Paris

Paris represents for me an amazing time and place in my life. It has taught me the importance of taking the time to notice your surroundings. Being back in Gainesville I feel myself being more aware of the subtle things, I can't believe how much my perspective has changed. My challenge now is not only to record this experience, but make others care and understand.

Final Note

As we end this experience, we leave with a deeper understanding of our surroundings. The ability to observe, to stop and drink in a location will prove invaluable to our skills in artmaking and in our paths throughout life. I came here hoping to gain a more intimate knowledge of Paris, one that would take me beyond the typical tourist experience. A connection has certainly been forged; I hope to apply what I have learned about consideration, observation, and meditation into my art and in my life. Thanks for that.

Pompidou Reflections

Walking through the Airs de Paris exhibit, I expected to see an ode to the city and its beauty. I thought the work would revolve around Paris’s magic and charm. I was intrigued to see so many pieces that instead considered the effects of industrialization and urbanization on Parisian society, resulting in culture shock and a changing sense of time and space. A new spin on the effects of Paris on art and society other than an exploration of its splendor and loveliness, but an effective stimulus for consideration of the city as a changing entity that has negative as well as positive implications.

element of change

I started thinking about the idea of change as it relates to the city of Paris. According to many of the pieces that we saw at the Pompidou today, this city is constantly growing and changing with technology and modern advances. This is an element to consider when creating our final pieces. How do we make a piece about Paris that can be appreciated many many years from now?

party's end confetti

Like most of us I've used my pack ratting skills well and collected countless pamphlets and bit of Paris. Until now I haven't had any plan for these tiny treasures; some of the shinier pieces I've wanted to protect and keep clean to display for my own benefit later, others I like to rip to pieces. These final collages are made up either of a singular source like a map, or multiple pieces that together tell a story of my path through Paris. Either way, these mini projects leave me with confetti for the next couple days in this city.

Pieces of Paris

Round 2

We’ve come full circle. Reconvening at the Luxembourg Gardens, I was surprised by how much easier it was to describe the landscape around me and to trust in myself to document the information. I was still hesitant when making my marks. But the lessons we have learned in observation gave me a sense of confidence in my ability to connect with my surroundings and accurately recount/record them.

an end to paris...

documents of what are now my memories.....







"collective memory items.....layered reality....speculative understanding.....disciplinary interfusion.....systematic associations.....confirmed model.....". taken from a piece at the pompidou, i thought it was a perfect fit for our class.....

sound in parc andre citroen....

stop and listen

It is amazing how much you can hear if you just stop and listen. Imagine how much we actual miss when rushing through our daily routines. It was amazing to me how quiet the park was when we first arrived, but as soon as we stopped to listen, so many sounds were revealed.

wednesday

although this is a found drawing, I hear it as a sound map
found drawing on a larger scale than I've been seeing them
bunched flowers from Giverny:

the parts to my Louvre map(hfh photos)

Troisième

For the third time I found myself wandering about Montmartre and, without another person to guide me or keep track of, I happily got lost. I say this positively because the imperfect weather kept the most of the tourists at bay, and in my dark raincoat I blended in among the Parisians who then greeted me with smiles. I felt like I could fade into the surroundings and observe more of the minute details I had passed over before.

mapping red

I took the photographs of red objects I found on the quest for red pixels and took the elements in the photographs similar to those in the map (curbs like roads, circles like trees) and adjusted and cropped them to fit over the map. Then I isolated the red elements in the photograph and thier placed them on the map in rleation to where they were placed in the photograph. I still need to figure out the installation aspect though.

mini collages

mapping statue's gazes

At the Louvre I mapped the gazes of statues in different rooms. I would photograph the statue's head, then try to aproximate it's gaze and take a picture in that direction. If there was another statue in it's line of sight I would do the same for that one and so on, etc. until a statue would not be looking at anything, or look out of a window (or in this case an inaccesable elevator), or in one case at a statue with no head.

The photographs of thier gazes I used for reffrence to draw lines from thier eyes to the next statue creating a visual shorthand for thier eyeline. I used small circles in reffrence to the size of thier eyes, each one drawn with a different color, similar to how a train uses different colors to represent different routes.

mini collages

parc citroen soundsketch

a set of sketches produced during our sound recording exercise at parc citroen. i followed a parc employee raking leaves and let the event influence how i treated the paper.

Found Drawings

I know this whole Orangina thing has been a joke but I'm serious when I say I really like this photo of the Orangina. I like the composition and the perspective, I think it makes a nice still life.

Means or End? May 14

While walking around at the Louvre, I noticed that, soon after I got there, I was completely worn out. Not in the sense that this week and last has been packed full of walking, and that my body was exhausted, but I think that the overwhelming size of the Louvre itself had me worn down. I was trying to think about mapping, but also trying to find works of art that I was "supposed" to see while I was there. I began to think about the function of the benches in the gigantic museum. I tried to think of these benches in a different light, rather than being a temporary pause within a long journey, maybe these benches were several destinations
in several different journeys. Like how one person may walk through the French painting area of the Louvre, continue through the Sculpture rooms and then sit on a bench. End of journey. Then picking up and deciding where to go or when to leave this place is the start of a new journey. In this way, a bench is less a refresher for a continuous trek, but more a place to recycle old paths and then create a new one.
My map would be a time based map, one made into a movie of sorts. The legend for my map would entail reading the movements of someones feet or body through a space in a central white frame. The other frames around this central frame would be the still photographs of these benches, and a persons body superimposed over the photos with low opacity so that the bench is the central focus of the map, and the person moving through the map shows the function of the map rather than a sign or symbol giving the information.

