Exhibition Text
Title: Scars
Medium: Ink on paper
Size:16cm x 23cm
This is a piece I created using ink on paper. My intention with this piece is to get people to be aware about breast cancer. I also want people to know that breast cancer is not all pink and pretty but that it is a serious disease that causes its suffers a great deal of pain. I was inspired by German expressionism again and german expressionist were known for having dark meaning behind their work. So I decided to do a piece that showcased the darker side of breast cancer.
Medium: Ink on paper
Size:16cm x 23cm
This is a piece I created using ink on paper. My intention with this piece is to get people to be aware about breast cancer. I also want people to know that breast cancer is not all pink and pretty but that it is a serious disease that causes its suffers a great deal of pain. I was inspired by German expressionism again and german expressionist were known for having dark meaning behind their work. So I decided to do a piece that showcased the darker side of breast cancer.
Process
I started of by doing planning sketches and I continued to brainstorm about how I was going to draw the picture of the breasts. As I was drawing my planning sketches I realized that I wanted to make the women more realistic. I wanted her body to reflect a real women's body. I didn't want to make a barbie looking body because that's not realitic. So I wanted to make sure that I got the body of a real women done.
My first planning sketch was too barbie like. I didn't like that the body wasn't a more realistic women. It also didn't show the real damages of breast cancer.
This was the first time I attempted to print my dry point. It was hard to see and it didn't print out as I liked it to have been. Thats why I didn't use. You can barely see the print anyway.
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These two planning sketches both have the breast cancer logo on them and even though I really liked them, they didn't show the reality behind breast cancer. It was still making breast cancer look good and pink. I didn't want that. I wanted people to look at my print and say " wow that looks intense and painful" that way I can get them to think that breast cancer isn't all pretty and pink.
"Change by Doing Voluntourism, Service Travel, and Volunteering Opportunities around the World." Change by Doing. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
I found this picture in a owmen's health magazine and it gave me the idea to do a project on breast cancer.
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Artist Inspiration
My artist inspiration for this project is German expressionism. I picked german experssionism because the artwork that came from that movement was made to show reality and terror before and during the world wars. Of course breast cancer is not a war but it is a fight that many women are fighting. I wanted to show the darker side of breast cancer and not what you see on Tv and other places. So I thought that German experssionism was the perfect art movement to get an inspiration from, since the movement's theme is to uncover the uglier and scary side of society and in general things. This art inspiration is the perfect inspiration to convey the message that I'm trying to convey. I think that german experssionist were trying to show what they thought was a horrible time in history for germany. I'm trying to do something similar and show a thing that is deadly for anyone, and especially women. Men do suffer breast cancer but its far more common in women than man. To conclude I picked German experissionism to showcase the sad reality of breast cancer.
Meaning
I've already discussed the meaning of my piece but basically the meaning of my piece is to get people more aware of the dangerous of breast cancer. On tv and other places women with breast cancer are seen with pink shirt and pink everything but in reality it's not all pink. This disease forces women to loose a part of them, they loose a part of their body that they think makes them a women. The reality of breast cancer is scars and damaged bodies. It's not just wearing a pink shirt and running in marathons, it's deeper and more painful than that. A lot of people don't know the effects of breast cancer because they believe what they see on Tv. The TV doesn't show the surgery scars and the pain women and men that go through this disease experience. So for my art piece, I have a woman 's torso. On her torso is one boob and the a scar. The scar is suppose to symbolize the pain and agony the woman went through. It also symbolizes that breast cancer takes a lot from it's victim and it's a disease that focrces it's victims to go through a lot of pain. In conclusion, this dry point is suppose to symbolize the sadder side of breast cancer. I didn't want the print to be super clean and white because I wanted to give the final product a dark look. A gloomy and sad background. So that's why the background is a little grey and not completly white and perfect.
ACT Question
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.
german expressionist were known for having dark meaning behind their work. So I decided to do a piece that showcased their style and technique.
2) What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
german expressionist wanted their work to be viewed as a darker art and I tried to take their theme and make a piece out of it on my own.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I made the conclusion that humans can be easily fooled by what the media puts out. They don't do their own research and a lot of people don't know much about breast cancer.
4) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central idea of my research was to explore and understand a disease that I didn't know much about and I learned a lot.
5) What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
Some inferences that I made while reading my research was that I didn't know much about breast cancer. I didn't know about womens boobs being completly removed because of the cancer.
Reflection
When I first started to work on this project I didn't know what to expect. I had to do some research because I didn't know much about breast cancer. When I did learn about the disease, I had to come up with a way to represent it in my artwork. I decided to do a dry point because it fit the theme that I was looking for. I didn't want to do a block print again even though I thought about it. I wanted to keep exploring and getting better at different mediums. I wasn't very good at dry point last year and I wanted to challenge myself again this year and make one. Most of my artwork is a collection of diverse mediums because I don't like to stick with one medium and do one medium multiple times. I get bored easily, so I decided to go with the dry point instead of block print. Overall this project was nice to do because I got the opportunity to research on a disease that I didn't know much about and to represent the women that suffer this disease.