Tuesday, March 31, 2015
ASP Artist Statement
Alex St-Pierre Pesant
03/31
Digital Imaging
Poster Project
Survival
When we think about adaptations, it is easy to forget the ways in which we change our ways of thinking and behavior according to our surroundings. Though this has served the human race well in both survival and evolution of our society, it can also influence us in ways that are temporarily effective, but make us less functional outside of that situation. No one is more susceptible to this phenomenon than children, as they are still developing themselves. I wanted my poster to create awareness of this effect particularly in the case of a child with conflicting parents.
I was drawn to this idea because I find that it is a factor in domestic conflicts that is often overlooked by the public attention, and something that a great many people experience during their childhood, myself included. With divorce rates for marriage in the US being almost 50%, there are a great many troubled households, and children are often caught in the crossfire. Though it is rarely their fault, children often feel caught in the middle, or become used to get at the other person. This can influence the child and change their behavior in order to best avoid being caught in these situations.
Cade Lawton
Project 3 Essay
Within project three while exploring upon dependability, adaptability and taboo I initially responded to taboo since I could mostly affiliate or associate with it. So right off the bat I knew I wanted to do something more personal to the topic and by trying to persuade others through personal connections. I decided to focus my poster upon homosexuality and initially focus on negative religious perspectives imposed on this community however I changed it and decided to focus more broadly towards love and separation created from hate. I feel that homosexuality or any other sexualities that do not pertain to heterosexuality face discrimination and is most definitely viewed upon as a taboo within todays society. Usually the main argument to fixing sexuality focuses around the concept that it is a choice when in fact from personal experience it is not.
Within discussing multiple posters throughout class in the course of history I learned that many posters depict innocence, to stir emotions of the unpredictable. For example one poster our group researched depicted the slaughtering of asian people during Vietnam and using the this innocence made me want to apply it to my poster. To depict innocence I decide to show me and my significant other holding hands. With this information I leave myself vulnerable and depict innocence. However I wanted to express the barrier of the social norm created by man which is depicted through the fence. I implied for the fence to have a motion blur to show how the hate established towards homosexuality is a blinded hate that has no consideration. Within the fonts I wanted to express individuality through handwritten fonts and express a stern natured font to express societies hate. Within my word choice I wanted to rhyme hate with segregate to connect the two words and apply it to my concept. I believed my artistic expression for this piece is mostly displayed in the composition of the photograph that I took and the motion blur that was established in the picture. I will admit that my piece doesn't necessarily have the most artistic expression simply due to the fact that I wanted to keep my poster simple, which is something I perceived constantly when looking at other posters in different time periods such as Shepard Fairy’s Hope poster. I essentially learned that a poster should consist of being noticeable, simple for the viewer and compelling with short amount of words.
Overall I believe my poster establishes the feeling of being able to chose a partner while expressing that a sexuality is not a choice and to compare it to how hate is a choice. I also believe that this expresses the feeling that society naturally segregates people of the LGBTQ community and their lovers. This poster is a visual representation of the trying to suppress hate towards others sexualities but specifically homosexuality by stating that hate is a choice and that being of a different sexuality is not a choice, but that a lover is the main choice for other sexualities.
Progress Book
Final Outcome
ZWG - Essay + Final
Artist Statement
I developed my concept by first deciding what color scheme and aesthetic I wanted to communicate within my work. Eventually, I decided on 1950’s, focusing primarily on reds and analogous colors such as beige and orange. Then, I did research on what ads (primarily from makeup and magazine ads) from this time period looked like, and found that they were composed primarily of headshots of women with bobbed haircuts and flared dresses, where the product is secondary to the women’s faces and/or reaction to the product. I utilized these tactics in my poster.
After deciding that I wanted to use the theme of adaptability in my Diversity project, I used a camel in a mascara ad, and related this back to camels having a double set of eyelashes to keep sand out of their eyes in the desert. This was supposed to be reminiscent of Joe Camel in the position of the product (long, cigarette-shaped mascara brush) as well as the “mascot” herself. I played off of the adaptability prompt in relation to evolutionary adaptation in animals, as well as commercialism and how animals are often used as mascots in media and ads in order to sell people objects, even if these objects are detrimental to the animals the mascots are saying they represent. (I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t really want to draw a camel in lipstick and a wig.)
I adopted 1950s posters’ strategy mostly in relation to the commercialized side of the 1950s; the idealized (or in my work, ironically skewed) set of facial features combined with perfect hair and period-appropriate makeup and dress, the product in question diminutive by comparison.
My piece works as a cultural object and artistic expression on multiple levels, both by satirizing the objectification and sexualization of women in media in the past and present, and by bringing it home by playing off of the familiar visage of Joe Camel.
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