Zine: Things I Find Relevant

Hey, hey, hey...read this entry from the bottom up, please...




















Here are the pages to the zine I made for my seminar in painting class. I call it "Stuff my Stuff is about: or Things I Find Relevant" by Danielle Ramirez. Please, enjoy.

Second Semester: Second Thesis Group Critique

For my second group critique I had a few more paintings to show. I had experimented a bit with using India ink to make dark backgrounds for the figure and also tried encompassing the entire figure in the (now gray) liquid splashing over it. I also explained to the group that I had an idea I was a little nervous about--doing a performance as part of my thesis. I told them I thought it would be helpful to act out being the girl in the chair as a way to further explore how this state felt. I explained how I wanted to get a large amount of paint and pour it over myself while sitting in a fancy chair, like the one in the paintings. The response was generally good and they encouraged me to go ahead with it. The grad student helping with the critique warned me that people might find it funny or weird and laugh at it, and just to make sure I was prepared for that. I told him I expected that and I know its a pretty weird thing, so I'd be ok with it if that ended up happening. As far as the paintings went, the general concensous was to keep plugging along and making them.

Second Semester: First Thesis Group Critique

At my first thesis critique all I really had to show were two quick paintings on paper and a screen print I painted on from last semester. I explained how the screen print of the fancy wallpaper with the red fancy chair inspired me to incorporate with it an image I had been working with for a year or so. I had been working with the idea of sketching the images I say in my mind while concentrating on a particular feeling or state. One feeling that had been persisting cyclicly since childhood brought up the image of a girl pulling string-like tears from her eye and raveling them up. I explained that I had been working with this image since two summers ago and had drawn it and painted it, but felt there was more to it that I was missing. I told my critique group that I painted the girl into the fancy chair on the print and decided the girl belonged in that chair. From there I decided that in order to capture the feeling more truthfully I should start painting smaller and more quickly in order to let the feeling be expressed purely and not over thought. By this class I'd produced two small paintings using whit acrylic paint and a burgandy magic marker. Working quickly and more intuitively, the drip of the tears became something pouring over her, splashing over her shoulders and filling the room, even sending the chair afloat. Now it was becoming more about a feeling coming over her; a kind of unexplainable, unidentifiable thing represented by the liquid. In response there was some concern about how I would display the work, being only on paper, and how I would make it look gallery-worthy. Gerry agreed that if I were to work so small (about 9 inches by 11 inches) and quickly, I should produce as many as possible. He also suggested--since I explained that working while I was experience the feeling I was trying to explore, I had the best results--that I keep making paintings everyday but be ready to paint whether I had the feeling or not. I think it was all good advice, I need to make a lot so I have a body of work to choose from.