From the school website:

Three drawing samples are required of all candidates. The first drawing must represent a bicycle. The second drawing must utilize both sides of the sheet of drawing paper. For the third sample, your visualization must combine image and text.

 

RISD Bicycle: “Creature in the Snow”

Graphite on paper; 16 x 20 in.

I don’t think I have ever spent as long on a graphite drawing as I did on this one. This bike is locked onto a parking meter a couple of blocks from my apartment. The tire is based off a European adder, which is often found in snowy climates. I liked the idea that in the Venn diagram of things not expected to be found in deep snow and things with a textured black surface, the bike and the snake are sort of buddies.

RISD Both Sides of a Piece of Paper: “New Friend”

Graphite on paper; 16 x 20 in.

There’s a little kid on one side, and an imaginary creature on the other. I got the completed image by holding the paper up to the light and taking advantage of the paper’s transparency.

RISD Text: “Bai Ren Kan Bu Dong”

Acrylic on paper; 16 x 20 in.

I used a photo a friend took of me in college popping out of a giant box of packing peanuts (trufax) and the text from a parody T-shirt that translates to “white people can’t read this” or “white people can’t understand this.” I have some racial identity issues, and my self-therapy includes liberal use of Hello Kitty. I don’t know how RISD will receive this one, but it felt like a big risk for me to leave most of the paper blank and trust in the balance between the image and the negative space.

So in the spirit of YAYOMGPARSONS, here’s my Parsons Challenge. I found the incredibly vague instructions very frustrating, and had to change my plans a few times as I hunted down more information online and found some clarifying remarks by people from the admissions offices in various FAQs and forums. It was also frustrating to look at the few examples people had posted online and, for the most part, not know if they got accepted or not. So if you’re reading this and found this post by looking for information on the Parsons Challenge, good luck and I hope this helps.

From the school website:

Explore something overlooked within your familiar surroundings and daily life. Choose one object, event, activity, or location.

Interpret your discovery through 3 pieces of art using any medium. Support each piece of art with an essay of approximately 250 words each. The series you create should convey a conceptual and creative response of the subject matter you have chosen to discover.

Acceptable media can be any visual art form such as: drawing, video, photography, sculpture, 3D work, collage, digital images, etc. All 3 pieces of art may be created with the same media, or different mediums.

Your work will be evaluated on the concept conveyed through your writing and visuals and the relationship you create between the two.

I decided to explore three aspects of my teaching experience through NYCTF, visually tying it together with the presence of a brick wall. My original idea was to go a little more Norman Rockwell and depict some scenes I had witnessed that may appear strange, but I saw as a depiction of a New America, such as the time I watched an emaciated drug addict pick up a little girl after school and buy her ice cream on the corner.  Eventually I decided that doing three paintings like that would be too one-note, and shifted my focus to some of the conflicting sentiments I had about my experience.

I also ended up submitting these pieces to the other schools I applied to, which didn’t allow for an accompanying essay. For those, I changed the title to hopefully better capture the intent of the pieces (Parsons Title/ Title For Other Schools). I don’t know how the other schools will respond to the pieces, but at least Parsons liked them well enough.

Parsons Challenge 1:  “First Impression”/”South Bronx Revival”

Watercolor on paper; 9 x 12 in.

Look beyond Manhattan. Take the 1 train up to the 181^st stop and transfer to either the Bx 11 or the Bx 13. Ride across the river, past the community center and the burned out bowling alley that, for some reason, has a small parking lot surrounded by barbed wire that is filled with rusting washing machines. You will be tempted to pull the cord here, but the bright orange and green building is only the annex building. Take the bus another two blocks, past the salons and bodegas, to the corner of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].

Here is a big, old, stone building, with a main entrance and two smaller entrances on either side, humorously labeled “boys” and “girls” as if resolutely trying to transport you back to a time when such things mattered. As soon as you walk through the main entrance and walk past the security guard, a gangly, stuttering man named Thompson who takes no shame in flirting with the teachers, the noise belies any sense of peace or authority the outer edifice of P.S. [REDACTED] might have bestowed.

