Also, if you are working in an MPS lab for example you can access your AFS folder in Smith by downloading a program called Cyberduck, entering the network name godzilla.acpub.duke.edu and your netID. Professor Szabo told me about it and it was a lifesaver last week!
Speaking of making sculptures out of cans… this is a really neat project called Canstruction which was held in Boston in October, to promote a food bank (found it in the Globe since I am from Boston).
What a great way to combine art, design and philanthropy!
November 9
I am excited to make a film because I just made an imovie for the first time this semester and it was really fun and a neat product to have, and to incorporate visual and audio. Other than that, I am not familiar with story boards, or Quicktime–but am sure I will be soon!
I spent the past week looking more into the different techniques mostly through google searches and youtube. While I considered the white board animation, because I loved the video we saw in class with all the funky figures coming to life, I am leaning more towards the flipbook or diaporama. One diaporama that I looked at was of Edie Sedgwick and it was a really wonderful commemoration of moving in and out of portraits, with great accompanying songs relevant to her life and the people in it. Another was of New York, and it was beautiful. I think these are easier to do because their content is in “tribute form”–thus…
Most importantly I have to figure out how I want to incorporate heaven & hell here… so I was looking at cultural definitions of these… maybe I will look at sins… or what I personally consider the two. I am trying to figure out how what I have access to filming could be relevant/utilized. So I am still thinking about what to focus on.
Also I checked out the flipcam from the LINK which is a great tech resource for visual studies.
Stay tuned!
November 14
I am making a diaporama tentatively titled “Hell in Heaven,” and I’m working in iMovie. After looking at cultural considerations of heaven I was really intrigued by the sky as “heaven’s space,” as an entity that represents this concept of holiness and rescue and protection and safety and refuge. However, the sky is not always this way; people die up there, not just go for eternal peace. Perhaps because it was Veteran’s Day this week I was thinking about warfare and how battles take place in the sky; the sky as a warzone, as a place of conflict: the invasion of the sky. I have started compiling the photo slideshow of slower-moving, “heavenly” sky images–fluffy clouds, blue, etc. that gradually turn black and white with “hellish” images of WWII fighter jets. The audio will be a big part of conveying this (I plan to use songs, instrumentals, and gun shot/motor sound effects), as well as the quickened tempo that I working on increasing across the sequence. In terms of design elements, I have been showing the cloud texture with close ups, as well as the interesting shapes they make (such as heart clouds for peace!), and focusing on color as contrast. I’m developing the “soundtrack” now, and besides that have much more editing to do. As I go, I’m sure more will come up. My goal is for the viewer to start feeling comfortable and enjoying the pictures before it becomes unsettling. In my initial views I am thinking of how the world could be so peaceful, but instead violence exists, disturbs, disrupts, changes it.
I couldn’t figure out a way to upload it on here, and I’m trying to be really careful about backing it up. I’m hoping to finish it in the next week because I am going home for Thanksgiving and won’t have access to video editing software there, and don’t want to leave it for the one day after the holiday back at Duke before it’s due! So that is a consideration.
November 23, 2009
I am very happy with the progress I have made this week with my movie, “hell in heaven”. It got off to a bumpy start though, because I thought I had saved it properly last week but it turns out I hadn’t… so I did a lot of research into how to save it properly and now I’m using iMovie HD, which I have found easier to use. Another obstacle was that after I made up the work I lost and went ahead, the files became corrupted, so I had to start again. The supervisor in one of the Multimedia Project Studio labs had no idea what caused that to happen so I’m reallyyy hoping that doesn’t recoccur, but so far so good!
So, I have about 46 seconds for the montage, with transitions, and incrementally increasing slides (learned how to calculate seconds into frames), and differing Ken Burns effects etc to create disorientation. I also added the audio which made things really come together. I picked a piano song from the Amelie soundtrack because it fits with both the “happy” quality of the heavenly images as well as becomes more melancholy for the transition to hell. Its versatility is really interesting and a great asset. I also added audio for wind, which makes it a bit unsettling from the beginning, and then when the first jet appears, there is the sound of flybys, and then I downloaded audio for gunshots (from a free sound effects website). It ends rather abruptly, so I find it kind of unsettling and violent, which is not really something that I was expecting myself to create–but fits with heaven/hell. An interesting note with this project is that I have been much more mindful of the viewer than before–with the two previous projects, I was concerned about how they would approach it and consider it, but with this one I’m really invested in the viewing experience.
