Abstractions

Here we have an unaltered photograph I took while assembling materials for the never-completed hybrid project. (For the curious, it turned out the professor only wanted us to merge two images, so my grand designs turned into a mechanized fish. It was fun, but not worth posting.) My goal for the course was to force myself to view the world in more abstract terms. I've always been a very narrative thinker- anyone who knows me knows that everything's a story with me, for good or ill- and I've always found it very natural to "craft" an image. Portraits have been my forte; everything else tended to bore me. In this class, I tried to learn to see the world in shapes, colors, textures... with some amusing results. From my very first assignment, I was pegged an "abstract artist," and it was hilarious to hear my submissions discussed in those terms, or to listen to my classmates talk about attempting photos in "my style." If they only knew....

I think I managed some level of success in this arena, though, and it's been amazing the difference it's made to my other creative endeavors. Weirdly, I think it's made me a better painter, as it's definitely helped me understand spatial relation and the effects of light and shade on an object far more completely than I did before. Plans are grand for some summer artin'!