ashleepurcella-blog

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Project 2: Collaborative - The Art of Living Project

Title: Fossilized Sunlight

Medium: Plastic bottles, rocks, leaves, sticks, weeds

Size: ~2'x~2'

Date: June 5th, 2019

Artists: Ashlee Purcella, Katie Roth, Abaigeal Eagen, Amanda Byzewski

Inspiration:

Artist Statement: Katie, Abi, Amanda and I created Fossilized Sunlight as a collaborative response to other pieces done by artists who are part of the Environmentally Engaging Urban Street Art movement (EEUSA). For this project we were required to create a piece that combines ideas from at least one reading, a curated institution, and a street art scene. We used inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers that were on display are part of the Tate Britain’s special exhibition of Van Gogh’s work to create our piece. We also followed the same technique as artists such as Stik who are part of the Dulwich street art works in south London whose hidden neighborhood murals display revamped renditions of famous traditional paintings housed at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Finally, our work is based on the stated principals of the Riggle article, Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, which states that in order for street art to qualify as street art it must: (1) use the public space in a way that is internal to its meaning, and (2) use the street in a way that the street is internal to its meaning. Fossilized Sunlight is classified as street art because it is dependent on the backdrop brick wall as well as sun positioning to create the perfectly framed shadow. The blue wood-siding square serves as the framing device for the finished product.

My contribution to this project included cutting out the vase and filling it with rocks, cutting and tying plastic stripes to make fastening string, breaking down sticks for stems, as well as collecting and placing the natural elements within the piece, such as the leaves and weeds. Each team member worked diligently to make the entire piece come together. We all worked well together with a set goal in mind for the finished product.

The concept behind our work revolves around the idea of how plastic and trash are polluting our environment. We constructed Fossilized Sunlight out of found materials in the environment, some of which belong there (like weeds and sticks), and other materials that do not belong in the environment (such as plastic bottles and plastic wrap). We created the flowers out of plastic to highlight how plastic doesn’t belong in nature and how the flowers don’t look normal next to the natural materials. The finished piece is entirely sunlight dependent, showcasing the cast shadow created by the plastic flower model, and speaks towards man-kinds present and future relationship with the environment. The reason behind this method was to create an idea of a hope for the future, and the removal of non-biodegradable plastics from the environment (represented by the shadow). When the viewer observes the shadow only, they cannot see that any plastic was involved in creating the piece. However, the actual model is made out of plastic, and represents our current situation and how our world is still polluted with plastic. The shadow is only a small hope for the future, fleeting and temporary, like the setting sun.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 17 - 6/05/19, Berlin

This morning we visited the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art. This was by far my most favorite place we visited. However, before even entering the museum one could see this gigantic murals over the front doors that displays a quote from Dr. Seuss. I've heard this quote before and it's very important to me in many ways. For my multimedia journal today I chose to create a collage that represents everything I believe this quote can be applied to. Obviously there are many more applicable things, but extinction, deforestation, and pollution all are effect by human activity. All of this issues could benefit from more people caring and taking action to stop them.

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 16 - 6/04/19, Berlin (Part 2)

This morning we visited the Memorial of the Murdered Jews and then after we walked to the Jewish Museum in Berlin. I found it intriguing that both sites showed a memorial to murdered Jews in a similar fashion, with large, askew cinder blocks that towered over those who entered them. I found that when walking through both memorials I was overwhelmed with an intense feeling of dread and sadness. I felt so crowded but at the same time there was silence in the crowd. The experience of walking through these two memorials had a powerful effect on me. The significance of what these giant stones are representative of is truly heart wrenching. For my multimedia journal I drew a sketch from inside the Garden of Exile that is within the Jewish Museum.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 16 - 6/4/19, Berlin

This afternoon we visited Berlinische Galerie, also know as the Modern Art Museum. I thoroughly enjoyed the museum, as I enjoy most modern art. I thought the architecture was inventive and I was very impressed with the "X" staircase. While at the museum we were given the task to compare and contest one object in the museum to something in either the Pitt Rivers Museum or the Horniman Museum. I've decided to not compare two single objects, but to compare display styles in general. Both museums are organized typologically, however, I found a huge contrast between the display techniques used at the Pitt Rivers Museum than at the Modern Art Museum in Berlin. The Pitt Rivers' display style can barely be called a style with the way they shove as many artifacts as possible into one display case with minimal labeling or individual object background information. The museum felt overly cluttered display wise and too overwhelming to take in. I found that today's museum was vastly different. The Modern Art museum gave each piece ample space to live and breathe, some pieces receiving an entire wall to themselves. Each work also had good background information and details labeling, which made it very easy for the viewer to understand each piece. I found the Modern Art museum much easier to digest and enjoy than the Pitt Rivers Museum, all simply due to display style. For my multimedia journal today I created a collage contrasting the display styles of the two museums. In the 4 corners are pictures taken at the Modern Art Museum in Berlin. The center 4 pictures are from the cluttered displays of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The colored tiles are gallery walls in the Modern Art Museum. Their blankness is representative of the quiet and spacious displays of the Modern Art Museum, while their large quantity and compiled appearance represents the Pitt Rivers display technique.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 14 - 6/2/19, Berlin

The majority of our day today was a free day, apart from the evening when we visited the Dirckenstrafze Street Art site. Dirckenstrafze is 750 meters of street art of all kinds, including paste-ups, stencils, grafitti, instillations, tagging and everything else one could think of. The majority of street art in this area is done by random, everyday people who want to do street art, and serves as an area for free speech. Artists that have made work here include BLU and El Bocho. For my multimedia journal I decided to create a juxtaposition between the way things are displayed in a museum verses the way street art is displayed. For my work I took images of street art and edited them similarly to how museum pieces are lit.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Street Art Assignment

By: Ashlee Purcella

We were tasked with posting a collage of atleast 15 different imagery, from 3 different sites and in 3 different styles. I've created a collage of artwork samples from the East Side Gallery (East side), East Side Gallery (West side), the Kreuzberg Street art site, and the Dircksenstrafze Street Art site. Going back to one of the articles we read by Emma Russell called "Writing on the Wall: the form, function, and meaning of tagging", tags and graffiti are created for one of three reasons: to be a voice again oppression, gang related tagging, and tagging as a part of hip hop culture. Stylistically Street Art can take three forms: images, images and words, or words in disguise. For my assignment I tried to get examples of all three of these styles as well as providing examples of pieces created for each of the three functions listed above.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 13 - 6/1/19, Berlin

On our first offical day in Berlin we visited the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island in the morning. We were visiting the museum to see the exhibition Beyond Compare which is an exhibit that compares artifacts from both Africa and Europe next to eachother typologically as well as aesthtically in order to show that they were all made by humans. This specific exhibition's goal is to show individuals that objects don't necessarily need to be deemed "created" by a specific person, tribe, culture, ethnicity, etc. in order to have meaning. We were given a sketching task while at the museum, and I've decided to turn mine into my multimedia journal for today. I've taken two African masks, one from the west coast (Liberia, 20th century) and one from central Africa (Cameroon, 19th century) and drawn them as one mask to show their anesthetic differences in facial features.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Kreuzberg Street Art

By: Ashlee Purcella

Today we had the wonderful opportunity to wander along the Kottbusser Tor district and the Kreuzberg Street Art sites.

Kreuzberg is one of the most densely populated districts of Berlin. Nearly 1/3 of the 150,000 residents are migrants, mostly Turkish in descent. Kreuzberg contains Checkpoint Charlie, the famous border crossing between the East and West sides of Berlin. Popular artists who've created work in the Kreuzberg area include 1UP (Berlins biggest graffiti gang, El Bocho and his famous "Twisted Little Lucy" series, BLU (whose famous murals were painted over in black), SOBR, Victor Ash's Astronaut and C215 (French artist). Kreuzberg is home to the Punk movement and other alternative subcultures. Kreuzberg also houses the Kreuzberg Museum and is openly friendly and accepting of the LGBTQ community. Within Kreuzberg is a building named after Tommy Weisbecjer Haus, a 23 year old anarchist killed by West German police in 1972. The building is covered with 2 large-scale murals depicting a surreal sky and a pile of TVs showing different sides of contemporary life. Most of the pieces in Kreuzberg (as with most street art) have political messages behind them as well as being protest driven.

