Sasquatch Retires!

Here is the centerfold image for this semester's first mailer exercise using InDesign. The concept of my mailer was the retirement of Sasquatch and is relocation to an elderly living community. Here is a photoshopped image I constructed of Sasquatch entertaining party guests and fellow residents.

I did not learn much about InDesign other than its useful guides and layout options.

How to Hide the Body

Here is an image from my InDesign tutorial of How to Hide the Body. I started out with hand-drawn ink images that I scanned into photoshop. I added wrinkled paper textured by downloading several wrinkling brushes and also downloaded multiple blood brushes to assimilate blood splatters. This tutorial gives options to disposing a dead body whether it be underground, in your home, under cement or in outer space. I imported different text from online to give an eerie typography feel to the book. Due to printing problems, I was never actually able to bind the pages but I constructed a black, textured hardcover with gold, spray painted insides and shadows of a skull and mug shots. The book was loosely held together by a think black, leather belt. I went through a lot of ideas before I came to an instructional about corpses. These included: how to throw a party for a hamster and also how to write and instructional manual. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my final result and was even more happy that I got to use my own drawings.

Deconstruct. Reconstruct. Contextualize.

Here is my final image for the reconstructed contextualized project. I used multiple images for this project, all that I took on my own. The dwarf hamster on the left is my pet/roommate Carlos. I tricked him into eating from his bowl to get him in a stand up position. A lot of masking went into this little guy. I used a hair-like brush to work on the edges and add definition to the fur. I also used small brushed to recreate whiskers since his got cropped out. I also used a desaturated, low opacity copy of the little guy for the shadow. Next to Carlos is an image of Carlos' transportation orb. He rides this thing all over place but after much use there is tons of writing and duct tape all over it. I had to use several effect to bring out highlights in the plastic and to also give it a translucent effect revealing the background. Most of the lines on the ball are drawn in to show light contrast. The trees and pathway came from a very "yellow" picture that I took from TCNJ's campus. I used multiple photo filters to manipulate the completely yellow-green trees into a warmer, fall atmosphere. The cyborg coming from the trees is a combination of my neck and a outdoor parking garage sensor light. I used motion blurs and different gradients to synthesize a metal texture. Lastly, is a cropped image of Loser Hall that proves to be a barrier/destination for adventurous Carlos. There are many similar hues throughout the picture and that is because I felt having comparing photo filters would tie the picture together more and give it a more realistic feeling. The hardest part of this project was making the cyborg appear as if it was coming out of leaves. I used different leaf brushes and cloning stamp tools to make it look as natural as possible.

underwater typography

Here is underwater tutorial from abduzeedo that uses different filters and layer masks to create an underwater effect to typography. Besides the highly unrealistic bubbles, the combination of photoshop elements make a really cool image.

Breathe Smoke

This is one of the coolest typography tutorials I have ever seen. For the weak eyes, the word says breathe and it is in a smokey effect that required a lot of blur effects, color dodge blending and downloadable smoke brushes.

Here is a painterly apple that I made with Illustrator's bristle brush. I like the idea of being able to create your own brushes and the fact that brush options allows you practically manipulate every strand of the brush.

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/create-a-painterly-apple-with-illustrators-new-bristle-brush/

WORST.TUTORIAL.EVER.

Here is an illustrator tutorial that was labeled with a time completion of 1.5 hours. Well, it took me 4, but I'm really happy with the final result and the immense amount of information and tools I became familiar with while working through the steps. I never felt comfortable with Illustrator but these tutorials definitely make a substantial difference.

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/how-to-create-a-curious-owl-in-illustrator-cs4/

Pathfinder Tool

Here is a simple Illustrator tutorial about the pathfinder tool and pen tool. Pretty simple/boring stuff but good for learning the basics.