This was my home from the fall of 2008 to the spring of 2010. I was a new Teaching Fellow, having skipped my college graduation to move to New York to teach in the South Bronx. The exterior monolith matched my dreamy expectations. What I encountered inside shattered and exceeded them. Instead of reliving my childhood memories, the children I met inside this building changed my life forever.

*The specific location and name of the school have been removed for privacy.

Parsons Challenge:  “The Forgotten Boy”/ “The Forgotten Soldier”

Acrylic on canvas; 18 x 24 in.

One of the greatest challenges I faced as a teacher was not the bureaucracy or the classroom violence, which were daily struggles, but rather a constant battle to balance my own perceptions of my students –specifically, the new influx of poor African immigrants coming into this traditionally Hispanic neighborhood. I was taught by my mentors and in my graduate classes if not directly, then certainly by suggestion, to always keep their differences in mind. These were not normal children, not like the African Americans, Puerto Ricans, or Dominicans.

These children came from homes with multiple wives, from civil war, from a culture so wholly different from our “normal” students that they became caricatures. It was the new West meets East. It was the new Orientalist craze for us, these upper middle-class well-meaning liberals to come into this impoverished neighborhood as explorers.

On the one hand, these were students, so we needed to administer standardized tests when we had no real method for addressing the myriad languages and cultural references that we normally lumped under “African.” On the other hand, this is a damaged child whose village was burned, and who does not have a community to fall back on. In the midst of all this, sitting overlooked, is the child him or herself. He is the immigrant, the ESL student, the refugee, the outcast, but he is still Kamara, Moussa, or Ibrahim who likes chicken nuggets and WWE wrestling. In this big bad world, he is impossible yet easy to forget.

Parsons challenge 3: “Dream Girl”/ “Kani Believes in Make-Believe”

Ink, acrylic, paper on wood; 6 x 12 in.

Every kindergarten classroom has something like this: a board with the simple image of a place, like a park, or a kitchen. Part of childhood is taking cutout figures and stickers of dogs and balls and placing them on these settings. It is educational role-playing for the children to be able to insert themselves into these scenes, and its therapeutic optimism for the supervising adults to imagine each child’s future full of good things like puppies and beach vacations.

It is likewise therapeutic optimism to picture the smart, good-natured, immigrant inner-city student.  She is above the racial slurs and crippling poverty. She will be the one to make it out of this place. For the moment, she is accessible. I can pick her up in my mind, dress her in the bright colors she loves, and open her eyes to the world through books and learning.

She is likewise accessible for the young students. She’s the good example, the girl who earns the stickers and has first pick out of the prize box. If you sit quietly, read your books, and raise your hand, you can be her too.

For the moment, we can ignore the food stamps and free school lunches, or that she came to school with her pants tied up with a rope. She’s a good student, she’s a nice kid, and she’s our fantasy girl. Despite the hardships outside, and inside, these four brick walls, in here, a child’s fantasy is also the teacher’s fantasy.

The other day I was looking through some old photos– partially because the word “recent” is extremely vague when it comes to deciding what art pieces you’re allowed to put in your application portfolio. Turns out “recent” may also mean “nothing you did in college, asshole” which is fine because I was AWFUL at documenting my art projects in college.

Case in point: Assignment 3 for… this must have been Intro to 3D art. I really liked making this project, and I think it looks super cool. It’s just a shame that I don’t think my conceptual understanding of it was very strong, so therefore my explanation of it during classes left the TA somewhat unimpressed.  I ultimately got an A in that class, so it hardly matters.

I don’t have any other pictures of this project except for these two itty bitty low quality, badly lit combo pics. Ugh. What was I thinking?

It was really cool too. There were real plants that I collected around campus. The box/mountain/whatever is water bottles and papier mache. The animals are a mish-mash of things I bought at the campus thrift store and bits of stuff we had lying around. Sadly, it got a lukewarm reception when I presented it. It was all “Huh. So what’s the fancy schmancy artsy fartsy concept behind this?” and I was all “FUCK YOU IT LOOKS AWESOME” (Obviously I didn’t say that out loud).

I think it lived under the stairs for a while before I threw it out because 1. where the hell does one keep something like this? and 2. it was molting dead plant bits all over the place.

