Conceive of drawing as leaving traces on the world, either in human-built environments, or natural environments. This concept could result in an object (2D or 3D), documentation of the action in photos or video, or a combination of these. Thorough sketch book concept development, research evidence and on-going, rigorous studio work is expected.
Consider
context
process
materials
micro / macro relationships
text as image
obsessive nature
passionate nature
Student Work
I have been really excited about this last project. I actually plan to continue this sticker campaign after graduation, on a larger scale. Making my work matter to others, not only myself, is important to me. If there’s a way to make a positive difference in someone else’s life then I want to do my best to do so. Through a lot of my previous work I have begun to reach others on a few different levels, but spreading stickers to advocate for organ donation awareness is a way for me to touch others on a much broader scale. I can’t wait to see where my stickers end up in the future.
All of that being said, I’ve been greatly influenced by artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey. Beginning as street artists who weren’t well known at all, and having their work end up reaching so many people is amazing to me. In looking at them, I realized that the only way to even try to achieve something similar would be to put my work out there, all over. The most realistic way to do that seems to me by printing my art on stickers. They’re portable, small, and hold a big message. Make a difference.
Attaching the hashtag “#DonateLife” is important to my work, as it provides a “why” to viewers. That hashtag will connect back to Donate Life America, increasing awareness and hopefully support for organ donation. I decided that this was not enough though, and simply showing others these stickers wasn’t quite enough—I want my viewers to be a part of this campaign. So, my goal is to have people email me pictures of the sticker and the location of it, to be added to an image gallery and map on my website (the link is also on the sticker that way it all connects back to my work and mission). I’ve included a project statement on my website as follows:
This sticker campaign is an attempt to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation through art. My goal is to have my Make A Difference stickers end up all over the world, and I want all of you to get involved! Send a picture of the sticker where you've placed it, and the location, to marieveschusio@gmail.com. I'll add your image and location to the image gallery, and together we can make a difference by raising awareness.
You have the opportunity to make a difference in this world by signing up to be an organ donor. As I have had many family members who have needed organ transplants, I have learned at an early age the value of life. You, one single person, can potentially save up to 8 lives by signing up as an organ donor. For more information about how to sign up to be an organ donor go to www.donatelifeamerica.org. Make a difference.
To produce a body of work that could potentially reach so many is pretty crazy to think about for me. It’s never really occurred to me that I could possibly reach so many people through my art and hopefully make a significant difference in the world at the same time. It makes me excited for the future, for making more art outside of my college career now, and it excites me for humanity. What a way to end my career at Caz. Or better yet, to continue my career outside of Caz.
Katie B. - Hearing the words poetic marks and repetitive actions sparks many ideas in my head that I want to explore, but the one that is most prominent is embroidery. Working with embroidery for two of my previous projects (Experiment #7 and #8), I wanted to learn more in exploration of the art. Embroidering to me is poetic and repetitive. I am able to create a piece of art that has a piece of me in it because I am free to do whatever I want. The repetition of embroidering to me is soothing, while therapeutic. I am able to release any emotions I have pent up while I am embroidering and I can put that into my piece and you will be able to read those emotions in the piece itself through the tautness of stitch and the organization of threads
As I am a novice to the art of embroidering I decided that I wanted to learn and teach myself how to do the various different stitches there are. I wanted to keep the stitches I learned simple so that I wouldn’t become confused or overwhelmed with what I was trying to do. I decided to improve my French knot and learn the running stitch, back stitch, split stitch, stem stitch, and a chain stitch. I wanted to learn these stitches without any pre-set idea of what I wanted my piece to turn into. I started and just kept going with where I wanted to draw with thread.
After using a flimsy embroidery hoop I invested in a sturdier plastic hoop that kept my piece in place as I embroidered. I used a satin feeling cotton fabric and I decided that I wanted to keep the color scheme of my piece that same. I decided to stay analogous with my colors and chose soft pinks and salmon colors as well as brighter, warmer shades of the same colors. I chose to use cotton embroidery thread to compliment the cotton fabric that I had chosen. This way, while embroidering and creating the piece, I wouldn’t become too overwhelmed with what I was creating and the viewer later on wouldn’t be overwhelmed while looking at it either.