Here are some of the visuals:
I had to enlarge some of them in Photoshop; the WWII photos are a little low resolution but I talked to Bill and we like the old quality of it.
The opening slide:
from the hell montage (from color to black and white, with accompanying “scary” audio):
I am going to continue to work on the story board (drawing representative slides) and mounting it, and some final edits and then exporting it!
December 1
Well, since my last post, much has changed! When I headed home for break, my plans for editing, after checking in at class, were to remove some shots of birds at the end (fade to black instead) and to take out the black bars around pictures by two ways: re-sizing all of them again (and replacing any that wouldn’t fit) and changing the transition between “heaven” pictures. All in all, I also had some finetuning for the audio.
But, when I was at home, without access to any editing software, I did a lot of thinking and was very inspired by all the things around me, things from my childhood and my hometown, which would lend themselves well to stop motion animation: for example, I attempted a story line of domestic bliss-domestic violence (heaven-hell) but the dolls were very difficult to bend. Then I thought of a plot with a giant gorilla stuffed animal searching for bananas in a climbing tree (heaven-fed, hell-hungry), or things washing away in the surf on a beach (beauty/loss), or two figures on this ladder toy trying to get up to heaven and avoid falling down. What I eventually decided to do was use several (seven) miniature pony figures and a retractable wooden fence from an old barn set to illustrate the heavenly freedom of the wild and the hellish restrictions of captivity. This could be for animals or people in general, metaphorically-what being held captive by something or someone does to the body and soul. Another layer was that the horses start in heaven, with illustrative scenes being those of joy, friendship, love, then see “greener pastures,” but when they get there, crossing mountains and lakes (well, just one), the fence ropes them in–so this parallels the temptation Biblical plot/sin of jealousy.
In terms of elements of design, I found that many could be fairly naturally incorporated into film. For example, I was very conscious of the placement of the horse figures, as a collective and in isolation for certain “character development”. Several frames were meant to introduce anticipated motion. In composing the shot, I wanted to make sure the appropriate ones were consistent, and all were balanced visually in a kind of grid of the frame, all of which affect the viewer’s sense of space and depth. I was also conscious of color–such as that of the ponies (warm) and the surrounding land (cooler, with semi-contrasting orange-y browns and greens). A more minor element was the selection of font type for the title. And as in the original, I was curious about texture and its presentation, particularly of the background.
And I LOVED creating it! I developed the story line, shot all the pictures (over a hundred that I narrowed) using my camera, backyard, and a tripod–which was key, and began selecting audio so that when I got back to school I could edit. I used iMovie 09 this time instead of HD and I spent a lot of time on some helpful websites (example) and since I was familiar with HD from before it was a lot easier to work with and I can say a better experience. With the photos loaded and organized, I started working on adding the audio tracks (including Born to be Wild, Teresa Prelude by Citizen Cope, Vicious World by Rufus Wainwright and some really helpful iMovie sound effects of horses, water, slamming locks). With that result, I checked in with Raquel, and after that focused on making the transitions smoother, especially between different scenes. I think I had been trying to make it speedy to look very movement-based but I realized I could slow it down and in doing so make it easier for the viewer. Then, I smoothed out the audio by making only one sound at a time and “flowing” the different ones together where they could merge using manual adjustment of the fade ins/outs. A big contribution to the story line was the addition of voice overs–it was so fun to narrate! I used the microphone on a webcam from the Visual Studies Initiative for that part. That was a great tool for scene transition, I found.
I am really glad I jumped into this new version of the project–a different interpretation for sure–because I learned a lot about stop motion animation, iMovie, and aspects of film and film making very quickly. This learning process was more satisfying than the one with the original project. For me, it was more challenging than the diaporama. Although I was pleased with it, I didn’t feel as invested in the original as I do in this one, which I got very excited about. I am definitely more proud of this result!
The following pictures will come tomorrow morning as Firefox has crashed three times when I try to upload them on flash uploader… weird!
Here they are:
Some original story boards and the final–on the story board I didn’t emphasize transitions as much as I needed to, which I realized once I got into iMovie. I also found myself describing the scene more than drawing it… interesting!
This one has some watercolors.
Some still frames!
ponies go to the lake
ponies head towards alleged greener pastures
… where the gate comes! In the final edits of the movie I tried to make this part as emotional as possible with the camera effects and audio, after talking to Raquel. It’s really tragic! I don’t like sad endings, but this one works with the subject.
