Blog 4

For my Final Project, I think I would like to continue with my ideas from the last post, but i'm changing and expanding on a few things. I really like the idea of two unexpected elements coming together as in the mashup Jon Schmidt did of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida". Keeping this mashup idea in mind, I took a look at Fred Tomaselli's work. He uses collage of small icons repetitively to create one large image isn't just pretty; but mesmerizing. You can't always tell that he has composed an image of a hand with hundreds of tiny fingers cut out, but you can see the smaller bits coming together to make something intricate and wonderful.

Somewhere along the line I started putting these two ideas together, but the idea was still unfinished. I wanted to see how the big idea of "beauty" could be tested. How much ugly

could you add in to make it interesting, but keep it visually beautiful. I realize that beauty is subjective, and for that matter so is ugly, but how much can you combine the two so that what you are creating is actually beautiful. I think a great mainstream example of this is th

e vision of Tim Burton. Whether Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, or the highly anticipated Alice and Wonderland, there is something sinister and gorgeous all at the same time. Check out some promos for AIW:

As for how this relates to my project... I want to take a base image and "collage" it with things that aren't traditionally thought of as pretty to make an intricate and (hopefully) beautiful final portrait.

To match the different skin tones and colors, I would really like to explore color channels and color sampling to create different tints to have a multidimensional but homogeneous final piece.

Blog 3

I think that its safe to say my two artists are pretty different, and going along with that I wanted to explopre the new big idea of "beauty". Perhaps a little more specifically, how more that one unrelated elements(s) can some together to create unexpected beauty.

My first artist really inspired me conceptually. His name is Jon Schmidt and he is a concert pianist that is now a Youtube star. The specific video I love is his mashup of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" and Coldplay's "Viva La Vida". It was created for his 7 year old daughter who loves the Taylor Swift song and combined with one of his favorites to create something I believe is even more beautiful. I realy love his work, which is surprising because in general I am not in love with instrumentals. Also I found out about this artist because I shamelessly follow Taylor Swift on twitter and she posted the link and raved about it. Were it not for my favorite celebrity endorsement I never would have searched instrumental mashups on my own. Taylor is the reason I found it but the reasons I loved it were so many. I love that he took he and his daughters favorite things and put them together, I love that he brought in a cello player who plucked the instrument like a guitar, I love that he really plays out the key change (his daughter's favorite part AND mine), and most of all in the video you can see how much he loves what he does and that is truly beautiful. Here is the link to the T.Swift mashup, but also worth checking out are "Bella's Lullaby" and "Can't Help Falling in Love":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXtVBJDPs6k&feature=related

My next artist is definitely more my visual perception of beauty. Fred Tomaselli was introduced to me in another art class (I guess those presentations have an affect?) and I immediately went home to check out more of his stuff. His collage/super realistic painting approach to art makes for a very celestial and seducing feeling. While the inspiration behind his work range from perscription pills, medicinal herbs, (hopefully I am not stuck in this subject?)to more innocent plants and flowers, inner human workings, butterflies, and just general magazine cuttings. He wants to seduce the viewer and I believe he really achieves that. He has some of the most beautiful works that I have ever seen, but they are also really interesting because they have so many things in each work. For example it may be a large picture of a bird, but the work put into just one feather could be hundreds of cut-out flowers of similar shades. I am not only impressed with the time it must take him to create one work, but also by how well thought out it is. The end result is something that I believe would be hard to perceive when you are cutting out a .25 inch rosebud. Here are some of my favorites: