SOAD
Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia
The artwork that I think piqued my interest the most is "sKIN deep" by Raymond Zada. The lore and cultural history behind the artwork made me understand and appreciate how they have their own established self-identity.
The intended message is no matter what age, gender, job, and skin tone, they will always be a single identity of an aboriginal.
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There are a few ways Raymond demonstrated this message. In the video, there are several images of his kin (close relatives & friends) with smooth transitions by their faces in between, the same displacement with their features.
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The artwork he made was used with shellac techniques on rice paper to show the different skin shades as they are being laid out in a somewhat grid manner. The detail of the delicate stitching from one sheet of rice paper to another as well as giving the hairy texture amazes me.
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What I can derive from this is how can we show our representation with the use of familiar mediums and elements to dictate a single identity and message.
Jack of All Trades
It was an eye-opening session as I always thought there is always a mainstream way of making it into the design industry, such as just bringing yourself up only through working experience. It was not really that simple as it is always beneficial to obtain knowledge in all areas of the art industry by experimenting with multiple sectors and roles.
The more we make things, both successes and failures, the more we learn. Throughout the entire learning journey, the speaker shared that she had a cultural shock at times and was humbled as she was labeled as not that outstanding. Having an inflated ego will cloud our own judgment and bring difficulty when working with clients while at the same time balancing with our own artistic vision, which happens the majority of the time in the industry.
Collaborative work with team members and adaptability skills are crucial. She advised us to venture out for opportunities beyond schoolwork to build ourselves up. Although it is also not wise to burn fast, which leads to burnout and quitting.
Printmaking Workshop
Without any experience in printmaking, it was interesting to see how prints are made, though it was not as what expected. Initially, I thought it has something to do with a printer stereotypically, but it is explained that this is more of a traditional method to print designs onto different canvases with different materials. The facilitator shared some examples which amazed me, giving me a ton of inspiration. We were given a canvas to carve our design on it took me a lot of deliberation to decide on a design due to the influx of ideas. Honestly, it took me some time and trouble getting used to carving as I realized that I was using the wrong tool in an unsuitable size to carve out the details of my design. However, with several retries, I managed to print out the entire design without many flaws onto paper. Hence, it was an interesting experience trying out printmaking for the first time and would definitely apply it onto future works and projects.
