MIAD Pre-College Course
The class that I chose to take during this time was "The Urban Sketchbook" which focused on exploring areas that are around and documenting our findings. The class often took fieldtrips around the city while sketching, journaling and sometimes even collecting things around us. Overall, the class focused on Geography and ourselves.
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The Urban Sketchbook The objective of this project was to fill up an entire sketchbook with thoughts, quick sketches, and anything that came to mind. As new places were explored with the class we often paused to fill up a page with something new. I mainly focused on capturing things that were seen during the trips. I focused on sketching the things that caught my attention as well as things that highlighted experiences and memorable things during the program. |
Zines (pronounces "scenes") The second project was to create a zine. A zine is something similar to a book. They are meant to tell a story or show something that you are passionate about but tend to be much shorter in length than a book. For my zine I decided to create a flipbook with a theme of immigration. Because it tends to be difficult for me to talk about this at times, I decided to create a big metaphor that depicted my theme. The use of plants was used to represent different races, while the human who decides to rip the plants represent the bigger figure. That person is meant to represent the bigger authority. At the end of this project I had to create 10 copies which were distributed among peers and staff. |
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Personal Geography- Layering Piece The objective of the final project was so highlight geography and yourself. Because I have lived in Milwaukee my entire life, I decided to highlight the three places that I have lived in. I hold many memories, good and bad so I decided to show areas that I remember the most as well as things that I recall from each place. The layout chosen for this project was sort of a zine /pop-up book. I chose this layout because it allow the viewer to come closer to the piece and interact with it. |
Artworks For Milwaukee Internship
The Internship with Artworks for Milwaukee gathered many students from different experiences to learn about multimedia art as well as the elements and principles of art. During this internship I was able to learn new skills and techniques. We were faced with deadlines that helped us improve our self management skills and often worked as a team. Overall, this internship allowed us to learn new things from others while working in a team as well as acquire new skills as we worked alone on projects.
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A few projects that were assigned were meant to be completed as a group. One of the projects was to conduct a photo-shoot. My group had decided to continue the story from a previous project and so our idea was to show why a tripod was involved in the first photo-shoot. We had decided to tell the story of how the girl in the photographs had decided to take the tripod from her mom and how she was trying to avoid her when she gets a call from her. Another project that was done in a group was one that followed the film "Milwaukee 53206". After watching this film we were told to create a visual representation of what we
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would like other to get out of the film. This project was assigned after a few reporters had decided to only focus on part of the film. They had decided to only capture what seemed more convenient, leaving out much information. Overall, the reporters were very biased as they conducted interviews and so our projects ended up having to create something that showed what was seen in that film. Because we had all agreed that photographs can be very affective to capture what was shown on the film, we had decided to watch the trailer and screenshot the parts that seemed to be the most important to us. We then each made a digital collage of the screenshots that we each chose. I tried depicting sadness and sorrow in my collage so I added any of the pictures that showed the harsh truth of what was happening in that area. At the end my group had combined the three collages together and put the zip code on top of them so that when joined together they would make up the number 53206.
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Not only did we have to work on group projects but there were also times in where we had create our own individual projects. One of them was to obtain an object that was around the room and to take photographs of the object in different angles. After that we put the photographs in a grid and then critiqued our photographs. Another one of the projects that we did was a Behind The Scenes photo-shoot. Going back to our group project we each had to take photographs of the scenes that were conducted. In my photographs I decided to capture the difficulty of keeping in our laughter. Overall the photographs give a very happy feeling just like when this photo-shoot was conducted.
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The final project that was assigned had to have the theme of community. For my project I had decided to observe the community around me. I began by observing those around me in near by stores and coffee shops. The activity that kept appearing was the use of electronic devices, specifically cell phones. Often times, I saw people sitting across each other who talked for less than a minute. The cause of this was the excess use of their phone. Because this was what I kept seeing around me I had decided to take that and create illustrations that showed us all what we are accustomed to do. I took Kehinde Wiley's work as inspiration and created a diptych that showed just what I kept seeing. As I was creating this piece I thought about having more fun with it and so I took the posture of a person that I had seen at a coffee shop and began to change the background. I began by changing the clothes into pajamas and adding a bowl of popcorn on their lap. I then kept the cellphone that was on their hand and added a charger connected to it to represent attachment. After that I decided to make the background the plant that produces coffee beans to show the fact that the scene took place in a coffee shop. The next illustration that was made was a close up in the hand with the cell phone. The background shows the green hue while giving no other hint. The reason for this was to focus the viewers eyes on the hand and then give a clue about the theme of the diptych. At the end of this project our works were displayed in the WPCA gallery in where the works of arts all had a theme of community.
Photo Journalism
My Photo Journalism project was inspired by Arnab Banerjee who is a photographer from New York. As he travels around the world he often captures photography of beautiful landscapes. Although he often focuses on nature itself, he also takes photographs of his travel life. Arnab Banerjee is knows for using different kinds of lighting in his photographs, such as the golden light that is produced form the sun during the afternoons, or even the dramatic light produced in the sky as clouds begin to appear. Just like much of his work, I would like to capture photographs of nature that show the harsh truth of industrialization and urbanization. Because our cities have greatly developed, we have stopped caring as much about the green life that surrounds us. We have decided to create things that are more comfortable for us while ignoring the plant life. The set of pictures that were taken show how plants grow in areas such as concrete or unstable environments. Along with that there are pictures that show what we have decided to do for our green life and how we tend to utilize it for aesthetic purposes.
Information Obtained from Citation Below
- Banerjee, Arnab. “About Arnab Banerjee - Photographer, Adventurer and DAD!” Arnab Banerjee Photography, www.arnab-banerjee.com/about.