Illustrator Blend Tool & Typography

Here is another abduzeedo tutorial that works with illustrator's blend tool and typography. I made a cover album for the experimental music group MGMT. I never knew about the blend tool before but I couldn't stop playing around with different options and settings. I can't wait to use it in future projects.

http://abduzeedo.com/cool-typography-blend-tool-illustrator

Here is a really cool abduzeedo tutorial on changing the appearance of plain text to a lit up casino sign. This exercise required an excessive amount of layers of both text, lights and background textures. This tutorial taught me a lot about different blending options and also using several embossing and shadow techniques.

http://abduzeedo.com/easy-casino-style-sign-photoshop

Color Halftone Filter

Here is a tutorial that use's comic artist Roy Lichtenstein's illustration style by working with the color halftone filter. This tutorial requires both illustrator and photoshop. I used one a picture of one of my favorite music artists: Max Bemis. I had a little trouble using the filter on this tutorial. It may have been because of the original image quality but I used a layer mask to hide unwanted dots, such as on the face.

http://abduzeedo.com/simple-roy-lichtenstein-style-illustrator-and-photoshop

Photoshop Bas Relief Tutorial

Here is the final image from my manipulation of photoshop's bas relief effect. I used my own images of a tree background texture and a line drawing of a surrealistic octopus. This was probably one of the easier tutorials. The link is below:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d/quick-tip-create-a-bass-relief-effect-with-photoshops-3d-tools/

Week of 10/18 - 10/25: Challenge #3

Here is my final result of the "image blending to create a forest scene" exercise. Working through the tutorial opened my eyes to different filters such as gaussian blur that helps images look more hyperrealistic. I had some trouble with the overall photo filters which resulted in a more blue-er image. In the end, that is one intimidating bear.

p.o.e.m. b.o.o.k. v.i.z.u.a.l.i.z.a.t.i.o.n

Going into this project I had a few initial ideas that I wanted to I knew I definitely wanted to incorporate in my final piece. I was very enthusiastic about working with Chris Tusa’s poem because there was a lot of imagery and it dealt with a familiar theme, Snow White. I took my fellow classmates’ suggestions about researching the original Brothers Grimm version to see how it relates with well known Disney rendition of the story. Tusa gave the poem an eery feel with the story changing from the prince’s kiss waking the sleeping girl to the girl actually dying because in reality a kiss does not wake the dead or poisoned.

When I began working with my images I remembered the critiques from past projects and tried to avoid complicated, cluttered designs. I worked with as little color as possible and focused on the details of the design and text alone. I went through the Suitcase application and searched for fonts that I felt applied to my poem’s theme. I found a few including: Prestige Elite, Warning LXT Pi, Zebrawood, and Georgia. I was not satisfied with the few already on the hard drive so I went to www.dafont.com and downloaded extra fonts such as: Abusive Pencil, The King & Queen Font, Jellyka Castle Queen, Typo Garden Demo, A-Lolita Scorned, and Floral Two. The two fonts I used the most throughout my book are Jellyka Castle Queen and The King & Queen Font.

I made my final book piece to look like a large storybook. I used cardboard to give it a sturdy look. I contemplated painting the cardboard with either acrylics or spray paint but both resources were out of my reach. The size of the book correlates not only with my primary intent to make it immense, but also with to hold an old tape recorder that would play a music box sound when you turned to the last page. The music helps illustrate the last line: “If only you could hear the songs my bones sing.”

A lot of my images I brought directly into Illustrator and used live trace with varying thresholds and brush and stroke lengths and weights. I only used Photoshop to use quick selection and the gradient tool. I also used a variety of filters and the warp tool to blend images or give them a unique texture. All of the text was done in Illustrator using mostly the type tool or the type on a path tool. I printed the final images on the Xerox printers due to a surprising lack of printer points. I also used my dorm room printer to take care of the few images that have color. I tied the pages to the cardboard story book and manipulated the final page so that the coffin holding the girl was raised above the surface and gave the essence of a three-dimensional format.

w.o.r.d. v.i.s.u.a.l.i.z.a.t.i.o.n.

Classmate Presentation Comments

The first "mock exhibition" was presented by Emma and Radha. They introduced their theme of a "Sci-fi Nightclub" which would include installations from artists, Erwin Redl and Leo Villareal. I was very interested in hearing their idea for their exhibit because, I too, was researching Erwin Redl but on a different level which is why I loved the interview with him because I got to see him on a more personal level. Both of these artists worked with light - Erwin Redl leaning more towards cyberspace, whereas Villareal's attention was drawn toward the organic and geometric elements of light. Fused together, they would create a virtual reality using the medium of luminescence. "Living Computer," an exhibit curated by Michelle and Stephanie combined the works of Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommere with Raphael Lozano-Hemmer. I thought Raphael's installation of Pulse Park was amazing and installation of an interactive virtual species would be really fascinating. Liz and Keri proposed their exposition "Independence" that would take the two mirroring techniques of Q.S. Serafijn and Gerhard Mantz and fuse them together. This exceptional visualization would bring two artists who work opposite from eachother (Serafijn working from digital --> reality and Mantz creating his work from reality-->digital) and have them coexist to create a public digitally enhanced landscape that subliminally gets people to notice without imposing on their way of thinking.

