Mixed Media 2020-2021
"An Ambient Milieu"
Reflection
What is the overall message of your media? How much of the given materials should you be using? What would make it even better?
While I was brainstorming and researching “An Ambient Milieu”, I found that it means either the mood of your situation or your surroundings. My initial thought process during the brainstorming portion was to find a bunch of words in my magazine (that I would depend heavily on for my piece) about fitting beauty standards and have a background of images relating to “get your hot summer bod!” or “the newest trends!” while having the scribbled out brain as I mentioned in my daily journals. The scribbled out mind would symbolize the stress of an environment in public where you feel pressured to fit a specific standard. The surroundings would be, for example, every other person fitting to trends, and the mood of the situation would be stress.
As I was planning out my board I realized that I hadn’t looked too deeply into my magazine and only flipped a few pages without even reading the title of it. To my disappointment, the title of my magazine was “Tall Buildings”. Considering I was planning to be heavily dependent on my magazine, this set me back on the first day of brainstorming. Instead of starting completely over, I thought I could keep the same idea and change the concept. While I was searching through my magazine, I found tons of titles, phrases, and imagery surrounding the concept of education, development, engineering, and statistics. I replaced the “beauty standards” idea with the idea of drowning in work and having too much on our plates through the typical “junior year” with the constant reminder to “keep going!”, “try your hardest”, etc. I was on FaceTime with my boyfriend at the time of brainstorming and I proposed my idea to him. His initial reaction was that it seemed too intense and if the school counselor were to walk by and look at my work she’d definitely pull me out of class to ask if I was ok. The meaning changed even further with that commentary and I searched for a more imaginative and creative way to demonstrate the education system and the mood of our surroundings in what we learn.
During the piecing together of my magazine bits, I constantly rearranged and replaced items on my board because it all just seemed very jumbled together. In the center of my piece, I planned to use an image of myself from a photo project from last year where half of my makeup looked like I was regularly crying with mascara on my face, and the other half was rainbow. I kept asking myself how I could make my piece even better, and something finally clicked that would make my piece make even more sense. Coincidentally during that photo project, the rainbow “tears” were on the right side of my face which relates to the right brain, which is full of creativity and imagination. The left side with the black makeup would then relate to the left brain where it’s all about numbers and the boring stuff. I thought I would mimic this in my mixed media and put my colorful pieces on the right side of the board to correlate with the right brain, and put my black and white cutouts, statistics, and graphs on the left. Without that idea, my piece would definitely be a bunch of random words and images mixed together with no meaning as to why they were placed next to each other.
Finally, as I finished up the gluing, I asked myself again how many pieces of the given materials should I be using in my work. I only had my own photo, magazine cutouts, and paint on my media so far, but I felt like I was missing something. I looked at my wallpaper and found a rainbow plant that was sprouting out and thought it would fit nicely on the “right-brain” portion of my board. It wasn’t a super dramatic change to my work but it definitely made a difference and added a bit more texture and layering to my final product. I thought I could maybe add more to the left side, but I also thought that may take away from the message I was trying to make about the simplicity and plainness of the left brain. Overall, I had a few setbacks that put me a days work behind or made me rethink my ideas, but the final product turned out to be exactly how I wanted it to be and being able to take some time to stop and think proved beneficial.
Daily Documentation
1/7-1/8
Today was brainstorming day. I spent my time these few days on Pinterest to explore other artist's take on mixed media and take inspiration from a few aspects of their work. I found some ideas I liked, for example, covering the eyes of your subject with a red bar or paint with a message. I saved some ideas I enjoyed content from and will keep them in mind as I make my own piece. Keep in mind: What's the message I want to be displayed through my piece?
1/10
I picked out the materials from my bag I would like to use in my mixed media. I think I'll be using the magazine for sure, a picture or two of my own from previous projects, and I'll be putting it on the square board instead of the circle. I flipped through each page of my magazine and studied the images and wording in hopes of having enough to cover my board. I decided today my theme would be surrounding education. In the back of the magazine, there were a few pages dedicated to statistics, graphs, and blueprints which I think I will use a lot of.
1/11
Today I started to cut out images and words out of the magazine and experiment with where to place them. I taped down the pieces I knew I'd 100% use and possibly keep in their specific spot for when I glue it down. I also measured out my board and printed my image from Lightroom to fit the length of the board.
1/13
I proposed my idea to my family to get feedback before I started to glue things down. My feedback came back somewhat negative with the concern that it's too intense or saddening. I rethought my ideas in hopes to take a more creative approach that would promote the idea of imagination. I sorted through the pieces I previously cut out and put away most of the cutouts I wouldn't use for my new idea.
1/15
I had a breakthrough of a new idea for my piece while making it more about imagination. I had the idea of symbolizing the difference between the left and right brain in correlation to my image of myself being the center of my piece. I did most of the positioning today and let it sit overnight so I can wake up and maybe see where I can make changes.
1/16
I made minimal changes today where I thought the positioning could be better and added a piece of wallpaper to put in one more element. I did all my gluing and finished my mixed media! I'm so happy with how it turned out!