I started creating French knots in the middle of the fabric and I just let my mind wander as I was embroidering, laying the knots as if punctuating my thoughts onto the fabric.. I didn’t have any expectations as to what my piece was going to look like and that to me was therapeutic in itself because then I wasn’t trying to follow a pattern and I couldn’t mess up because my method was completely free flowing. I used all six of the different colors of embroidery thread that I had picked to create the knots until it decided that I wanted to learn how to do another type of stitch. I picked a color and got to work learning various new stitches. Each stitched line in my piece is one color. I chose to keep the stitches just one color so that anyone viewing the piece wouldn’t become confused about how the stitches were coming together.
In the end, I decided to end my piece making it look like a small embroidered explosion off of the fabric. I am very happy with the result of my embroidery learning process. It shows time and effort, as hand embroidering is very time consuming. I can see this becoming a much larger piece or at least a small piece of many others.
Anne V. - We live in a world where one of the main thing we do everyday is consume. As we buy new things, new things are being made every single day. Even when I was little I’ve always been very sensitive to littering, I absolutely hate seeing garbage lying anywhere, but especially outside. I am picking up trash on the sides of the roads when I go for walks and properly disposing of it. For my project I am showing what we do everyday, but may not realize it, walk in garbage. Humankind has been polluting this earth for quite some time now and there may come a time when there is nothing left but pollution.
Therefore, I decided it would be best to do a two part project, to help further emphasize the point I am trying to get across. So I’ve created a video that shows me walking down the side of the road, with one sneaker bare of trash, the other in a fully, colorful, littered line extending from my shoe and continues to accumulate over time. I chose the side of the road, as this is where I often see trash; from people either throwing it out of their cars or dropping it as they walk by. The video shows the accumulation of garbage attaching to my foot as I walk down the side of the road, the longer I walk the more trash I pick up. I chose to do this using a pair of old sneakers because they go hand in hand with the act of walking. Also, the pair of shoes I am using are old and worn, so instead of throwing them out, I am giving them a new life to further emphasize the importance of recycling. The second part of my project is the actual pair of shoes themselves, which I took only one shoe, the right one, which is my dominant foot, and stitched and layered as much trash as I could onto it. The shoe became very arduous and cumbersome to walk in, as the trash increased. This further emphasizes the idea that we are continually placing a burden on the earth, by constantly polluting it. While walking around in these shoes, I got a sense of what the earth must be feeling, and it is exhausted.
I am also greatly influenced by contemporary artist Mary Mattingly’s piece, Pull, that she did in 2013, which showed her dragging a huge ball of just stuff around New York City. Her sense of the lifestyle of an apocalyptic world, just really resonated with me, and lead me to think about all of the material, products, and just stuff that is manufactured in our world, and how so much of it can never be properly disposed off, allowing waste to just take over the earth. Therefore, this is what my piece is showing, a trash takeover, somewhere in the future, when their is no room left for production of any more new stuff. And we all will have to work with what we have, which is garbage, and probably end up wearing the one thing we have too much of.
I’ve taken something usually known as ugly and worthless and made into something beautiful and poetic. My piece is very colorful and diverse, I mostly included garbage that one would see on the side of the road. I tried to make it as long as possible, measuring approximately 8 feet. I left one of the shoes without any trash because I realized the juxtaposition would be more potent to see one shoe with more on it then two shoes with not as much. Also, the absent shoe creates a nice contrast, emphasizing the present versus the future, and how the future might hold an apocalyptic world.
Pollution will always be a problem until everyone recognizes that it is. As human beings, it is our responsibility to take better care of what we’ve been given, for we only get one earth, there's not another one just waiting around incase we fully trash this one. So I beg all of you to stop and think about how we are hurting this earth. Because the first step to a healthier planet, is as simple as not littering by properly disposing of all trash, whether it be outside or inside.