Tim and Cristina presented a gallery that encompass the works of Gregory Scott and Oliver Wasow. "Perceptions" would alter the viewer's mood as they enter an undercurrent of loneliness, disconnect and isolation - all main themes of these artists' works. "Future Shock Love Sounds" curated by Keith and Renee was my favorite "mock art gallery." I find myself particularly indulged in the medium of music and sound. I have also heard of both Danny Deacon and Danny Perez and I think they are both brilliant, especially Perez's work with Animal Collective. I honestly wish this was a real exhibit because I would definitely be willing to pay a good amount of money to experience it. The final presentation that was done by Alayne and Kaitlin introduced "Mechanical Creations: The Integration of Mechanics and the Natural" exhibiting Ken Rinaldo and Ken Feingold. I feel that if these two artists worked together using their knowledge and experience with artificial life, robotics and integration with biology, they could create something completely original and find a lot of success with it.

Define: Structure.

Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture - founders of Asymptote Architecture, a decade old New York based architecture firm that has been highly recognized for not only their building designs, but also for their art installations that are exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and especially the United Arab Emirates.

http://www.asymptote.net/

Erwin Redl is an Austrian-born artist whose main medium is LEDs as he works in both two and three dimensions to give a new meaning to "space," interior and exterior throughout his installations that are both nationally and internationally known.

http://www.paramedia.net/

Elena and I proposed an exhibition that would take place in one of Asymptote's establishments, like the Strata Tower in Abu Dhabi. The exterior of the building would display an immediate fusion as the firm's usual use of outdoor aesthetic architectural lighting is installed by Erwin Redl. The interior would then be transformed into a perplexing atmosphere as guests reconfigure the overall meaning of edifice. Interior installations from Asymptote would include their award winning digital designs for upcoming projects as well as their groundbreaking use of virtual reality and digital space environments. Erwin Redl would contribute with his use of LED lighting to manipulate rooms making it an alternate interactive dimension.

Snow White, to the Prince

by Chris Tusa

Truth is, my life was no fairytale,
that afternoon, I lay, a smiling corpse
under a glass sky, a rotten apple
lodged in my throat like a black lump
of cancer, your sloppy kiss dying on my lips.

Did you really believe a kiss could cure
the poison galloping through my veins,
as you stood there, with your ugly white horse,
the voices of dwarfs buzzing like flies
in the apple-scented air?

I wish you could see me now,
how I take to the sky, a witch
without a broom, an empty black silhouette
with stars for teeth, spooking deer
into briar patches, swallowing the shadows of trees.

I wish I could slip into my beautiful white flesh,
just once, my pretty white feet stuffed into black slippers,
my poisoned-breath fogging up the smiling mirror.
If only you could see the light pouring from my skin.
If only you could hear the songs my bones sing.

MARCO!..........GREEN!

One of my favorite mediums used in art is film. When I visited the Whitney Biennial I recall spending a substantial amount of time viewing both Ari Marcopoulos' and Jesse Aron Green's video performance installations. Ari emigrated to the United States in the late 70s and has centered his work around the theme of American youth subcultures. This is apparent in his 7 minute, 32 second 2009 video Detroit. This installation also encompasses his other art

interests such as underground music and extreme rebellious behavior toward athletics. Two boys are seen in a child's bedroom creating a sense of "noise rock" using various amplifier pedals unattached to instruments. They throw a small mediocre concert of gritty, loud music by strategically combining the sounds of distorted sound waves. The video uses vibrant color and energy to assimilate with the feeling of youthfulness and freedom of expression.

Jesse Aron Green's video installation shows a large amount of contrast to Ari's dynamic performance. The 2008 80 minute loop Arztliche Zimmergymnastik which literally translates to "Medical room gymnastics" is based off of an 1858 book by the German physician Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber which describes a set of gymnastic exercises. Green uses this text as a choreography for sixteen male performers demonstrating forty-five

exercises to the manual's exact instructions. The setting of the film is in a neutral room with sixteen square platforms where grown men sporadically appear and demonstrate awkward or foreign movements. There is little to no sound aside from the noise of footsteps or bodies hitting the wood. Arztliche Zimmergymnastik also differs from Detroit in terms of performance because Detroit exhibited a less controlled execution whereas Arztliche Zimmergymnastik demonstrates a specific ritual.

