For the final project I want to address what I have gone through over the year. It is going a step further from addressing factual issues that I have discovered such as the deforestation. The more I learn the more I see all of the issues in our world and it overwhelms me. The most overwhelming part is what I can't do in regards to those issues. This is a small section of my drawing

Some awesome fun finds

By: Raul Perdomo

http://butdoesitfloat.com/681171/The-corrosive-effects-of-time-redefine-everything-against-our-will

Place: "Look What I Found!"

(I Need to do some more work on this project)

When I think of place my mind wonders into people. Trying to represent a person, as a place, was a little difficult for me to grasp so I went deeper. I started to think about all these places and people. Why are they important to me? Perspective was a word that kept surfacing during this question. I see these places and people different then another person. Then I took into consideration the how these places and people constantly change over time. In all of these thoughts unraveling I came up with and idea. I wanted to show as a kid we see things different compared to when we get older. As a kid I used to climb any branch I could reach, pick up any creature I could catch, and play anywhere could access. As I get older I no longer plop a seat on the ground without looking where I am sitting. I no longer climb trees in fear of falling, and I no longer pick up frogs snakes and salamanders for the joy of it.
How do I show a time? I simply took a picture of myself when I was at my carefree age and made myself holding a frog near my face in a gesture that says “Mom, look what I found!” I spent a long time trying to perfect the perspective of this drawing. I wanted the viewer to be looking down at the little girl who was in a window well. I am not trained enough in anatomy to create the form of the girl without looking at a picture and I could not find one. Instead I zoomed in on the girls face so that it is just neck and up with the frog by her face. I enjoy how the perspective turned out because it creates a sense of home video or photo taken by a parent who’s daughter just came to the door showing them what she just found.
Also, I find the facial expression, showing the girls joy, important for portraying my idea.
Materials were another personal debate for me. I thought of doing all paint but knowing that is not my strong media I wanted to mix in other materials. I did use a square canvas to get that viewfinder perspective I was looking for. In the past I have worked with newspaper and magazines to create an image, which intrigued me for this project. I laid down newspaper and magazine pieces as a foundation and help create the forms. I then added paint to the surface. Not completely pleased with how it turned out and being frustrated with he paint I turned to my safety net, colored charcoal. Another thing you will notice is the hair. I fringed magazine paper into small slits and used them as the bangs. I thought the hair was too flat and this would give it more texture. I am still not 100% clear if I like it or not.
I feel this piece is comparable to Sally Mann’s work. In Sally Mann’s earlier work she photographed her children. Though my subject has a different emotion represented then her children, both portray a sense of youth and innocence. Our perspectives in that sense may have been the only similarities. I use color a different emotion then Sally Mann. However, though I draw and she photographs, I feel as though my drawing reads as a moment captured in time randomly. Also like Mann, as it reads as a random moment we both premeditated what was going to be the product.
I think over all my approach on this project is fairly different then the artist we went over in class, other then what I mentioned above with Sally Mann and capturing a time. Majority of my influence for this project is combining styles I have used in the past and the web map we made in class. A lot of my process was digging deeper then the cliché surface ideas.
Over all I am please with my project. I do not think it is my best work however. I am continuing to explore different mediums and wish I could keep taking one project and reproaching it all semester. I think this piece could use some perspective adjustments in relation to the figure. As I mentioned before I am not a master at anatomy, and I should have spent more time addressing this. Also, when I first added the paint I did not want it to cover the paper I laid down before, but once the paint was down I could not get it off. I think a better way for that would have been to water down the acrylic paints before putting it onto the surface, so I could blend the two mediums together.

Protest Project: "What's the Problem?"