October 19, 2009
Hi! I am excited about the second project. After making some preliminary sketches, I realized that I was really interested in representing or at least exploring some kind of natural environment in my soda can sculpture: I at first considered abstract shapes based on fish or birds. Perhaps this connection comes from my perception of the relationship of “trash” with the Earth. I wanted to use the plastic rings that six-pack cans come in, but had to re-consider and am glad as it forced me to consider more possibilities.
[first without flash, second with... neither is ideal... still trying to figure out best way to photograph them]
I started collecting red Coca Cola cans because I wanted a minimum of color on any one can, and the diet ones have red, white, silver, black and Pepsi has blue, white, red etc. All the other ones I found in recycling bins were too cluttered looking. I wanted the minimum of color on any one can because I prefer that aesthetic, more of a monochrome. Then I started experimenting with them as materials:
After playing with these pieces, I decided to work with the mobile as my medium, as it comes to mind when I think of abstraction. Alexander Calder, the father of mobiles, is one of my favorite artists, whose work most stood out to me on a past visit to Cologne. As I began looking into his work more, I was fascinated by descriptions of his work as elements “balanc[ing] in changing harmony,” with kinetic movement like waves caused by “atmospheric forces” (his website is extremely comprehensive). Also see page 112 of the Pipes text on design for more about kinetic art. This seemed a perfect way to incorporate my interest in environment, as well as see art interact with space. Thus I am creating a suspended, abstract sculpture for the physical art part of my project… pictures and details of the building process to come!
As for the virtual component, I am still testing the waters with Maya and developing the design I’d like.
(to be continued)
October 26, 2009
In this project I have really loved working with the mobile form, beautifully simple yet complicated. Mobiles are made by adding on to each existing extension, that is, like branches. The “branches” are called lever arms, and they are suspended in a series of fulcrums (pivot points that support movement). The process can’t be done arbitrarily because of balance (which I explore in the last part here): the formula is that length times the weight must be the same on both sides, making each step up shorter, unless you increase the weight of the next piece, by increasing it’s size or thickness, which you can’t do using cans because they weigh almost nothing. The heaver it is, the closer you can balance to the fulcrum. I definitely learned that it’s very delicate, as these arms must interact with each other in a very exact way. I built most of my mobile with access to my dad’s boatbuilding workshop, so I used the following supplies to be described below.
After experimenting with the rinsed cans with scissors and shapes shown above I used tin snips to cut the tops and bottoms of the cans, then unfolded and smoothed out the body of them. Then I cut those into fin/leaf shaped pieces, being careful not to tear. I chose that shape to represent either fish (like a school of them) or, what I prefer, leaves (like a tree of them). They could even look like raindrops. In this way they are semi-representational, and naturalistic. This was another motive for keeping them red like foliage, with a warm color.
And now for the more technical details… I used a hammer and nail on a piece of wood to punch two holes at the rounded end of the piece. Using a pair of big pliers, I took a piece of welding wire and bent a short end of it 90 degrees (does take more muscles than I would have thought!). To secure them to each other, I stuck the short bent edge of the wire up through the first hole, then rotated the whole wire down so that the short part would go through the second hole after the first Then on the other side, I brought the short part, at 90 degrees, to 180 degrees, as a kind of lock. To double check that they were secure, I hammered that short wire joint flat with an anvil. A struggle there was keeping it square so the wires all stayed neatly in line (kind of like when we installed the collages on the wall—trying not to distort the nails with too much force). For the first lever arm, I attached a piece to either end, then I literally let the piece of welding wire, with the can pieces at both ends, sit on my finger to see where it would balance. Where it hung straight, I bent a loop with needle noose pliers (with a circular motion that was also a hard grip I had to adjust). In the future, every time I made one of these loops I would go on to lock it with the needle noose pliers. After the first lever arm, the loop of each new branch becomes the center of balance for hanging. After this first “level,” I decided about how many branches I wanted, on which sides, and which colors (sides) would show on the cans, then I completed the extensions by repeating the process. So while the piece is legitimately in balance physically, it is asymmetrical and thus more informally balanced artistically.
Me making some adjustments post-attachment
This is me trying to make the “leaves” flatter, as the cans tend to curl a bit. It has been interesting to have to work with a very specific material that can be limiting.