I found that I continued to watch Ari's piece because it was continuously entertaining, but after a while you get the gist of children making noise. Green's video leaves the viewer with such a perplexed feeling that they proceed with watching as much as they can in order to grasp some sort of concept with what is being shown throughout the loop.

s.e.l.f. v.i.s.u.a.l.i.z.a.t.i.o.n.

My first concept for the self-visualization triptych was thrown out the window days before the final files were due. The only thing that stayed pretty much the same is the middle panel which was a montage of my old houses that laid a background for pictures taken throughout my younger childhood. I modified its appearance by putting the pictures of my houses through a black and white threshold and also putting the layered pics through either a color gradient or a negative color effect. I also accompanied the panel with lyrics from Regina Spektor’s song “On the Radio.” This quote just reflects my overall view of how growing up and aging works and also adapting to changes as you grow.

The idea for my left and right panel changed dramatically as well when I spent a few days taking negative pictures with my camera phone. The settings of these pictures were Washington Crossing Park and New York City. The pictures were amazing because of the coloring and also because the camera was only a three megapixel the scenes of urban and nature turned into more of a design. Unfortunately, before I had the chance of uploading these pictures to create my finished piece my phone was stolen. I was devastated but realized I loved the idea too much to not go through with. I was able to compile some pictures from my old camera of the city and Central Park and I also used some images I found online. I manipulated the pictures using varying gradients and color effects and I also used the smudge and gradient tool to make them flow together.

The left panel is a combination of photos that represent nature, the beach and wind. These are by far my favorite things in life and although they are simple, it is in these conditions where I am most serene. I used a lyric from Animal Collective’s song “My Girls” that reads: “There isn’t much that I feel I need; a solid soul and the blood I bleed.” I feel that this relates to the effortless beauty of nature and its impact that is has on my mood and emotions. The right panel is a culmination of photos from New York City. I wanted to incorporate this metropolitan jungle in my piece because it is where I see myself in the future. I have always been a shore kid and have spent my entire life on the beach with the tallest structure around me being a ferris wheel. I can really see my career prospering in the city and I can definitely picture myself continuing my life there. I used a lyric from Radiohead’s song “Bulletproof with Butterfly Wings” that states: “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” When I say rage, I am not referring to rage as in anger, I pertain it more towards unreleased energy. Fully indulging myself into my career will allow me to hit my highest potential.

I scanned the childhood pictures into photoshop where I was able to use the quick selection tool. The house pictures were also scanned in and the top house picture was scanned in through Adobe Illustrator where I live traced and painted it. The rest of the work was done mostly through Photoshop and the finished panels went through Illustrator again where I added the final text. I wanted the panels to be poster size, so I decided to make them each fourteen inches wide and three feet long. I used the wide format printer and printed on Premium Luster paper because I really wanted the colors to vibrant and beautiful. I was ecstatic about the ending results. I plan on mounting them so that they each have a small black frame separating each from the panel next to it.

A.I. Exercise 2

Here is the final image from the second Adobe Illustrator exercise using Live Trace and Live Paint. I chose to first layer some images and adjust some coloring using curves in Adobe Photoshop. I took a background of some lightning and place a picture of my brother, Jack, dressed up as Albert Einstein next to a picture of professional surfer, Rob Machado.

Marina Abramovic.Frida Kahlo.Cui Xiuwen.

Marina Abramovic was very fascinating and regale as she spoke of her photographic work and performances. Her collections show self portraits that demonstrate a test of her physical and mental limits. Many of her pieces demonstrate natural and real feelings that she encounters in her own life. My favorite piece of hers is “Happy Christmas” where she presents herself in unaesthetic way expressing an emotion of utter despair and sorrow. It resembles the ending of her marriage with her husband. I love this photograph because I believe the main holidays people celebrate today have become artificial with there demand of gifts and glazed over get togethers with their relatives. This photo shows the other side of the holidays, the one hidden behind the decorative wrapping paper.

Frida Kahlo’s work was absolutely stunning as she brought out the beauty of herself as a woman and her Mexican culture. In

her self-portraits she portrays herself as strong, dignified and liberated. Her story was incredible entailing love, struggle, pain and the path of making herself an independent female artist. Her technique of painting with the use of a mirror’s reflection was very new to me and although staggering it seems extremely difficult. Her piece that intrigued me the most is “The broken column” where she paints herself nude covered in nails and bandages and split in half by a simple, damaged stone column in place of a spine. This photo is in reference to her almost fatal automobile accident that left her bedridden for months. It was during this time of hospitalization where she found her amazing talent in painting.

