The Selfish Artist

Hey everyone! So you have seen several mediums used over the few years on my blog.  But I haven't been true to you all. What you have seen is allot of 2 dimensional work and some sculpture.  But would it surprise you that I make jewelry? Not beading and silly stuff like that, but metalworking, hammer and a blow torch type stuff! I actually took jewelry all through Booker T. Washington High School and I am continuing to take it at Brookhaven College, until I can go to UNT and take it there.  Jewelry is a great love of mine that I will keep in my heart of art for ever!

Another form of art I have kept up with for maybe 6 years now is the beautify art of Mehndi! For those of you unfamiliar with this term it means the art of applying henna tattoos.  This can be found in several countries mostly in the middle east and in Africa.  It is apart of many different cultures and different religions.  Its  versatility in all these places and existence for several thousands of years is apart of why I think it is so beautiful! I have studied this art for several years now and enjoy practicing it on myself and friends. I also use henna for my hair to make it red and soft!

And yet another art I have taken on is the art of fiber!  That's what I call it because I card, dye and spin fibers.   Some people dye yarn, some spin yarn and some make bats of fiber ,  but not many people do all three.  My interest started very young on a visit to Old City Park in Dallas.  Its one of those places where people pretend to live in a town from the 1800's.  I met some women who were spinning wool with a drop spindle. I was about 8 so naturally the interest left, but stayed in the back of my mind forever.  Last July my mother and I visited the Dallas Fort Worth Fiber Fest in Garland, Texas.  This is wear I fell in love with spinning again! I bought some fiber and found my old drop spindle! a month later my loving mother bought me  spinning wheel and I have been making yarn like a wild woman!!!!

What all these forms of art have in common is that they have been practiced hundreds maybe thousands of years ago and they are still practiced today.  whats even cooler  about that is we can look back and study how these forms of art have changed, improved or stayed the same. They are also all forms that have to do with adorning the body.  More posts to come on each new form of art! Sorry for being so selfish!
Love Danielle 

Party Animal

This is a dress I made the summer of my junior year in high school for AP 3-D class. This assignment was on a list of others to choose from. The challenge for this one was to design and create a garment NOT using fabric materials. I actually had another idea for this and created a more flapper design. But once I got my hands on the bubble wrap I could see it had more potential. So I whipped up this sketch.

The corset is made from cardboard. I cut separate pieces and let them soak in water to make them malleable. After letting them dry on the form i stitched and glued them together. Once smoothing the seems out with glue, I painted on the Zebra pattern with acrylic paint. Then covered it in clear packing tape to give it a shine.

The skirt was made of several cut out pieces of bubble wrap. They were stitched onto the corset. Duct tape covers the seem between the skirt and the corset. It is very see through so I suggest wearing a silver something under it.

When it comes to finishing touches, I used black duct tape for the side belt, the sleeves and the straps. For each piece I stuck lengths of wire between the pieces of tape so I could ruffle the edges. The belt strap has Velcro on the inside and there is a seem in the skirt down the middle. This makes it easy to slip on and attach. The mettle grommets on the front and back, are laced with black and silver chains. These make it a little harder to adorn. The brazier is glued in peacock feathers.

This piece has been featured in the Fall 2009 Senior Art Show called "Le Cirque" at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. It has also been at the Senior Art Show at The Norwood Flynn Gallery as well as a few others. This piece reminds me of Alexander McQueen's garments and I would like to see it worn by either Lady Gaga or Katy Perry.

Can I Sit?

This piece was done during my Sophomore year of high School in 2009. My AP 3-D Instructor assigned us something new, "Everyone make a chair". So this is what I came up with. I started with a wooden frame, that I made myself which was really hard because the wood was warped. I designed it to look like that classic fold up chair. except the difference with mine is that I didn't make the chair adjustable, I screwed and glued the two sides together, so it is stationary. I cant remember where I got this idea but what I did next made it even less functional. I took different soda cans and crushed them into discs. It took a long time to collect the cans and I had several techniques for flattening them. Although several were flattened a select few were used for the chair. Then I drilled four holes in each disc and connected them with floral wire. Once they were made as one blanket I hung them on the dowel rods for final completion. I would very much like to try this project again to see if I can improve the looks and functionality of the chair.

A "Confused Artist"

con-fused art-ist :

-person
1. a person who produces more than one works in any of the arts, performing arts or visual arts; but is unclear or perplexed on which one form of art to pursue.
2. a person who is talented in many of the arts and is undecided on which one/one’s to partake in fully.

Green Ball

This piece is really old. It's from my sophomore year when I did an observational study using oil pastels. We were not aloud to use black to create shadow, so we had to improvise using other colors. You can see that I used reds and greens to create the black shadows under the plate; and I used light blue to show the grays. This piece is actually really good for my sophomore year. I pulled it out of my portfolio to use it in my quality and breadth sections for AP 2-D Final Portfolio. It's good to show an observational study with your other pieces so colleges and jurors can see that you can still do the traditional stuff.

Robert Rauschenberg: Marilyn Monroe

In this piece I focused on the painting and the colors. I began with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe and a few collage elements. Starting with a lighter purple for the background I continued with different shades of blacks, whites and grays. The translucent wave falling from the upper left and ending in the lower middle of the board is a long ribbon of folded Acrylic Acetate. I hot glued it on then gave it some black splatters of paint.

Since the Acrylic Acetate and the film strips (upper right) have the same glossy texture, I saw them both as stories each telling the level of fame in different parts of her life. I heard once that Marilyn was in porn films before she was in bigger films. The Acrylic Acetate represents the quality of her adult films; they were messy, uneven and unsophisticated. The film strips above her head represent the quality of the big films we all recognize her in; they were clean cut and higher class. Maybe the black drips show her attempts to put some fame and recognition into her earlier career as a porn star. She could only get a few splats onto the film.

slipper

This piece is an excellent example of what Robert Rauschenberg created called a "Combine" which is a combination of his love for painting and sculpting. He did this by adding a 3 dimensional object to a 2 dimensional piece. Most of the objects were random, having nothing to do with the painting.

I started by painting a few places with turquoise and some other colors. Once it dried I covered it with a layer of pink. Then I used the end of my brush to scratch away some of the pink, while it was wet, thus revealing the turquoise underneath. One of the differences between Rauschenberg's work and mine is that I make sure to incorporate the objects into the paintings. I do this by using what Iv been taught in principles and elements of design.

First I placed the slipper on the canvas diagonally and glued the ribbon through out the top of the piece. I then added the lace to the left in order to let your eye travel through out the whole piece and to calm the attention away from the slipper. I changed the appearance of the slipper by painting some parts with the same colors.