AMERICANA ROOTS

@kelseyblosser55-blog

Through this course: MSCO 371-5 : Communication Graphics, I acquired a working understanding of print and online design, copy and type design, digital imaging for print and the Web, and pre-press issues relevant to advertising, print and web media production. I created my own Photo Book, as seen on the on blog--made using Photoshop and Illustrator. The inspiration stemmed from this idea of The individual pursuit of meaning. A Beat Generation/Old America/Americana Roots theme. These photos and mockup Clothing Line (Florence Collins) line are meant to capture the free-spiritedness of the beat generation—the idea of living life as a wild soul out on the road. The “Beat” movement was a precursor to the nonconformist movements of the 1960s—focus on individual freedom, experimentation and finding oneself. My main interest or theme is blending this generation with our Americana roots or Old America—channeling this idea of road-bound adventures; vagabonds of sorts. Think… *Spontaneous and outrageous journeys *Traveling thousands of miles *Willingness to pick up and hit the road, regardless of the current situation *Self-exploration *Spiritual loyalty to novel experience *New sights, new people, new perspectives.

13 posts

ROAD-BOUND:

THE ROAD TRIP is an enduring symbol in American culture. Ever since cars became widely available, the road stretching over the horizon has represented a sense of possibility and freedom, discovery and escape--a place to get lost and find yourself. These photos are meant to capture the free-spiritedness of the beat generation—the idea of living life as a wild soul out on the road. The “Beat” movement was a precursor to the nonconformist movements of the 1960s. It’s focus on individual freedom, experimentation and finding oneself. My main interest or theme is blending this generation with our Americana roots or Old America—channeling this idea of road-bound adventures; vagabonds of sorts.

#spontaneous #thousandsofmiles #hittheroad #selfexploration #newsights #newpeople #newperspectives

“I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead and I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy and I am waiting for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder ...”

I Am Waiting (1958) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull …”

Howl (1955) by Allen Ginsberg

“The people yes The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds, The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback, You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it. The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas ...”

The People, Yes (1936) by Carl Sandburg

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

On The Road (1957) Jack Kerouac

“A heaving sea of air hammers in the purple brown dusk tainted with rotten metal smell of sewer gas...young worker faces vibrating out of focus in yellow halos of carbide lanterns... broken pipes exposed.... ‘They are rebuilding the City’”

Naked Lunch (1951) William S. Burroughs

“To linger with them thereafter, in the pelting roar of November midnights and the clickety-clack of lonesome valley freights, until they up one night and go after it in a battered bus, following the telephone wires that make a zigzag music staff against the evening sky - some variation of that basic beginning could be told for everyone who jazz has touched and altered.”

Go (1952 ) John Clellon Holmes

“Last night I drove a car not knowing how to drive not owning a car I drove and knocked down people I loved ...went 120 through one town.

I stopped at Hedgeville and slept in the back seat ...excited about my new life.”

Last Night I Drove a Car (1958) Gregory Corso

Kelsey Blosser

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