Hanna Kruse
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Updates on Project Progress

Final Progress Post: #4

5/16/2017

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       Finally the home sculpture project is finished. I am quite satisfied with how the shape of the hanging objects ended up turning out. One of my biggest concerns while making this was if it wasn't going to end up being evenly distributed in terms of weight and then it wouldn't hang quite right, but thankfully I was able to maneuver the different size objects so that they allowed for the overall mobile to hang properly.
       Additionally, minor story time, while I was attaching one of the pine-cones to the mobile, a beetle crawled out of the pine-cone and onto my hand. I, of course, freaked out and killed it and hid outside my room for about an hour out of fear that there were more beetles in my pine-cones. So, yeah. The things we go through for art.
       For this project it was hard for me to originally get inspired to make anything creative, so I turned back to a previous exhibit that my art one class had visited, which was about unity in art. Using that for inspiration, it was easier to work out an idea that demonstrated unity while also adhering to the given theme of environment.
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Progress Post: #3

5/5/2017

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       Here you can see how I have attached some of the hanging elements of the sculpture. As of right now, the mobile itself is slightly crooked due to the weight on a single side of the hoop, but once all of the hanging elements have been added, the top of the mobile will hang level.
      I had another found object, a stick that I was going to use, but I felt as if the long stick would class with the more roundish appearances of the other hanging elements, so I decided not to use it. In terms of future elements to hang from the hoop, I am contemplating creating a pattern of pine cones, shells, and rocks instead of forcing myself to find a completely different object for each hanging piece.
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Progress Post: #2

4/28/2017

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       I've done some further thinking on the content of my sculpture project as I've kept developing it. So one thing that I have decided is that I am going to take inspiration from the content of a previous art exhibit by Hoss Haley: Yield, for the content of my sculpture project. In terms of what the content will center around, it will focus on the control that I have over the objects that I am incorporating into my sculpture as well as how the objects in their own way also have a control over me and how I place them, which will overall tie into the central theme of environment for this project.
       In terms of the progress of the physical side of the project, I have made it so that it will be able to hang once it is finished. The hoop that will hold up the rest of the mobile now has two strings crossing each other attached to it so that a hook or anything else necessary to hang it can be attached to the top of the sculpture.
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Progress Post: #1

4/21/2017

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       First of all, I apologize for the not-so-great quality of the pictures. I promise that I will eventually find a place in my house to take pictures of my art progress without having it look like I'm already living in debt from paying for art school.
       Anyway, for my sculpture I have a vision of having my sculpture being a hanging mobile. So what I'm planning on doing is using the hoop that I weaved a dream catcher into and hanging different found objects from nature from the hoop to form the basic structure of the mobile.
       While making this I want to really capture the sense of environment and have the elements of the mobile to work cohesively, which would exemplify the unity of the over piece. Because of this I am going to have the pieces hang in a spiral formation to create a sense of continuity that the viewer's eye can follow when they observe the mobile as it hangs.
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Progress Post: Sculpture

4/2/2017

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       For this project, we were assigned to create a sculpture with a certain theme or content in mind while creating it. Boiled down to one word, the theme that I worked with was "mortality". I wanted to portray the duality between life and death in this sculpture, but I wanted to deal more with the life being cut short, which is why I had my theme be "mortality" instead of "death".
       Because of my theme I wanted to use a deer skull to represent the aspect of death in mortality, but I was unable to find a real deer skull to use, so I created one out of clay. I had the color scheme of the sculpture consist of black, red, white, and gold since I wanted the color scheme to be darker with the white and gold as accents to the darker components of the sculpture.
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Artist Spotlight: Kiki Smith (1954-Present)

3/31/2017

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Biographical Information
Name: Kiki Smith
Birthday: January 18, 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany
Lives: New York
Known for: Drawing, Printmaking, Sculpture
Notable Works: Sleeping Woman with Standing Wolf (2004), Wolf Girl (1999), and Lilith​ (1994)

