I have a personal connection to the roots of Quakerism because my family "converted" when I was in 1st grade because I was attending a Quaker school and would ask my parents, of my own volition, if we could go to meeting for worship. What shocked me when I went to public school in 5th grade was how surprised people were when I told them I was Quaker. Then we would open our text books and read about George Fox and William Penn and the Native Americans and the idea of Quakerism would fade into colonial America. Well, I clearly used electricity, much to many people's shock, and I did not use the words "thee" or "thou" so I began to realize that there was some sort of miscommunication going on with these kids that they could assume something was dead and also a certain way because a text book only mentioned it once. My goal was to shed new light on aspects of Quakerism that are often overlooked as well as making it clear that Quakerism as still as much of a religion as any other that was present during Colonial America. 

I used the form of a podcast because I know that I learned best when I am spoken to and also am best at relaying information verbally. With those qualifications understood I created a skeleton of a script and then spoke as though I were presenting to a class. I find this to be the most helpful way to hear new information because inflection and interest does not sound dialouged but engaged and loose.



http://soundcloud.com/emmahohen/quakers-1644/s-nOrdu

​Charcoal is a classic medium and indisputably the one I am most comfortable with. It smoothes well and thick and leaves part of your art work on your fingers. When you become so accustomed to using just one medium you know the intricacies that it wants and how to bend to its desires and make it work the way you want it to. That is why I find it so easy and fluid to make so many drawings of the same thing. Each time it comes out strangely different than before which is why I never stop doing the same thing. Part of the most interesting thing in this project was how I was able to do the same concept a few times before I felt I had accomplished something. I did two figure drawings, one in color and one in quick sketch charcoal. I felt like they were completely different projects and in a sense they were. I was in a different position and a different paper and medium and model. But the base concept was the same - large figure drawing. It just makes me happy to see how things that are the same concept end up so differently. 

Similarly, I also made three drawings on glass bowls. One was a simple sketch to get the feeling of the material right. The second was with water and a flower to test my use of shapes and dark versus light. The third was a still life of multiple to try my hand at the circles they had as well as glass on top of glass. Again I was in deep admiration of the way that things that would seem so similar can be portrayed so differently.

The pictures came out very small, sorry.

​For the week of 200 photos/photo editing I went out of order and used the photos from Spring Break. MY family and I went to Chincoteague, VA and at the end of the week I had nearly 1000 pictures so I figured I had a good place to start. Editing the pictures was difficult because I had never used photoshop to do more than color editing and contrast changes. So, I used this week to delve into filters and such. I'm not sure how I feel about some of them but I do like the two of my little sister (the pink-purple one and the one with words).

“Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.”

 

-Salvador Dalí, 1953

 

 

            Nothing quite so well defines Salvador Dalí as himself. By that, I mean that Dalí always was and always indefinable. Salvador Dalí is world renowned for his fantastic, perplexing surrealist paintings and art. The image of Persistance of Memory is something that, though not by name, everyone can recognize. His style and key elements (watches, elephants, eggs, ants, etc.) are recognizable by his frighteningly realistic surrealism. His public image: the pointy, waxed mustache and large crinkly eyes are all too familiar. Andy Warhol cites Dalí as one of the great inspirations for Pop Art culture. His art work also stretched beyond his painting into film, costume and fashion, lithography, sculpture, and drawings, to name a few. In his 84 years of existence he seems to have spread to every corner of modernity and art culture possible. Based on the reputation and commendation of his artwork he seems like a god of canvas. However, throughout his life he was met and fought opposition as well as raised more than a fair share of concern and displeasure.

            Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Doménech was born 11 May 1904 and would leave to his eighties. His birthplace of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain was the home of not only his childhood but also his first public exhibition, museum and death. He was always supported by his mother, who passed away when he was sixteen from breast cancer, and encouraged by her to pursue art. He was sent to a drawing school in 1916. After three years, at the age of fifteen, he had his first public exhibition. But it was his mother’s death that most impacted his childhood. He was completely devastated.

            The next year he moved away to Madrid where he attended Academia de San Fernando. This was the place where the endlessly talented and egotistical Salvador Dalí would emerge. Even when he arrived he was already an object of attention because of his odd style of dressing as though he were from the 1800s and his friends Pepin Bello, Luis Buñuel, and Frederico Garcia Lorca. This would be the point to introduce the idea of Dalí’s sexuality. Though he had many women  as well as a steady wife, he was notorious for sexual advances on nearly anyone, to his ultimate denial. This is present in his college years where many people speculate that he and Lorca had a much more romantic relationship than simply platonic.

