ellie

[ellkr]

Final Assignment: Abstract Expeessionsim

For my final assignment, I chose to work with the Viewing Art and Fauvism assignments. I wanted to depict the tree outside of my college house, to serve as a memory of my senior year and all of the happy memories that it contained. It is springtime, so I chose colors that come to my mind when I think of spring. I think of the first good sunsets starting to arise as we move closer to summer, and these contain various shades of yellow, orange, pink, and purple. So, while many may think of blooming flowers and foliage in the spring, I think of what the season is leading into.

I used the fauvism style to fill in the tree with all of these colors. These are colors depicting what I feel, rather than the colors of the tree itself, just as assigned in the Fauvism unit. As for an album that I relate this to, I thought of the song “Upside Down” by Jack Johnson. It is a single, written for the Curious George series, but I feel that this song aligns to what spring is like in my mind. In combining the two assignments, I wanted to show how the song makes me feel and relate it to something that will always bring me back to St. Bonaventure.

[caitlynclements30]

Art 322: Earth Art

For my earth art project, I decided to depict the golden ratio. The golden ratio is a mathematical formula that when graphed out has a half spiral shape. It reminds me most of shells that I would find on a beach. Ancient Greek and Egyptian architecture both depict this shape in their buildings. It is also found in nature, on shells and the formation of leaves and seeds on plants.

I used sticks and helicopter seeds from a nearby tree while on a walk with my dog, Baxter. I laid the sticks in the shape of the spiral, and filled in the inside of the spiral with the helicopter seeds. It was very windy when I was trying to lay on the helicopter seeds, so I only got one good picture before they all blew away. Attached is the photo of the artwork, a picture of what the golden ratio looks like, and a bonus picture of Baxter (who really liked to steal the sticks I would lay down on the ground😆😅)

[ellkr]

I love the idea of using the Fibonacci sequence as your inspiration!

[ellkr]

Assignment 10: Dada

This is my puppet, Stan. I was inspired by the Stanford dancing tree mascot that is typically seen with the school’s marching band at a variety of events. I love how the mascot has a crazy look to it and that it seems to just do whatever it wants. My puppet has a very similar personality, highlighted by its wild hair, eyes and mouth, and movements. I constructed Stan by making a cone out of thin cardboard and layering on the decorations. I cut strips out of a magazine and further cut them to attain lots of small rectangles for the tree body. I layered these to resemble an evergreen tree. I then found a mouth and made my own eyes out of cotton pads to make the face. These are secured with tape and metal fasteners. The hair is a Pom Pom from my A10 meet in February, the strings are from masks from the covid era, and the handle to control the puppet is made out of an Amazon box. Looking back I wish I had used string that was not as stretchy as the mask ear loops, as I would have more control over moving the puppet.

[ellkr]

Assignment 9: Surrealism

I chose to make a vest using paper bags, a cheezit box, and the netting from a bag of oranges. I used Ryan to measure the dimensions, as I was going to have him model the vest in the end. I liked the examples provided by Nicole McLaughlin, where she made vests out of bread and cereal. I used that as inspiration and found whatever I could use to make a vest of my own. Vests provide slight insulation for days that might not require wearing a full coat, and this vest can do just that.

[ellkr]

Assignment 8: Futurism

I chose to depict space tourism, an idea floating around that would connect regular civilians with atmospheric weightlessness. The trip is currently offered for $250,000 to $450,000 per person, which only caters to the extremely rich, ambitious individuals. The future aspect lies in if this idea will be sustainable and available for commercial spaceflight. Will this be the beginning of a new era of travel, or will it quickly die off? For this to become “common” (using that word lightly) we would need to develop more regulation over airspace, mishaps, and innovation. Overall, space tourism exists in the current sphere, yet only for the wealthy. Even still, it has its limits and needs improvement before it could attempt to truly satisfy the public domain.

The New Frontier of Space Tourism - Who’s Ready for a 10-Minute Vacation to the Stars?

For centuries, humans have gazed up at the night sky and wondered what it would be like to go there. Now, thanks to a few ambitious billiona

[ellkr]

Assignment 7: Cubism

To begin this project, I drew shapes with pencil then traced over them in blue, purple, and pink crayons. I cut out a variety of objects, mostly from a Bloomberg magazine, and pasted them onto my background in a disassembled form.

[camryncwiklinski-deactivated202]

For the Cubism Assignment I started my background shapes with pencils and then added shapes with markers. I then cut out fun colorful pieces and shapes with lots of character and brought them together!

[ellkr]

I love the assortment of cutouts in your work!

[ellkr]

Assignment 6: Fauvism

I chose to draw my boyfriend and use various shades of the colors blue and green for this assignment. Ryan is a very calm, easygoing individual. He likes structure and predictability, but also likes to have fun. He is optimistic, kind, and outgoing–he doesn’t hesitate to offer help where it is needed. I picked the colors blue and green because I feel like they best portray these characteristics. Specifically, I felt that blue represents calmness and green more so represents energy and positivity. He also likes being outdoors a lot, and the blue and green combination gives off an earthy outdoor vibe in my mind.