       Kiki's father was also an artist, and her mother was an actress. At an early age, Kiki was exposed to her father's geometric sculptures, which partially served to inspire her to become an artist. Also as a child, Kiki was a member of the Catholic Church, which also spurred her inspiration for art as well as feed her interest in the human body. Her family moved to the United States when she was still and infant, and she ended up attending Hartford Art School in Connecticut for college. After eighteen months attending the school, she moved to New York and joined an artist collective called Collaborative Projects. The radical materials used in this group can be found featuring in her current works, showing the influence that the group had over her artistic style. Unfortunately, Kiki's father passed away as well as her sister from AIDS, which most influenced the themes and content in her work. With this, her themes of birth, sex, and regeneration became very prevalent in her works.
       Later in her life, Kiki started creating works that were based on fairy tales and myths, with the "abject" figure of her previous works falling away. Despite this, she still has an aspect of feminism present in her art, though it is less central than in her previous works. When asked about her work, she commented that it is, "...no longer linear and the narrative imbued in them has fallen apart."


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​ Sleeping woman with standing wolf
2004
Collage, lithographic print on rice paper
175 x 200 cm
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto

Sleeping woman with standing wolf is reminiscent of Kiki's early printmaking works before she started to specialize in sculpture. The human and animal figure present in the print reflect Kiki's themes around the human body as well as the relationship between humans and nature. Additionally, the figure being a woman shows how the female figure is ever-present in Kiki's prints and sculptures.


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Lilith
1994
Silicon bronze and glass
33 in. x 27 1/2 in. x 19 in. (83.82 cm x 69.85 cm x 48.26 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sculpture more reflects Kiki's content concerning women's rights and how the world views women. She does this by giving Lilith striking glass eyes to contrast the bronze of the rest of the sculpture. Despite being crouched against the wall, this makes her look as if she is ready to pounce on the viewer instead of cowering away, which takes away from the passive female stereotype.


Questions:
  1. How are Kiki's prints' and later sculptures' compositions both able to convey her themes and content?
  2. How does Kiki's choice of materials and medium help to reflect the themes present in her works?
  3. How do the events in Kiki's early life serve to influence her content and themes in her present works, both prints and sculpture?
View the video below to learn more about Kiki's content and how her art and habits have developed over the years.
Sources:
​http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/lilith-35875
http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/442/kiki-smith
http://www.artnet.com/artists/kiki-smith/
​https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/kiki-smith
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Progress Report: Final

2/22/2017

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       I didn't necessarily think that I was going to be making another one of these progress posts, but what can I say? Sometimes you get inspired and changes need to be made to art. Anyway, here I have posted all the pictures I have of my progress of my painting, with a noticeably new one in the lower left-hand corner.
       A couple of noticeably new changes have been made to the previously thought "done" painting. For example, the top left corner of the painting felt almost as if it was lacking in terms of composition since the dots seemed to be more concentrated and more purposefully placed in the lower right of the painting. So, to remedy this, I added more of the yellow dots to the more empty space of the upper corner of the painting in order to have the composition seem more balanced and have more of a sense of continuity. In terms of other new things added to the painting, while viewing the painting, Mrs. Mosley and I agreed that there could be more depth added to the dots in order to make the painting more interesting to the eye. This was because the dots, even though having different colors in them, were all essentially hues of a color and were not varied in either way. So, to achieve more depth, I added a glaze on top of some of the dots. The glaze was made by taking the whitish original glaze and mixing it with different degrees of blue in order to create a rough complement for the colors of the dots. This does have some flaws, however, since most of the dots are not one solid color and are instead more of a mixture featuring any combination of colors from the palette of red, orange, and yellow.
       Due to this, it was difficult to decide what hue would work best to slightly desaturate some of the dots, but blue was decided on since it would be the most likely not to interfere with the background composition, which is heavily based in blue. Then the glaze was layered onto the dots in different degrees in order to desaturate some more than others, therefore creating more depth as a result. I don't think that the glaze on the dots is an element that makes or breaks my painting, since they're not the emphasis when viewing the painting, but I think that it adds a more subtle aspect of depth to the composition that will allow for the painting to overall be more interesting and to appear more finished and complete to the viewer.

