#2d concepts

[orangesavannah]

Rohttu Sieidi

Next up, the lovely horse statue from the end of the game.

There were a lot of options but in the end, the more dramatic the statue, the better! 

Ruohtta (or Rohttu as he is named in our game) is the god and the personification of sickness and death in Sami mythology. He is said to have traveled on horseback, hence his sieidi is represented as a horse.

[uwmspeccoll]

2D Concepts and the Artist’s Book

Last week, two sections of 2D Concepts taught by UWM art lecturer Cynthia Hayes made visits to Special Collections to discuss color theory through the use Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color. This week, those same two classes are just beginning their artist’s-book assignment, so they stopped by again to discuss book-art’s concepts and review a broad selection of artists’ books from our extensive collection.

We identified some of the key concepts we cover with 2D Concepts classes in a previous post. When it comes time to review the artists’ books themselves, we ask that the stuendts critique the works for 2D-, 3D-, and time-based composition. At the end of an hour of review, the students articulate their general response to the experience, and what they found compositionally successful or unsuccessful. This discussion offers them a way of thinking about their own approaches to the book. 

We have conducted instruction sessions for multiple 2D Concepts classes every semester for over 20 years, and we never tire of hearing their responses. Many of these students go on to work professionally in the book form, and then we acquire those works to inspire a new generation of artists. Oh, the joys of being a special collections librarian!

Click on the images to find out what they’re reading.

View other Special Collections instructions sessions from this semester.

[uwmspeccoll]

Art Students and Artists’ Books

Yesterday we held an instruction session for about 20 art students in Jeff Zimpel’s 2D Concepts course. 2D Concepts is one of the Foundation courses required of all art majors, and each section of 2D Concepts has a required artists book assignment. So, we see many of these art students every semester, and we never get tired of watching them explore the selections we make from our extensive book arts collection. Aside from 2D concepts such as line, color, shape, form, layering, composition, etc., key elements and concepts that students examine in these works are:

visual relationships time-based composition accumulated fragments sequence movement transitions lines of direction pacing rhythm structure binding technique printing technique art applications negative/positive space scale sense activation use of translucency repetition mirror image intimacy typography media applications material choices and much more

Click on the images to see some of the titles and artists they are working with.

[uwmspeccoll]

Art Students and Josef Albers

This is the time of the semester when students in several sections of 2D Concepts begin to work on color theory and begin thinking about their artist’s-book projects. Ethan Krause’s 2D Concepts class was here for a few ours yesterday discussing book-arts concepts and investigating a wide range of artists books in the collection. Today, two classes in Cynthia Hayes’s 2D course spent a couple of hours each engaging in Josef Albers’s iconic color-theory instruction publication Interaction of Color published by Yale University in 1963. We are fortunate enough to hold three copies of this boxed set of interactive plates and two volumes of text.

While other editions and iterations of this classic work, including digital versions, are readily available, there is nothing like working with the original silk-screened plates to get your mind spinning on how colors shift, change, and warp as they interact -- as the students in these two classes experienced. Coming out of the Bauhaus, Albers began to develop his experimental method of teaching color theory at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. His innovative course of study awakened his students to the quirks and variables of color behavior, just as it continues to do today. After 30 years of effort, Albers’s course of study achieved its fullest development with Yale’s publication of Interaction of Color  in 1963. The portfolio includes about two hundred reproductions mainly created by Alber’s students, to whom he dedicates the book, acknowledging their help in having “visualized and discovered new problems, new solutions, and new presentations.”

Next week, Hayes’s classes will return to begin their artists-book projects, which is always a lot of fun!

[kaitlynburch]

"La Mort"

Multimedia Collage on Bristol Board

12x14

By Kaitlyn Burch