In elementary school, every Friday was Art Class. I not only looked forward to Friday as the last day of the school week, sleepoversFridayNightVideospizzafreedom, I also looked forward to art class, my favorite class, signaling a time to relax, create, and prepare for the weekend.
Back then, art seemed so simple; so approachable. A sheet with directions and set of supplies for everyone. Sometimes you had to share supplies, and that was part of the fun. Sometimes the assignment was boring, and sometimes it engaged me fully. I want to re-engage with art and I’m bringing myself back to Art Friday. We will see what that means going forward. What I hope to do is provide simple ideas that others can use to create art and engage in a visual expression of ideas. Or just inspire people, including myself, to pay more attention to art in the world.
Overall, I would like to create weekly projects to document and share on Art Fridays, or share artists who currently inspire me. But today I am sharing with you some art I did B.B. (Before Baby), when I could spend an entire afternoon on a Saturday, sometimes an entire weekend, becoming absorbed in an idea or obsessing over a website, as I did for quite some time with The Met’s website.
Several winters ago, I obsessed over timelines and the timeline of human history, specifically art. In the pictures below, the cow, the woman, and the bird are all pieces arranged in Photoshop in an effort to place (very) old art objects in common settings . Below is the main website I used to find the ancient art /artifacts to collage into my pictures: (honestly, I’ve spent hours totaling days on this site alone) http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/
Step 1: I identified from this site pieces I wanted to use, then I found backdrops on which to place the pieces. The pieces inspired the overall ideas.
Step 2: I photoshopped images together to create a collage.
Back then I wanted to take this project further by recreating the photoshopped images into actual handmade collages- made with bits of paper and such, and also to write accompanying essays on the pieces from the past and how each piece fit in to my collages, but that just didn’t happen, for whatever reason.
Question: Are photoshopped images really art?
Define: Art – Google Says: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”
Bottom Line: Don’t let yourself be bogged down by questions such as What is Art.! Express yourself by making things and you will see life differently.
