April 10, 2011

Candles

I've never been good at art, but I guess one lazy Saturday afternoon proved that I'm a closet artist. That, or I'm just really good at being abstract.

For my last assignment in Humanities, we have to create something that either parodies or pays tribute to someone or something we learned this semester. At first, I wanted to parody John Cage's "4:33"--four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence--on the piano (don't worry, I only was going to play the first movement). But, as I was studying for the art identification portion of my final, I looked at Jasper Johns' "Flag," which was painted with hot wax. I was intrigued by this concept of encaustic painting so I decided to melt some candles and drip them onto cardboard to see what would come of it. This was the outcome: (Blah...I made them bigger, but now they're all pixel-y.)


I know that you can't really see it that well, but it looks pretty decent in person. Regarding the names (I feel like I explain names often on my blog...), Lauren, Nicolle, and Crystal named them. Lauren called the first one Kindergarten because "it's all the primary colors...plus one." She named the second one Easter because of the addition of the color pink. Nicolle named the first one Revolution because although it always begins orderly, somehow, chaos always ensues. And she named the second one Consumerism because it was done on the back of a Pillsbury brownie mix box and the mess of consumerism leaks from it source (or something like that...I took creative liberty on what Nicolle actually said). Crystal only named the second one, but she called it Shadows because the 3D wax gave off a shadowy effect. So as of now, the titles for these works of art are still in the selection process.

But here they are. My first two art pieces: tributes to Abstract Expressionism.

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