Mini Collage - May 15

I really responded to the mini collages we did yesterday because of the spontaneity I felt and the limits I put on myself spatially. I think that I was most successful on the collages I wasnt necessarily thinking about...because I let my eyes judge what should and shouldnt be, rather than overthinking color, line, and composition. It really helped me loosen up and stop letting my mind get in the way of things. It was almost like daydreaming with my hands. AWESOME

Natural Space - May 13

Giverny represents nature in the way that the garden at Versailles represents nature, both in a very controlled and manipulated manor. I see the bike ride to Giverny as a little less guided than Versailles, though, with a wider opportunity to take routes outside of the established space. Both places, however, are giving people a certain path to follow, and although this path is man-made, what you see along this path is still embodied in the term "natural." The trees, the flowers, the dirt and pebbles, no matter if they were originally part of the scape or not. They still exist on their own whether primped or ignored. I felt closest to achieving a liminal state (or one that might fit my definition of this experience) in Versailles, laying in the grass after the picnic. I felt completely in balance, in a way that I knew it could only last a short time.....and it ended with the boat ride. Although that was a lot of fun, too.

Backyard Salad - May 12

My first memory of a garden is the one in my parents backyard in Maitland. My mom started growing tomatoes, mint leaves, lettuce, carrots, and a couple of other vegetables to use in the salad she would make me eat every night. I remember her asking me to go pick a couple of tomatoes, and I remember thinking that we were so self-sufficient, because most of the time we relied on McDonald's for our happy meals. I wish that my mom had more time when we were younger, because with 3 kids in 5 years and two little ones after that she didn't have much
time to keep up with our garden. I remember the progression from having a nice, weed free garden to it getting a little out of control. Finally, everything died. To me this garden represented a sort of life cycle that follows the pattern of my mothers care and available time. I associate this part of my life with my relationship with my mother, so in a way a garden represents a maternal presence.

To Be Without - May 11 Blog

My experience at Dans le Noir was more interesting than I could've ever imagined. I was telling Kyle it reminded me a lot of this "aha" moment I had while watching the movie Babel. In the movie there is a character who is deaf. She struggles with her disability, especially being a teenage girl raised solely by her father. There was this scene where the deaf girl and her friend go to a club. With the strobe lights flashing, and a large crowd of young people dancing and singing, everything was silent. The absence of the sound along with this strong visual information helped me more than reading about Helen Keller in school could ever help me understand what it means to be without a sense. I never thought about not being able to hear music and trying to dance, just the same as how I never thought how blind people pour their drinks without spilling. Free will was something I think we all missed out on with this dinner, but I liked that aspect of this experience, too. I wish people would take things away from me more.

Dis Connects- May 10 Blog

Connects and disconnects between people, especially considering the language barrier, are more apparent here. But verbal communication is not the only form of communication and certainly not the strongest. There is something about children and breaking barriers, mayve they are just innately open-minded. They don't know that they aren't supposed to like tourists. I feel like I can make connections with children easily because I'm looking for someone to respond to a smile, or eye contact, and they always do. Especially since I am more aware and observant from being in a different place, I feel like younger here...I also feel vulnerable and am always aware of the people around me, which leads me to my interest in the children here and how they respond to the stimulus around them.

The Moment In Between

Sight is not needed to get a sense of surroundings. Sound identifies space. Music fills the room, creeping into niches, caressing walls, traversing the expanse of ceiling before reverberating back toward the listener. As echoes fade, we “hear” the immensity of the room. Music acts as our eyes, creating an audio map of the space we inhabit.

eliminate excessive junk

This entire trip has been about finding a way to get rid of distractions. Paris is such a wonderful city, but in order to experience the true essence one must eliminate the excessive junk, and extract only what its crucial to each event, site or activity. It is futile to try to document everything.

small is big

working small today reminded me of being a child and making little drawings... yesterday I made these photographs that are similar to the small drawings

next is combining:
(hfh photos)

subway movements recreated.

for my final pieces, the process will be just as important as the final outcome. i want to recreate my memories made in paris over and over again with each time that i rework a piece in order to make the experience become fully, permanently fleshed out in my mind.

Squeaky shoes

As I mapped my path through the Louvre and tried to be sensitive to my individual steps; how I walked down the hallway and was drawn to a certain piece, then backtracked, spun, and circled about the pedestals and cabinets. Allowing my mind to wander as well, making connections, minor discoveries, and wondering what made certain pieces more popular or important than others (scale, media, Dan Brown?). And always checking the Louvre’s own ceiling as I continued.