Thursday, December 10, 2009

Final Project




Emily Bail
Untitled, 2009. Newspaper on cardstock (11" x 11.5")
I explored "transience" in this piece.

2 comments:

  1. James Koch
    In this representational work, the artist uses oblique and offset lines to culture an image that is both dark and elusive. The lines at the top of the image are relatively perpendicular and parallel, showing the context between the uniformity of society and the life of the homeless. As the as the lines of the city break down, their values and the line quality of the pieces of paper used degrades also. Finally, the city moulds into a ragged path, which meanders toward the figure that dominates the right portion of the work. The figure is discombobulated, nearly impermanent, and gives the viewer a notion of movement or uncertainty. The color of the figure is drab, and is contained within torn portions of magazines, showing that the figure, the representation of a homeless person, is made by society, yet is treated like refuse. Thus far, the eye has jumped to the lighted top left of the picture, then followed the path down to the lower right corner where it makes its way tentatively up the figures visage. From there, the viewer’s gaze is drawn to the bag, and thus the falling paper, which flows in to the bottom left of the composition. This path traveled by the eye allows the piece to become closed, and is symbolic of the futility of a homeless person’s life. The white, crumpled paper shows the everyday cycle that the homeless must face; the struggles that they must meet, leave behind, and then pick up again over and over. The words constrained within the droppings are all related to the value of society. The balance of the piece is well proportioned; the strong, ordered yellow at the top works with the disjumbled, yet equally powerful white at the bottom. The figure to the right counteracts the gaping black holes to the left middle which represent how easy it is to lose one’s path in life. The material, also, works with the piece. The newspaper and paper materials used the portrayal of a homeless person; the piece comes off as dirty and mistreated, underlining the homeless as transient members of society.

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  2. One thought on representational vs. abstract: In the sliding scale paradigm, where representational (an exact 3D copy) is on onside and abstract (having almost no recognizable attributes) on the other. I find Emily's piece toward abstraction, or away from the absolute certainty of mimesis.

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