Journal Entry #30 April 30th

COMIC TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 9

The final chapter in McCloud's textbook is called putting it all together. This chapter discusses why comics are so important by finding the anser deep within the human condition. I loved the part when McCloud said, "No other human being can ever know what its like to be you from the inside" (p.194). The path comics follow is from mind to hand to paper to eye to mind. Therefore comics and even other forms of artwork will never been seen exactly the same way by the creator and the viewer. According to McCloud, he believes comics are one of the very few forms of mass communication where individual voices still can be heard. Communication is key to getting your point across to others, without it would be impossible for everyone to be on the same page. The first step to understanding comics is to clear your mind, then try starting by scratch. The comic creator uses a sight-based medium and finds a whole world of visual iconography. Before I read this textbook I really did not know much about comics, however I now know some tips that will help me understand and also how important narrative sequence is.

Journal Entry #29 April 29th

SEQUENCE/NARRATIVE PROPOSALS

Idea1:

The first idea I was thinking of was going more with the second option of the project, doing something with someone else's story with empathy. I wanted to do a video sequence of my roommate's band and the struggles they have gone through and how successful they have become thus far. I thought I would use video images that I have taken in the past and make some new ones to show the beginning, middle, and present of the making of their band.

Idea2:

My second idea is a little more ominous but it still goes with the second option. I want to use images though and show a sequence of a part of my Dad's life. I wanted to express through images I would edit of a nice family in the 1950s suburb. Then I wanted to show an image of symbolizing my Dad's Mother's suicide when he was 14 years old. Then I wanted to show him going to USC and suceeding in college and marring my Mom. Then I wanted to show my Dad's Dad's suicide when I was five. Basically I wanted it to represent the up and downs in life and using my Dad for an example.

Idea3:

It has been hard for me to think of a third idea, but I thought I could something a little lighter than my other ideas. For example draw a comic strip of a sequence of how close me and my roommates have become. I wanted to make an illustration of how our friendship has developed and the hard times we went through and the good ones.

Journal Entry #28 April 28th

FAVORITE ARTIST

One of my favorite artists is Shepard Fairy he does the Obey logo and some other controversial artwork. I really love his style and how all of his stuff looks like propaganda. I am really interested in new age art and digital prints, the colors he uses really pops out and catches your eye. He does an arrangement of works using different mediums such as screen prints, prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal, and canvas. I really enjoy digital media artwork, I am very new to this technique and I am trying to follow more artworks under this category. I also like how he is a young contemporary artist and I think it is very important to help support younger artists and their work. I also really like how he does a lot of portraits of people, and they are really good but he add a pop art flair which I think makes it even more interesting. The hope poster of President Obama was really great and became iconic in a way. SHepard FAiry is one of my favorite artists at the moment.

Journal Entry #30 April 27th

FREE FOR ALL

I watched the movie Avatar today and I could not help realizing so many comparisons to the Pocahontas story. Even the main character's initials are the same Jake Sulley and John Smith. Both stories are about a guy who is not apart of the girl he likes' tribe. The tribe is also very suspicious of the newcomer and they do not know if they can trust him. Eventually the man learns more about the girl's culture and realizes their benefits. The humankind and the blue people do not get along and the white man and the indians did not get along. The movie has really great affects and I think it is pretty artistic. I really liked their life tree and the new technology they used to make the movie. One of the major themes is the cliche do not judge a book by its cover. I think they could have done a more creative jobs with the names, I think the name Pandora was a little obvious. Avatars actually exist in today world, online avatars. It is crazy to think how far we have come with our new technology.

Journal Entry #29 April 26th

REVIEW FOR CONFESSION PROJECTS

The projects once again were very impressive, I felt like since they had more time their projects were extra great. One project that really stood out in my mind was the last project of class. The project when we were all in the dark and we listened to sounds in the room of someone walking, birds chirping, bears roaring, sirens, and a shower. His confession was when he was younger he got lost in the woods and when the ranger found him he was near a family bears. After that experience he ended up developing an extreme fear of the dark. I thought it was interesting how he portrayed his confession in a pitch dark room and made us feel anxiety with just sounds and no image. I thought that presentation was really strong and different. A project that I felt could have been improved was the one with the outline of a person with cigarette buds. I liked how obvious it was but I thought he could have used more materials, maybe something with smoke and fire to make his confession more symbolic. His project was really good though, I liked how it was in the middle of the classroom for the past couple days.