[ellkr]

Assignment 5: Impressionism

For this assignment, I chose to draw one of my teammates, Dhav. Dhav is a freshman diver on the women’s swimming and diving team, and has made a great impact on the team in just a short time. She joined us in December, and started competing for the second semester. In just a few meets, she broke our school records on both the 1-meter and 3-meter boards, and qualified for the NCAA Zone Championships on both boards as well.

The picture that I drew is of Dhav competing on 1-meter at the Atlantic 10 Championships back in February. In prelims, she finished in the top 8 of 40 divers, so she got to dive in the “A” final at night. Typically, with A10s, I would be swimming at night so I never really got the opportunity to watch our divers in finals. However, that night the meet got rearranged to where Dhav’s final started after I finished swimming, so I was able to watch. It was so fun getting to watch her dive, and I remember the suspension we would feel every time she would dive, straight into excitement once she would finish a dive and her score would go up on the board. At the end of the night, Dhav finished second in the event and got to take home her first A10 medal, which in itself was so exciting. I was so proud of her for what she accomplished, and cannot wait to see how she continues to thrive in the future.

[ellkr]

Assignment 4: Midterm

For my midterm assignment, I chose to depict Livvy Dunne in the way that she appears on her social media accounts. Unlike the Kardashians, whose photoshopping is extremely common and well known, Dunne is a bit more subtle. However, people have found discrepancies between posts on her Instagram and posts on the official LSU instagram pages. It isn’t obvious on its own, but when put next to the original, we can see that Dunne has altered her appearance—making her neck, face, and stomach slimmer, her butt look bigger, and most obviously her ponytail longer.

When I see the images side by side, I am disappointed. Livvy Dunne portrays herself as a role model for young gymnasts, especially as her popularity has taken off. In editing her appearance, she is creating a body image that people aspire to obtain, but it is not real. She is creating unrealistic expectations for those that look up to her, which is unfortunate because she looks perfectly fine before the editing. I feel that this comparison image shows that our generation aspires to look a certain way, and many popular people edit themselves to obtain that. This then creates issues amongst their followers, as individuals go to great lengths to look like their idols.

I feel that photo editing will continue to exist in the realm of social media and online popularity. Photo editing, especially with AI, has become more and more advanced over the years. We look at the pictures of the Kardashians and know that they are obviously photoshopped, but we may not have noticed the photoshopping on this picture of Livvy Dunne without the comparison. Thus, it's likely that photoshopping is happening all around us and we barely even notice it. A common photoshop trend that I usually see is women making their butts look bigger, similar to what is seen in the Livvy Dunne photo.

[ellkr]

Assignment 3: Curator

As I was scrolling through my classmates’ work, I was particularly drawn to the two pieces done by Chiara and Gabe. The aspect that I felt tied the two together was that they each feature a road that continues off into the distance on the edge of the page. They also each have a creature of some sort at the closest part of the road to us. Their directions are different, but they all seem to have purpose in where they are going, even if we don’t know where that is. This was something that I wanted to convey in my piece. I have animals on a path coming towards the audience, but we don’t know where they are coming from, nor can we see very far past that path. Another thing that I connected to each piece was the level of collaging that was done. Chiara and Gabe have a busy, full background of collaging with almost no white space. I took this and made sure that my piece would match theirs in that way as well. I really enjoyed layering all of the different types of foliage and the different sky scenes. I wanted to fill the space yet allow for each piece to be seen in some capacity.

[ellkr]

Assignment 2: Fashion Design

I decided to title my work “Serving Breakfast” because, well, the outfit is serving and the creature (person?) is quite literally serving breakfast. Beginning with my background, I chose to use the complimentary colors blue and orange. I just moved around the page, adding different lines and shapes with various blues and oranges. It was a lot of fun, and I liked how it turned out. As I was looking for items for my outfit, I cut out anything I could find that could even remotely resemble clothes, limbs, hair, anything. It just so happened that a lot of the things that I cut out were food related or lighting related. Thus, you’ll see that my person has a lot of lamp shades and breakfast items incorporated into it.

[ellkr]

ARTH102 Assignment 1- Viewing Art

For this assignment, I chose to rework Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’ album cover. I got to see her perform The Eras Tour in Pittsburgh, where she opened with songs from this album. The concert was electric, and those songs were the best way to start it. My favorite song on the album is Cornelia Street.

As I created my piece, I tried to incorporate parts of the album cover as well as my own touches. When I think of lover, I think of hearts, flowers, and butterflies—somewhat of a Valentine’s Day theme. I began by using oil pastels to make a background similar to the real one, then added the album title. Then, I cut out a bunch of little paper hearts, added butterflies, and put a bouquet of pink flowers in the center. Outside of the actual album cover, this is a pretty good depiction of what the album looks like in my head.

[ellkr]

Hi! My name is Ellie Kraus, a senior from Erie, Pennsylvania. I am double majoring in Finance and Accounting with a minor in Mathematics. After graduation, I will be working for Ernst & Young as an auditor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am currently a captain on the women’s swim team here at Bonaventure, and I have loved swimming for as long as I can remember. This summer, I visited my boyfriend in Toronto. As we walked around the city, we saw these neat bubble art installations. I am looking forward to learning more about art history in this class!