Now that my last fall semester has started for this year, so have my last art classes. This semester I am involved in two art classes, Conceptual Design and Ceramics, and one Art Therapy class in which I will also be creating art. Due to the fact that as of this writing it has only been one week of the semester, there isn’t too much I have done yet. However, I have started projects in my conceptual design class and I have started to come up with ideas for projects in ceramics.
In my conceptual design class our first project is to create a mobius strip. A mobius strip is a twisted loop of a strip of paper that is twisted to look as though there is only one side to the form. If you pick a point on the loop and follow it all around you will notice that, unlike a normal strip loop, there it will come back around to itself and there doesn’t seem to be two sides of the surface. For this project I have to create a design that goes along with the mobius strip to look infinite. To start off I created a few different ideas of design. I tried pandas, colored line design, shapes, the phases of the moon, and stages of a flower. Once I did this I decided to stick with the stages of the flower because that was most interesting to me and it is what I was drawn to the most. I unfortunately have yet to finish it but what I intend to do is draw it all out on paper and create it that way. The other option that I have is to create it digitally, but I am not much of a digital artist so I do not believe that is the way I will choose.
For my ceramics class, I had to come up with a general idea of pieces that I want to make throughout the entire semester. This class is a graduate level and there are only four of us participating in it. I love small classes so I am glad that I am a part of it. The theme that I have chosen to build upon is women empowerment. I chose this theme because I recently have been itching to create meaningful artwork that speaks to the audience more than just looking “pretty”. I also chose it because I am a feminist and this topic is very important to me and in my art therapy class that I mentioned, we are doing a social injustice project and my theme is also women empowerment, so I wanted to continue the idea more. I plan on creating female figures and things that represent the idea. I am very excited to explore more of this theme throughout the semester.
As it turns out, I have two art therapy classes this semester, one which I have already mentioned where I get to make art, and another one about Approaches in Art Therapy. In this class I created a collage that is meaningful to me and it includes the narrative and Gestalt’s self aspect of art therapy. Narrative and Gestalt’s self approach art therapy is simply storytelling and self representation in art. So, the collage that I created tells the story of my inner child and self combining the narrative and Gestalt idea. I used black poetry and a few different colors with little things that I feel represent me like the “G” for my last name Gallagher and columns that remind me of when I traveled to Italy.
At the end of this week there may not be a lot of art making yet, but it’s a good start and I am super excited to see where this semester will take me.