Journal Entry #28 April 25th

LECTURE REVIEW

This week's lecture consisted of a lot of video about personal narratives. What I found the most interesting aspect of personal stories is that some are creature of habit and the people that surround us during our public and intimate moments are the ones that really observe the pure nature of human kind. In Tony Mendoza's memorabilia of his late father called My Father's Lunch really showed how we as people enjoy repetition and are sometimes afraid of the unknown. His father ordered lunch habitually, almost everyday, for twenty five years from the same fast food restaurant. Not only did he order from the same place, but ordered the same exact food including chicken tenders, 18 mini onion rings, small french fries, two honey sauces, and a diet coke (size depending on the season) and since he was so familiar with the menu he could even talk about the costs changes over time. It is so true how much of a routine all of us get into at one point or another, even when we are younger we have all experienced similar experiences. Sally Mann the famous photographer for her black-and-white photographs of her children expressed the familiarity of childhood and motherhood. Although she was criticized for her photographs they expressed many situations we all experience at sometime in our life. Personal narratives may definitely differ from person to person, but in some way we are probably more alike than we would expect.

Journal Entry #27 April 24th

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG

Robert Rauschenberg was a famous artist mostly for his paintings and sculptures. He was most famous during the 1950s and he mainly worked in New York. One of Rauschenberg's mentors was Josef Albers and he taught Rauschenberg to do exactly the reverse of what was taught to him. He married Susan WEil in 1950 and one son but then they got divorced three years later. He had a number of romantic relationships with female artists after his divorce. Rauschenberg was known as a neo dadaist along with Jasper Johns, and he quoted saying he wanted to work, "in the gap between art and life." He is very famous for his works called, The White Paintings, Black Paintings, and Red Paintings which were monochromatic paintings that stripped down the painting of its essence and brought it to its pure nature form. He is also known for his works called the Combines, where he collected trash and other materials he found on the street and put them together trying to make something from collectables to represent the relationship between art and life.

Journal Entry #26 April 23rd

REVIEW ON ART ASSIGNMENT FOR THE WEEK

The art assignment for the week was either do an act of kindness or and act of beauty. I brainstormed a whole bunch of ideas starting with maybe using chalk and drawing a mural on the street, but then I decided I wanted to go more towards an act of kindness because I thought it might have a little more weight and be more influential. So then I wanted to incorporate my project with the homeless, and I wanted to help them out somehow. I know from a previous relationship of mine how important food is to the homeless, so I thought it would be nice to bake some cookies and hand them out. Then it dawned on me that they would probably appreciate a meal more, so because of my budget I knew I could not spend too much money therefore I decided to make peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. I wanted to try to make it as anonymous as possible, but when I left plates of sandwiches in IV park the birds were starting to attack the food rather than the people. So I handed out plates of food myself and with a couple of friends. I think this is something that I want to make a normal routine, I feel like people should help people as much as possible and it took a couple hours out of my day but it was totally worth it!

Journal Entry #25 April 23rd

DESIREE'S BOXING BATTLE REVIEW

I went to Desiree's finale at room 479 yesterday. It started at 5pm-6:30pm and I brought some friends that wanted to see what her exhibition was all about. I have never seen a live boxing match except for on television. It was really cool how she built a smaller version of a boxing ring in the room. Desiree went up against a newcomer named Nicole, they were both really good. However, Desiree was a lot stronger and it looked like she had a better reach. I could not believe how big of a work out it was, I really want to take a class. The girls were pretty fast and their technique looked really cool. Then two guys fought each other I think they both weighed around 175 lbs. The guys' match was definitely different, not to sound sexist but the guys' physique helped them hit harder and look more athletic. They hit really hard and one of the guys was so fast he reminded me of the matrix because he was dodging so many hits. They had hot dogs, beer, and chips for the audience and it was just a really fun time. I love how desiree incorporated athleticism with art, very unique.