Also, be on the lookout for a new sculpture project that will be happening very soon! (And maybe my art class will finally begin uploading pictures for our gallery...*wink wink nudge nudge* Mrs. Mosley)
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Progress Report

1/24/2017

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        My apologies, but I made an entire abstract painting without any updates. Now, before there are riots, this is because overall the painting took approximately four class periods to complete, so this didn't allow for a substantial update to be posted after every class period. Because of this, I'm doing a full post now.
       For starters, I wanted to use a lighter coat of the black and blue house paint in order to have the texture of the background be more visible, allowing for some of the blank canvas to show through at some areas. Additionally, I applied darker paint to the edges and made the center lighter in order to also draw the eye into the center of the painting.
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       Pictured to the left is the final painting, though the orientation is incorrect. Since I had to paint the final edge of my painting and allow it to dry, so I had to turn my painting on its side. The final picture posted in the gallery of my website will be displayed the correct way.
       For the intentional orientation, I have the dots rising from left to right in order to complement how those from the Western Hemisphere typically read from left to right.
       The color scheme is split complementary. I had the darker complement make up the majority of the painting in order to mimic Clyfford Still's paintings which were often described as "voids of darkness with glimpses of light."
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AbEx Artist Spotlight: Clyfford Still (1904-1980)

1/19/2017

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Biographical Information
Name: Clyfford Still
Born: November 30, 1904
Died: June 23, 1980
Time Period/Artistic Style: Abstract Expressionism and Modern Art
Notable Works: 1948-C, 1944-N No.2 (also known as 'Red Flash on Black Field')
Lived: Grandin, North Dakota
Occupation: Professor at California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute)


       Clyfford was one of the first out of his contemporaries to create art devoid of a clear subject. His art mainly consisted of colors interacting with each other in order to convey meaning rather than strict subject material. Overall, his works have a theme of existentialism which captures the conflict between human spirit and the forces of nature. Thanks to the color compositions of his works, most of his art has been compared to an abyss with hints of light escaping. This is due to the fact that he favored using heavily contrasting colors with many of his works being very darkly colored with hints of contrast. Clyfford's art later also inspired a non-representational art movement among his other modern art contemporaries.


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1948-C (1948)
Oil on canvas
81 x 71 inches
​ Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

This work of Clyfford's is quite representative of the culmination of his art career, for distinguishable figures have disappeared completely and have been replaced instead by contrasting colors. In addition, this shows how he favored using heavily contrasting light and dark colors. He is quoted as comparing these colors to ​"life and death merging in fearful union."


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​1944-N No.2 (also known as 'Red Flash on Black Field') (1944)
Oil on canvas
8'8" x 7'3"
​Museum of Modern Art, New York

       This painting was influential in Clyfford's transition into non-representational art. The painting lacks a clear subject matter, but has this strongly contrasting vertical and horizontal relationship in terms of composition. In addition, this is one of the only copies of a painting that Clyfford ever made in his career, with the first copy being almost identical to the second one pictured here.


"These are not paintings in the usual sense; they are life and death merging in fearful union. As for me, they kindle a fire; through them I breathe again, hold a golden cord, find my own revelation."
~ Clyfford Still
  1. Which art movements was Clyfford Still a part of? Which one would you say he had more influence in and why?
  2. Which elements of art and principles of design are prominently featured in all of Clyfford's works? How do these help to convey his message of existentialism?
  3. It is known that Clyfford's main content theme was existentialism, but explain more specifically the messages that Clyfford was trying to portray in his art.
Sources:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80198?locale=en
​http://www.theartstory.org/artist-still-clyfford-artworks.htm#pnt_3
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Progress Report: Week Four

12/11/2016

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       Ah, yes! The moment of truth! The self-portrait is finally finished! For the result, I feel as if I managed to mimic the master's mark quite successfully. For the hair, I kept the marks minimal to keep it similar to the marks making up the hair of the original Old Master's drawing. Additionally, I also applied the marks as uniformly spaced as I could in order to replicate the Old Master's drawing. In terms of the previous post when I expressed doubt about how to properly apply marks to the shirt, and I decided to simply apply marks in the same fashion as the rest of the drawing in order to not draw unecessary focus to the shirt.
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