lot and I know I definitely will make more books on my own time. This assignment allowed me to learn lots of new techniques (Courtesy of Nathan) which I will use to apply in my own art practice, and even in general when using design applications. I really appreciated the opportunity to be an editor for the magazine. It taught me many technical skills, and having that responsibility too! I am very excited to see the final piece, all of us worked very hard and it most definitely paid off!
ARTIST MULTIPLE
For this assignment I had a few ideas how to go about it:
- Create a Zine – Of my time here living in Guelph
- Create a brand of my iconic face of me as a child – would put on shirts, or make a zine of this
- Make a CD based on the weird dreams I had
After chatting with the class I decided to go forward with the CD but instead of just focusing on dreams, I also incorporated some weird experiences I have had. I would talk about both experiences in first person as if they all happened to me. I decided I would speak in a monotone voice so the tone told through all of the stories would give nothing away if it actually happened or not.
Below are the scripts for my stories:
Story One:
I was at my Uncle’s house and a man I have never seen before was there. He came over to me and told me he had a great business idea. I waited in anticipation and he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “let’s breed sea lions”.
We got the sea lions and the female sea lion sat in the middle of my uncle’s living room. She was grey, with large holes gouged deep throughout her body, and black ooze spilling from them. Littered around her on the floor were grey, gelatinous blobs that sporadically moved. The man and I took the blobs and shoved them in the holes. The blobs would spit back out of the holes as baby sea lions.
The sea lions were angry. We were overbreeding them and they wanted revenge. They started to close in on the man and I, before we ran to my uncle’s room. My uncle was putting clothes away when I said to him, “Uncle Darren the sea lions are after us! They’re mad at us breeding them!”
My uncle places the shirt on his hanger and looks at me, I’ve never seen him this serious. “I’ve dealt with this before,” he said, “what you’re going to need is a fly swatter and some good stomping boots.” My uncle, the man and I took the supplies we needed and went back out to the living room to face the horde of angry sea lions.
Story Two:
Tessa and I still hadn’t eaten even though it was close to 9 PM. We decided to head out to the grocery store to get some food. We lived close so we decided to walk. As we were walking, what looked to be a police car slowed down next to us and parked. The man could tell we were startled and flashed us his badge. “Good evening ladies,” he said, even though it was nighttime, “There is a suspicious individual running around with no shoes on, have you seen him?”. Tessa and I looked at each other then back to the officer.
“No, sorry we haven’t seen anyone”, I replied. The officer sent us a smile, “Well, be careful ok, have a good night.” and he drove away. Against our better judgement, Tessa and I still headed for the grocery store. The fear started setting in that there was a suspicious person running around, wearing no shoes. We quickly grabbed the rest of our groceries and headed back home. We decided to cut through our backyard to be safe. We usually went up through the side of the house but it was pitch black. What if we were to go up there and the shoeless man was standing there? Instead we knocked on the basement door for our roommate, Alan to let us in. We didn’t have the best relationship with him, but thankfully he opened the door. We stepped inside and I looked at him. “Thank you Alan, we heard there was a suspicious person running around and wanted to get in as fast as possible.”
“That’s wild” he said, and that’s when I noticed it.
Alan wasn’t wearing any shoes.
Story Three:
had a dream. In this dream a woman who had pale, wrinkly skin, creepy eyes, and a huge smile spoke to me. She resembled the person in the Russian Sleep Experiment. She looked at me and said, “You need to make the brownies.” Then I woke up.
I started freaking out. Brownies,I thought, I need to make brownies. So I spent my morning making brownies. I made a good batch of brownies and decided I would bring them to Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, but make sure they don’t eat them all. I got to my friend’s house and put down the plate and then we played our session. When the session was over I realised all of the brownies had been eaten!
“Oh no!” I cried, “These brownies were meant for the Smiling Woman!”. I headed home still worried about what would happen if I didn’t have the brownies. Though it was a dream I was still nervous.
I headed up to my room to get ready to go to sleep when I heard, “Don’t look under the bed.” I froze. I cautiously did what the voice told me not to do and looked under my bed. I was frightened. What if it was the Smiling Woman? I put my head to the ground and looked under my bed and saw…a guy? He was pressed between the floor and the mattress and looked at me and said “I told you not to look” I was silent then said, “Boy you fiiiiiiine”
Story Four:
It was late. Tessa and I had a bad day. It was our first year at university and we both had received a 65 on our first art assignment. We were both so upset. It was 2 AM and we opened the fridge to grab cheese. We started eating it then she slapped my arm with cheese. I slapped her back. We continued slapping each other. We laughed hysterically.
Story Five:
Alan came over to Tessa and I holding a jar of fettuccine Alfredo sauce.
“Does this smell expired to you?” he asked while smelling it. The jar did not expire until next year. The Jar had never been opened. And cheese does smell.
We repeated this to him and then he walked away. A few minutes later he came back to us and asked us for a wrench.
“Why do you need a wrench? I asked
“I cant open the sauce jar” He replied holding a marinara jar now
“You can’t open a sauce jar with a wrench,” I said. I asked him if I could try opening it. He didn’t think I could, but then after a few seconds the lid managed to pop off and I walked away.
He looked enraged. I heard him murmur, “I’m feeling very emasculated right now.”
I tried to lighten the situation to spare him of his fragile ego and said, “its because Im such a girl boss”
He looked madder after that.
More time passed and Tessa and I heard “Ow” come from the kitchen. The Ow kept repeating.
Ow
Ow
Ow
Ow
We looked over and saw Alan sticking his finger in the burning hot pasta water over and over. He then left the water and picked up a three month old banana, which had fruit flies swarming it off of his shelf. We thought he would throw it out, but instead he ate it.
I felt ill.
Story Six:
I was at summer camp and I was eating chicken.
After having the critique, it gave me a lot to think about in terms of packaging design for my piece. I really enjoyed the suggestion someone gave of the cover being a sea lion in a living room to add to the dream aspect! I’d like to think of more ideas for packaging to play between truth and dreams.
I decided to take photos of my CD up against a background of other CD’s to add to the physicality of the object. I did have a difficult time getting images as the plastic case of the CD was very reflective.
This assignment allowed me to create something I have never done before. I don’t usually make audio pieces, but it is something I would like to explore further in my practice!