scrapbook20

I found this Smarties wrapper near a trash can outside of the Campus Center. It caught my eye because of the fact it was laying next to the trash can and not in it. I was also attracted to the colors with which it was adorned. And I thought back to the last time I had enjoyed a Smartie. It is a classic childhood treat. Colorful and sweet, they were attractive to little children. This candy was given out to little kids on halloween or were bought inline at the grocery store. Everyone knows what Smarties are and can appreciate the treat. I do not see the wrapper as art because it does not invoke any sort of feeling upon seeing it. We only know what to associate with the wrapper and that is the delicious treats inside. I feel art has to have a deeper meaning or invoke some sort of feeling inside oneself.

scrapbook19

This straw wrapper was laying, intact, in the grass down by the waterfront. The white color of the wrapper stood out against the vibrant green grass. It was still straight and not ripped except for the ends where someone had pushed the straw out. It caught my attention because it looked like there still might be a straw in it. Upon further investigation I realized it was just the wrapper. Straws have found their ways into our everyday life. Everytime you go to a fastfood restaurant, your drink comes with a plastic straw. We are used to see wrappers strewn across the environment and it doesnt even phase some people. This wrapper is not art to me because no one created the wrapper with passion or put their soul into creating it. It was made by a machine just like all the other ones.

scrapbook18

I found this candy wrapper in the grass off the path near the bell tower. It caught my eye because of its bright color. After I investigated it further i realized it had another language on the wrapper. I am unsure of the language but it looked really cool. I don't even know what kind of candy it is because I cannot understand the wrapper. I thought this was probably the coolest thing I have found for the scrapbook portion of my blog yet. It is a foreign candy wrapper and you don't see many of those around. It shows how other cultures are present in our American culture as a whole. I don't find this wrapper as art because even though it is unique for being on this campus there are still thousands if not millions of those wrappers out there somewhere. There is nothing unique this wrapper at all.

scrapbook17

I found this metal C hook on the path as I was walking to class in Goodpaster. It caught my eye because it was laying in some sand and stood out in front of the light color. I started to wander where it had come from and what was missing this piece. I wondered how it had broken off or if someone had just discarded it. Metal pieces like this are everywhere. They are apart of many appliances and other every day ammenities that we use regularly. Metal can be bended and shifted in many ways therefore making it useful to create strong things. I don't see this C hook as a work of art because I still believe for something to be art it has to be unique but there are many other hooks exactly like this one out in the world.

scrapbook16

I found this flower near the patch of dandilions I had mention in an earlier post. It caught my eye because it was near the dandilions but not apart of the same patch. Its white color contrasted to the bright yellow of the dandilions. There was a patch of these little white flowers huddled together no more than a yard away from the dandilions. It made me chuckle because the way they were apart from eachother made me think of the way people tend to stick to their own group of friends and never venture out to meet new people. The white flowers stuck with the white flowers and the yellow flowers stuck with the yellow flowers. It just made it interesting so see these two groups amidst the green grass. I feel it is not art because again the flowers just happened to grow in that spot and happened to be that color. There was no one who came up and planted them right next to eachother.

scrapbook15

I found this odd looking woodchunk in my hallway in Dorchester. It stood out because obviously it had no business being in the hallway. It was a brown mass against a white floor and was easy to notice. it almost reminded me of a walnut shell but I think it is a piece of mulch. This piece may not have been significant to anything but it is funny to think of how the shape of something can draw your attention. We see wood all the time but if it is carved into something or is just naturally bent in some wierd way it attracts our gaze. This piece was in a peculiar shape for wood but the fact it was indoors is really what got me too take interest in it. I kept thinking how it had gotten there and who or what may have put it there. I don't consider it art because I feel it just happened to end up like that and there was no real concious effort to create it.

Scrapbook14

I found this helicopter leaf on the path when I was walking back to my dorm. It caught my eye because I haven't seen many of them especially this late into spring. Its odd shape makes it stand out from a lot of the regular shapes. I used to love helicopter leaves because they would fall from the trees spinning round and round. It was fun to run around and try to catch them. I think its neat that nature gave the seed a way of getting to the ground without falling hard. Everyone knows what a helicopter leaf is and even though the older people may not be too interested they still remember a time when they used to romp around chasing these leaves. I don't consider it art because it there was no artistic thought put into it. It is just the way the plant adapted to survive. There is no medium for which us to see it as art.

scrapbook13

I plucked this dandilion from a patch outside of the library. It caught my eye because having gone all winter without any color on the ground made my eyes awfully sensitive to even a hint of a bright color. So seeing a patch of them overwhelmed my senses. Its bright yellow petals seem to cheer people up when they come across some. Dandilions are apart of everyones lives even if for only a couple months at a time. Many people battle with dandilions from taking over their yard in the summer months but yet they are welcomed after winter because then we know summer is just around the corner. We learn about dandilions from the time we can walk and they seem to always be there. I don't see dandilions by themselves as art. Yes, they are good looking but there is nothing artistic about them. It is a weed and weeds don't exactly have a good wrap. If a person is to paint a dandilion or take some dandilions and arrange them in some artistic way then I would consider them art.