The Walker Bill was a very influential part of the news that effected all of my classroom discussions. I do not have a solid argument for being against the act but to see it upset so many people and to cause such an up roar grabbed my ears. I attended the Chancellor’s presentation of the bill to the faculty and students. As informational as it was for me, I noticed a lot of the questions unanswered. If the question was answered it appeared to be not what people wanted to hear.
There were so many things in question that I wanted to capture more then one argument, which began the idea of an 8”x8” series of computer animated images. Initially I wanted to capture other perspectives including being for the bill, but I had a hard time wrapping my mind around an idea.
One of the shocking things that came up in the Chancellor’s meeting was the idea of Madison leaving the University of Wisconsin system. They question was whether this would affect the other universities considering Madison to be the biggest and most well known of the system. My first piece I took a building from each UW school and stacked them above Madison’s building at the bottom. There are two stick figures pushing and pulling Madison in the same direction. The government is the man pushing, and the people of Madison represent the one pulling.
My second drawing is good old Governor Scott Walker himself. My initial plan was to have him saying something contradicting to himself, but I didn’t want the words to consume my piece and I could not think of something good enough for my satisfaction. It turns out the empty word bubble work. There are not answers to these people’s questions.
My third piece is addressing a couple ideas. In class we watched the video where a state representative called the protesters and state workers pigs. There was also a concern at the Chancellor’s meeting about losing retirement and losing large segments of their checks. I drew a piggy bank with money going in and two stick men taking money from the bottom. This is to represent the taking of money earned.
There were some other ideas that I did not get a chance to incorporate. One issue talked about was classroom sizes. I was going to take an 8”x8” spread and smash a bunch of sketched kids into the square with a classroom number at the bottom. For one of my ideas from the other perspective, I was going to draw a bunch of state workers portrayed as animals being lazy.
My ideas seemed to be direct representations of concerns and what is happening. It has a satirical feeling and is simplistic drawings with minimal color. I wanted minimal color because I wanted the three pieces to be cohesive and maintain a cartoon style.
Nancy Spero was a person who stuck out in the presentations in class. With out any intentional plan, I feel that my piece can be relatable to her art. She uses these solid simple forms. Though hers appear to be in a more abstract context, they both tell a story. Her soft colors also reflect the color choices I used in my protest pieces. Both our works also extenuate bold solid lines creating forms, yet her pieces flow more as on as mine has a stronger contrast with the background.
Andrea Bowers is another artist we spoke about briefly in class that seems to share some quality in her artwork with my protest piece. Her artwork has strong black and white contrast with the background, which I find my pieces also have. Also, Andrea Bowers uses minimal color that I also tried to accomplish. I get very nervous when applying color, especially to a black and white outline. I’m scared to lose that strong sharp relationship between the subject and the background that I find appealing. I find it easier to read the subject and to appear to be very confident.
As thrilled as I am for the individual pieces, I am not completely satisfied as a whole. I do not feel as though I have captured enough of the ideas, and perspective I initially tried for. I feel as though the three drawings alone to not speak of this problem I was trying to get across. I wanted people to be overwhelmed with the contrasting ideas and shocking concerns and possibilities Walker’s Bill has struck up, because that was the feeling I was experiencing as this issue unraveled. I want to continue to ad to this project and hopefully I can get to that final emotion I was shooting for.

Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats | Video on TED.com

Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats | Video on TED.com

My thoughts on the Walker Bill...

Like I said in my last post. I am not well educated in the sense of politics. I am glad we are doing a protest piece especially on a topic that does effect me directly. I'm sad that it took this project for me to take an interested in the Bill. Yesterday afternoon I attended the Chancellors discussion with faculty on the matter. There were many questions and many negative answers. From the conservative side I hear a lot of points about unions costing the state a lot of money. Listening to this discussion allowed me to see both sides of this argument and how it is going to effect, not just state workers, but also my education. I am still have loads of questions as I am sure a lot of other people do. Instead of taking a side with my piece I want to focus on the different views and different arguments for and against the bill. I want to make it satirical because I enjoyed that part on my last project. I can already see my ideas narrowing in on being "against" the bill but I am going to "try" and come up with ideas for the other side. We'll see how they turn out.

Scott Walker's failure to look into the future

What does America have that people want? Freedom. What gives people the opportunity for a brighter future? Education. I find it heart breaking that when a state needs budget control, education is the first to go. Scott Walker is not the only politician to neglect education. I grew up in Minnesota and a lot of what I heard about during elections growing up was about budget cuts to public schools. I hate to mention my sustainability class once again, but it has taught me something that I find important in thinking of anything. It taught me to look into the future. What is taking money from education really going to do in the future? Sure, it is a quick fix solution to the budget issue at hand. However, does that really justify belittling the peoples education. We all pay taxes. I pay taxes gladly blindly knowing they are going towards things the state provides me with. I say blindly because it is what I am told and I do not physically see where my money is going. Hopefully it is going towards things like, roads, education, health, and protection. I do not pay taxes so that these rich, "daddy's money" senators and politicians can drive the brand new car, so that they can eat out at high class restaurants, and have multi-million dollar homes with a lake house. Then to have them vote on taking more money from us (our education) so they can keep these things and fix the budget. I guess I do not know exactly how much a senator or congressman makes. It would be interesting to see how much they make in a year compared to their hours, next to a teachers pay check. As far as Wisconsin's education, and going to a public college, I feel as though I am learning every day. I have never felt cheated out of my money except the occasional movie day or teacher sick day. Does taking money away really make teachers work harder? "Lets piss off the people who give us a chance to make a living so we learn nothing and feed into a vicious cycle of poor education". Sounds great to me. Teachers do not get into teaching to make money. They do it because they care about it. If society was truelly given a far chance at education it would create a much more intense competition in the work world. What if everyone was given the perfect education? What would welfare be life? Would we have an issue with Health care as much?

This is me talking, and I will admit I am not well educated in the sense of politics and how they work. I even accidentally called Scott Walker, Paul Walker in this post. This is just how I feel with what we have been talking about in class.