However, even those things were not the most important. It was his work that was most lucrative for his popularity. In his early years at Academia de San Fernando he experimented in Cubism and drew much attention from his peers and teachers. He covered a wide range of styles in the 1920’s. In his work you can often see hints of his classical influence from Raphael, Vermeer, Velázquez, and others as well as his classic and avant-garde stlye. His talent was undeniable and even Dalí recognized that he was much more talented than many of his peers. But when it came time for final exams Dalí made a comment, the exacts of which are still disputed, that he was more qualified than any of the men whom would judge his work. This got him expelled. It was at this point in his life when Dalí would adapt his signature feature – the curly, handlebar mustache.

Dalí’s style was always original. But for the years after his time in Academia de San Fernando he became increasingly more eccentric in his attire. In 1936 he gave a lecture at the London International Surrealist Exhibition while wearing a deep-sea diving suit that needed to be unscrewed when he began gasping for breath. In 1934 he and his wife attended a Halloween party dressed as the Lindbergh baby and it’s kidnapper. Dalí was most comfortable in the spot light and was nearly as famous for his outrageous actions and feats and the way he pushed boundaries as he was for his artwork.

In an ultimate act of surrealism, Dalí partnered with his friend from college, Luis Buñuel, to create a seventeen minute film entitled Un Chien Andalou. The film is a strange picture which opens with a man taking a razor to a woman’s eyeball. He and Buñuel contributed on the script but Dalí claims that he did a large amount of shooting as well. It was around this time that Dalí met his, then married, future wife, Gala. She was a Russian immigrant who was ten years older than he was but she admired his work greatly, particularly after his hailed exhibitions and, what critics called, “paranoiac-critical method”.  Dalí often boasted of their affair since she was married to Paul Éluard when he met her. In his book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí he details a romantic affair for years before their marriage and her ultimate split with Éluard in 1934.

Through the 1920s and 1930s Dalí produced what historians consider to be some of his best work. It was in 1931 that his most famous and iconic painting, Persistence of Memory, was completed. It is the easiest to use in description of his constant use of imagery. Common symbols that Dalí used were clocks which he linked with Einstien’s theory of relativity. He also used eggs to symbolize love and hope because of it’s connection with the female anatomy. Eggs appear in many of his works, namely The Great Masturbator and Enigma of Desire.  What is interesting about his symbolism, particularly with Persistence of Memory, is that it evidently changes as his social and political opinions change.  As a boom in quantum mechanics and scientific ideas came about in the late fifties, Dalí changed right along with it. His The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory is often analyzed as his change from being focused on dreams and human thought and representation to a focus of science and theories. "In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg." The symbolism in much of his later work can also be connected to his growing interest in Christianity. Often times the two coincided and images like Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) were created from his devotion to Christ and his love of the hypercube.

After Dalí’s marriage to Gala he met an art dealer in New York who opened his first exhibition in America. He was an immediate hit. At the same time, Dalí’s largest patron in Europe was Edward James of London. He was a wealthy business man who took a shining to Dalí’s work and collaborated with him on the iconic surrealist object Lobster Telephone and Mae West Lips Sofa. During these few years in the early 1930’s Dalí’s once formidable presence in the Surrealist group was become shaky. It’s leading surrealist, André Brenton, felt that Dalí’s decision to remain ambiguous about his political views were causing him to support the “Hitlerian phenomenon”. Though he adamantly denied, he was put on trial and removed from the surrealist group. André Brenton for the years to come would criticize and hash Dalí, nicknaming him “Avida Dollars” (a phonetic spelling of the French avide á dollars meaning eager for dollars, conveniently also an anagram for Salvador Dalí). Many surrealist also felt that his work was become less about art itself and more about money and fame. There was also a tendency to talk about Salvador Dalí in the past tense, as though he had died. As the world rolled into the 40’s the harsh commentary from nationwide surrealist groups continued and didn’t stop until even after his death.

It was in 1938 that Salvador Dalí met Sigmund Freud whom he instantly idolized. He centred much of his work around human mentality and dream sequences so for him, meeting Freud was like meeting the Wizard of Oz. Another thing about symbolism – when Dalí walked into Freud’s house there was a snail on the front gate. In many paintings afterward snails can be found to represent the head, or the mind.

The 1940’s marked a changing point for the whole world. When World War II went into full swing Dalí and Gala moved to the United States. There he began to shift his work into other medium. He created a few other movie projects, one of which was in collaboration with Roy E Disney on a film called Destino. He also began in 1941 a set of jewels. Many of them were complex, moving pieces that are laden with rubies, crystals, diamonds and the like. He also began working with some Americans on photography, the most famous project being his work with Phillippe Halsman, Dali Automicus.

