Joe's Foundations Blog

This week we were assigned to find examples of colors in our everyday life. Such like the examples below.

We were also tasked to organize the colors in our environment in special ways. In a monochrome fashion…

and with the whole spectrum…

The final tasks for our assignment this week was to research a color and an artist that each student was specifically assigned, my color being Sepia and my artist being Sam Gilliam.

Sepia is described to be a reddish-brown color and in Greek and Latin, sepia is the word used to describe the ink that would come out of a cuttle fish’s ink sac, which then through association lead for the specific reddish-brown color of the ink to obtain the name sepia.

Some examples of sepia are the ink sac of a cuttlefish, the aged look of paper, and certain colors of wood.

Now the artist I was assigned to research was Sam Gilliam. Gilliam did a lot of his painting in Washington and was known to use other Washington color artists for inspiration, such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. He works with primarily paint using an array of colors all along the spectrum, on top of precisely planned out geometric shapes to create very loud, abstract pieces of art. His style of work has been described as “bursts of energy held in check by geometric lines”.

This week we were assigned to reflect on our new environments and working at home. To get us into the swing of working at home we were given some artists to look at for inspiration. Artists like Louise Despont, Lucas Blalock, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Laleh Khorramian, and Bryan Zanisnik. After watching videos on all of the artists, I appreciated what each of them had to say. They all had a similar ideology that less is more and what ever is at hands is adequate enough for anything. I especially like one comment that Louise Despont made about how she filled a book with her work for herself so that then no one will see it and she can be comfortable with the mistakes she makes. But I personally felt like I connected the most with Laleh Khorramian who looks as though she indulges herself with several different medias like paint and sculpting and animation. She mentions how she would like to mimic artists she admired, which almost all artists do, but also how she leans toward repetition and repeating herself in order to practice her craft. Something I also admired about her work is it is very loose, yet also has a very intentional quality to it. Like how she likes to put paint on paper and then press objects against it, and whatever pattern comes from it is what it is and she has little influence over. Then mixing that with animation is something I found very interesting. It seems very loose and in the moment which is a style I admire and like to practice. Her work, although serious, also has a whimsical quality to it as well. For example, choosing to display human intimacy with orange peels is a very unique idea but yet her approach with it I thought was very clever and impactful. So for the inspiration given to us students, I will look more towards her.

In response to now working from home and learning from other “at home” artists, I have constructed my own field guide of objects that inspire me and that I personally think are symbolic of traits that I possess. In other words, objects that define my character

The first object I drew to start off my field guide is my graduation cap from senior year of high school. I decorated my cap by painting it into a picture of sponge bob which came out perfectly. I decided to choose my graduation cap first not only because it represents four important years of hard work, but also because the sponge bob face I painted onto it was very special to me and sets me a sort of landmark for where I was artistically at the end of my high school career. It is also a good reminder that sponge bob has always been a big part of my life since I was little, and I am very proud to say that he still is.

The second object I chose was my guitar. I can’t even play guitar really that well other than small songs that I taught myself when I was bored but I still chose my guitar as a symbol that defines me because when I look at my guitar in the corner of my room, it reminds me of how much I wanna learn new things and to always set goals for myself no matter how much time they take. I can proudly say too that because of this constant reminder to learn and teach myself, that I am improving at playing the guitar and will be great at it one day.

The third object is my xbox. Not only because I love video games, which I do, but also because some of my best memories are when I was playing xbox with my friends. I remember staying up entire nights laughing histarically and other nights having. serious personal conversations with. my friends that I will never forget. Looking at my xbox is like seeing all my friends sitting in my room with me.

The next thing on my list is picture of my cat, this cat in particular is twilight, one of the newest additions to our family. My family has always had cats because my mom loves them, I don’t always love the cats because they can be real annoying and messy sometimes, but what can I say they are imperfect, just like all other people. I do love the cats and they act as a reminder to me to be kind to nature and living things, even when you really don’t want to be.

This right here is a picture of a tackling dummy that my dad got me to practice football with. It sits in our backyard everyday collecting dirt just like it used to do when I was little. I never used it too much, in fact I never asked to have it but my dad did it just to help me. My dad is the one who got me into sports and I love playing them and being active, there were times though when I think they were pushed onto me a little too harshly, this tackling dummy being a good example of that. I don’t have many found memories of this tackling dummy but I see it everyday and it reminds me of all the work I had done playing sports and all the work my dad put in to try and make sure I was as good as I wanted to be. Overall though, I see it as a reminder that may dad loves me.

