Human Xerox Machine

Marie Marchant

Human Xerox Machine

                            On April 25th, 2018 the Advanced Drawing class at Chapman University collaborated together in the ongoing project, “Human Xerox Machine”. Each year the professor, Cindy Rehm, proposes the project to the class. Essentially the project takes objects from outside volunteers and the class attempts to recreate that object visually through found materials everyone brings to class. The project each year gets named something slightly different by each Advanced Drawing class. This year we chose, “Human Xerox Machine”. Each class member was assigned a portion of the preliminary or post work with making the project, as well as participating in the actual recreation of objects as well. 

                           Sometimes it is difficult to recruit volunteers to come drop things off through the window in our handmade door. However, this year through social media and word of mouth, we were able to gather a decently large influx of items. Each item that was dropped off was then taken and labeled with the owners name and phone number as well as a short description of the object. This was done so that we are able to identify who owns what exactly so we can safely return the objects to the owners. Each object then was chosen by students to recreate. On average it took us around 10-20 minutes to recreate each object. Yet some items went by faster than others based on their difficulty. 

                       As an artist this was an amazing exercise to think about how one can manipulate materials for a desired effect. Many times we are not encouraged, or necessarily given the opportunity to experiment and play with materials. This was a fun and random exercise, in the nature that we constructed a couple rules on how to operate and everything from that point on was randomly handed to us. Most of the objects were roughly the same size since they had to be transported through a small hole in the door. However, some of these objects weren’t inanimate. We got a visit from one of the beloved art dogs on campus, Klaus. In addition to Autumn, a new pup one of our classmate’s new companion. 

                      Being forced to be open and ready to anything that comes through the door is something difficult to do at first. However, soon after creating the first or second object, it was incredibly easy and exciting to not have any idea as to what the subject is or how you will execute it prior to doing so. Below are some images from the event, hopefully showing the amount of creativity and problem solving that it took to recreate these objects. Thank you to everyone who came out and participated in the event, as well as a thank you to Cindy Rehm for allowing us to be a part of this great ongoing project.

 photos credited to Cindy Rehm 

Artist Statement

Marie Marchant


                                                             “Shades” Artist Statement


                    Shades is a series of three collages, each made of 3, 1’x3’  sheets of plastic sewn together and collaged on. Collaged materials include, embroidery thread, sewing thread, yarn, plastic adhesive sheet, paper, tape, and other found materials (i.e. tobacco bag, lock of hair). Each panel is an abstract collage of objects all of the same shade blue. The panels are of cobalt blue, sky blue, and aqua. Each panel is created with focus on composition and texture. Each layer of plastic is transparent yet imposes a slight foggy-ness to the color when layered on top of one another. Many of the shapes within the piece are geometric shapes and layouts with little organic shapes intermixing within the piece. The decision to keep to a relatively exclusive rectangular theme within the three panels was done so to emulate artists that influenced the piece, such as Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg.
                   Creating this piece was a much more experimental piece for me as an artist. Typically most of my works are made with lots of symbolism and full composition planned out. However, for Shades I chose to focus on materiality, and color. Using those two to motivate the composition and configuration of the piece. I was very excited to experiment and create art in such a playful manner. I have wanted to work with color and using that as a rule in my artwork. The way in which I structured this piece so that there was some organization and planning to the piece was by first selecting which colors I wanted to use. I chose blue simply because I was inspired from a studio visit with artist David Korty, where he was using incredibly deep shades of blues in his work. Blue is also a very pleasing color to the eye and is relatively peaceful and calm, something I wanted to be expressed as to not become overwhelming to look at. I hope that the viewer is able to look at the piece in a calm contemplation. Next I chose what kind of materials I was going to use in this piece, I knew I wanted to utilize the plastic and have layers overlapping to create a final composition. As well as all be unsown completely together so one is able to view each layer individually as well. For the colored material, I chose items that can easily be sewn since that was my chosen method of application. As well as, items of all the same color with differing textures, in order to create as much visual interest as possible.
                 I began to assemble the pieces by starting with the back layer of each panel focusing on creating a generally large colorfield for smaller objects to lay against. I then used tape and other materials such as paper to create vertical and horizontal lines along the panels for movement and composition. The placement for many of these objects was based on their materiality and how they react and converse with one another. Much of the composition was based and motivated off of intuition and the materials. I also used similar techniques and imagery in the panels as well. I used an “X” stitching on many of the materials in order to sew them onto the plastic. I also used the severed hand imagery in each panel in order to have some sort of representative imagery link and connect all three panels together. Using the image as a signature of me as an artist, as well as to represent the artists hand in the work as it is very indexical of hand stitching.
               The pieces themselves were very much influenced by the color fields of Mark Rothko’s paintings as well as Robert Rauschenberg’s use of collage and mixed media. Even within Rauschenberg’s mixed media pieces, he does include some organic shapes but has a sort of grid that he lays everything out on. I wanted to resemble this, yet include the additional element of layering these shapes and found objects on top of one another to ultimately create one final composition. Creating three color fields of texture and space, something non-representative, allowing one to focus on the color and materiality of the piece.

