Ryan Holland

ART 12001 Art as A World Phenomenon

Art Project/Paper

Flowers, Life, Symbolism and Collage

Introduction

When I started thinking about the required art project for this class, I found it difficult to come up with a subject at first. I am not artistic at all. I do not draw well, paint or really have any artistic expression beyond creating computer programs. I have many artists in the family. I have also just started to learn to blow glass but also learned quickly that summer is not the time to be doing a blown glass project. It is way too hot.

Then, I thought about walking outside my front door to get in my truck or coming back home. I always pass the flower garden that has been there for years. It has been there for so many years that I really do not pay much attention to it anymore. Today, however, my Mom was talking about the Poppies that are in that garden. How they are usually one of the first flowers that come up each year and the blooms just seem to come up practically overnight. The flowers are fragile too. They do not last very long and can easily be damaged by wind or a hard rain. I decided that my inspiration for this project would be the flower garden in front of my house. The Photo I to the right is a picture of my inspiration garden. Like Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, I decided that I wanted to take my inspiration from ordinary

scenes from everyday life. Vermeer however, specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life (Vermeer Foundation). That seemed a little too uninspiring for me and reinforced that I wanted to use the ordinary theme of a flower garden.

Photo I: Photograph of Poppy garden in front of my house in Columbus

The Subject: Flowers and Progression of Life

Flowers as subject are very prevalent in art throughout history. Very early use of flowers in art was seen as embellishment as early as Egyptian times on tombs of the earliest dynasties. The lotus blossom was also used in Egyptian jewelry and inspired the shape of the capital at the top of Egyptian columns (Chick, 1998). During the Gothic era too, flowers were often the subject of art and more specifically they were used as symbols of the personality or importance of particular people. I, however, was seeing the floral theme more like the Dutch felt about the symbolism. To the Dutch people, flowers were much more than beautiful. Some Dutch paintings showed flowers in various stages from budding, to blooms, to losing petals and becoming a seed pod. For the Dutch, this progression was a metaphor for the stages of human life (Enrich Your Life With Symbols, 2011). In addition, my inspiration garden was mainly of Poppies and the Poppy has dual symbolism. Poppies can be symbols of death. The Remembrance Poppy has been in use since 1920s to commemorate soldiers who have died during war, inspired by the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields". Poppies are also, for the Chinese, a symbol of the devastating impact the trade in opium and Opium Wars had on the Chinese population and culture (The Dual Symbolism of the Poppy, 2011). However, much more positive symbolism is also associated with Poppies such as beauty, magic, consolation, fertility and eternal life (Enrich Your Life With Symbols, 2011).

Progression in life, or stages of life, is depicted in art in many different ways. An example can be seen in clip of a poster shown below in Photo II titled Native Wisdom (Native Wisdom). The poster shows a man aging while wearing a Native American headdress. Another good example is Caspar David Friedrichs "Stages of Life" shown in Photo III below.

Photo III: Stages of Life by Casper David Friedrich

Photo II: Native Wisdom

Gothic Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrichs work was considered shocking at the time. His work portrays a wistful sense of adventure and youthful idealism remain contemporarily relevant today (Casper David Friedrich, 2013) and clearly shows an interesting take on life progression.

While there are many artistic depictions of life stages well beyond the two examples I provided above, I intended to remain firmly in the company of other artists known for floral work. Such artists range from Claude Monet who immortalized the water lily, Vincent van Gogh and his sunflowers, to Georgia O'Keeffe and her famous flower series. Unlike fresh-cut flowers or garden flowers that fade and wilt in a short time, artists throughout the ages have recognized the beauty of endurance in floral art. It brings the beauty of nature in for enjoyment, either with an introspective, calming approach flowers of the Impressionists, or with an in-your-face approach, as seen in the work of Georgia O'Keeffe (Floral Art, 2009).

Combining all my different areas of research and what I learned from the course text and discussion on the Bulletin Board, I determined that I wanted to focus on the floral subject in general and Poppy flower specifically with its symbolism of both death and everlasting life. I wanted to combine the metaphor for the stages of human life (birth, life, death) to the life progression of a flower (bud, bloom, seed pod) and the result was the subject Photo IV on the next page.

The Medium & Theme

Thus far I had relied on photographs for my inspiration and my subject. Now, I needed to decide my medium for this project. Since I do not really have drawing or sculpting experience or talent, and it was too hot for glassblowing in addition to the fact I do not yet have the skills for floral work, I decided I would maintain the medium of photography for the overall project.

There are many famous fine artists who rely on photography as their medium. One of the most famous that comes to mind for me is Ansel Adams. Adams, an environmental and wilderness activist, highlighted his personal interests in his photographs. Other include James Nachtwey who was focused on the art of war, Mary Ellen Mark with her Cultural Diversity and Humanism, and Robert Mapplethorpe with his unconventional and controversial work (Photography, The Greatest Artists). My art piece was not patterned after any of these artists though. I wanted to have my own concept.

Photo IV: Photograph of my subject: Poppy bud, bloom, and seed pod

With photography determined as my medium and the Poppy flowers as my subject, I started to think more about the theme I wanted to portray in my piece. I was still very interested in the concept of the progression of life as it relates to both plants and human life so I thought that would be a good overall theme. I looked at the photo I took and started to think about how I could alter and manipulate (Lazzari & Schlesier, 2012, p. 84) my photograph to add interest and more clearly define the theme. I am technically inclined, a digital science major, and so I used a photo editing software to come up with the piece I have titled Life at the right in Photo V.

Photo V: Life

I also thought about some information I read that raised the questions: If a picture is worth a thousand words, will a manipulated photograph say less or more? (The Art of Photo Manipulation, 2011). This seemed to be a fairly provocative question considering I am using photography in my composition. I think the manipulation provides an opportunity to say more, though, much more. The controversial art of photograph manipulation has been practiced for almost two centuries. Some see it as an art form; others think of it as fakery, perhaps glorified fakery but still fake. But whichever side of the fence you are on, there is no denying that photo manipulation is very useful and requires a lot of creativity, precision, and skill (The Art of Photo Manipulation, 2011).

Photo manipulation does not just cover the techniques used in a darkroom. Today with the proliferation of digital media, the manipulation of photography more often refers to image editing from a computer, also known as photoshopping or photoshop. Photo editing tools are commonly used by both photographers and by graphic designers, and this is really aligned to my style preference. Digital editing provides nearly countless options in the application of textures, colors, contrasts and visual effects to name a few. A simple photo can be made over with photo editing to be amazing. This was the route I took.

The Process

For Life I used color contrasting with grey tones to make the bloom, as the central figure, pop out of the photo. I also used a variety of color, highlight, and shadowing techniques, finally softening and blurring the outer edges around a circular area maintained in the original lines from the photograph. While I was pleased with the final product, it was fairly simple I thought I might want Life to be a part of a larger piece. I needed to think about how to make that happen while still keeping my progression of life theme. I still wanted the focus to be on the circle of life: birth, life, death or bud, flower, seed pod. Since collage was one of the options mentioned in the syllabus as an appropriate option for the project, I decided to also make a collage. In out text collage is defined as a two-dimensional composition in which paper, cloth, or other materials are glued to a surface (Lazzari & Schlesier, 2012, p 462) so using my photo to create a collage seemed aligned. My next decision was what type of a collage I wanted to create. Collage is also an artistic concept associated with the beginnings of modernism (Collage) too so I began to think and read more about the modern art movement, abstract art and really honed in on Cubism.

Cubism is art movement that spanned from 1907 to 1914, and which featured the abandonment of traditional rules on perspective in favor of flat, geometric representatio