SW15



Be Yourself  February 2013   Acrylic Paint on Cork Board

** This piece once again includes the use of superheroes as the main subject, the piece is basically two carnival cutouts of wonder woman and superman, for the piece to actually show it's purpose the audience must play a role where they put their faces in the faceholes and look at the mirror in order to understand the message. **

** What were the artistic and/or cultural influences for this project? Who/what influenced either the composition and/or the style. ** This piece was the product of a class discussion that i had while i was presenting my last piece, i wasn't researching an artist who inspired me to do this piece. however later on when i was doing some research i came across three artists that inspired me. the first one was, who creates carnival cutouts for certain events, she also uses acrylic which is what i ended up using however i used it on cork board and she used it on wood. Another artist was Lynn Hershman who is known for her use of technology and collage to show ideas of identities. she uses collage and photography to place objects or other people's faces on other bodies. This influenced me since the whole idea of a facehole is for a person to pplace their head on a body that's not theres.

** What materials/processes did you use and or experiment with, and how? ** I experimented with the use of acrylic on the cork board, before starting the piece i did several trials to see how many layers i needed to keep the white from showing. after figuring that out, i measured the size of my head and drew a cirlce around my head while it was on the board so that i could get an estimate of how big the whole should be. Later on i began to draw the figures and later on painted them while keeping in mind the fact that i need to add several layers to avoid showing the corkboard.


 * How do you think you have responded to advice and criticism during this project (and during the term), from fellow students and the teacher. Did you actively seek advice? If so, was it useful? **

I believe i responded well to the advice and ideas that i recieved during this piece however this project. one of my friends helped me come up with this idea while we were brainstorming on ideas for this piece. however i didn't have trouble with anything because i was dealing with media i was already familiar with and that ive used several times.


 * Explain clearly the weaknesses/areas of improvement - **

I believe the weakness of this piece is that the whole for the head is too big, after i tried it out i saw that it was too big for my head. I also think i need color the back of the cork board with something saying "try me!" or "play your head here" in order to tell the audience to actually try it out.


 * Clearly explain the strengths of the piece **

the strengths of this piece are evident in the the technique i used with the acrylic paint i used several layers and i also used several shadows to show a difference in texture and to show the muscules of the figure and to define the contour of the figure. ** What could you take through to the next project and develop further? This could be anything, from a technique to an idea, not necessarily just the theme ** my next step involves the making of another carnival cut out but with wonderwoman as the subject and i would also like to go over my old pieces to check if they need improvements and to work on them to make them better.

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