Mail Art

Marie Marchant


                                                                       Mail Art
 
         After watching “How to Draw A Bunny”, I was very much inspired by Ray Johnson’s mail art and quite excited to participate in the act of mail art. Ray Johnson is an American Artist, he was known mostly for his collage work and his mail art. He was a primary figure in early pop art, however he was one of the most influential artists gone un-noticed. Mail art began in the 1960’s, when artists began to send mail or postcards with art and sometimes poems or personal notes to each other. Mail art allowed artists to exchange and collect art disregarding the conventional and commercial art world. Mail art can take on many forms, such as letters, packages, email, fax, and blogs.
             Ray Johnson was a pivotal artist in the Mail art movement because of his exclusivity to Mail art as well as the interactiveness of his work. Sometimes he would add instructions to his work, requesting the receiver to add to the piece and mail it back. Many artists responded to his call and pushed the Mail art movement forward, creating a large web of artist connection around the world. Due to the fact that creating mail art is inexpensive and fast to produce, it allowed for creative room and flexibility.
              In Alexxa Gotthardt’s article, “A Brief History of Mail Art, from Cleopatra to Miranda July”, I learned that Ray Johnson’s colleague Ed Plunkett gave the Mail art community a name. He named it the New York Correspondence School. The group stopped officially operating in 1973, however Ray Johnson kept creating and sending mail art until his death in 1995. Other artists today like Miranda July continue Ray Johnson’s legacy. Miranda saw how Ray Johnson’s art created such a community, she was inspired and used it to create a feminist community to network and spread word about a project she was working on. She soon received many responses back including videos that she pieced together to create the final piece. She then sent the 19 chain letter videos back to the participants. Another artist Frank Warren started a blog, PostSecret, where he asks people to illustrate their secrets on a post card and send them to a singular address and he posts the collaborative project on the blog everyday.
                These artists I found all very inspirational when looking at how to create art on a budget and in conversation with other artists. For this project however, I was more inspired by other pop artists and other movements happening during the same time as mail art. I was particularly inspired by Andy Warhol and his use of silk screening. For this project I wanted to utilize some of these silk screens I’ve made in the past with designs of my own. Seeing as we were required to make 14 separate pieces of mail art for each individual in class, using screen printing as a tool would allow me to create multiples easily and accurately. I then decided to add additional details to differentiate each piece of mail art. They were all relatively simple in design, I had an image of a graphic severed hand that was printed onto each post card. Then I added color using marker or paint to each post card, some were filled in entirely with color, others had halos of color or stripes.

Links to research:

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-history-mail-art-cleopatra-miranda-july

https://sofiakofodimos.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/the-open-curriculum-of-the-new-york-correspondence-school-ray-johnsons-pedagogical-mail-art/

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/nyregion/art-conceptual-art-in-the-days-before-e-mail.html

Artist Statement

Sheridan Scifres

Advanced Drawing

Professor Cindy Rehm

May 13, 2018

Publicly…

I approached using watercolor as a medium for its well-known characteristics: the way it bounces off light, and its transparent qualities that allow for multiple layers. Finding my voice as an artist has been an uphill battle, juggling between ceramics, video, performance, painting, and drawing. The more I navigate through them, the more I slowly uncover bits of myself and the language I am creating. Most of my work is centered around the deep-rooted impact of humanity on the environment and the contrary impact of the digital era on society. How these intermix, play, and build up layers, to me, mirror the layering capabilities of watercolor.

In my series Publicly… I explore the deep-rooted layers of nearby counties: Riverside, Los Angeles, and Orange County, in the form of an anti-poster.  The word Publicly is often used to describe the public at large or to express views held, that others might not usually feel. By calling the 18 x 24in poster series Publicly… I reveal the underlying layers of these counties. Inspired from the old graphic style of WPA posters, I highlight the negatives of these counties in my use of color, whimsical language, and layout.