My space is the one above/around the water fountains outside the studio classroom, it’s a great one! And I like that it’s near water. I am eager to work on its suspension on Tuesday, as that will obviously help me incorporate it into the space and unify the two in installation.
As for the Maya component, since balance has been such a big part of my sculpture, I’d like it to be involved with the virtual as well, maybe radial. At first, I was planning to make some kind of stacked pyramid with 10 tens or a staggering of rows, with thematic unity of the object. Since I wanted to use a limited color palette for the mobile, I want one of the big parts of my Maya project to be using Hypershade to create cans of all different colors, but within an analogous color scheme. Now I am still deciding about the form but I have learned a lot more about Maya and since I know more of its capabilities, the options have expanded greatly. It has been intimidating but really fascinating. I can’t believe we have that kind of technology!
More to come…
November 1, 2009
Happy November! First an update on the Maya component of my project, which I’m really excited about. In the past week I departed from the ideas I had outlined above because I was thrilled about the idea of making a “fantasy wedding cake” in Maya. I had been doing a lot of my practice, getting-oriented-to-the-program work with pyramidal structures and rows of cans, so the shape came to mind. Then I thought that decorating the cake would be a fitting way to experiment with creating textures. So it seemed like a great combination of structuring/modeling and hypershading capabilities. Even better, I love to bake! After searching, this is the cake I decided to model my creation off of. I chose it because I thought the shape and design would enable me to explore what I wanted to in this project. It has rectangular bases, four of them, and intricate pink vine work on white frosting-way over the top, but fun. Yum!
And here is the render view of my design!
After trying it both ways, I made it with three layers instead of four, as I wanted to add the wedding cake topper of bride and groom in its place. I did this through mass duplication and movement, taking special care to do both with the same amount of space (using translate). Once I was happy with the structure itself, I got to work planning the textures. From Raquel I learned how to load brush ornaments into Photoshop from a free program online, which is how I got the vine templates. I worked with a lot of layers to create the cake texture, more than I ever have (the border, polka dots etc), so that was good experience. I found the bride and groom I liked best, then picked the angle I liked for the picture and rotated the top can so they would face the viewer. I chose to make their background white because I didn’t want it to be the same color as the cake, or any other to imply that it was filled. For the background of the whole image in render, I made it a light subtle pink color to complement all the tones. (If anyone is struggling in this step, I found the following youtube video helpful in addition to the handout: edit)
I’m really pleased with the end result! And proud that I learned a lot about Maya and Photoshop through the process. It would be fun to create a virtual bakery and make more designs. I could really experiment a lot with this, as there are so many possibilities, and it could even be used to custom design cakes. That would be neat. Also, mounting was a lot easier a second time around.
As for my “real space” sculpture, since the last series of pictures I added another lever arm as I felt it was somewhat unbalanced. Now it is installed in its space in Smith. Professor Fick helped create a hook into the wall so that it is suspended from a kind of wire trapeze that we tried to make extremely clean so as not to distract. I really like the way it fills the area.
Looking Up:
Titles:
Natural Suspension / Fantasy Wedding Cake
Final artist statement:
In creating my abstract, 3D can sculpture I was inspired by the work of Alexander Calder, the master of mobiles. Within the limitations of the material (its low weight and high fragility) I focused on informal balance and asymmetrical composition to make a naturalistic piece that could represent a school of fish or branch of leaves, either way reflecting the presence of trash in the modern environment. My virtual can sculpture is in no way related; I created it because the structural shape enabled me to experiment with Maya’s modeling capabilities in its design, and explore hypershading textures through Photoshop in its decoration–as well as reflect my love of baking!
I was really excited aobut Victoria Szabo’s presentation today because I’m involved in the Muhuru Bay mapping project. This is the village in Kenya where WISER is located and where I spent two months this summer. By compiling digital pictures and video onto the geographic map, people will better understand the community and will hopefully become engaged with WISER. I think it has a huge potential for bringing people closer! Likewise, there was a mapping project in Muhuru while I was there that was mapping the ecology of AIDs, trying to find where the geographic points of transmission are, ie risk areas. What an amazing, interdisciplinary way to look at the disease, with potential for important and useful results. I think the concept of mapping places is so interesting and human and that’s why I tried to incorporate it into my collage about Berlin.
This is a follow-up to my earlier post about a collage artist that wasn’t on the given list.
