Grad Show Wrap-Up

[artistbettyanne]

So...yeah. ^^; It's been a couple of months since my last grad show blog. Let's play catch up and wrap up all in one post, shall we? :D


I didn't get the major multi-figure pic I was working on finished. It just wasn't going the way I wanted it to, and in the end I also don't think it was communicating the way I fully intended. It's iffy whether I'll finish it or not. (This isn't unusual - I have a habit of scrapping many works before/just after they're finished. They're just not posted, even as WIPs, so other people rarely know about such works.)

The works that did end up in my exhibit are here: http://hurricaneislandheart.deviantart.com/gallery/#Graduate-2010

The exhibit also included a large acrylic painting I've been working on (photo by my mother-in-law, painting unfinished, displayed in the exhibit as a WIP):

The Saiyan Odalisque by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
The Saiyan Odalisque (2008) was a pivotal work of my undergraduate career, and is the only undergraduate work in the exhibit. This was where noticeable tells of my current style first really appeared. I wasn't all the way there yet, but getting there. It's also the first truly "controversial" work I displayed on campus, and people either loved it or hated it - there wasn't really a middle ground with this one. Most of the hate came from people who felt it was an insult to Ingres (Ingres was the painter of the original La Grande Odalisque my Odalisque is modeled after), or from people who were offended by this type of portrayal of a male, particularly one who's described as a "manly man" in the original context. The latter was an intentional and expected provocation for this work - our culture has a lot of very deeply-ingrained ideas about sex and gender, and I challenge those ideas whenever I have the opportunity.

The Gyumao, Son Gohan by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
The Gyumao, Son Gohan (2009) was one of the early works of my graduate career. I used this on the cover of my graduate paper, Fan Art: The Contemporary Pop Art, and it went over really well (the professor, as well as all of the members of the class, received a copy of the paper, and I printed mine in full color). I was particularly happy with my use of warm tones in this work. This was also one of my first "multi-purpose" works, where I started tying in my own interests and my fan fiction with commissions/requests. This is how I love to work - nothing makes me happier as an artist than being able to pull multiple aspects of my life and interests into a painting.

Go West by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
Go West (2010) was my first real attempt at backlighting in my style, and I fell in love with it as soon as it was completed. For a fairly "static" image (the poses are active, but not overly-so), there's a lot of nervous energy wrapped into it, mostly from the energy I had while working on it. Experimentation always brings a combination of nervousness, uncertainty and excitement for me, and only sometimes does it result in real elation like this one did - more often, it results in disappointment or frustration. It's part of the creative process that keeps me going, however. Every gem like this ends up being worth the five or ten that were scrapped in the process.

Part of Our World by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
Part of Our World (2010) was inspired by the CoolClimate 2010 Art Contest on deviantART, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. I had a lot of bottled-up emotions related to the Gulf oil spill, and while I was plenty willing to rant about economy, responsibility, corporations, etc publicly, I never really got into how it hit me and what I felt on a personal, emotional level. I have heard from a lot of people (including some who visited my exhibit) about how much this work has also affected them, and I am really, really glad that it was able to convey those things that I just couldn't in words. This has probably been my best work of my graduate career so far.

Concrete Paradise by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
Concrete Paradise (2010) is kind-of-sort-of inspired by Dragonball Forever's wallpaper contest (it influenced the dimensions and composition, in case I decide to use this for my submission), but more heavily influenced by my considerations on the dichotomy of an urbanized society vs a rural and sustainable society. The title Concrete Paradise comes from a line in the song Gutter Ballet by Savatage, and the song echoes a lot of my feelings about the urbanized world. Most of the industrialized world (and even Toriyama in his original ideas) consider the life the Saiyans led on Planet Vegeta to be "primitive" and "savage." This line of thought is dangerous to the survival of the natural world, because it continues to widen the gap that has developed between us and our Earth. Are the true "savages" the ones who live with their environment as a partner and incorporated member, or the ones who pave it over to create their concrete paradise?

Dare 2 Believe You Can Survive by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
Dare to Believe You Can Survive (2010) - Dare all you want, but a fiery death awaits you. :3 XD I could not stop myself from creating this one, and I'm glad I didn't. This is probably my next most successful work from my graduate career. A lot of thinky-thoughts are also behind it (I'm a terrible Decepticon sympathizer) but it's also what it is on the surface: Megatron riding a robot unicorn. (Megatron is riding a unicorn - your argument is invalid.) I pulled from the song Dare (Transformers: The Movie) for the title, because even though it was angled toward the Autobots in the original context, I feel that it really echoes what the Decepticons are striving for as well. I've come to love the song more every time I listen to it, and it really strikes me that this could be a "theme song" for everyone. Especially in the wake of media attention on pre-teen/teen suicide and the "It Gets Better" campaign, I feel it's something everyone should hear and experience at least once. Have a listen if you need a refresher or are too young to have caught it with its original release:

I Wanna Do More by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART
I Wanna Do More (2010) is done in the spirit of all "remakes" of successful media that are out there. The original was done in 2006 in Crayola markers for MediaMiner's art contest and placed (I don't remember what place anymore, I just remember receiving my print from Fan for being one of the winners.)

One of the things that annoys me hugely with "remakes" is when the new creator thinks that "re-envisioning" something means fucking it up entirely (I'm looking at you, Michael Bay) when it's absolutely not necessary. I still like both versions of this work, but I really love the things my new style has done for it. I'd love to do even more Magic User's Club art now - working on this piece really rekindled my love for the series. The title, while a reference to the habit of remakes and one of the OPs from Magic User's Club, is also an expression of how I felt. I knew when I started this piece it was going to be the last one done before my exhibit, and...I wanted to do more. I always want to do more. I thought it was an appropriate way to close out my exhibit work. <3


The show itself went fairly well. Two of my art professors brought their evening classes in for the exhibit opening, but aside from that I only had about a half-dozen people attend the opening. It was a bit disappointing, and afterward I felt kind of let-down. It didn't help that I was completely drained, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'd invested a lot in this exhibit and opening (a little over $500 in costs, months in creating art, weeks in planning and hours in set-up, in addition to all of the stress I put myself through doing all that). I'm not ungrateful for the people who did come to the opening, or who signed my guestbook on other days or spoke to me outside of the exhibit - those were about the only positive things I felt came of the exhibit. I also learned what not to do for future exhibits - namely most of the stress and money I put into it. I couldn't even get people to take the free food I had put out for the opening. I could have gotten by probably $200 cheaper than I did, in the end. It's still a matter of being a starving artist, but I've definitely learned that 90% or more of the cost has to go into production of the art (materials, etc.) and screw the rest. (I have around $200 invested in the prints of my art alone, so the remaining $100 that could have sufficed for the opening is not that unreasonable.)

It's probably going to be a while before I do another exhibit (even though I'm feeling a little bit better about it now, it's still tiring and a bit depressing to think about) but I definitely will be doing more exhibits in the future - it's just part of life as a professional artist.

So that's the wrap! Next post: What I've done since then!