scrapbook12

This fork was found outside of the campus center sitting by itself on a table. It was weird to see this fork outside because usually when we come in contact with forks it is in some type of dining hall setting or kitchen. The peculiarity of seeing a fork sitting outside by itself is what really grabbed my attention. Its shiny metallic gleam glints with sunlight so you can't help but look at it. This item is such a huge part of our society. We use it everyday and do not think twice about it. The only reason I did a double take was the fact the fork was not where we usually see them. I feel the fork is not art because it was produced out of necessity and there are millions of other ones out there that are exactly the same. It is unlike paintings where no two paintings are the same. It has no uniqueness to it besides its location.

scrapbook11

I found this stick of gum by the back doors Montgomery Hall It was laying on the ground still in its wrapper. It caught my attention due to the bright colored wrapper that stood out on the dull brick pattern. It made me wonder why there would have been a perfectly preserved piece of gum lying on the ground short of someone dropping it. It is just something bright that seems out of place. We regard gum as something that can keep our breathe smelling fresh or for people who need an oral fixation. It is something that we have taken from nature and artifically changed to make it more appealing to the population. Gum is such a huge part of our culture that it is not suprising to see wrappers everywhere. The only thing that got me was the fact there was still a piece of gum in it.

Bonnie Veblen's SMP

Bonnie Veblen's SMP was very deep to say the least. I was able to feel her passion for her work and she helped the audience understand her motivation for the types of work she did. She explained how she used to be afraid of painting and how she just stuck to certain things because she was comfortable with them. She has stepped out of her comfort zone and really seems to be taking off with her paintings. Her landscape paintings concentrate more on keeping your view in one place as opposed to wandering off into the distance. It makes for and interesting way of looking at a landscape. It was cool to see how she challenged herself with her work. She didn't just settle for her first piece but reworked it and reworked it some more. I also found it interesting how she changed her styles back and forth until she really settled on one. She even changed scales to see which ones worked better for the message she was trying to portray. All in all I felt it was an eye-opening experience.

Artist 11

Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar created a work that is called Pedestrian. The onlookers is looking down at a crowd of people as if hundreds of feet in the sky. The miniature people walk around in different directions and even open up umbrellas if there is rain. The way Kaiser and Eshkar are able to arrange these movements is by putting movement suits on eight people and recording the way the human body reacts and the way it moves. The project explores how people act in crowds, whether the movement of the crowd effects the movement of the individual and so on. I found this project to be very peculiar because I have never thought to look at something like this in such a way as to find patterns. I think it is neat how they use the suits because it is the same process as many of my favorite video games are made.

Artist 10

John Klima created glasbead which is a three-dimensional interface with allows for twenty people to make music simultaneously. The music is made from stems that emerge from the center of the orb. These stems can be slung around using the computer's mouse and when they are knocked into each other they make a sound. Volume and pitch is controlled by using purple rings surrounding the stems. I found Klima's work to be highly interesting. The orb has a psychedelic look to it and the idea of being able to make your own music by swingin the stems around is pretty neat. I feel like a person cannot create good music without having an idea of how to play it. So I feel his project has a limited audience.

Artist 9

Mendi and Keith Obadike created a game to explore the relationship between race and color. The games tells a story of two people whose color and race are unknown the reader/player. The game is meant to show how people react to race and how people view the color of a person. The game shows no bias due to the fact the Obadike's do not reveal the characters colors and race. I was drawn to this artists work because I feel the way people are still viewed today is through what color or race they are. Because of what has been recently going on there has been a lot of prejudice towards Middle Eastern people and I feel that it is not right to judge someone like that because of their ethnicity. I feel the message the Obadike's are trying to portray is one that should be shared with anyone so that they can understand the values it can instill.

Artist 8

Natalie Jeremijenko is a new media artist who created the project "a-tree" which is an digital tree on the desktop of a computer. The tree grows in correlation to the carbon dioxide levels in the surrounding area which is read by a meter in the computer. This "a-tree" is meant to be a way to get the point across to many people how our world is being effected by our society. It is a way for a person to really see the effect we are having on the environment. She also has a printer virus that prints out a circle piece of a stump when the printer has used enough paper to equal that part of a tree. We know the tree is not really alive on the desktop but if it can grow and die, she says, than doesn't that make it real? She tries to bridge the gap in an attempt to get people to understand we must preserve our world.

Artist 7

Auriea Harvey, in February of '00, created an online art project called An Anatomy. It is apart of gallery 9 in the Walker Art Center. An Anatomy is a almost an artificial lifeform that a user interacts with when that person visits the site. The "life form" interacts with the user/users and is ever-changing because of it. She says that she tries to portray the work as one that is collaborated with the use of people across the globe. Everyone is at one place at once and effecting the life form in their own way. What drew me to the work was her idea of time. I have heard time mentioned in a lot of art and I feel that this essence of time is used in all art. Time is what changes the life form and time is also what lets the person get to know the life form. I just think it is cool that something can be effected by so many people therefore being a product of everyone.