Artsvis 54

For this final project, I ended up changing the entire  storyline, since I somehow could not make a progress

with the previous storyline.

The finished project is about a woman who had firmly believed in everlasting love, and being betrayed by her lover after the marriage. She greatly suffers from her borken relationship, but utlimately decides to not let go of her hope, finding another love…That could be the real perpatual love…

Through this project, I wanted to portray the heaven and hell experienced by a vulnerable human being, who is so easily influenced by the relationship with the person one loves.

Also, I wanted to mention that eventhough people experinece hell in their relatioships, they eventually regain their hopes of finding a “real” heaven by finding another love.

I used some lyrics and sentences of my own for the background voice, talking about the woman’s thought and feeling about her belief in love.

For making this animation project, I used tablet and photoshop, and imovie at the end.

I used the image of Duke chapel, my rose cossage, ststue of an angel, flowers, a ring(found on website), and the shdow of a couple(Website found).  

For the transition, I either moved the image for each frame or draw in some transitional pictures for making the animation smooth.

It was composed total of 216 frames, and the length was 1min 50 secs.

 It took more than I expected, since I am not really good at utilizing computer.

However, I like the finished product and I learned a lot of helpful techniques that could be used for other art courses.

For this sodapop project, I decided to make a fish; the metallic texture of sodapops seemed to match well with the scales of a fish. 

For make the scales, I cut of  the sodapops into small pieces with size& shape variation:

composng the scales, I mainly used two methods. First method was to cut the sodapops(side) into scale-shped cirlces then connect them with the wire(above)

Second method was to cut the sodapops into larger size then actually draw in the scales with the nail. Since the metal used for making sodacan is soft, when I draw in the scale, pressing with the nail, the indented parts shows the scale-like texture that work well with my project.

After making all the components for scales, I made the skeleton of the fish by wsing thicker metal wire.

On top of the skeleton, I connected all the parts using the thin metal wires.

For the body part I focued on the detail, and for the head and the tail I wanted to simplify some of the details for making the contrast, making the piece bit more interesting.

For the head, I just used the method of nail drawing, and for the tail part and some of the upper body part I used the bottom of the sodapop, connecting them with wires.

At first, I wanted to make it as a mobile but I realized that my space is not 100% appropriate place to put a mobile. Since it’s right infront of the door and the wall shakes whenever the door opens and closes, the mobile could collapse if it’s not sturdy and balanced really well.

Therefore, I decided to hang them on the wall with the fishing wire, instead. By disconnecting the part of the fish and hang them separatly, I wanted to give a unique sense to the piece, and

For the project, I wanted to represent both the depression of the German people during the separation of the country and the significant meaning of the reunion of East and West Germany. Although this project is more about the fall of the Berlin Wall, by including the gloomy and crumbling atmosphere in a canvas, I wanted to underscore the hardships that the Germans had to endure during the separation, and therefore further emphasize the significant meaning of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

During the research, I tried to think of the objects that could represent ‘Peace’. First thing that came to my mind was the hand. Holding hands represents ‘making peace’ and ‘reconciliation’; I thought that it would work really well as the symbol for the reunion of the country. I also decided to put butterflies with hands for creating a peaceful atmosphere.

 For creating a gloomy atmosphere, I decided to use a combination of images that have connotation with ‘chaos’, ‘depression’, and ‘anxiety’. After the research, I decided to include withered trees, grey sky, running horses, and the people lying down on the ground who are longing for the reunion of the country under the monolithic Berlin Wall.  

First week

 I thought of all methods that would work well with the collage. I thought that using transparent material would enhance the aesthetic quality of the project. I, therefore, decided to oil the News papers and the Magazines, both toning down the colors and making the papers transparent.

As another method for making a collage, I decided to manually draw hands at the very bottom of the piece, using variety of medium to make the piece interesting. I used mechanical pencil for sketching and acrylic paint for coloring. I colored outside of hands in acrylic paint.        

Second Week

 To give a sense of being broken apart and of a chaos, I wanted to use many different textures and colors. For the middle part, right above the hands, I used paper towels to provide rough texture to the piece. For softening the bold boundary between the hands and the paper toweled part of the canvas, I did the collage using the oiled papers alongside.

I started positioning the oiled papers on the canvas. The images were mostly the people lying down on the ground, representing German’s misery during the separation. I tried my best to place each piece in the place where it could provide its richest texture and composition. Although papers were all similar in color intensity due to the oiling process, they still had color differences that would affect the composition of the piece. After figuring out the composition, I glued them on the canvas. These processes took longer than I had expected; it took about 4hours

Third week

I was not sure what to do with the very top part of the piece. I was initially planning to draw in eyes as well as gluing the ‘eye’ pictures for representing the ideological censorship but I finally decided not to do so since this would create too much details in the piece, undermining the visual quality of a collage.

 Instead, I decided to put the bold characters ’Berlin’; I used the marker for writing the word.

For the spaces between characters and along the paper toweled canvas, I drew the withered trees from down-to-up perspective, representing the seemingly endlessly continuing depression.

Final touch

I wanted the Berlin wall positioned above the people in the canvas, repressing and depressing them. Also I wanted the wall look very bold and monolithic, slowly crumbling down. Therefore I used bold black-and-white photo-shopped image for expressing the wall. For making an image, I used the word ‘Soviet Union’ and the face of the Governor and the barren scenery of Germany. The problem was the place. I was not sure where I put this wall image without breaking the balance in the piece. However, after much pondering I just decided to place the wall image in a very imbalancing way so that I could capture the lingering anxiety even after the wall was fallen.

I could have put emphasis more on the peace and joy in virtue by the fall of the Berlin Wall, but through this piece, I wanted to convey the message that depression, anxiety and the emotional pain that the German endured during the separation are too deep to be easily forgotten. Even though the wall fell down, the scar within the country and within the German history will always be imbedded in the word Berlin.  

Title: Berlin Wall, scar of the separation

Statement: Depression, anxiety and the emotional pain…

The scar of the separation is too deep to be forgotten. Even though the wall fell down and ideologies ‘reconciled’, people will always remember the pain of the separation in the name of ‘The Berlin Wall’.

I visited several Korean Museums during the summer, looking at various styles of paintings. Among all the contemporary pieces, those of  Jeon Woong, young Korean artist, were the ones that captured my eyes the most.

He incorporated a ‘wonder-mom’, the simple-cartoony-2-Dimensional-character that he created, into the realistic portraits of people’s daily lives. The obove picture, for example, he drew a cup of Starbucks Coffee and wondermom, swimming in the coffeecup.

All of his paintings were interesting and unique in many ways.  It would have been really great if I brought his collection book with me when I came back, but unfortunately it is in my home,Korea.