Semester Exam Exhibit

I put up the 5 pieces of art in an exhibit that I felt were my best and truly conveyed what I felt as an artist. This exhibit was to be my semester final and here is what I think of each of the 5 individual pieces. As for the exhibit itself, I looked the way it looked, I liked my name, and I should have made the name tags smaller. However all in all, I felt that this exhibit was successful and I enjoyed my first semester.
If we were to go chronologically the first piece of art that I had created would be the one titled Harvest Moon. I made this last year in digital photography and it was one of my most successful pieces back then. It combined the photos of a lamp, clouds, and trees and utilized various filters and photoshop effects, finally ending with a poem placed in front of the image. The designs and principles it used consisted of line with the tree, contrast with the light and dark coloring, shape with the moon/lamp, and emphasis with the bright lamp color on the dark background. The criteria that was required for this assignment was to combine three or more images together which I felt I did successfully. My concept was to create an image that looks like you could have photographed any day and not three images thrown on glossy photo-paper. This I did well, except for the text which obviously you can’t photograph like that in nature. The composition was done nicely, it flowed together and could be seen and understood, the minor exception is that the text was occasionally hard to read. Finally the craftsmanship was clean and crisp and showed my attention to detail and imagery. Although this project was done early on it showed how I could make art and I can make cool, pretty, or exciting art. Finally this piece showed how I learned to used photoshop and my skills with a camera.
The next piece I created was the first free choice project in AP Art. This one was titled Imagination and featured a photoshopped portrait of Nathan Knutson and text created in Illustrator. Although the original photo was taken in Digital Photography the effects and text was created this year. Since it was a free choice project there wasn’t much in terms of criteria, so since it was done on time and completed, it fit the criteria. This piece of art continued to use some of the skills I learned in Digital Photography, drawing on my photoshop knowledge while still teaching me a thing or two about Illustrator. The overall concept of this piece was to show how our imaginations are limitless and the picture represents someone thinking, utilizing their imagination, and have fanciful colors to further represent imagination. The composition was a bit blocky with the rectangle text boxes and the other rectangular shapes, but overall I felt it was successfully done. The craftsmanship could have been better seeing as how the text was nearly falling off the page and I could have taken my time and created more interesting text. As for the elements and principles it had a sense of color and value.
The third piece in my exhibit was my self-portrait project. This piece was titled, Hypocrisy and it showed a different side of both me and high school. It was basically a narrative on how I tend to get teased/bullied a lot but sometimes I too do the bullying. That’s why I’m photographed as both the victim and the bullies. Some of the other “me’s” pictured are the gossipers and the people who just ignore what’s going on. This multiple Austin’s effect was done by photographing me separately and then photoshopping all of them together on a similar background. It followed the criteria by showing me and how I view myself. The craftsmanship was kind of poor, the photoshop effects could have been better and cleaner and I shouldn’t have been wearing a red sweater against a red background. The elements and principles showed followed along the lines of unity, space, and emphasis on the one Austin that is different. However this piece doesn’t really show anything new I learned or developed as in AP Art.
The fourth piece in my exhibit was another free choice piece under the name of Neon Trees. This one was going to be like a poster and represent a band that I enjoyed listening too. This band was Neon Trees and as such I used a picture of the band, placed them on the background of trees and used some filters to make the trees a neon color, finally adding their name, arched above their heads. I felt that I had a good idea, and it could have been great, however the execution was simple and it showed. The letters were made in Illustrator but the colors seemed to combat with the neon trees in the background. I liked the band members the most but I felt that this pieces needed something more. I obviously used color in this piece and tried to put some emphasis on the band and their name. I also felt like their was line in the trees in the back.
The final piece in my exhibit was our final free choice breadth piece. This one was called, The Marionette. The piece was considered the best one in the exhibit and it also was another self-portrait. Here I am like a puppet whose strings are being controlled by someone else. This shows how I’m not always in control and sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled in every direction by everyone. I printed out the background and myself separately and then cut my limbs off and reattached them using fishing line, however one of my legs fell off. The last part of the piece was the longer fishing line that was attached to my hands and pulled off picture to represent the strings that control me. I felt that the concept was good, I feel that the craftsmanship was good although the leg thing still irks me. The elements and principles that I used were line with the fishing line, movement in the joints, more like implied movement, and emphasis on me, because I happen to not be a part of the background and I stand out.