Godspeed, Assignment 3. You were sent before your time into this breathing world

It was originally just going to be a fairly straightforward painting of myself–excessively yellow, yes, but otherwise normal. It was supposed to be a continuation of an Asian-y caricature self portrait I did some years ago. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it sucks really hard and I was going to scrap it. At the time, I was also thinking about the whole point of art and what sort of function art and the artist has in today’s society, so I cut the canvas off its frame and made the painting into a pair of shoes.

The upper part is canvas and acrylic paint. The soles and heels are cardboard covered in more canvas, and lined with felt.

Back in the summer of 2009, I drew a picture during a painfully long educational theory class that made me want to punch myself in the face. It was based off the interpretation of an unseen antagonist in a children’s book as drawn by a first grade Spanish bilingual student. Yes, I steal art ideas from children who can’t even speak English. Just like Hans Holbein. Deal with it.

You can see the original drawing here.

Seeing as how it was done just for fun, I was lazy and there is a lot wrong with it. I recently went back and did a new version, changing a few things to make the rat a little more mobile so it could actually chase something down and kill it rather than knock it out with the stench it probably had from not being able to move to bathe itself — which is not to say that isn’t how it killed people in the book. Children’s books are often vague like that.

(Click on it for the full version)

As you can see, it sucks slightly less. It also took forever, which wasn’t so bad because I worked on it in between other art projects that required actual thought. Then when I got tired, I made dots for an hour or so.

Hm. I’m not sure how often I’ll do these art school application posts. I have three more drawings to do for a hoity-toity school I’m not going to get into (but what the hey you only live once so why the hell not) . I shall endeavor to remember to post once a week or so.

About 2 weeks ago, we got a new cat. While perusing the internet for cat-related things, I came across this page on traditional woven cat beds. I love me a craft project, and so set about making my own.

For mine, I used cotton rope, strips of blue fake fur, and rudimentary basket weaving skills I had learned in 3rd grade (I will have you know that the yarn basket I made then totally got put on display in the library. Huzzah).  You can see Kitty in the background, generally not giving a fuck about all the effort I was expending for his benefit.

In fact, he made his opinion of my project quite apparent when I tried to show it to him. Everyone’s a critic.

Here’s the finished product. Of course it couldn’t be a normal basket. It is me, afterall.

The face was made with felt sewn on afterward. I left the top open because Kitty doesn’t seem to like closed-in spaces. Not like it mattered, really. Kitty wasn’t that interested in it since he can sleep anywhere he damn well likes. I think he hurt the basket’s feelings.  OH GOD LOOK OUT KITTY IT’S COMING FOR YOU!

Alas.

Clicky por biggy

My Own Personal Ulysses, by Sharon

I’m going to do my own version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Yes I will divide the original picture into a grid, and divide the canvas into a grid, and transfer the image onto the canvas. Nothing can go wrong! OMG why does this drawing look so weird? Hm I’m going to keep drawing and it will turn out all right. Wait a minute. How many spaces did I divide the original picture into? 8. How many did I divide the canvas into? 6!! OH HOLY CRAP WHY AM I UNABLE TO DO BASIC MATH I HATE MY LIFE! Ok well I should use this canvas for something anyway. I’ll just start painting whatever and it’ll be ok. Well the messed up diner still looks cool so I’ll keep it in. Hm yes I like the color red. I’ll put some red on it. OMG WHY IS THE RED SO STRONG THERE IS TOO MUCH RED THE ENTIRE PAINTING IS RED THIS IS A DISASTER! I guess I’ll neutralize some of the red and turn the rest into a forest. But it still looks so red and angry. I’m not this angry. I don’t want people to think I’m all emo and tortured because I accidentally used so much red. I’ll put some more green and blue in. There, that looks ok. But what the hell is this gaping black space in the corner? It looks like some swirling maw of hell. Goddammit this painting wants nothing but to be dark and emo. Fuck this I’m going to paint in a pack of corgis. Try and be emo now, motherfucker.

The End.

Clickers

Also, I took a picture of the corgis in detail with my cell phone, and the camera was on a weird setting which did this. Enjoy the ghost corgis as they come for your eyes, adorably.

This entire exercise has been an unending series of accidents. Yes, I am a simple beast with simple amusements.

Those flowers are kind of creepy. I bet they turn the hummingbirds into zombies. That would be a weird movie.