This week was spent on preparing my work for the art show. I also finalized my artist statement, and had someone look over it, and give me critiques. Mrs. Keeney printed my images, and I learned how to mat my work. That included measuring the picture, and making sure that boarder didn't cover the actual picture. It was actually a really fun week, and I alway enjoy preparing art to be hung up. 

This week I spent time researching the person that the mural is of: Barney Ewell. He attended McCaskey, and went on to win one gold and two sliver medals in the 1948 Olympics. He was one of the worlds leading sprinters in the 1940's, and he was African American which is why his story is so amazing and inspiring. His high school career record of seven gold medals in statewide track competitions has never been surpassed. I really enjoyed reading more about him because of his perseverance especially during that time with racism and all the other stuff going on. 

This week was struggle and plan to overcome. I really struggled with having motivation and inspiration this week.  I feel like none of my art feels inspired anymore. But I planned to write poems for a few of my pieces which is something that I love to do. So hopefully that will help me a little bit. I also kind of want to do a collage for my last piece. Instead of using magazines I use pictures that I have taken myself with maybe a few word cutouts. 

For this upcoming artwork, I chose a mural that has rise up with strength, and decided to draw the black lives matter fist. This week I worked on creation, and also struggle and plan to overcome. I feel like I don't really know where my work is going anymore, and how to make it my own. So I was thinking, what if I made a poem for each piece of art. I feel like that would be something that would make it my own. I would also be writing about how these pieces speak to me, and how I am interpreting them. 

This week was development, it was spent practicing and sketching out the word rise. This is the one that I did that I liked best. Next week I'm going to spend time working on the creation process and getting this down on better paper. I'm also going to check adobe to see if they have text options that fit what I'm trying to do. I also want to see how It would look if I made the text outline a different color so it's not just plain black, so we'll see. 

This is where I got my reference photo from: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/double-exposure-inspired-text-effect--cms-26769 . This week was mostly spent on planning, I went out to take a picture of the mural that I want to use. I had to figure out how I wanted to use double exposure with this one, and I'm thinking that I'm going to put the mural into words. I feel like i want to use the word rise, because that's how i interpret the meaning of it. I also looked at this article that was talking about how to do the double exposure effect on adobe photoshop which I'm hoping will help me out with the process of doing this. 

This is where I got my reference photo from https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/africa.htm

This week I mostly worked on my artist statement, but yesterday i figured out that I want to draw africa and put the mural inside it. When I spoke to the artist she said that,  "I think that people don't talk enough about how much African culture is woven into and stands alone within Latinx Caribbean cultures." So i think it'll represent the roots of the cultures that she spoke about. She also said "I wanted the colors to reflect the warmth and brightness of Puerto Rico and I also chose to simplify the designs to reflect the rhythm of the music."

This week was experimenting with double exposure, and struggle and plan to overcome. I tried working with photoshop on double exposure and I watched another video, while I was doing it. I struggled a lot with it but when I finally finished it was so satisfying. Now I'm happy to actually know what I'm doing. So for my future projects I'm going to be able to do this type of photography.

This week was Inspiration, I spent a lot of this week researching and watching videos for double exposure. Basically you make one image kind of translucent or a bit see through and then you take another image and either put it behind or on top of the other image. This allows you to make two images into one. I also decided that for my last pieces this is what I am going to be using for my art pieces. This week i'm going to use the mural and a picture of the park that it was in. 

mphillips007 | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto. This week was struggles and plan to overcome. This image is my inspiration for my next piece, for me personally food has always been a big part of my culture especially since one side of my family is from the south, cooking is kind of our thing. Recipes get handed down through generations, and sometimes we add things or sometimes we keep it the same. I kind of struggled this week because I don't really know where to go to get the food from, or whether I should make it myself. I also am struggling with where exactly my portfolio is going. So, I'm just going to talk to my mom (about the food part) or something and see what I can do. 

This is a version of the photograph that i'm using for my first piece. So this week was probably creation, I needed to work on editing it because it seems light. But it kind of represents life, which most definitely has to do with culture, because obviously without life and people you cant have different kinds of culture. I also like the fact that the hands are brown, and it ,makes me think that it is a person of color, which relates as well because i'm mostly focusing on African- American Culture because its what I know best. I relate to it, and I believe that I can show it in a good way. 

This week was inspiration. This is a really bad picture, but when I went to Harrisburg this week I just took a few pictures of "cultured" things. I also wanted to get back into photography, just because its been a while since I've taken these kinds of pictures. I've walked past this mural a few times, and I just really like it. I also read an article on "culture photography." 

This week was struggles and plan to overcome. I spent a lot of this week just trying to brainstorm and come up with more ideas, so this is the only sketch that I did. I struggled with figuring out what the color scheme should be, and if I should just do portraits or actually go out into communities as well. Honestly, I think i may be able to do both, if I make a plan on how to make it connect. 

This week was "helpful or interesting conversation." This week for me was mostly spent brainstorming/trying to figure out my guiding question. So I talked to Gigi a lot, and she helped me figure out that I actually wanted to do cultures instead of nature. Then I had a very good conversation with Mrs. Keeney, and we talked about narrowing down what cultures and she gave me the idea to do people I know and kind of visually tell their story.