We visited Kreuzberg after a long and tedious day, so unfortunately we weren't able to see very many street art pieces. However, I did manage to capture a few of the works around the train station as seen above. Artists whose work I could not find on my walk I've provided images of from the internet.

@worldsofwonder2019

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology

By: Ashlee Purcella

For our first official day in Oxford we had the pleasure of visiting the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology. The Ashmolean Museum was founded in 1683 because the wealthy Elias Ashmole gifted his collection to the University of Oxford in 1682. Ashmole donated his collection because he believed the "knowledge of nature is very necessary to human life and health". Elias received his collection from the Tradescant family, a father and son employed by the Earl of Salisbury to be gardeners. They traveled overseas to acquire exotic plant specimens for the Earl's garden, and on their travels they acquired a collection of botanical, geological, and zoological items. Elias Ashmole helped the Tradescant family catalog their work and was later giving the collection, which he then gifted to the University.

The Museum opened in 1845 and was the world's first University Museum as well as the world's oldest public Museum. The museum's goal is "to tell human stores across cultures and time". The building recently underwear expansive redevelopment in 2009, and project cost about 77 million (U.S.) dollars. Part of the renditions included stone work, oak floors, spruce plywood and polished plaster, steel, glass and zinc. The building was constructed by Charles Robert Cockerall as an early Victorian style building with fusions of ancient Roman, Greek and English Baroque design. The idea behind the museum's design is to entice the viewers to walk a "figure 8" through the galleries, always returning to the main staircase. The museum's collection ranges from Egyptian mummies to contemporary art. The curatorial departments include: Antiquities, Western art, Eastern art, Heberden Coin Room, and the Cast Gallery. Currently the Ashmolean is hosting a Jeff Koom exhibition as well as 4 additional temporary exhibitions.

We began our day with the accompaniment of Dr. Jim Harris (a curatorial staff member of the Oxford museum). First we visited the initial collection of the Tradescant and Ashmole collection, and later moved on to other monumental exhibits within the museum. Just before lunch we received an amazing opportunity to engage more with the collection in a private handling and study room with Dr. Harris. Many students commented how much more interesting and deeply connected we were with the artifacts when we were allowed to touch and dissect the history behind them. We also got the opportunity to look closely at some famous drawings by Michelangelo, Cezanne, and Leonardo di Vinci which were currently not on display at the museum.

After a short break for lunch we were shown to a cermanic gallery within the museum that showed the first beginnings of the results of the industrial revolution and its effect on everyday objects. We finished the day examining the Jeff Koons exhibit and reflecting on how we feel about the exhibition, the artist, and the museum's envolement with the artist and his pieces.

Overall the day was very successful and full of interesting and valuable knowledge all housed within the grand floors of the Ashmolean museum.

@worldsofwonder2019

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 10 - 5/29/19, Oxford

Today we traveled to rainy old Oxford and visited the Pitt Rivers Museum. Our tour guide for the day discussed that one of the main challenges the museum faces is how to display the half a million objects the museum possess, and only a small portion of which are currently visible (which is hard to believe). A quick walk around the museum confirmed that they simply just don't seem to have enough space to properly curate displays. The clutter and jammed packed display cases seemed to almost produce a negative effect on the viewer, to which it was difficult to read the labels of most of the objects and understand everything the museum held. Our discussion today was on how the objects are typologically displayed for cultural comparison, however the display cases seemed to be everything but this. Their overcrowded capacity made it difficult to digest the materials inside. For my multimedia journal today I decided to document a few of the cases that were just too over stuffed with objects, and how it produced a negative effect on the viewers.