Journal Entry #24 April 23rd

COMIC BOOK CH. 7 & 8

Chapter 7 called The Six Steps began discussing how comics can be art. According to McCloud, "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction!" Art serves an important in life for three reasons: one, they provide exercise for minds and bodies, secondly art provides an outlet for emotional imbalances, aiding in the race's mental survival, and lastly art leads to useful discoveries. Any kind of art follows six steps whether it is painting, sculpture, and even comics. This path starts off with idea, form, idiom, structure, craft, surface, this is often used in an apple diagram making the surface the peel and idea the seeds in the core of the apple. Comics help plant an the idea seed and form it into something bigger and better. Chapter 8 A Word About Color discusses the touchy battle comics had with color. This was because of commerce and technology since not one color stands out on a comic strip. It is important to keep in mind comics that are in black and white are more direct. Comics with colors takes on more significance since shapes and space becomes more apparent.

Journal Entry #23 April 22nd

ACT OF KINDNESS

So for this assignment I decided to go more towards the act of kindness side because I think there can always be more acts of giving in this world. I know I wanted to do something with the homeless community in Isla Vista because I am familiar with a lot of their stories, especially the younger crowd. I was going to make cookies, but I wanted to do something that was a little more substantial so I decided on something I could afford, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. I made 20 peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and put two on each plate and brought three of my friends with me so they could help me carry the plates. I went over to the park in Isla Vista also referred as "Bum Park," and I approached the first homeless person I saw. His reaction was a little different than what I expected he was not very excited and he just said, "Uh yeah I guess." That was fine, and I found a group of homeless people that were a little younger and they were very thankful and even agreed to take a picture. Then also I ran into an infamous homeless man that is very well-known in Isla Vista, Pirate. He was also very thankful and we talked for a little bit. This act of kindness was actually really fun and I felt really good afterwards, I think it would be a great thing to do every weekend!

Journal Entry #22 April 21st

RESPONSE TO CONFESSION PROJECTS

Once again I really enjoyed the presentations today. It looked like everyone spent a lot of time putting them together and trying to think out of the box. One of my favorite ones that sticks out in my memory was Alex's PowerPoint. I usually find PowerPoint to be dull and repetitive, but his presentation made me laugh and was very interesting. I thought it was really cool that he decided to actually go out of his way and go somewhere for this project. I also liked the live videos he showed us, it really made me want to be there. I also thought the way he presented his confession told us a lot about his personality. Everything was very organized and precise and I believe that is some of his characteristics. One project that I thought could have some improvements, was my friend Johnson's. He gave us a narrative during his whole presentation and I think it would have been stronger if we had tried to guess what he was talking about. I thought he had a really good confession and his objects were very interesting and creative. Again I think everyone did a really good job!

Journal Entry #21 April 20th

FREE FOR ALL

I am very excited to say I just contacted the Boys and Girls Club in Goleta and they are looking for an art student to help teach this new art class. I contacted the Management Coordinator and she seemed to be very interested in me. I have volunteered at the Goleta Boys and Girls Club before, but I just helped kids ranging from 6-12 years old with their homework. I really enjoy working with kids, and she said it would only be like one day out of the week and I could get Art humanity credits for it. I have been searching for an opportunity like this for awhile and it is so great how it just fell into my lap. She wanted to meet me in person on Monday, but the time was right during lecture so I gave her my availability and hopefully I will get to meet with them sometime next week. My school schedule has been so jammed pack every quarter that it seemed impossible to try to get a job or internship, but I believe this will work for me if they like me. The next step I have to do is just update my resume.

Journal Entry #20 April 19th

CONFESSION DOCUMENTATION FINAL PROJECT

I just presented my confession project today and I think it went pretty well. I ended up going with my ex-boyfriend confession; how I used up all my energy, time, and money trying to help my ex-boyfriend remain sober and better his life. During this process I ended up losing my identity and gained his of his bad characteristics. So I made a liberty scale out of a ruler, ear phones, a hanger, paper clips, and red cups. I collected a different range of sized rocks and painted them different colors. I matched the "emotion words" to the colors of the painted watch; for example the blue rock=depression, red rock=stress, green rock=jealousy, yellow rock=co-dependency, and the black rock=lost. When I first presented the project all the rocks were in the cup labeled ex-boyfriend, and the cup labeled me was empty so it was higher than the ex-boyfriend cup. I took out a rock and placed it into my cup while saying the word, "transfer." At the end my cup had all the rocks in it so my cup was lower, symbolizing how the emotions or rocks were pulling me down and ultimately I had lost myself in that relationship. I don't really like to talk about it to people I don't know very well, so it was hard but I also felt a lot of support from the class. I also chose to build the scale out of things that were easily found around the house to symbolize how much we struggled in our relationship especially financially and how we had to find anything to keep us together. I enjoyed making this project and it really challenged me to think out of the box.

