Jeffrey's statement

I am a filmmaker at heart.  To me, film (and by film I am referring to all forms of moving pictures) is the marriage of all arts.  It is the culmination of thousands of years of artistic expression.  Every aspect of the creation process is important to me and I work hard to learn as much as I can about each one.  For me, there is no more complete way of expression, ranging from documentation of life and reality to the completely surreal.

My interest in film is not necessarily in recreating reality, however.  I read once that film is nothing more than holding a mirror up to society and then filming the mirror.  And while there may be merit to that method of looking at film, I would find it more interesting to hold a fun house mirror up and filming that.  Real doesn’t always equate to interesting.  And many times, the lack of reality is what it takes to move the viewer.  Which reminds me of what the great Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz said, "Art is not trying to be accurate, but art may be more accurate than science."

David's statement

The mediums of the technology world are what I am most drawn to as an artist.
I believe that after a long experience in the design world, that art is the natural fit
for me.

Faustine's statement

Cartoons, video games, and other elements of pop culture are large influences in my art. My work is an escape from reality. I believe that living in the real world is harsh enough, so my work is all about having fun. I enjoy creating things that, on first glance, appear friendly and pleasant, but upon closer inspection, are actually malicious.

James' statement

I am full of color yet as transparent as glass; loud and obnoxious yet quiet and humble. My work is vulnerable and revealing, yet secretive and emotionless.

Recent inspiration is derived from the aesthetics of the out of focus areas of photography, or bokeh. They are not random but they are not entirely predictable. The mind’s ability to recognize a space without discernible landmarks is what drives my most recent works. We each may see the same imagery, yet each sees it differently by associating it with images from our memory. Therefore the actual location is left ambiguous as the viewer substitutes in their own recognizable locations.

Jenna's statement

Being adopted has affected most of my life in ways that I am just now beginning to realize. My works are either explorations of my adoption or some sort of emotion, feeling or state of mind. These paintings contain personal fragments of my life, revealed through transfers of actual adoption documents, water based materials, threads, and strings. Much of my recent work has been collage based and uses the techniques of adding and subtracting layers. Building up and taking away layers has always been part of my life.

Marie's statement

It makes sense to me to make artwork about myself. I can only relate to the
emotions of others, but emotions and experiences that I have dealt with personally,
I can fully conceptualize. The hard part from there is then displaying these concepts
and emotions to others in a way that is interesting.

I have been dealing with this idea since the summer. I studied abroad
in Greenwich (London, England) and we had a poetry week in which one of the
assignments was to take a walk and write down not only what you were seeing
but what you were thinking. The poem became a mapping of my mental state. I
enjoyed working that way in my journal, sometimes just writing whatever and not
allowing myself to even stop for a second to think. It was interesting to see how my
environment influenced my thoughts and how each thought lead to another.

Since I’ve been back to Columbus, I have been working this same process into
my artwork. All of my paintings, and even my glasswork, have reflected a mapping
of what I’m thinking of while creating the pieces. They are excessive, non-narrative,
hard to follow, and 100% about me. I’ve tried to display them in an aesthetically
appealing manner so that viewers are first pulled in my the visual content and then
as they start to break apart both the words and visuals they become interested in
the emotional concepts. It’s not important to me that the viewers know exactly
what’s going on in the piece. Instead, I hope that some of the ideas the viewer can
divulge and relate to, comparing it to their own lives.

I’m also engrossed specifically in the ways a person makes themselves
vulnerable by producing artwork that it about all their thoughts with no editing. I
write down something that I wouldn’t even tell my best friend, but then I paint over
it, only allowing some of the words to show through. In this manner, my struggle to
become accessible, my reluctance, my vulnerability is shown.

In Art553, I have attempted to show this same process through real-life
video imagery. Everything is shot from my perspective and the pictures are things
that I experience almost every day. The jumping, quick, unwarranted, clips are a
mapping of my thought processes and I have placed them in a narrative in which I
ask someone their name and then completely forget it because I am thinking about
these thoughts instead. The piece has been titled “Elsewhere” to introduce that
my mind is working outside of the situation I am in during the film. Because we
naturally want to place a narrative to most film we see, the viewer might also find
the leaping imagery leading their minds elsewhere in trying to understand the narrative if they can find one at all.