@multimediajournalww

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Project 1: Iconoclash & Creative Project

By: Ashlee Purcella

Title: 1000

Medium: Chalk, Grass

Size: ~8'x~3'

Date: May 28th, 2019

Artist Statement: 1000 years. Plastic materials take on average up to 1000 years to decompose in landfills. This means that we as individuals and creatures that inhabit planet earth are producing plastic waste at a significantly faster rate than our planet can accommodate. This destructive habit has taken a devastating toll on both the environment and creatures in the form of pollution. The instillation I created is a reactionary piece to an artist who is currently on display at the Horniman Museum, Claire Morgan. Her exhibition titled As I Live and Breathe (pictured below) had a substantial impact on me and my experiences in London so far. One of the major problems that has caught my eye while traveling around London is the amount of waste and litter produced by individuals in this city (me included). In the back of my mind I can't help but constantly dwell on the tremendous problems this creates on the environment and wildlife. Most importantly, I don't think people truly understand the impact on the environment they are creating by living the lifestyles they do. Due to this, I was inspired to create my piece, 1000, to remind people just how long it takes for the plastics we use everyday to decompose. I choose to draw the bottle somewhat simplistic, so it can be perceived as a plastic bottle of any type. The label on the bottle simply reads "1000", to indicate the numbers of years until decomposition. The line of grass serves as a reflective surface, but also as a reference to decomposition and how the bottle slowly begins to appear below the "earth" to indicate decomposing. Overall I just hope passing people take a moment to really contemplating the meaning of 1000.

"We are living on this planet as if we have another one to go to." - Terri Swearingen

By the Skin of Teeth, Claire Morgan

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 8 - 05/27/19, London

Today we visited the Horniman Museum as well as the Dulwich Picture Gallery and finished the day by scavenger hunting the Brixton street art murals. The street art project first started when the Picture Gallery commissioned local street artist Stik to recreate his rendition of some of the gallery famous paintings within the gallery. So we saw a lot of Stik's work during our scavenger hunt. In addition to this, today we focused on the ideas of Iconoclash from our Schater reading as well as the idea of juxtaposition of displays and curatorial decisions from our textbook readings. Combining both of these ideas, I decided to create my own "Stik" drawing in the style of the artist himself. However, unlike Stik's work, I choose to juxtapose the figure against his background. Most of Stik's work is simple and on a plain background, so I decided to give the piece a background that clashed with Stik's normal style as well as juxtapose the figure against the background and causing it to stand out. @mmj-worldsofwonder

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 6 - 5/25/19, London

Today evolved into a more art centered day as we visited both the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern museums. Currently the Tate Britain is hosting a Van Gogh exhibit that we were fortunate enough to go visit. With well over 100,000 pieces of work between the two museums, we were definitely overwhelmed with a menagerie of various asethic designs. This overload of visuals caused me to ponder the unanswered question of exactly, "What is art?". So, for today's journal I decided to create a mash-up collage of all the photographs I took of artwork and combined them into a whole new image. I did this through the usage of extremely close up viewpoints combined with leading lines, similar shapes, and like-colors to help the collage mesh together more smoothly. The entire collage includes 16 different photographs. @mmj-worldsofwonder

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 4 - 5/23/19, London

Today we visited the Soane Museum as our daily activity. I quite enjoyed the intimate and personal way of viewing this type of gallery. As we discussed in our meeting afterwards, this museum varies quite vastly from other museums, and one must acquire prior knowledge in order to understand the history behind the objects of John Soane's private collection. Although the article we read greatly talked-up the Model Room, we were unfortunately unable to go visit this room. However, in the spirit of Soane's architectural profession, I decided to do some quick sketches of rooms within the house for my multimedia journal for today. Because of the short one hour visit I was only able to sketch the Crypt and the Living Room.

[ashleepurcella-blog]

Day 2 - 5/21/19, London

For today's journal I did a multimedia blog from the street are found at Shoreditch District. Based off the reading we did called "Writing on the Wall" by Emma Russell, I decided to look specifically for tags that included numbers and names. Russell writes that these types of tags usually mean the writer is one in a series of similar names, or associating a name to a street number. I created a collage of these tags along with other imagery we saw.