lots o' ceramics

just pics of a bunch of my ceramics. I'll try to upload some more info about them later.

Mood, Mental States and Mortality

Intaglio Prints- 12"x18" each

This was my series for my senior exhibition. The concept behind the series was melding my art and psychology majors into this final project. I had always been interested in mood congruent memory, and mental state learning. Mood congruent memory is the tendency for people to recall memories similar to those of their current emotional state. Mental state learning is the similar concept that to recall certain information easiest, one should be in a similar mental state as when the information was encoded.

Based on these concepts, I theorized that if I manipulated my mental state, and produced drawings all with the same subjective content (mortality) that the differences between the drawing would be reliably detectable to observers.

Next, I created an experiment and administered it to 30 psychology students through the psychology lab on campus. Showing them images of my drawings (which were turned into prints for the final product) I asked them to match each drawing to the mental state that they thought it was produced in. The mental states used were; stressed, drunk, caffeinated, calm, sleep deprived and a control drawing (with no mental manipulation). Video explains how mental manipulations were achieved.

Results of the experiment found that participants could reliably pick the calm drawing, and there was near reliable results for the other states. When the caffeinated and stressed conditions were combined there were reliable results along with combining calm and sleep deprived. The hypothesis for these results is the crossover of these states was because the physiological similarities of the states.

Self-Portrait to Freud

Intaglio Prints
18"x12" each

For this piece I set out with the goal of making three separate piece which could stand alone but when printed in a certain orientation would interact. I also like how this aspect of it can also sort of illustrate the process of printmaking. The linking imagery between all three prints is a neuron. This leads into the content, each plate represents a different aspect of Freuds theory of mind (Id, Ego, Superego) All three together were intended to create a type of self portrait.

Id: The red plate represents my id, which operates on the pleasure principle. It is impulsive and has no regard for others. I started with a simple line etch of the most impulsive line i could draw. Then for the value, sticking with the abstract, I tried to come up with an etch which would be passionate for both love and hate. I mixed a deep red ink to echo these themes.

Ego: The green plate represents my ego, which operates on the reality principle. For this plate I took the concept that due to perception, the body makes it's reality. Especially with the setup of the eye, and due to lateral inhibition, which causes edges in the environment to actually be more clear than they are in reality. Therefor I made a line etch of box edges, and did a systematic stage bit for shading. you can thank lateral inhibition for your ability to detect the exact edge of each stage bite so easily. I decided to print in a green hue as this is the color closest to the average of all three color cone types in the retina.

Superego: The blue plate illustrates the superego, which operates on the moral principal. The superego is very systematic and logical. The line etch i did a simple strait forward (get it?) line etch, and for shading also used a technique which would give a strait and peaceful texture.

Say Something!

I seem to have more of an issue than most people with meaningless artwork. I don't necessarily believe that all artwork has to be heavily based in content, but nothing pisses me off more than hearing someone talk about their work and say it really isn't about anything. So I wanted to make a call to artists by taking a jab at one of the one's who says nothing. I etched this statement into an intaglio plate and chin cole'd a Bob Ross painting under it. Make your work mean something.

shitisfuckedup (Andrew Carnegie)

Charcoal Drawing
42"x48"

With this piece I was further exploring the use of propaganda posters. With this piece I was playing with the idea that propaganda is designed to be a low level process, and appeal to a subjects laziness in terms of thinking. The layout is designed to look like a tribute to Carnegie, while the content quite clearly is not. The text as well requires some secondary thought to realize the theme I was dealing with was "The Ends Justify the Means".

The inspiration for this piece came from discussions in high school and reading about Andrew Carnegie online. It drives me nuts that Andrew Carnegie is revered as a great and philanthropic American. Certainly I cannot deny that he did some great and noble things with his fortune, but that does not excuse the horrible things he did to acquire that fortune. Thanks also to The Offspring for the inspiration.

Synesthesia Series

Intaglio Prints
8"x12" each

1.These Amps Go to 11
2. Bananas
3. Just Out of Reach

This series of prints was inspired by the psychological condition known as synesthesia. Synesthesia is an overlap of two senses due to too many neural connections. I used drypoint etching for the figurative aspects and a la poupee to selectively ink the plates.

The first print is dealing with the concept of sound-color synesthesia. In which the subject gets color activation in their visual field from hearing certain tones, in this case some metal.

The second print, deals slightly more with the continuum of synesthesia and how most people demonstrate evidence of synesthesia. For instance when cheese is described as sharp, people understand the meaning of that phrase even though "sharp" isn't technically a word that applies to the sense of taste. With this piece I tried to create a visual connection to the taste of bananas.

The third print dealt even further with the fact that most people display synesthetic tendencies. Both physical and emotional pain are described in the same way, i.e. pain. In fact they are both also processed in the same area in the brain. This piece was trying to put a visual representation on an emotional pain, when love is just out of one's grasp.