This is Bearden’s piece “Sunday After Sermon” from 1969. I liked using artstor’s images to be able to zoom in on certain parts of the collage. My favorite aspects of the piece are the use of the color blue and the assembly of composite bodies–using cut outs of different body parts to make one body. I think it lends it a really funky, somehow inherently human quality. To me, the design is interesting because it constructs a familiar kind of space out of pieces–the outside or alley of a shop, with what looks like mountains/lake/sky in the background. The figures are casually engaged in every day life pursuits, with a cat and other props (chair, barrel) mixed in. It looks like the shopkeeper is just checking up on things. Thus the scene is conceivable/identifiable, but because it is a collage, dream like and beyond reality. The multiple patterns are an integral part of the piece–red and white brick overlap, blue-ish colored figures, some red houses, and the green and blue of nature. But, they all fit together in this natural environment. Texture-wise, I think the piece has a few kinds–the imaginable brick the softness of the figures, yet flatness of the landscape. A lot of the materials used for the people and “props” look almost screen-printed and grainy. Gritty, real. I can almost imagine music in the background, conversation. Even the background has perspective and less detail–it’s an effective composition.
This really optimizes a collage for me. I really like the liveliness of his work!
September 12: (started class September 8.)
I am particularly interested in the child’s experience of trauma, so when I began thinking about the assignment I wanted to incorporate that concern: what was it like to grow up on one side of the wall or another, in general– a place so divided? What would the experience of the child look like in such a polarized environment? What would that mean once the wall came down? Thus I am seeking to represent/visualize what that may have been like for youth. I found a book about German children and the wall that I am using to inform me of their perception of the wall through interviews. One thing that is particularly fascinating to me is that the children interviewed drew answers in response to the questions of what does Berlin look like, what does the wall do–they are incredible. I wasn’t sure how to incorporate these though, I needed something to really express that I was trying to visualize this experience of the child. I thought of one of my favorite pieces of art, the Unicorn in Captivity from the Unicorn Tapestries at the MET (which I was thrilled to recognize in the back of a scene in the new Harry Potter movie!), and how this cruel imprisonment of a special and curious creature who needs freedom is so limiting. This is how I found the parallel to the child’s experience in Berlin at that time. I love it!
The background of my collage is a composite of maps of Berlin, because I am also fascinated by the mapping aspect introduced by the children’s images. I am going to have an image of a child in the middle of the wall beginning to break open; the child will be holding one of the maps of her view of the city which expresses the disconnect between East and West and the child’s hope that it can be repaired.
This is a picture as of Tuesday, September 17. The background is a map of the city of Berlin from 1985 that I hunted for in Perkins (they have a phenomenal map collection!) and had to reduce in size to fit the dimensions. On the overlay I have pictures of boy and girl toddlers that I found on Flickr and used photoshop to isolate and enlarge. That was my first time using photoshop and I was amazed and proud! (They aren’t yet attached). They are going to be connected by a fake tin can phone, with their images (one’s a copy, one I used photoshop on to size) of their perceptions of the divided city emerging like thoughts. The work I have left to do is figure out how to really drive home the point that this is about the effect on the child. I think I have to bring back in the idea of the unicorn, that really fits as a metaphor based on the research I’ve done on child interviews. And I need to make the collage pieces stand out a little more, as it is pretty grey, overall.
September 21
After some frustrations this week in terms of how I really want to convey the emotional effects on the child, I’m feeling better about my project. I am really excited about its concept but its satisfactory execution is a little bit difficult–expressing the way the wall affected children based on a research book I’m working with. But, I think it is coming together a bit more, especially after viewing the collage examples.
As you can see I have strayed a bit from the unicorn in captivity tapestry idea. I have not totally departed from it however and think I will try to incorporate a border and perhaps fencing.
Now the children are attached to the map with two visual bubbles of their hand-drawn maps coming out as thoughts. The tin cans are connected by string that I glued on (that was tricky/sticky!). I decided to use words to describe the situation, the fragmentation seen by the children so I found alphabet building blocks to spell out “Why do we see walls not bridges”. That was an explicit way to help convey the way the wall affects the child’s perception of the city and the world in general. I was just thinking how if anything is to be built it should be a bridge, and how the construction of a wall and a bridge are totally different and contradictory. I am going to marker around the edges of the shapes still as well.