Cui Xiuwen’s photos were celestial and unblemished as she used the theme of displaying herself wearing white clothing. Her works address the life of a young single woman living in China and her emotions that she carries with her every day. I know that in China women are held at a significantly lower status then men and I could only imagine the agitation and frustration that females feel on a daily occurrence. Her interest in womanhood varies from the level of a child as those portraits where she is wearing a school uniform to the level of a grown adult experiencing pregnancy and maternity. Several of the works in her collection “One day in 2004” exemplify a growing tension that draws the viewer in and tempts them to call out to the girl and ask, “What is wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

illustrator exercise 1

p.h.o.t.o. a.l.t.e.r.a.t.i.o.n.

Here is the final result from the first project: photo alteration. I used the hole in the wall as a sort of setting which I related to a cave or underground environment. I then became intrigued with the interior of a printer and realized it could definitely be used to show a human interaction. That is when I asked two roommates from my floor to pose for my project. I worked a lot with altering the colors of each image to give it a more darker tone rather than a vibrant one. I also had to put numerous hours ino working with different layers of transparency. I found a lot of frustration and difficulty with this task but after a large amount of tweaking and undoing I'm pretty satisfied. I know I will become more comfortable with this technique with future Photoshop practice.

pictures for project 1

These are the four images I plan on using in my first photo alteration project. The top two pictures show human interaction for I will manipulate Tyler and Ryan so that they work as opposing forces towards each other. The third picture is the interior of my hp printer. Displayed in the center are the color and black ink cartridges. The bottom photo is one I took of the exterior of a hole in the wall of the girl's bathroom in Wolfe Hall.

c.l.a.s.s.m.a.t.e. c.r.i.t.i.q.u.e.s

It was great to read my fellow classmates' opinions about artists: Gregory Crewdson, Teun Hocks, Jeff Wall, & Cindy Sherman. I was able to see which opinions were similar to mine and I also got the opportunity to learn more about these artists then what I captured from my own critiques. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from their blogs -

Gregory Crewdson ~

Keri: "Because his pieces were not titled, I was able to view with work without any "previously set" notions. It was completely up to me to set the scene, or "title," without considering the role the title may play.

Michelle: " Was this some sort of mockery of American life? I felt as if a crime just took place. His work is cohesive, very interesting and captures attention. With detail, I wanted to comb through the scenes like a detective, but finding nothing."

Teun Hocks ~

Tim - "Hock’s work I think is more interesting as a process than the actual work is when completed. I think its pretty cool to take the values and add color instead of the opposite that has been done countless times before."

Stephanie - "His works appear to be based in sections. Each section a continued piece of the section next to it. Some pieces are divided equally and others are divided with organic lines, giving it a feel of abstraction."

Liz - "Hocks main series uses the same model so that the focus is on the action, not the person. He has an isolated and obvious focal point and does not use excessive wide shots like Crewdson."

Cindy Sherman ~

Alayne - "Knowing the origin of Cindy Sherman's work, for example that they are all film stills, all conveying, pausing, particular emotions and ideas, has given me a new and towering respect for her."

Renee - "However, artist Cindy Sherman differs from her peers by setting her works in more of an enclosed space. Centralizing her works more upon the study of women, this could be to better capture the figure. Moreover, where the other artists manipulate color to shift the overall mood of their pieces, Sherman has set her works to tones of black and white."

Jeff Wall ~

Rahda - "Jeff Wall’s work refers to history of art and philosophical problems of representation. He captures social issues in life in a more realistic fashion than the other two artists."

Keith - "His photographs since the early 1970's have been on the cutting edge of the avant-garde and he is not even a New Yorker. Wall, a Canadian photographer, is know for his large scale Cibachrome prints (cibachrome being related to a positive to positive printing process that makes slides as opposed to prints on paper)."