The color pallets reflect those of the old WPA art posters; mainly diluted yellows and browns with bold red and blue tones. The messages are clear and simple. By recording the hidden layers and negative sides of Southern California counties they act as unique snapshots of our current day society. 

Artist Statement

I grew up an introvert in an extroverted society. My refuge from big crowds or excessive small talk was my hobbies. I played lots of sports and I had friends, but when I went home after school and practices you would not find me texting a plethora of people or going out to parties. You’d find me stuck at my art desk, headphones in, dead to the world. Or you’d find me on the couch in the rarely-travelled living room of my house, buried in three blankets and nose-deep in a book. I learned how to sew, write, knit, do crosswords and Sudoku, read Morse code, play guitar, put together puzzles, anything that was interesting and didn’t involve other people. Nothing was more addicting to me than art and reading. Those two put me on a different planet where I am both fully absorbed in the activity and perfectly challenged and entertained. When I am violently ripped out of those worlds to do mundane things like eat and go to class, I only think about the next time I can go back. I don’t make art to be political, or to make a grand statement about society or disgust the viewer, as the style seems to be these days. I make art selfishly, for my own sanity and therapy, and it is just a pleasant side effect when others enjoy what I create.

One of our assignments this semester was to alter a book in some way. Of course I took this as free reign to slap paint all over the pages of a book and hope it looked good. To make the piece I looked through the book I had chosen and outlined the strong descriptive sentences I liked. Then I went through with gouache and painted the first thing that came to my mind when reading those phrases. Gouache is a paint opaque enough to hide or blur the rest of the words on the page, so all the viewer can see is my painting and the phrase I left uncovered. I stayed pretty literal; on one page I painted a glass of lemonade behind the phrase "Have some lemonade." I loved how it turned out, and it was a lot of fun to make because it combined my love for art and my love for reading in one activity. For my final project I decided to expand the original idea. I found visually inspiring phrases on different pages from magazines, art books, and fiction books and tore them out. I used the same process as before of painting over all other words with whatever image was strongest in my head. The result is a series of paintings, all around the size of a book or a large magazine, which portray somewhat dream-like visuals around a highlighted sentence. In my favorite piece of the series I used the phrase "Imagine the sun is a giant florescent bulb", and I painted a solar system with planets revolving around a bright lightbulb. This final series shows the real, incredible process of reading, where our minds create such rich imagery simply by looking at black marks on a white page.

Mail Art Project

I’ve always been a romantic. This began with being raised by two very in love parents who were constantly giving each other affection and tokens of their love and illustrating it in front of my siblings and I. My favorite movie as a child was Princess Bride, and I demanded to watch it weekly so I could see my childhood crush, Wesley. I dreamt about love, talked about it, told my mom what I wanted to be when I grew up was married. Needless to say, Valentine’s day was always one of my favorite holidays. I went all out making cards for my parents, friends, and crushes at school. Usually, I spent more time on the writing and content of the card than the design as I wanted each person to feel especially loved and appreciated by me. So for the mail art project, I immediately thought of my Valentine’s day cards, but this time, I wanted to spend little time on the writing, and more on the content of the card. I was also reminded of my childhood so in each card I gave it this childrens book/childlike illustration. I found much of my inspirations for the actual content and puns actually on Pinterest. I wanted them to be uniform across the board but with different drawings and puns on each card. I achieved this by drawing each one in the same style and also looking at hallmark greeting cards. I wanted each person to feel like they were anonymously being appreciated, as growing up that was one of my favorite feelings.

            For the material of the cards, I used paper, permanent markers and colored pencils. It was really fun to use the colored pencils as I hadn’t really dabbled in that this semester. I also felt the style of the colored pencils gave it more of a childish, sketchy quality which was what I was trying to achieve.

            Overall, I feel satisfied with the end product. I successfully created my first series in the style I wanted, and genuinely had fun creating these cute, flirty creatures. Below are some of my photos that I referenced and the three links that inspired me!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/06/artistic-valentines-day-cards_n_6622450.html

https://www.artiststowatch.com/everyday-cards/valentine-s-day-cards

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alannaokun/my-punny-valentine?utm_term=.brGwVJ80g#.ma0JQ4nZq