Journal Entry #28 April 19th

DISCUSS CONFESSION PROJECTS

I was really impressed by everyone's confession projects today. I think all the projects were well thought out and and very interesting. One of my favorite projects was the project with all the red cups with the water in it. I thought it was great how she involved the whole class and made everyone a little suspicious of their drinks by putting a couple drops into some of the cups. This was great because the class could experience the anxiety she goes through when she is offered a drink now. I also thought the recital was good, while it was not to blunt and obvious but made sense once we knew what the meaning of the project was. I thought it must have been pretty hard to confess something like being drugged and raped in front of a class of almost strangers. I really enjoyed her presentation. There was another project that I thought was really good, however I think there was a couple of things that could have been changed to make the project stronger. The project with the poster board and the guy singing and relaxing in his car while everyone is looking at him funny and all the outside stress trying to pry their way into his car. I thought the illustrations were great, I was thinking maybe if he were to add something less obvious to the board without using text would make the piece stronger. For example I was thinking of maybe adding or using mirrors because during his explanation he was talking about the pressure of school and life, and I feel like mirrors reflect what is actually there. So if he added something that could reflect all of his stressors and then reflect his relaxation and serenity in his car might add something to the piece. I really liked all the projects though, and I am excited for Thursday!

Journal Entry #27 April 18th

LECTURE MAPS

Today in lecture the topic was maps, but not just traditional maps for location Kip also talked about different mapping tools. There is an informational map, like Min-Yin Lin's Tribe #4 that explains a concept and suggests information. There is mapping of beauty, and the example given in lecture was the famous Barbie and how Barbie Dolls are subjective and stereotypical of cultural beauty. Then followed hierarchy/power mapping that suggests who has power, such as people have a enormous and almost unfair amount of power over goldfish. Mapping demographics came next and I could not believe the example that was given. It was an old advertisement for "The Last Great Neighborhood," for Rancho California and it left out a lot of minorities and was completely insulting. Finally mapping of fashion discussed the "promotion of desirability by exclusivity," meaning people love fashion trends because they want to fit in, but at the same time they want to be unique or one of a kind. The video at the end really caught my attention, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Poto & Cabengo 1979 documentary. The video is about twin girls who have been raised in a poor home with many different dialogues surrounding them, and they had made up their own "secret language." Only the twin girls understood it, and then eventually they learned english but still communicated with each other using their made-up language. It was so interesting to me, I have never heard of anything like that before!

Journal Entry #26 April 17th

JOHN CAGE

John Cage is a very famous musical composer that changed the music scene in the early 1900s. Cage was born in 1912 in Los Angeles and was a very gifted smart child. He did very good in school, and he started taking piano lessons with his Aunt Phoebe. He entered Pomona when he was sixteen and challenged the conventional teaching styles. One story that I really liked about Cage was he was assigned to read a certain number pages of his text book before his exam. Instead he read the same amount of assigned reading but on other topics. He ended up getting an A on the exam, I believe that was an interesting test he did and it was just the start of him believing in chance. His work revolved around chance, and he had really great mentors such as Buhlig and Schonberg. He chose to stick with serialism since he worked with Schonberg and widen his skills with music. He married Xenia Andreevna Kashevaroff and had many hard times keeping a good living. He worked many jobs, but he eventually wrote some very famous pieces such as Sixteen Dances and Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra. Cage also worked in theatre and dances, he liked the idea of writing music to choreographed dance moves. Later he loved working with contact microphones that could amplify sounds. Cage had a laid back attitude and really believed it was more important to loose control than to attempt to control it.

Journal Entry #25 April 16th

CHAPTER 5 & 6 COMIC BOOK

In chapter 5 Living in Line discuss how comics show emotion and senses between or within panels. Expressionism gave artists the ability to express their inner turmoil that they could not express before. Wassily Kandinsky used line, shape, and color to help symbolize the five senses. For example reds equal angry, blues equal placid, textures equal anxious, shapes equal loud, lines equal quiet, and cold equal greens. Expressionism and synaethetics can obscure subjects because of their distortion. Pictures are a strong way to give away strong feelings, but sometimes it is not enough and words can help make it more clear. Chapter 6 is called Show and Tell discuss word choice and how when we were younger we chose any describing words that worked but then we grew out of it. When art shows attention to detail is when it is concerned with pictorial Representation, and some can be Iconic that act like symbols instead of pictures. There is also an addictive combination and that is when words elaborate an image, and the image can also elaborate the words. These two chapters definitely further explain how comics express the story with usage of images, words, and senses.