This film is staccato, redundant, and fast which is exactly how my mind
works and at the same time I do not put the ideas out there clearly to expresses
my interest in vulnerability. While there is a minor theme to the images, I do not
allow that to be obvious because it is something personal and secretive. This piece
stays true to my visions in trying to visually express my thoughts and emotions and
somehow making them visually appealing to others.

Courtney's statement

I want to give my audience the opportunity to feel something. I am interested in capturing, recreating, and sharing sensations. My artistic research considers the contrast of movement and stillness. I experience the world through visceral moving images; I hope to emphasize the subtle motion we each forget day to day.

My history with dance and video informs my perspective. The body and the camera are both organic projections of the self and yet they are both mechanical. In this era, find solace in the conversation
between biology and technology. We haven't lost in touch with ourselves, we're transforming.

Samantha's statement

This quarter, I wanted to create work that was entertaining, visually stimulating, and enjoyable to experience.  Typically, the work I create is stays within the realm of drawing and painting; however, when I do branch out to try different mediums I like to keep a consistency throughout the body of work.  By taking this class and thinking about image in a different way, I was able to tackle different concepts of movement, light and color.  This video course not only challenged me by forcing my hand out of the direct work and to rely on the technology to translate the vision I had for the project.

I chose to focus on color and movement as I would in my paintings and drawings by creating a collaged motion picture of still images.  I wanted a whimsical and slightly dark comic audio track to accompany it so I chose copyright free radio shows from the 1950’s to the 1970’s.   I feel that my love of the impressionist era was somehow translated through my video and could not be happier that it presented itself and inadvertently created a tie to my other work. 

Brendan's statement

When I went home for my freshman summer of college I suddenly gained an enormous amount of time.  Without the burden of available friends. a job, or places to go, I did what anyone in my situation would do--make a movie with Lego people.  I did all the voices myself, distinguishing the ladies with a fairly pronounced falsetto.  All of this occurred while my parents were away so I could rant and rave and use all the profanity I preferred.  (For realism's sake of course).

When I returned to school, the movie was a hit (at least among the people I knew well enough to humor me).  With this experience in hand, and under the looming deadline for declaring a major, I picked film studies.  The more I thought about it the more I had always enjoyed movies.  Since I was a kid I wanted to be Marty McFly or Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker.  Considering that wasn't exactly possible, I figured I might as well try to craft the kind of stories I thought were the Iliads of our era.

To be able to relate a good story--one that sticks with people throughout their entire lives--is a pretty amazing thing.  To do that on a mass scale and for fabulous profit is beyond even that.  As an artist I hope to create interesting things from nothing.  And if doing that keeps me from pushing papers no one will ever give a second thought to, so much the better.

Bryant's statement

Art making for me used to be purely recreational. When I decided to pursue media and other art mediums academically my preparation and process changed. When exploring a project I typically turned to a meditative exercise to achieve some creative ideas. Applying a sequence from that idea the remainder of the work generally falls into place organically. This process would be delicate, because again, I would have no deadlines and art making was purely for my own entertainment and a means to let off some creativity. Now, when I am given an assignment I try to revisit the practice that got me here with art work that I produce. If I struggle with ideas or feel pressured to produce work, forcing myself to create great ideas in a certain frame of time, I usually fail. As the deadline gets closer I get more anxious then, BAM! Breakthrough. It's a great feeling and I can attribute many works to that surmountable breakthrough. The feeling it gives me to come up with something late and then be able to get excited to see its completion then a reaction from my peers is why I am so amped that I pursued this path.