This is a picture of my bed. I know everyone loves there bed but I love mine especially because along with a lot of other furniture in my room my grandfather had built it, but he is sadly no longer with us. Sometimes when I look at the details put into the bed frame I am just shocked to know that my grandfather had done that all by himself and it amazes me. My bed is also one of the places I feel most comfortable, not just in a physical sense, my bed is my happy place and its where I do everything. It’s where I sleep, eat, work, draw, play my guitar, play my xbox, everything.

This is a drawing of a ramen noodle packet, but not just any ramen noodle packet, an off-brand ramen noodle packet. Ramen noodles were my favorite thing to eat as a kid and one of the first things I learned how to cook but it is embarrassing to know that our family really got the off-brand ramen noodles when the typical ramen noodle packages were already super cheap. Now I see it as a reminder that you don’t need to be glamorous to be happy in life, things are as good as you make them and I am grateful I grew up to be generous instead of a spoiled brat that eats the name-brand ramen noodles.

This is a picture of a rubix cube, a yoyo, and some legos. Some people are shocked when I tell them that I actually keep all my toys. Maybe I am selfish for doing that because I don’t play with any of them anymore but I still have a lot of my toys from when I was a kid, like all my legos, my toy story collection, and all my build-a-bears. They all just hold so many memories in them and a sense of childlike wonder and innocence in all my toys. If I could stay 7 years old forever I would choose that easily but for now I still have my toys to remind myself never to grow up too much. Some people think it’s stupid but I think those people are boring so I don’t really mind.

This is a drawing of my bulletin board that hangs on my door. I could pick out 12 items that define me from this bulletin board alone but I figure I might as well throw the whole thing on this list. I put anything I want to remember on this board. I have notes from friends, get well soon cards, my old prom tickets, a mask from my girlfriend’s mascaraed prom, pictures of me and her, a party gift from my lacrosse banquet, buttons I got from certain classes, this bulletin board is full of memories from my past. The bulletin board itself is a reminder to me to always appreciate the past and remember the good times.

This is a picture of my closet which is filled with trinkets and cool things too but I specifically want to talk about the clothes. I have so many clothes in my closet that it’s ridiculous, I don’t/can’t wear half the clothes that are hanging up in there. I guess I am a bit of a hoarder but my shirts play the same role that my toys and my bulletin board play, in that certain shirts I can’t get rid of as they are too special to me. I have tie-dye shirts in there that I made with friends, shirts that were my favorites when I was little, shirts I got as presents. It’s like looking at pictures of myself when I was younger. My mom also likes to take the old shirts I don’t wear anymore and turn them into “memory quilts” or she at least plans to do that one day, and when that day comes I’ll be ready with a closet full of memories.

This ugly thing is Lenny, it’s a drawing of a ceramic mask I made in eighth grade during my first year of studio art classes. He was meant to be an ugly, scary, cracked out unicorn, so you could say I was incredibly successful. He hangs up right next to my door and makes me laugh whenever I look at him. Lenny is a reminder to have fun and enjoy making art, and that if it ever stops being fun then I should stop because then I’m doing something wrong.

The last item in my field guide is not so much to remind me of anything, but is more just a story I like. Our football team the summer just before my senior year of high school was selling these special hats with our school name on the front of them and the initials of our retired head football coach who passed away that year on the back. We were selling them as a tribute as well as a fund raiser. They weren’t very high quality or good-looking, in fact I didn’t even like the hat, but just to be nice, I had bought one. Around that same time I began my new job washing dishes at a restaurant where my family was good friends with the owner. I had wanted to wear a hat to keep my hair back instead of a hair net and without thinking I grabbed this hat and went to work. It was a busy day of running up and down stairs and grabbing bins full of dishes with my wet pruny hands as quickly as I could. One of the times I had went behind the bar to grab the dishes, an old man had stopped me and asked “where’d you get that hat?” I explained to him how I got it and what the initials on the back were and the man asked where he could get one. We had stopped selling the hats sadly though so I told the man I wasn’t sure, but I would go and ask my coach for him. The man said okay and was so happy, I felt a responsibility to get this man his hat. I asked my coach the next day however and we had no more for sell, or even any leftover. I felt terrible. So the next time I went to work I made sure that I wore the same hat incase I saw the man again so that I could give him mine. Sadly however he didn’t show up at the bar that day. So I continued to wear that same hat to work every time I went in just incase that man would be there. I have never seen that man again to this day but I still wear the same hat every time I wash dishes at that restaurant. It has been three years and I still work there wearing the same hat every time. It isn’t a very happy or interesting story but I still like it. I like to think that it reminds me to always be determined and patient, and have pride in the school colors I wore and the dirty job I still have. Because what you may think is stupid and worthless may be awesome to someone else, so we can all try and be a little more grateful for what we have.