Journal Entry #24 April 15th

FEARFUL/SCARIEST MOMENT

One moment that will always stay in my hear was when I was a senior in high school I got into the wrong crowd. I had just finished playing volleyball, and I have always played a sport in my life so I had a lot of free time on my hands, too much free time. I ended up hanging out with this girl who was not a very good influence. To make a long story short, one day my new friend and I got high and decided to go shopping at the mall. We tried on a whole bunch of clothes in the same dressing room and I noticed my friend taking of the security devices off the clothes and she taught me how to do it. So I decided to put a couple of things in my purse and when I was changing she put her stuff in my purse. Next thing I know we are exiting the mall and the security comes up to us and hand cuffs us. We are taken downstairs to this basement I did not even know it existed. I had just turned 18 a month prior and my friend was still 17 and since none of the stuff was in her purse and it was all in mine I got arrested. I was escorted through the mall in handcuffs, put in a cop car, and had to spend the night in jail with three other women. One woman was in there for beating her child, another was a Walmart employee who stole money out of the register, and the third was a younger girl who broke into a old lady's house with her boyfriend and stole a whole bunch of stuff. I was so scared, I did not sleep at all and the phone call to my parents was devastating, I felt terrible and so ashamed. My parents made me walk from the jail cell, when I got out at 6am, a couple miles to school and I had to wear the same clothes and could not shower. This situation scared me so bad that it changed me as a person, and I am much more responsible and cautious now.

Journal Entry #23 April 14th

PROUDEST/HAPPIEST MOMENT

One of the most proudest moments in my life would have to be last year. I took this really hard communication research class and I wrote a 23 page research paper. I have never wrote and dedicated that much to a paper before. It was really hard because the paper had to be all hypothetical and I had to find evidence and research on a topic that has not really been studied before. I ended up writing it on initial impressions between roommates and how it affects their future relationship on a valence. Also I talked about cognitive complexities and how it plays a role during first impressions. It was actually a really interesting paper, and it is probably the only paper I have ever written that I would not mind re-reading. I spent so many late nights trying to complete and edit this paper, and I went through a couple of crying periods that I might not finish it or it was not coming out how I wanted it to. When I finally completed the research paper and got a B+ on it, I was extremely happy and proud of myself. It made me feel like I could do any assignment.

Journal Entry #22 April 13

ART REVIEW

This week for my art review I attended Bean Night at the Rainbow House on Monday night. There were some different performers that night than usual, including my friend Marc Lazlo. The band I talked about last week with my friends Rufio, Mark, and Dave also played on Monday. I really enjoyed listening to Marc's slam poetry performance. Apparently he used to be a theatre major, but switched to global studies. However, he still enjoys doing stand up comedy and slam poetry. He talked about who people think they are, and to take the time and accept yourself. We only have so much time and we need to have some kind of definition of ourselves without having to clearly define it to anyone. We should not be fearful of this world, people, and even ourselves. Marc had a lot of stage presence and the crowd showed their excitement by screaming, clapping, and snapping. It was a fresh change of scene from the usual musical performances. There was even some humor, but more importantly truth. I really enjoyed it!

Journal Entry #21 April 13th

PROUD PIECE OF ART

One of my most favorite pieces of artwork that I have done has to be this painting I did a year ago in the acrylic painting class I took at SBCC. I have always loved painting and I took this really good painting class last year that helped improve my skills. It is a painting of a portrait of a nude model, and I worked on it for about a month. One of the biggest challenges I ran into was trying to blend the perfect skin tone. I tried so many different combinations, and finally I found one that I like. The model was very pretty and where ever I you sit in class that is the view you have to paint. So I sat in the back and I had to paint her backside, which I really liked because the curve of her spine was really interesting to me. My teacher really liked my painting and my background. When the semester was over I remember very specifically that my teacher told me before I left that she will always remember my portrait painting. That was such a nice complement, and I felt very proud of myself, and how far I had gone with my art.