It was also in the early forties that Dalí re-founded himself in Christianity.  He had been born and raised Christian but after he fled WWII in Europe his work took a turn for the religious. He, himself, also became devoutly religious and is said to have had an exorcism performed on himself in 1947. Ironically, he also became fascinated with science and math. His work between the forties and fifties all tends to incorporate some sort of mathematical notation or symbolism as well as religious imagery. The surrealists at this point began to say that his work was getting repetitive and pointless. Many historians also claim that after Dalí moved to America his quality decreased.  His actual work became commercial: things like logos, commercials, an autobiography, and a novel).

After WWII was most definitely over Dalí returned to Catalina where he lived until his death. Though his work became “repetitive” during this period it was no less icon or virtuously composed. Pieces like Christ of Saint John on the Cross show his unyielding talent. His Christian imagery was, however, almost completely limited to his paintings, which seemed to have declined in his later years because of his interest in alternative media. After the later forties the reputation of Dalí’s work seemed to have completely crumbled in historians mind. A main reason for this was that during the eighties and nineties a large number of forgeries were created. Another factor was that some people claim that Dalí’s guardians while he was on his deathbed forced him to sign blank canvases that would later be painted and sold as originals.

Before Dalí died he constructed the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, his hometown. It was there that he stayed when his health finally began to topple. There are speculations that he had been poisoned in a drug-laden cocktail in multiple doses by his wife Gala. By the age of only 76 he was showing symptoms of Parkinson’s and he was confined to his bed. He completed his final drawing for King Juan Carlos after he changed Dalí’s official title. That was in 1983, 6 years before he died on 23 January, 1989 in Figueres.

His lasting impression followed him beyond the grave. In 2002 there was a scandal where the owners of the right to Dalí’s name made Google remove a logo based on his works. In 2005 the Philadelphia Museum of Art had a Salvador Dalí exhibition which was so successful that it’s dates were extended for nearly a month and it was and currently is the museums highest grossing exhibition.

Regardless of the strange, self-aggrandizing, obscure nature that encompassed Salvador Dalí, his talent and craftsman ship is undeniable. His artwork lives in almost every continent and through every decade. He has been an icon and an inspiration to numerous art generations. His long-lasting legacy will be a presence and an irrefutably interesting story that will travel far into the future of art and art history.

​For the third quarter we had to create a compilation of drawings. For a short run-down it was: a sketch of a hand, a sketch of a self-portrait, a full self-portrait, a full-size figure drawing, a full size still life, a sketch of a plastic bottle and a full-size plastic bottle. The medium was simple, mostly charcoal or pastel. The drawings were all from observation which also, for me, made them easier.

Basically, this was my forte. I have been learning how to draw for years and I finally got to exercise them in a classroom setting. Starting with the hand and portrait sketches, I was able to smoothly transition into the larger 24 x 36 pieces. I feel as though the content wasn't too challenging; it was nothing I hadn't done before. 

However, for these I chose to being working in color which I had never done before. I used them first, simply, in my large portrait. I used conte (sanguine and medici) and white conte. For the full figure I went back to using only black and white because it was larger than any drawing I had ever tried before. For the other drawings I chose to work in multiple colours. 

I feel as though all of my drawings turned out really well. I think that the water bottle and the still life, as well as possibly the full figure, could be used for portfolio pieces. I showed the water bottle to admission counselor at Tyler and she really liked it. Regardless, I learned a lot this quarter about how to use my medium to make new looking things rather than the same old things I've been drawing.

*PICTURES ON THE WAY*

How we chose our topic:

 

Our topic was the Ping Pong Diplomacy and Sino-US relations of 1971 – 1973. We first came across this topic in a base list of ideas on the National History Day website. Ibrahim is a big fan of Ping Pong and so, as a warm-up to the actual project we did a little research on it. As we looked into I we agreed that it was a very interesting topic and could lead to a lot of new, enlightening information particularly in respect to the current US-Sino relations and the debt we owe to China.  In the end we used our preliminary research to kick-start our research for the rest of the presentation.

 

 

How we conducted our research:

 

            In our class we had a system set up for researching historical and current events. The idea was to find the social, economic, military and political implications of the occurrence and it’s aftermath. We split thee groupings so that Emma did social and military and Ibrahim did economic and political. Continuing from there we broke down the three or so years that we wanted to direct our research on into critical events. We each researched separately our parts of the events and compiled them into sets of primary and secondary documents. We both used a lot of research from video footage and primary documents from Reagan and Chinese Government officials. There were also books and quotes from some of the members of the team that went to China, which were very helpful. We shared what we had and did a little research for each others topics just so we were fully rounded and then buckled down to write out Op-Eds and fake news articles.

 

How we selected our format:

 

            At the beginning we very much wanted to make a video. After all, large amounts of our research and material were news footage or videos. However, we figured that a single video would hardly meet expectations. We debated whether we wanted to make a physical exhibit or a website. We ended up picking website because we were able to use our written information as well as make a video to go with whereas with an exhibit we would have to transform all of our writing into imagery.

            In creating our website we originally were using Tumblr. However, it was a very inefficient format because it was not accessible in school and also was messy and complicated. One of my teachers suggested that we look at Weebly.com. It was easy and unblocked by the school district. This made it easier to work from school and together. We set up the different sections we wanted, quick formatted them on paper before placing everything in its place on the pages. Emma set about creating a video from a compilation of the footage that was collected and uploaded it to Youtube so that it could be seen in the website. After that all that was left was a little touch ups of picture framing and word formatting.

 

How our project relates to the theme:

 

            With a theme of Debate and Diplomacy the connection to Ping Pong Diplomacy seems more than obvious. The entire event was about the conversation, creation and reparation of Sino-US relations as well as the Shanghai Communiqué. In regards to our connections (the economic results and political reaction)  are relative because both involve discussion between two parties (in one case, China and the US; in another, Nixon and the GOP and the voters of America) as well as a formal decision in important concepts (economic production and presidential candidacy).  Within each subcategory of the main topic of Ping Pong Diplomacy there are many other diplomatic actions and reactions between countries as well as opposing opinionated groups.

airush1011.weebly.com

The scan doesn't do the contrast justice.

During the first marking period in another class we built masks out of a pitiful sort of sculpy clay. I chose to take it a step further and used some of my own red clay to make a mask. I had never worked with clay in any other way that ceramics so molding it into a face was interesting. I decided I wanted to make more animated and human-like forms. Over three weeks I ended up with four new masks dried in brittle red clay. After that I left them with my uncle to be bisqued. That's where they are presently. When they're done I will paint them with acrylics. 
Each mask is completely different. The first is shaped like a porcelain baby doll. It has small lips that will be painted red, huge round cheeks that will be painted white and a smooth forehead. This mask was created to juxtapose my favourite mask - the old man. It has a sort of calm, simplicity to it's child like face where as the old man has a sad, heavy demeanor plastered across his face. 
There are two others, also meant to sort of pair. One is a fresh faced, eager, rebellious warrior and the other a passive, tired veteran. With these two the colour is important. Though it hasn't been added yet they will be very thick and smooth. The colours of the young man will will sharp reds and blues and yellows. The veteran will have grays and greens, a symbol of ld military work and such.
This process opened up a new world of clay to me. I had often been involved in pottery when I was younger but this was something I hadn't thought of. The idea of scultpure, for me, is t display an image or idea that doesn't fit in two dimensions. That requires a depth and texture. And that is exactly what I was trying to do with my masks. 

(pictures to be posted as soon as the masks are done in the kiln)

Website. 

            Working with materials that have already been made is a daunting task. The intuition required to look at something, like a tricycle and a hula-hoop, and see something else in it, like a spine and rib cage, is very rare. It takes many people many years to be able to see something in a form that has already been made. Needless to say, when faced with the project of creating recycled art I was stumped. The options available and vagueness of the prompt was so elusive that simply narrowing the playing field was difficult. I tried and failed at many different styles of recycling. Plastics were too inconsistent; bike pieces and glass, too sharp. I didn’t know what to do.

            My project came about as I was sitting in a book room surrounded by, obviously, books. In a fit of temper I picked up the Encyclopaedia Britannica and chucked it at the opposing wall. As it slid to the ground the pages made a very delicate and interesting curl. I had seen pictures of other artists who had taken books and twisted and carved at the pages to make interesting wave patterns. I took inspiration and began tearing the pages out and curling them. The shapes and lines of the type were endlessly attractive and from there I built one loop on top of another. Fastened to a wooden rod the pages hung, reminiscent of water droplets.

            The project is not finished, to be honest. The form is lacking all of it’s body and the flow of the piece is not completely controlled. However, from what there is, the shapes, depth and interaction of all of the separate parts of this larger sculpture give an interesting feeling. There is a juxtaposition of hanging squared lines and weighted curved droplets that makes the sculpture almost whimsical.

            I can’t say that I’m incredibly proud of it. There was very little preparation and the inspiration was rash and almost ill-advised. I like the idea of what I wanted to do but the presentation of the idea left something to be desired. As I looked at it I nit-picked each flaw that I saw and attempted to remedy it with more paper loops. That caused the whole thing to become a little overwhelming and messy. I also feel that, given more time and a little more care, the project will turn out to be alright. It’s just not done yet.

            I know that my piece is not quite finished because when I look at it I imagine more and I can visualize more dimension and movement. Now, technically, all art work is a continual state of creation but there is an evident sense of incompletion. I want to add more volume in a couple places and include strips of paper that hang from the bottoms and edges in order to give the downward pulling motion a little more delicacy.

            Basically, I’m gonna finish it soon, but what I have now is pretty chill.