Cristina - "They may not be as painterly as Hocks, or as visually exciting as Crewdons, but Wall's works are lyrical much as they come off street-wise and ordinary...his visual poetry evident in his philosophical and art historical references."

i.n.h.e.r.i.t.e.d. t.r.a.i.t.s

Today was my second time visiting Nina Katchadourian and Heidi Kumao's art exhibit: Inherited Traits. To my own surprise, however, I had a totally different experience and also a new appreciation for the six displayed pieces. The first, most obvious piece is Nina's Genealogy of the Supermarket. Not only is this piece extremely clever and humorous, but it is also relatable to almost every one of its viewers. Personally, I was able to recognize a large handful of the pieces and found myself laughing at the fantasized relationships between them. You could detect a personality and story from each of the portraits and their frames without any commentary or writing.

The next piece was Kumao's Translator. I discovered a greater appreciation of this piece when I was able to hear the "parents" speak and criticize their child saying things like "go away" or "I have no money." The use of video showed a different personality in each of the parents. One displayed scribbly extending lines that would eventually be erased. I saw this chair as the father, not really knowing much about his child and also not really caring that she is a mystery. The other video displayed a spinal cord that would disappear and be followed by plates crashing. I saw this parent as the mother, tearing down her child's inner strength by criticism or verbal abuse. It was compelling to know that you, as the viewer, was in charge of the decision of which parent to go to. The machinery and materials used gave a dreary and detached feeling as the crank dragged the delicate child back and forth to disappointment.

Katchadourian's Accent Elimination displayed a loss of inherited traits in the way that Nina has never been able to demonstrate her parents' unfamiliar accents. I thought it was really cool that her parents were Armenian because my freshman reading requirement was Black Dog of Fate - a novel about the Armenian Genocide and its effects on future generations. Her final piece The Nightgown Project also had a underlying feeling of a lost part of culture. The aspect that I enjoyed the most about this piece were the "flaws" or missing material. For example: when Nina spent three years trying to find the right location of one of the earlier pictures but decided to leave it blank due to frustration; and also when a year was missing due to the war.

Kumao's last two video projects were extremely moving. The entire display including use of furniture and accessories to the film really added to these pieces as a whole. I remember the story of Frederick Douglas and how he told the slaves trying to escape to follow the "drinking gourd" or the big dipper. Contrary to this, I had absolutely no idea about the Japanese-Americans who were held as prisoners during World War II. This piece went with the theme because of Kumao's heritage of being a Japanese-American. I'm sure that making this project was extremely important to her and exemplified a lot of emotion and pain.

c.o.m.p.o.s.i.t.e. e.x.e.r.c.i.s.e

Today was my first time working with Photoshop so I was very apprehensive about it. However when I completed my first piece I realized that I had fallen in love with the program and am anxious to use it in the future. This is a composite of 5 separate images which include: a nebula, an astronaut, an abandoned underwater shipwreck, an old photo of an external hard drive and a picture of a fish bike from Nevada's Burning Man Art Festival taken by photographer, Scott London.

I was very impressed in the work done by artists Gregory Crewsdon, Teun Hocks, Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman. Each artist had a very different style or personality towards their work and utilized very different techniques. Teun Hocks' photos were self portraits of him in a somewhat surreal situation. From swinging on a chandelier to floating on an iceberg, he had a very quirky and comical nature about his work. An aspect which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman both displayed a lot of work from the 70s and 80s decades yet executed their pieces in very different lights. Sherman had a somewhat feminist view to her work displaying either herself as various heroines in Untitled Film Stills or by demonstrating the female representation of what society wants to look at. Jeff Wall did a lot of work with street photography. Two of my favorite pieces from him are Milk and Doorpusher.

I saved Gregory Crewdson for last because his digital images really blew me away. His creativity with overlapping images and combining scenes and situations never failed to amaze me. I loved how I was able to feel sort of a dreary or uncomfortable emotion when I viewed pieces such as: The father, Sunday roast, or Ophelia. His Twilight and Beneath the Roses collections were stunning and I am really glad I got the opportunity to find this artist. Picture above right is Crewdson's piece from Beneath the Roses, Ophelia.

Here is another example of Alex Andreev's work. He has a collection of altered photos taken in the Moscow subway where photography is strictly prohibited.

i.n.s.p.i.r.a.t.i.o.n.

I find myself easily inspired by everyday experiences. My surroundings in general and especially my subconscious really help me find ideas whether I am day dreaming or asleep. The art that I find most interesting is when something real and usual is transformed into something surreal or unfathomable. I love surrealism and surrealist artists such as: René Magritte and Salvador Dali. I also enjoy the work of Russian artist, Alex Andreev who calls his style of art "Hermetic."

To the right is an example of Andreev's Hermetic style.