Performance Art

     I gotta say the hardest part about this assignment was coming up with an idea. I always want to do something that has a message and it almost took me forever to come up with one! Thankfully this idea came to me! Throughout the performance I put a piece of paper over my mouth and didn't speak while interacting with the people. I had to try and ask a question or a request solely on hand motions and head nods. I wasn't trying so much to make a message but to experience something I've never experienced. Many people that live in America can't even speak English and struggle with communicating everyday. Instead of going to another country and trying to communicate with their citizens, I did it here without saying a word. It was pretty fun and I actually didn't expect the ones at the field to answer those questions due to a hard time trying to explain what I wanted. Ordering at Salsa Rico was hilarious mostly because they thought I was the strangest thing. Many people not even involved in the questions and such also threw in comments or just laughed at my actions. Some comments were just down right mean but others were pretty funny! Overall I had fun with the performance piece!

Be Yourself?

     For my Xerox project, I wanted to do something different and try to integrate myself into my concept. What I did for the project was xerox a ton of my hands and along with that, many different facial expressions. The idea was to have all of the hands as if they were clawing at me along with a mask full of expressions. With the xeroxed body parts, I'm holding up a sign that says be yourself.

     At first looking at this, the message may be a little strange of what I'm trying to convey but I wanted to explain the difficulties of staying true to yourself. The hands reaching towards the body are different people that come into our lives that try to steer us into different directions which is what the facial expressions are for. Those expressions symbolize the people we turn into. We always say to be ourselves but it is very hard to do that when we have peer pressure of trying to fit into groups or joining cliques. Throughout high school, I myself have changed to fit into "popular" cliques or try to hang out with others that I really wasn't similar too. It's an uncomfortable feeling hiding who you are which is why the only part of my body that isn't covered is holding the sign. I intentionally did that to show the pureness of who we really are. It's who we are underneath the fake personas.

     Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this came out. It was an interesting idea that I had and was glad to bring it to life! The only thing that could've went better was xeroxing the face but I was able to work with what I had!

Art History at it's most randomness!

     I watched a video on a timeline of the history of art from the beginning of its origins. I gotta say it's pretty crazy how far we have come and it's still growing! It was really interesting to see works of realism and to see how artists began to work on that to exaggerate features on a person to soon even distortion of a person like Picasso. I am always a sucker for the work of ancient Greece. Not even the paintings and such, but also the architecture always amazes me. The statues felt larger than life and the way they were able to sculpt them. What's even more amazing is the architecture found around the city such as the Coliseum. That venue is still even more advanced than some stadiums today! The one thing about this video that still makes no sense to me is the fish. Now I know thats not the main part of this but seriously why even put it in! I could barely pay attention to anything else but the little aquarium stuff going over the artwork!

Modern Saints

     Our class took a trip to the HCC Art Gallery to come check out Santiago's solo exhibition. He had a piece that was called Modern Saints which was a series of photographs of faces of people with the experiences they have faced in their past. He called these kids saints who were facing demons. It was a very interesting piece especially with the meaning behind it. I thought it was cool how he was able to project the experiences they faced right on to them. It was actually very eerie in a way but made me intrigued to find out more. I really wish their was descriptions of what each faced because the photographs interested me to know more which is a really good thing being able to captivate an audience like that. I think Santiago was very successful in not only this piece, but the rest of the ones in the show as well. I was a real fan of his pirates work as well, taking all of the faces of people arrested in the tampa bay area to form a grid art piece of the Buccaneers logo. I can't wait to see more from him in the future!