Jonathan's statement

The main reason I do what I do is communication. Through storytelling, and specifically the
use of video/film medium, I can communicate with people on an entirely new level. I’ve
found I primarily have two options when it comes to communicating through video. First,
I can imitate mainstream and classic techniques in order to dictate to audiences a certain
feeling about what I shown on video. Secondly, I can attempt to simply present a subject
without any major influences on how an audience should react. I enjoy doing both, and
communicating through video/film allows me to communicate new idea’s, experiences and
emotions using either option. I think there is so much in life that is “new” to someone, and
video has great potential to deliver that.

Zack's statement

For me, art is synonymous with the ability to evoke emotions. The best way
I’ve found to do this is through moving images, which mostly take the form of
cartoons. Through my narratives, I project fantastical worlds and the characters
that dwell within them, simultaneously creating a new fictional place and indirectly
probably expanding the reality of some parallel dimension that only exists because
of the imaginations of people in this dimension.

Art isn’t so much a business to me, and as such I can’t honestly say it’s done
with a goal in mind. The stories I tell exist in my head, and the characters are as real
as any person I know. I have this nature urge to talk about them and share them
because I feel like if I don’t, then their existence will be lost once I’m gone, and I
can’t imagine a fate worse than that. I’m essentially the intermediary that allows the
fictional creatures I create to exist within this world.

Benjamin's statement

Remember, art may or may not be true. Because, all truth is independent inside the sphere of influence upon which it has been placed. It is specific to the single entity that holds the ability to discern between truth and error. If one has not this ability, they are in ignorance. If they then are ignorant, then they are innocent. If they are innocent, then they cannot be held accountable to any law, statute, and are not held down by the laws of justice or mercy.

Let art-makers be true, should they possess the ability to discern and make known truth and not embellish the falsehoods of half-truths, lies, deceit, innocence, ignorance, the unknown, the rigid, the stale, harsh, evil, rancid, gooey, slimy, stinky, stupid, dumb, and retarded within their artworks.

To those who know not the truth, don’t worry about it, you may or may not be right about the art you make in its relativity to truth; Unless, truth is important to you.  It is to me.

Truth, even though independent, when applied will always be true by it’s own evidence. It is a one-sided Boolean. Hurrah!

Truth is gauged by how long it will hold. The longer something remains true, the deeper the truth. Its influence is further in. The further in the influence the more pure it is. The purest form of truth is the one that connects inside the deepest part of your being, one that stretches you, you feel yourself grow, you expand, the truth is warm and growing, you become truth. You want this; you need this. The purest form of truth will make you all that you can become.

Art may or may not hold this. Of this, we are judges. Time alone, is no judge. People vary, but the pure sure form of truth will prevail inside the one who knows. Truth is unchanging. It is the sure rock, surer than anything people may see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. It goes beyond these. It tells you who you are. If you care about that, this may be important to you. It is to me.

Search truth. Detect truth. Live truth. May the truth, be known.

Katelyn's statement

It's taken me my whole life up until now to realize that I'm not perfect. Not perfect like I'm
entitled and nothing I can do is wrong, but perfect as in I expect the art that I make to be a success
every time. Perfect colors, perfect line weights, perfect anatomy.. everything. I used to spend countless
amounts of stress and effort trying to get what I make to be exactly the way it should be. In the end, I
would wind up disliking whatever I could make because it was never exactly what I wanted. After a
break from the art-making process, and a change of scenery by attending University, I was able to wrap
my head around the idea that sometimes accuracy isn't everything.

One of the ways I was able to use imperfection successfully in my work was through animation.
After doing it the boring way to learn the basics, I could really stretch my wings and complete two
films I can really be proud of. By working on an animation without the pressure of it being completely
visually accurate or “perfect”, I could let the emotion and movement be the major strong point of the
film. If I had to bog myself down by making the animation completely technically animated,
comparable to Disney or Miyazaki, I would have been incredibly discouraged a long time ago.

Perfection is something that I will always strive for in my work but the definition of it has
changed. No longer do I use it as a comparison of my own work to other's, but rather as a never-
attainable goal that keeps me working and creating. I hold steadily to the phrase, “never become
complacent with your work. Once that happens, you will cease to create anything great.”