Artist In Residence Project

This project was a huge jump for me in terms of solidifying my artistic voice and finding a certain way I like to work. It was one of my favorite projects this year and I found it exciting to work on everyday. Having a partner definitely helped and both 5am and I were able to collaborate together really well and build off of each other. Working abstractly and presenting a situation in which the materials and (paint and ink)  devices we used to spread the materials did most of the work was a fun new way to play with our art. The sense of freedom and movement we had in the project was also invigorating. Everything felt very natural which made it a lot of fun. In terms of our intentions, we changed our expectations a little bit as the project went on, but it was mostly about experimenting on different surfaces. We wound up incorporating a certain amount of detail and the idea of reconstruction/deconstruction in our work which also made our pieces more intriguing. In our first two, we captured a sense of cosmic life as well and tiny, bacterial life. Adding fine detail to those really helped bring them out and create a path for the viewer to follow. Our deconstruction/reconstruction pieces originated from rejected pieces where we had fooled around with color and texture. Yet when we took the most interesting parts and smashed them together, we came up with two coherent pieces. We really only used one or two different inks and paint, but using both a little water and different spreading devices, we captured a great array of different textures and outcomes. It was fairly simple but it was exciting to challenge each other to come up with the next cool idea. This project will provide me with some great guidance moving forward as this type of work really resonated with me.

FOR LUKE:

Working with Luke helped out a ton and it was nice being able to run our ideas by him and get quality feedback. He provided good insight for us and really propelled up into our reconstruction/deconstruction pieces. Once we fleshed out our ideas with him and got his honest feedback, we were able to dive in completely to the project and enjoy ourselves.

Our Final Works: