Rand, Bearden, Gallagher

Paul Rand

For my Paul Rand response, I took a character concept that I have had, and worked with for a couple of years and redesigned it. Along with looking at his work in illustration and children's books, I read "Black In The Visual Arts" (1949) and "Design And The Play instinct" (1965) and attempted to use Rand's concepts and methods to come up with a clean smart and approachable character design that would "work". My character is an androgynous human that represents all self's, I have previously used the character concept in individual illustrations, and a couple of children's books but the design has always remained a concept and has never been solidified. After a goon amount of attempts, I came up with a character that fit my vision and was much better designed then in my prior attempts. For my composition I drew the final product three times on a large poster board, introducing it to the world.  I attempted to use an appropriate and balanced amount of black in the design to give the character weight, and importance.

Ellen Gallagher

(detail)

For my Gallagher response I created a mixed media composition on canvas. I really appreciated Gallagher's exploration of layers and layering, both in physical and non physical terms in most of her work. I wanted to create a piece with many layers both conceptually and physically. I created a piece in acrylic depicting a parallel reality leading to and coming from infinite possibilities. I wanted to add texture to the piece, to add a more "real" and physical layer on top of the composition, therefore I used hot glue to extend some of the forms I painted to on to the surface of the canvas.

Romare Bearden

For my Bearden response I wanted to depict my personal idea or story of life. Bearden, through painting and collage, told the story of Afro American life, and the general story of mankind.  In the spirit of Beardens scissor skills, I cut out cardboard bottles an pasted them in a natural arrangement on top of a busy acrylic painting. I used hot glue to make three dimensional seeds, or units, on (and hanging off), the bottles. To me bottles are a very familiar type of container and I believe that they very accurately represent the human. I believe that the human experience consists of perpetual containment and categorization of experience, and therefore I made the mixed media piece to reflect that. I chose to use seeds to represent units of, material, thought, or experience filling the bottles and interacting with each other in the background of the piece.