Chances

As I grow older my curiosity lingers towards greater lengths than ever.  Currently, I have found myself wondering more and more about my grandmothers journey from the country of Ireland to the United States of America.  It was here that she met the love of her life and started a family with him.  However, it took a lot for my grandmother to give my grandfather a chance.

He was a bartender when she traveled here.  One day she sat on a stool and asked for a drink, but she got more than a drink.  Pick up lines that a "player" would use filled her ears.  She was anything but interested in him, but he was determined to see her more than to once.  The next move he made was to ask for her number.  Her brogue was strong, so she figured that if she spoke fast and with the thickest accent she had, then he would be unable to understand the seven numbers that came out of her mouth.

My grandmother felt successful that she finally got rid of the man, until she received a phone call.  After her hard work on trying to get rid of him, he bounced back to ask her out.  She would decline or have someone say she was not home, but he would only call again.  The cycle was never ending and the only way to stop it was to agree to go out with the guy.  After a month of this she hesitantly accepted his offer.

It was that date that made my grandmother realize she could give my grandfather a chance.  The date went better than she expected.  He was charming, charismatic, and a real gentleman; later becoming the love of her life.  They got married, moved in together, and had two girls.  Their kids went on to have four children in total.  This was all made possible because she finally agreed to go out with the bartender that hit on her.

Fortune Cookies

In class we picked out six fortune cookies and were told to incorporate them into a piece of artwork. The only fortune I can remember was the one that said, "wise men learn more from fools than the wise".  I tried to think of a way show it, but the only thing that I could think of was Elvis Presley's song "Can't Help Falling In Love".  This gave me the idea to put this song into my art.  It helped me come up with more ideas and I was able to create something that represented my thoughts on the six fortunes I received.  In the end, this is what it looked like:

Art x 3

In Art x 3 we had to start, enhance, and end a work of art; however, instead of one piece of art, we had three separate ones.  I started out using transfers to get a background for the second person to work with.  They gave a good start to the piece, and I hope that it helped inspire the person who received my piece after me.

My First Contribution

My Second Contribution

What I Received

I received the piece on the left, and turned it into the piece on the right.  After I finished, it turned out as the picture below.  We all went for something different, but the person after me was able to take both of our ideas and create a finished product.

What I Received

The First Part

The next piece I received looked like the picture I provided on the right.  Before I received it, it looked like the picture on the left.  I was the third person to have this artwork, so it was going to be my finished piece.  When I was done covering, layering, and adding it turned out looking like the picture below.

Pop Print

Andy Warhol was known for his pop prints.  He portrayed the famous Marilyn Monroe with many different color schemes.  I have showed this picture before in my blog post titled Hats, Hats, Hats! However, this picture has more color schemes of Marilyn:

This type of pop art inspired us to make our own.  We picked an item from our pile of blue, and we had to carve it into a linoleum block using linoleum cutters.  My choice was a little blue button.  When I drew it out, I thought it looked simple, yet charming.  I wanted to make it look more  pop-like, so I decided to add some background to it.  This is what it looked like after I inked it and pressed it on the paper:

After I printed a few of my buttons in black, I tried to put color into it by mixing paints together.  I also used a colored paper to make the colors all tie in to one complete piece of artwork.  Instead of just printing it one, I printed it many times in many different ways on the same paper.  Doing this many times gave me a wide selection of pieces that I could make my final piece.  Out of all of the pieces I made this one was my favorite: 

A Blue Paradise

Portia Munson has inspired our class to create a pile of blue items.  Students brought two blue items to contribute towards the pile on the table in the center of the room.  Compared to Portia Munson's, our pile was not as substantial.  In the pictures below you can see the difference.

Portia Munson

Our Creative Arts Class

However, it is easy to wonder what all of these items are.  Some might just say that there is a hat, pillow, and a phone case.  What these items can really be expressed as are memories.  Each item on the table is its own moment in time.  Everyone might not be able to connect a memory to a specific item on the table, but the student who brought it in, most likely, can.  These are pieces of us, whether big or small, and even if we sometimes forget they will always be there.  This is what I see when I look at this table:  memories piled together.

Hat, Hats, Hats!

Andy Warhol saved an impressive amount of time capsules; over six hundred.  In fact, there are many  artists famous for their collections.  Some of these collecting artists include:  Andy Warhol, Portia Munson, Joseph Cornell, and Karsten Bott.  Seeing pictures of these artists collections showed the time and energy that went into gathering all of those specific items.

Andy Warhol

Portia Munson

Joseph Cornell

Karsten Bott

After hearing and seeing the different forms of collections from the artists above I started to wonder about the collections that I have.  Instantly the baseball hat collection piled up in my brothers trash can came to mind.  Every time we travel, go to an event, or go to a sports game we always buy a baseball cap.  They fill up an entire trashcan, and there are more scattered around our house.  Even if we have plenty of hats we always buy more.  We even buy more than one of the same hat, so that we each get one.  It has become a hobby of ours to buy hats to remember the memories we have had.  These are some of the very few baseball caps we own:

Drawing and Shading and Coloring, Oh My!

This past month I have been challenged with tasks that I thought I could never accomplish.  With a little push and confidence I found that I was capable of what my teacher, Mrs. Kiick, assured me I could do.  I tested myself and made a lot of progress.  It was still difficult reaching my required goal regardless of how well my pieces may have turned out.  Between the two tasks we received, the jar was, and currently still is, the more complicated to create.  Even looking at the two pictures, it shows the level of difficulty between each work of art.