Journal Entry #20 April 12th

EMBARRASSING MOMENT

One of the most embarrassing moments that I can remember is when I was on a family vacation in New York. I was about 13 at the time, and we had just got a rental car. We had only been in New York for a couple of hours, and I was very impatient at the time. Well the rental car store was extremely busy, and I was so excited to be in New York and go venture around. My mom could tell how anxious I was so she told me to go wait in the car we just rented. She described a red, I believe it was a nissan altima, anyways I went out into the garage and I thought I saw the car my mom described. So I went into the backseat of the car and buckled myself in the seat, while waiting for my family to come over to me. Instead of my family, a couple got into the car and I did not even notice until they started the car. All of sudden they realized I was in their back seat, and I realized this was not my parents. I was so embarrassed because the couple looked at me really weird and I jumped out of the car and my family was a couple of cars over and they just started laughing at me. I guess it was pretty funny, but I was so embarrassed especially at that age I felt like such an idiot.

Also real quick another time I was extremely embarrassed was not too long ago when I went to Vegas for my 21st birthday. My sister met a club promoter at the new hotel Cosmopolitan, and he took us up to VIP and introduced him to his friend, and I thought he said his name was "Jonas." So I started dancing with him and he was wearing those ray ban blacked rim glasses and a funny colorful suit. I went to flail my arms up to keep dancing and I accidentally knocked his glasses off of his face, and immediately noticed I heard the promoter wrong, it was Jonah Hill from Superbad and Get Him To The Greek and Funny People. I told him I was so sorry and I could not believe he was Jonah Hill, because I was so embarrassed I grabbed my friend Ashlee and told her to start dancing with him because I got so nervous.

Journal Entry #19 April 11th

RESPONSE TO LECTURE

Lecture 3 was mostly about the body and how artists have used either their own body or other people's bodies in their artwork. One of the most controversial artists was Robert Mapplethorpe and he made The Black Book. He was an artist is in the 80s and he was homosexual and died of AIDS. In The Black Book Mapplethorpe photographed what seemed to be some of his lovers but they were all African American men. It was controversial because some of the pictures showed the men full frontal and the men were usually naked but doing masculine poses. I also learned that the opposite of love is indifference because love is filled with a lot of different emotions, including lust, fear, hate, and safety. Whereas indifference means one does not care so they do not have any emotion towards that person. I also learned what altruism means, "Unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. Another artist that really touched me was the artist Sam H., he lived in a cage for a whole entire year. He also punched in his time card every hour on the hour for an entire year. His work was about time and how "Life is a life sentence." I believe it really takes a special person to be able to keep sane in a completely unorthodox situation. I would find it terribly difficult and wearing on my mind. The lecture was a really good one!

Journal Entry #18 April 10th

CONFESSION ASSIGNMENT PROPOSAL

Proposal #1:

My first idea I thought of was to confess something I have been struggling with since I was like 13 year old and that was my scoliosis. My spine got very crooked really fast because I went through a big growth spirt, and I even got a brace designed to help prevent more of a curve. I wore it for the weekend and was completely miserable, so my parents made me a deal as long as I keep doing sports and keeping my back limber I do not need to wear the brace, so I accepted the deal. I was thinking I could buy some plaster and sculpt a crooked spine. Desiree told me to go a little further and do not be so blunt but go deeper with the meaning.

Proposal #2:

The second idea I wanted to maybe try out was confess some personal things about my ex-relationship, and how I helped my ex-boyfriend to become sober. He was homeless at the time and I gave him a place to stay and stayed up nights with him from his withdrawals and got in contact with his mom who he had not spoken to for two years. His mom and I found him a sober living home and then when he moved out of the sober living house, I had a job at Victoria Secrets and I knew someone that worked at the Gap right next to my work and my ex got a job and he decided to enroll himself at SBCC. This was a very stressful and emotionally tearing part of my life, I'm not really sure how I could express this through art. I was thinking of painting a picture of something that expresses all the emotions that I felt during that time period.

Proposal #3:

I studied abroad in Europe last summer for marketing. I was mainly based in Vienna, Austria and then I went to Prague, Munich, Salzberg, Amsterdam, and Rome. It was an amazing experience and what made it even better is that three of my best friends came on the trip. I learned a lot about myself and how to get around in a foreign country and adapt to different lifestyles. I was thinking of creating a collage of some sort or even something to do with maps because before that trip I was horrible with directions and now I feel very comfortable navigating to places.