September 29
Over the past week I added more contrast to the piece by outlining the border of the city and the wall in black. I also wanted my block alphabet letters to stand out more–again, an issue of contrast. So, I used Photoshop to select blocks that were usually yellow, isolate them in a layer, and replicate the color I wanted, then I made them a little bigger. I was again, proud of using Photoshop which is so new to me! It is just astounding what can be done with that program and I am eager to keep learning and exploring. I then attached those letters to a tactile textured black paper that I found and was really excited about. I re-worded the question, “Why do we see a wall (in bigger letters) and not a bridge”. Now it stands out much more, as it is the central question I want to emphasize. In the key to to the map, I added an attribution to the children whose work I re-produced on the map. I mounted the collage using a foam core/memory board with adhesive on it–I have been keeping it under my heavy books just to be sure!
Here it is!
To conclude . . .
General Reflection: After my work this summer with children and a modified version of art therapy, I am immensely fascinated by the use of art to process trauma and express valuable personal opinions, especially with young ones. Thus, I sought to understand and express the experience of the child growing up within the wall. The book that really illuminated this with great insight was A Generation Divided: German Children and the Berlin Wall by psychologist Thomas Davey (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987). In this book, I found drawings by children in response to questions, “what should I know about your country,” “what conflicts do you perceive,” “what do you fear,” and so forth. What I really want my viewer to think about when looking at the piece is, how can we explain the notion of the wall to children, the truth of it is so ugly. How did they feel growing up in a polarized backyard? For this, I have incorporated borders and segmentation using the physical historical map of Berlin, and child-like elements such as thought bubbles and alphabet letter blocks, as well as tin can telephones trying to bring the children together. I like the shapes and the way you have to look closely to understand the superimposed drawings. I did not want my piece to be cluttered, so I left out some of the ideas about the tapestry, though I am still fond and proud of that concept; likewise, I wanted the placement/composition to be balanced, with the focal point as the wall, and with the elements (children, blocks, cans) to scale as best I could without compromising pixels. Can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks!
Title: Tell the Children
Brief Statement: I used a map of Berlin, 1985 and the actual drawings of German children depicting their views of the city to suggest the negative effects of such fragmentation on their emotional development and well-being, and understanding of the world.
I was first intrigued by the work of Robert Rauschenberg at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. I really like the way he composes his collage pieces, as though it just seems they couldn’t be assembled any other way. I used ARTstor to find images of his work that I hadn’t seen before. Below is “Blue Urchin” from 1974, which was a part of his Hoarfroast (meaning: a layer of ice crystals) collection in that year. I like the work because I feel it is an apt representation of the collage medium, which I used Oxford Art Online to better understand–that definition says it is the assemblage of “pre-existing materials or objects attached as part of a two-dimensional surface” and often used to express “the pace and discontinuity of the modern world.” How fitting for out project! Anyway-
“Blue Urchin” is made from hanging fabrics of different materials (ordinary cheesecloth to more exotic silk). On these, he screenprinted some text and images in collage fashion. When hanging, the falling lines emerge called stress lines. It makes me think of the stress and suspension of humans in the modern world, the fragility. I like how the medium itself lends itself to that. The NY times review of this collection (available at NY Times review (URL) ) says the “juxtaposition of visual data” is familiar but elusive, just as Rauschenberg intended when he says they are “approachable but out of reach”. The multiple layers and attachments are complex, the images of animals, faces, shapes barely discernible. Viewing it up close would be an even better experience.
Three days before classes started I returned to America from two months in rural Kenya. I spent two days in Nairobi before my flight and visited the National Museum of Kenya, where I saw an exhibit of Patrick Amory’s photographs called “The Living Treasures of Kenya”. After some involvement in literacy through photography projects, I was really excited to see his work on peace through photography (using the largest Polaroid in the world). There were many photographs of the people of Kenya, all with their names in the titles, such as this one of a Maasai healer named Korema Ole Tipanko. The exhibit aimed to encourage Kenyan pride and dignity and present the beauty of the misrepresented African continent. I am not only interested in the nature of his work (for which Kofi Annan nominated him to be a UN special envoy) but also the work himself: to me, this is a stunning portrait with a simple composition and rich tone, and a texture that makes it lifelike. He accentuates the subject with traditional Maasai beadwork on the clean canvas onto which it was printed, like a painting. Indeed, the man’s eyes were even more communicative in person, appearing full of tears. I am grateful to have seen this exhibit on my way out, because it was such an interesting representation of a country I had come to know. I also felt that he truly respected his subjects, something I value in documentaries. I have hope for the legacy of his work.
