I started my collage by harvesting some cardboard from an amazon box, then I rubbed some watercolor paint on there with a paper towel. With some crayon markers, I started drawing on the cardboard– just simple stars and spirals. I then taped some brown paper over the cardboard and spray painted it. After I finished painting the paper, I burned a hole in the center so the cardboard would show through.

After that, I started glueing/pinning found objects to the cardboard. I cut up a linocut I made and used the pieces to print some extra texture on the cardboard. I finished it up with some additional drawings and then I stuffed the edges of the brown paper with paper towels to create depth.

Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out, but I could honestly keep adding stuff to it forever. I really liked this process because I didn’t really know what the final outcome would look like at first, but it slowly became clear to me as I was creating.

This week, I’ve chosen to look at a somewhat local artist– Hedwige Jacobs. Born in Singapore, Jacobs lives and works in Houston Texas. She creates drawings that are simple in appearance but are rich with an investigation into the ways we live and interact with each other as human beings.

What drew me into Jacob’s work was one of her exhibitions that she had at Women and Their Work here in Austin in 2019. In this exhibition, she had an installation called The Corner Room in which there was a part of the gallery sectioned off to create a faux living room. I say faux, because although the room was real and contained real furniture, it was all drawn on and that really made me think of “drawing into space.”

She also did a similar site-specific installation in 2015 called Woven Living Room.

Sources:

http://www.hedwigejacobs.com

https://www.saatchiart.com/hedwigejacobs

https://womenandtheirwork.org/archive/hedwige-jacobs/

I started this project by looking through some old photos of mine on Lightroom, which is where I found my source image.

I decided to just focus on one panel of the panorama, which is the part with two people on stage and another man looking on. I chose this image because I like the story behind it, the man on the right is going to play on stage next and he’s watching his son’s band open for his.

I was really worried about this project, because my basic linear perspective knowledge is very rusty, but Hollis helped me a lot with getting my angles right. I was also worried that this image was too ambitious because I’d have to draw the human figures and I haven’t studied anatomy at all and have no idea how to draw people properly. My solution to this was to backlight my drawing and have the figures be silhouettes.

After translating what was in my sketchbook, I got a little stuck and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Then I realized I forgot the ceiling.

Lastly, I added the ceiling, fixed some scaling issues and added final details. Overall, I’m happy with it; I want to continue to polish it up but I’m afraid I won’t have time with the way my life has been lately:(

Contemporary artist, Kara Walker, is best known for her artwork about identity (sex, race, gender, etc.) and its relationship with violence. She attended the Atlanta College of Art and later got her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Walker’s career was steady throughout the 90’s and really took off after her exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, premiered at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2007.

This exhibition (pictured above) featured images of what Walker imaged to be what life was like on plantations in the south before the civil war happened. I can’t find photos of the full exhibition, but there were more than one hundred of these silhouette images collages together to create a larger narrative.

Walker’s other popular work includes a gigantic sugar sculpture which resides in an abandoned Domino’s Sugar Factory. The work is a response to our modern day relationship with slavery as Americans. It’s also meant to comment on the mythologizing of black women’s bodies.

Overall, Kara Walker is an important contemporary artist and I chose her because I feel like everybody should know about he work, especially Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, going into the collage project.

Citations:

https://www.karawalkerstudio.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2sedoeOiB8

https://www.themodern.org/exhibition/kara-walker-my-complement-my-enemy-my-oppressor-my-love

My name is Clara Rabe, I’m a senior at St. Edward’s University majoring in photography and media arts and I’m also minoring in art. I would say I’m most trained in photography, but right now I’m enjoying learning a plethora of new mediums. Something that’s consistent about my work regardless of medium is my love for color and texture.

I’m incredibly nervous to be taking this class because racing is definitely not my strong suit. I’m someone who struggles with perfectionism and don’t really like to make art unless I’m really confident about my ability to do execute the project to my standards. This mindset is easily the most counterproductive thing in my head, so I’m hoping to overcome that in this class and make some bad drawings.

My relationship with drawing is purely a form of expression. I’m not very good at using words to communicate, especially when I’m overcome with emotions– so I like to draw in a little sketchbook during those times. I’m not very technically skilled, but that doesn’t really matter to me when I’m just privately expressing myself.