Journal Entry #17 April 9th

READING ASSIGNMENT CHAPTERS 3 & 4

In the Understanding Comics textbook I learned some more interesting facts about comics including information on what blood in the gutter and time frames mean. McCloud first defines closure and explains how it relates to comics and other art media, for example closure is "This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name" (McCloud, p. 63). Closure is important not only in comics but in life because it gives the ability to see the big picture. The gutter is the blank space between the panels, and this is where the reader can take the two different images and form it into one. There are several distinct categories that describe the panel transitions including moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. All of those transitions offer a special way of delivering the story. McCloud explains that time frames appear between the panels when, "Our minds fill in the interviewing moments, creating the illusion of time and motion" (McCloud, p. 94). Also comics differ from culture to culture, for example when the comic tries to express motion American, European, and Japanese all use different techniques. Comics are inspired by everyday life and time, and they like to use it in their artwork.

Here is a website if you want to get more informed on specific comic books or browse books:

http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/

Journal Entry #16 April 8th

MARCEL DUCHAMP

Marcel Duchamp is a very famous brilliant artist who has done very original pieces of artwork and has changed the art scene. He questioned the definition of art, what is art? What makes art, art? He is known as a "mediumistic being," meaning he does not like to define himself or his work. Some of his most well-known pieces of art include Nude Descending, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, Large Glass, and Fountain ready-made. I really enjoyed his perspective on new age Pop Art and how some people will spend huge amounts of money on pieces of art that are either absurd or even self-destructing. He talks about how important the relationship between the artist and the onlooker. There needs to be a special connection and the onlooker is just as important as the artist. There are a number of young artists that idolize Duchamp's work and use them for inspiration such as, Tinguely and Oyvind Fahlstrom. Duchamp also states, "Society just takes what it wants. The work of art is always based on these two poles of the marker and the onlooker" (Reader, p. 14). If one is going to admire one thing about Duchamp is that he has remained to be a "free man," meaning free of movements or titles and enjoys to prove his opinion on what he believes art is.

Journal Entry #15 April 8th

ART REVIEW

I went to an open mic night called Bean Night on Monday. It was held at the Rainbow House in IV and it usually goes on every Monday at 8:30pm till about 11pm. You have to sign up early if you want to perform because it has been getting pretty popular, but it is really fun because the performances range from musicians to poetry readings to stand-up comics. The participants are usually students from UCSB and even some graduated students. My friend Rufio plays guitar and sings and he graduated from UCSB last year. He has performed at bean night a couple of times, but this week was a little different because he met two other guys and is attempting to form a band. He met a guy named Dave how is a guitarist and Mark who plays the electric violin. I went to bean night to support them, and it was packed this week. Rufio's group did really good and the other performers also were really entertaining. That night there was mostly music performances, a lot of the singers write their own songs so they are extra personal. I took a video of Rufio's performance, you should check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQnUgHnfx5U&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Journal Entry #14 April 8th

REVIEW FOR THIS WEEK ASSIGNMENTS

I thought this week assignments were really fun and creative. I enjoyed the assignment on Tuesday, since there was not enough computers in the lab I ended up writing my fiction news story with Johnson Chen. Even though we had to write at least 600 words, I had a lot of fun making up a story about the faculty club. I did not receive any comments from the website,

The link is: http://www.dailynexus.com/2010-05-27/gourmet-culinary-event-benefits-charities/#comments

I also enjoyed doing the public/private assignment. I felt really bad during presentations that I did not have any pictures to show the class, so I went home and redid the project so I could take pictures. I curled my hair outside in my parking lot and used the car windows to see my reflection. I realized from the project that my awareness and thinking differs when I am in public compared to private.

Journal Entry #13 April 7th

NON-ART OBJECT VS. ART

Storke tower can be considered as a military gun point unit, when it was first used a long time ago. Now Storke tower can be considered a piece of artwork for UCSB. Supposedly the tower was used to look over the military base when U

CSB campus was used only for military purposes. I had

no idea about this until earlier today, but now the students and faculty look at the tower as one of the tallest buildings in Santa Barbara and a beautiful piece of architecture.

Doug Aitken's "Wilderness," 2006 is a sculpture made of broken mirrors. This is a beautiful and intense piece of artwork, but also I see it as having a function other than just being aesthetically pleasing. When people walk by it they can see their reflection and sometimes it looks like it distorts their image of themselves. This can be humbling and also be helpful if you need to look at you reflection. Art and non-art objects can be more alike than one thinks.