SEMESTER ONE SEMINAR WORK

I continued to create photographic digital collages with Adobe Photoshop, but made these much more layered and dynamic than the collages in Twenty Works. I decided to use images from my time studying abroad in Scotland as my source of inspiration, and each of these collages represents my favorite places from my travels. From left to right is the Isle of Skye, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews, where I lived and attended university.

In my research for this project, I was drawn to art that was inherently political and based in history. At first, I was drawn a more humorous approach to historical events, but eventually decided to take a more serious tone with my work and align it with Stephanie Syjuco and Kerry James Marshalls artwork. This was also the first project I integrated my other major, political science, in my work. Choosing the other artists first guided the content of my own piece. Both Syjuco and Marshall combine elements of racism at home and the legacies of imperialism abroad, which I attempted to encapsulate in my piece on gerrymandering. 

I was inspired to make this project on a drive up to Maine on I-95, when I realized that if I were turn around and head south, the same road would lead to Miami. I decided to use Google Maps' satellite images of I-95s spiraling intersections two create three different works, one animated, one drawn, and one collage. I also included added elements to the collage in red, which were based on patched up concrete from on campus. 

The layering of these intersections also relates to urban sprawl, something that can easily grow or shrink depending on a variety of factors, namely cost of living, gentrification, and job availability. These factors are particularly highlighted in the animation, which slowly expands and then retreats back into itself, as if it is starting from scratch. This is my first project of the semester utilizing more than one medium at a time, and I like how the photographic collaged elements contrast against the black and white drawing and animation, at least in regard to color. Since they are removed from the rest of the context of the photo, it is difficult to tell the inspiration of the work, contributing to it's mystery and abstraction.