jalouie - Experience-Reproduce

Work:

The work I chose was Stadia II by Julie Mehretu created in 2004 in the medium of ink and acrylic on canvas. Stadia II was created to explore issues of  national identity, power, commerce, entertainment, and conflict. Mehretu captured this by creating the feeling of stadium architecture in her piece along with the use of country flags and other graphic symbols. The flags and the way they are drawn so that some seem to be behind others is meant to give the piece a sense of time and a sense of group identity coming together. Stadia II was meant

I chose this work because when I saw it, I was immediately drawn towards it. The lines on the bottom seem to draw you towards the middle of the large canvas, and the bright colors and abstract lines were really appealing to me. What also interested me in the work, was that at first it had the quality that it looked like an intricate doodle one would see in a notebook and that really interested me.

Experience and Response:

The main things I experienced looking at the piece were the feelings of being drawn into the piece, the sense of people/things coming together to create something, and the sense that I was entering into a stadium where something was about to happen. I also noticed that the painting, while being very large was also really heavy on detail and everywhere you looked on the canvas something new seemed to be happening however I was always slowly drawn to the center where this sense of swirling was happening. The painting also seemed to give off feelings of anticipation, playfulness, seriousness, floating, and slight isolation, fr the reason that to me it seems that you are watching from faraway. However, it also seems like your part f a large crowd come to watch and see something happen.

Product:

I created a digital art piece made in Photoshop. I choose this medium because I felt like my experience was better shown than heard. In my opinion that feeling of being drawn into something unknown with a variety of other forces influencing what you're drawn to would be hard to get across through music. 

I wanted to capture that feeling of being drawn in but also to capture that sense of spiral movement in the piece. So I added the spirals that for me draw the eye to the immediate center. I smudged the spirals because the feeling of being drawn in was more hesitant and other factors seemed to blur that feeling of being drawn in. I decided to color 3 f the spirals in an attempt to mimic the feel of the bright colors that first drew me to the painting. For me, when I look at the piece, I'm immediately drawn to the center only to find the center to be slightly devoid of anything in particular. Things are happening around it and it seems like the center is a product of all the things happening around, yet there is a mystery as to what exactly is happening. 

When I first viewed the painting, it made me feel as if I was just entering the stands to watch something like a concert or a sports game. I could almost visualize the people sitting in chairs before me and the back of their heads as we stare in collective union at what was about to happen/already happening. However, later I also saw the painting as the coming together of a variety of sources to create something unknown. The stars were added to the edges to represent the variety of sources that influence the product  and to represent the anticipation one feels right before the unknown is revealed. I ran out of time before deciding whether to have the box show a stadium scene or something new and unexpected. Though, I do enjoy it being blank although it makes the painting feel slightly empty, I think it captures the feeling of mystery.

Reflection:

I feel like I captured my experience semi-accurately. I'm happy with how it came out though it does feel really empty and I don't know if that is exactly what I was going for. I think this was really great in trying to represent an experience through art since I agree with Dewey that art is an experience. I think a problem I see is that I don't know whether when I look at this again later if I'll be able to feel what I felt when I looked at the painting the first time. Since I went to the Carnegie Art Museum just a few days ago to view the painting, the  feelings are still fresh in my mind so when I look at my painting I can still remember the experience. I think if I were to do this again, I would do a sketch on paper first. In my mind, I knew what I wanted to do and had a basic idea of the swirls, the colors, the busy border, and the focus on the center. However, when I started drawing it was hard to get the lines exactly right and I was torn between leaving the middle blank, trying to capture the feeling of a stadium, or trying t capture the feeling of something new being created but ran out of time before I could make a lot of leeway in drawing the center focus.