Clamshell Box

I wrapped my box with mostly covers of  The Stranger that I've collected over the past months. For one piece of the box i used the Seattle Weekly because i liked the pink robot for the promotion of Reverb 2010 that happened this past weekend in Ballard,Washington.

Community portraits

This project is called community portraits. Ms. Tina asked us to go around Seattle and ask random people the question: "What do i care about?" and take their photo with what they wrote down. Since people might hesitant to take a face shot, my partner, Natalie and I suggested to people to take a photo of only their hands.In the end, taking pictures of hands turned out to be a good perspective for most of the pictures. Surprisingly, some of our pictures seem to give hints to the viewer and  make it predictable to what the participants will  respond with. For example, a woman wrote down "Kids" and the little details of her keys to her mini van and playful purple nail justifies her response. One man wrote down "sleep", Natalie and I laughed at his response but thinking about it now the guy was riding his bike. In the picture the bike seat frames the bottom part of the picture. We never figured out how long of a distance he rides or how often he rides his bike but i'm sure he needs plenty of sleep for all that peddling. A strange response to the question, 'What do I care bout?' was: "Homeostasis." Need a refresher on what  Homeostasis is, huh? Well, according to Biology-Online.org, Homeostasis is how "humans and animals regulate certain conditions within their bodies to continue a steady, healthy functioning body.  From his response and his forest green zip-up sweatshirt, I would predict he is a bio-engineer or mainly focuses on biology in his daily work. 

*Note: The following pictures are in the order we encountered them. 

three variations

original

                                                     

uno

dos

tres

*Special thanks to Colette for taking the lovely photos. I only edited them with the help of Photoshop.

Gray scale

Gray scale(from top row down) in paint, created in Illustrator, and from magazine

typography

Symmetry

Hierarchy

Rhythm

Axis

Transition

Datom

Artist search in Seattle Public Library

Tony Oursler

Born: New York 1957

Stlye: Mixed media; ranges from video, sculpture, installation arts, painting, and performance

School: Completed  BA in Fine Arts from California Institute of Arts in Valencia, 1979

Pocketshrine

Outside...

Inside...

To my surprise, this project turned out be the best way to describe me. To be honest, i had no idea what i was going to do with this box plain box. The first things that came to mind were of course Hello Kitty and the Space Needle- my two big obsessions in life. Let's start with Hello Kitty...so she is more than a childhood favorite of mine, she represents my relationship with my mom and my aunt who had passed away long before i was born. my mom is the main reason for my love of art. she taught me everything; how to paint, sew,draw, make jewelry and much more that i can't of right now. As a kid, i liked to draw things that made me happy and especially others as well. i gained this simple concept by constantly being surrounded by hello kitty. Hello kitty serves as a fair reminder of my aunt who had passed away at the the young age of eighteen due to a heart condition.My mom had named me after her. As something simple as hello kitty to me it sure has a lot of complexity to the meaning behind it. The quote outside the box serves as a gentle reminder to myself that no matter how much i grow up to never forget where my inspiration comes from hello kitty and my main focus to make someone smile because that 's what i live for. The other significant thing in life is the space needle. i really have no reason why just that when i moved here nine years ago i couldn't take my eyes off it. cheesy as it may sound but it is the truth. And lately, using a x-acto knife to cut out the silhouette of the Seattle skyline is one of my favorite things to do. The paper i use to cut out my skyline is actually recycled Anime chapter books i found one day in the U District. i love using the anime paper because it not your everyday kind of paper. Coming to conclusion, the space needle is so significant in my life because this is where my whole artistic interest and love began to truly flourish. Plus, Seattle has an appreciation for art in general and presents that in the most friendly and inviting way possible. The quote inside the box by Pedro Arrupe what helped me through those last months of high school. It really made up my mind on going to art school. i fell in love with art as a kid, stayed with it this long , so why not let art help me shape my future.