Andrei had encouraged me to use his studio equipment during one of the days that I spent at his studio. It was really neat learning a new lighting system and a different studio. While he trucked along with post-processing of some jobs, I fiddled around with his gear and made a few photographs. I figured I'd share the outcome!

This photo features some of my favorite artifacts that I've collected. The pendant in the front actually has a little pressed moth and some flowers in it! So neat! Anyhow, it's tricky lighting small things, and especially small reflective things! Lots of little movements and adding and subtracting light selectively allowed me to get a nice look for the photograph.

This one was really cool to make. Andrei had this huge sheet of black glass that he challenged me to use, and at first I was stuck with it. After rummaging around for some diffusion material I managed to make a neat little backlit shot of some pearls! Problem-solving is cool, you guys!

So there's a selection of the photos I made, hope you enjoyed!

Storyboarding

Last week Megan and I met up with CHER to brainstorm about their upcoming kickstarter video. By posting videos and artwork on kickstarter.com artists can get the funds they need to pursue their projects. The goal of CHER's video is to get themselves out there and explain what they do. In a nutshell, CHER is a non-profit group whose goal is to expose art to Philadelphia's vacant spaces. Now try taking that idea and turning it into a 10 minute video. A lot of ideas were bounced around: Do we have a narrator or have the statement just written? Are we going for serious or comical? Should we switch paragraph four and fiveof the script? I found this process very thought provoking and as the ideas became more solidified I started to create a storyboard to map out the scenes. With our storyboards the director will be able to organize the production aspects much easier. Unfortunately filming won't start until I'm well in the semester but I am happy to know that our contributions will be beneficial.

CHERlaborating

After the great success of Laughing in the Face of… CHER’s next endeavor will be to create a kickstarter video that will promote their work and bring in funding for their next project. In the video they will use photos and video taken from the exhibition to show the work that they can produce. CHER’s main objective is to find empty spaces and give them a new life with the presence of art. Thus their name: Champions of Empty Rooms. They see this more a community service than an artistic opportunity. Any funding that they receive will go towards obtaining spaces and supplies; on top of that they do not take commission from other individual’s sold art pieces.

But before we can even begin filming we needed a solid plan as to what the video would consist of. Thus we had a storyboarding day! Jessie was up in Syracuse checking out a possible place to exhibit. So using the wonders of Google chat we were able to have a conference meeting in Veronica’s living room, graced by the presence of her two cats, Sir Francis Bacon, and Bartholomew.

 

The meeting concluded with plans for two videos. One will be the actual kick-starter video that will be about 10 min long. It will involve stop motion, similar to Lauren McCarty’s, and will clearly state the purpose and intent of CHER and their fund raising. The second video will be a film noir spoof that will consist of Veronica and Jessie in black and white, over seriously saying things to the camera about CHER. This video will be more around two minutes and will be used as a commercial for CHER rather than a fundraiser. Veronica decided that it would be even funnier if we had dancers in the background dancing overdramatically, so I offered up some of my dancer friends from Uarts. I can’t wait to see the final result because I really love it when different majors get to collaborate on things, especially in a school that has so many different artistic majors. 

Out with the Old

On my way to CBS!

All the Photography's we had to destroy :(

Another hard day at the office... Paula, our supervisor gave us the fun task of going through old folders. In the folders were old black and white photography's - negatives - and color slides of movies that CBS has shown on their network  in the early years.  

WE HAD TO RIP THEM APART! 

The first two folders I was still questioning if she was serious but she was .... Lucky for me, I was able to save / keep some prints and negatives.

Some of the Movies: E.T - Wizard of OZ - A League of Their Own -  Indiana Jones - JAWS - etc.

It's funny that to promote movies the network would just sent out a bunch of prints in the mail and now its all done by Email and digitally ....

Hands and Armatures!

This past week Anthony and I completed making the last molds for the Mother Theresa Sculpture, which were the hand and forearm sections. To make the molds we used a different type of silicone, hence the silver appearance in the pictures below. He also taught me how to make a clay shim wall, rather than a metal one like we previously had made with the other molds.


These are the hands before the silicone was applied. The darker clay is the original clay from the sculpture and the lighter clay is the clay shim wall we created in order to make two pieces for the mold.

The pictures below are the hands when we started applying the silicone to them. You apply the silicone in layers, waiting for each one to set before applying the next. 

 

This upcoming week we should be finishing up the molds for the hands and then painting wax in them in order for them to be ready for the foundry.

Anthony also started teaching me about armatures and basic points of anatomy. Here is a picture of a basic armature that would be for an 11" figure, which is the base on which clay is applied in order to make a sculpture.

More String to Come !

So to make things more efficient, we tried thinking of ways to get the string to be packed in tight on the wood. We were thinking the little sandwich ties but when we went on our shopping adventure we found some awesome pipe cleaners that did the job!! I cut each pipe cleaner about an inch and wrapped it down each set of strings into different lengths.  Now we can fit at least 3 spools worth of string on this puppy!

I seriously love how this picture looks so much !!! I'm a sucker for shine and glitter :)

Michele got a little pic of me ready to fall asleep after a long day of stringing! haha 

We are still working on the installation and we will be setting up August 25th in Greenwich CT !!!!! I am super excited to see how this will turn out and I will of course post some more pictures!! Make sure to save the date ! The opening is September 6th! Check out michelekishita.com for more information :) 

Lots of String !

So this is another section of the Installation that I have been stringing away at ! We have rolled up a couple yards worth of string onto card board and knotting each string to the wood. It's been a tedious job but we ended up really liking the way the cardboard looks and it almost made some sort of a bouquet ! This is not what the installation will look like but we had fun playing and seeing different things we could make ! We had to roll everything up because the string keeps getting into annoying knots. We think we solved the problem in the best way with this cardboard! We shall see what happens once we get to the gallery!