Bittersweet- Last Concentration Blog

This school year went by way too fast.

Honestly, I don't want to leave high school, yet I know there's nothing I can do to stop growing old. I guess you can say I'm connected to my youth, like my concentration.

I haven't updated my blog in a while, so time to catch up on my concentrations.

So with this concentraion, I wanted to portray the attachment to the past. In the photo there is a man holding an old photograph. (The picture's of my mom when she was my age at Princeton. I thought that was super awesome.) :)



The next concentration was centered around the idea of greed.

                                        

The next concentration I'm not very happy with. At all. But it's done, so it's whatever. I was attempting to show the connection to dream, literally and figuratively. Blah.

                

The next one was a connection to promises.

Connection to love.

And connection to gambling. I'm really proud of this photo. :)

So. This is my concentraion. Overall, I feel I progress and learned a lot more then I ever expected to. I hope to keep writing in this blog, since I feel my journey as a artist will never be over, and I would like to keep track of my improvement. I'm really upset that AP Studio is over. It was a wonderful class that I will never forget. I made new friends, strengthed old connections, and learned so much more about the world through a lens and a paintbrush. I just would like to thank everyone in my class and my wonderful teacher Mrs. Holliday for giving me this amazing experience. I love you all. :)

Searching.

I thought finding connections would be easy, but I've found it's very hard.

Watching people and seeing what exactly they are strongly chained to is hard, at least finding something that I could capture with a camera, and make the viewer of the photo stop and think.

But even though it is difficult, I'm actually quite proud of my concentration, and how I'm growing as a artist. My sixth concentration was a connection to art. I wanted to do something different. My friend was making a clay animal, and while watching him make it and watching him being gentle and exact, I was inspired. I feel the photo of successful, not only because it shows a connection to art, but it shows the hands that created the art, as well as the hands acting as the cradle for the art.

Growing in both art and self

The idea of an alcoholic and their connection to their addiction just randomly popped into my head one day. My dad modeled with a bottle of whiskey and the chains and I must say, this is one of my favorite pieces of artwork I have done so far. I edited it some. I'm very proud of the way it turned out, and the feedback I've received from some viewers stated that the photograph caused them the feel the emotion and sense the feeling. This is what I've been aiming for within this concentration.

The day before winter break, I received very scary news. My father was admitted into the hospital and scheduled for open-heart surgery the next morning. I couldn't focus on my exams, or studying. I consider my father my best friend, and the idea of having the possibly that he's life may be cut short effected me very much. He made it through the surgery, but the aftermath was very hard. He had to stay in the hospital longer than planned, and our Christmas was spent in the ICU. Now he's home, and slowly but surely improving. Yet the effect this had on me and my family could never be reversed. So with knowing the next concentration piece due date was approaching, I couldn't really think of anything at all, but then while holding my dads hand one day, I looked down at his arm and seen the cut that the surgeon made to harvest the ulna artery in his forearm to replace his clogged arteries, I thought of it. The connection between a human and their life. Not everyone can relate to this picture, but doing this picture was very therapeutic, and after telling others the story behind the picture, they empathize with me more not only as an artist but also as a person.

First two concentrations

My first concentration was my look on humans and their connection with faith. I feel this attempt was decent but I still feel it could be a lot better. With my second concentation I attempted to show human's obbession with the media and television. When I tried to photograph these, the pictures ended up horriable, so to avoid a F I tried to paint my vision in a very short amount of time. I'm still not happy with this. So I will be attempting to re-do these in the future if time ever becomes avaiable to me. I will defintity try to research even more with the type of connection and also the framing I could do to make the meaning stronger.

The idea that I am trying to say in my concentration is that we as humans are connected to so many different things and they end up controling us even though we like to think of ourselfs as independent. I've been asking and watching different people to see what different things people may be attached to, and I do have various ideas set up. I feel my ideas are thought provoking, but I need to attempt harder to make them thoughtful.

Concentrating on Concentration

Thanks to the amazing help of my lovely and beautiful friend, Abby Friend, she has helped me understand and find more in depth ways to show the idea of connection in my Concentration. With using a chain to link the two or more objects or subjects together I can get the point across more deeply than with my first idea than just simply messing with balance. I've found a few works that go with my idea of connecting two subjects. (None of these following photos belong to me. These works had to be used as links because of copy right terms.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonjazz/4591877957/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siggito/2314106895/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luix90/4970957105/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryhollis/2263779179/

Concentration

I first began with the idea of water being my concentration. I thought maybe I could take water and show it in all it's forms. But that sounds kind-of boring, doesn't it. So my friend helped me figure out the connection of water and the earth, and it got me to seeing the connections everything in the universe has with something. And I thought this idea of 'connection' would be something I could really look deep into.

Think of it. Even though we like to think of ourselves as independant, we all end up loving something that we can't image our lifes without. So here are some of the ideas I with experiment first with my concentration. (In no order)
- Two lovers. Ex. A boyfriend and a girlfriend. A husband and a wife.
- A mother and her child.
- A photographer with their camera.

With all these photos, I want to have the repeating effect maybe unsymmetrical balance. But I'm not 100% sure on this idea yet.