CourtneyS



The theme I chose for this social issue project in Art 2 is hunger/poverty in Africa. I ended up choosing this because I felt that I had a lot of ideas to use such as: colors, my clay figure, pictures, etc. I also have some brief knowledge on this subject. At first I was thinking about researching Alcohol abuse, or drug use. I then realized that hunger/poverty in Africa is way more interesting and i can connect to the idea. I connect to this idea in several ways: I love foreign countries; i enjoy researching history, present time and the future; topics such as hunger and abuse amuse me; and this subject is just very interesting. I felt that I got a major point across with my art. The point I was trying to get across to people with this piece is that we all have to start appreciating what we have and what we //can// have.

My creative process/"journey" for this piece was very slow and unpredictable. As you can see, i have a "photo transfer" on my poster. It is located in the upper left hang corner (the face). In order to do this I used a generous amount of modge podge on a thick square piece of paper, took a photo of a childs face and put a lot of modge podge on that and laid it face down, then when it was dry I had to scrape the picture off and it comes out backwards in a nice, weird texture. That is my favorite part of my social issue project. My second favorite piece is located in the upper right hand corner (the photo within a photo). This has a lot of meaning. I feel that everyone around the world really stereotypes Africa and the people that live there. By putting the roaring tiger face within the African women's fierce face, it shows that she has meaning, confidence, and is a strong person. Some problems I encountered are: what colors to use, and what processes to use. My goal with this piece was to have a lot of different looks of art to show what I am capable of as an artist, and to help catch people's eye with this social issue, obviously. The first specific problem I had was: the green paper and the purple paper slanting at the same diagnol. They caught your eye and made your eyes go straight up to the right and off the poster. Mrs.Ruggles recommended that I use some green color on the opposite side of the poster with the green paper on it. She said it would most likely stop your eyes from wandering off the page. So with her advice, I painted the whole side of the poster green. Mrs.Ruggles was right, in my opinion, it stopped my eyes from moving off the page. The only other problems I've had are running out of ideas. I solved that by sitting down and really thinking about how I could enhance my social issue. The decisions I had to make are very mild. Trying to figure out where to place the different pieces of art was difficult. Once you glue something down, its there. So you really need to be careful when making this decision. It can either "make or break" your project.

My piece //is// successful in persuading my audience to see my point of view. You can clearly tell this piece is about Africa (the countries are cut out in three colors), hunger (the clay figure is obviously very thin, and the picture of the small, unhealthy child in the background), and lastly, there are pictures of the wild life), the elephants, and the tiger within the photo of the face).The things on my piece that "work" for me are the modged podged background of the small chid, the tiger face within the photo of the human face, the photo transfer of the the child's face that is peeled back at the edges, i like the almost unnoticable picture of the child's face in the corner that is covered by the transparent, orange tissue paper. These things "work" for me because they stand out. They are the only pieces on here that really took a bunch of work. Basically, they are the ones I am most proud of. The specific things that do not work for me are the beads on the project. I feel that they aren't realistic enough to have put on there. They're just kind of hanging there. If I had a chance to do this project again, the thing I would do differently are; Make a bunch of small sophisticated works of art first, then form a collage with all of them, and finally glue them there permanently when I have everything done and made.

This social issue is about hunger/poverty, in my opinion. The artists', Kathe Kollitz, point of view is hungry, innocent, children just waiting for dinner that they may or may not have. The point's I can see in the work are: the kids' facial expressions are all calm, and they are holding empty bowls out. These help support the writers view point in a couple ways. She made the kid's faces calm so they wouldn't look greedy, she kept their bowls empty to make the painting more sad. As I observe the piece the emotions provoked are sadness, and anger. Sadness because the children are suffering from the doings of their parents. Anger because American's waste so much not even thinking about countries like this. The artistic elements used to provoke the viewer's emotion are; the big, round, puppy-dog eyes, the dark shades of black, and the white of the empty bowl.