Self-Visualization Triptych

In the top panel, my past is represented by my walking down a path that is dimly lit, showing uncertainty and unhappiness, as I look back at the "ugly duckling", who looks different, being teased by the other ducklings, who look the same. The first book I read was "The Ugly Duckling", and as a child, I watched the movie "Hans Christian Andersen" many times, learning the song "The Ugly Duckling" from the movie. When I began early on to be made fun of due to my looks, I identified with the character of the ugly duckling, and fervently hoped that some day I would turn into a swan, and that a man would cone along and see the swan inside, regardless of how the outside turned out. In the left picture I am holding a mask of myself at age 12-13, before acne, but with wandering eyes and large crooked front teeth. I am dressed in monochromatic colors as I tried to be inconspicuous, so as not to gain negative attention. Farther down the path is a bright hopeful light, where there waits my handsome prince in my brighter future. The picture is of my husband who did see the swan inside and outside from the moment he saw me. He helped me see her too.
In the center panel, is my current life, with me no longer afraid to dress how I like, in bright colors, juggling my responsibilities, loves, and interests while trying to balance it all while standing on a board that is balanced on a ball ( welcome to my world). The objects juggled include husband, children, house, college student, religious school teacher, friends, singing, and chanting Torah. I could also have included cooking, creating art, creative writing, exercising, but I ran out of room in the picture, and no one would have believed me. Actually, I can't get to everything all of the time, hence the juggling.
In the last panel, on the bottom, my path takes me to the places that nourish my soul, bring me peace and contentment, and have been a part of who I am for most of my life. Loving the beach and hunting for shells, creating art (starting with drawing), dancing, and music. I have found through the years that when I leave no time for these things in my life, I am not a happy person, and not fun to live with. When I make time for them, I am at peace. Through all three panels music runs in a continuous stream. My father is a music teacher, and plays many instruments, my sister also plays three instruments, and my mother plays the organ and loves show tunes, so I grew up surrounded by instrumental and vocal music. Consequently I have a stream of music in my head all of the time, love to sing and dance, and listen to music a lot. However, I do not play an instrument, due to sheer stubbornness on my part, I think.

Word Visualization Exercise in Illustrator

Dia:Beacon Field Trip

I really liked the sculptures of Michael Heizer, which were "negative sculptures" that explored negative space, or the absence of a piece rather than it's presence. His pieces were holes in the ground cut in different shapes: a cylinder, rectangular solid, cone, and cube. They showed a very alternate, original view of sculpture.
Fritz Sandback's works were very deceptively simple. They were colored strings attached to the walls and floors in different areas. they created visual barriers simply by outlining with string, a rectangle, or triangle, or other shape. It gave a strong impression that there was a sheet of glass there, that you were compelled to avoid.
Sol LeWitt's mathematically precise drawings left me speechless as they looked as if they had been drawn directly on the wall, by pencil, by hand. The size of them, the time they must have taken, and the care with which they were done was inconceivable to me. When you stand back from them, you can hardly see the lines, but up close it is all too clear. When he combined them with huge circles, the sense of visual motion increases. When he uses more organic lines repeated, the whole wall literally comes to life. The effect in one work appeared as an intricate wood grain, and in another, as an ant's-eye view, at ground level, of a field of grass.
John Chamberlain made one of my favorite pieces of the day. He is an assemblage artist who uses car parts. His "Privet Hedge" consisted of a long row of twisting, metal, 10 foot tall spears. They were colored in many bright colors and patterns-often re-creating tie-dye effects.
The size of the piece made you want to stand back to take it all in, but the attention to detail, and the variety in the colors and patterns made you want to come in close to study each spear.
One of the last artists I saw, was Richard Serra's huge metal sculptures that look like smokestacks on ships. The room they are in is chilly, and the large shapes crowd into it. You can walk into them, and explore their interior. In one, you walk around a circular maze, with the walls leaning in towards you, making it a bit claustrophobic.

Book-Poetry Visualization Project

Woman Work
Maya Angelou
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/woman-work/
__________________________________________________________________
My initial concept is to make a book where the first page is like an open box holding a long strip of paper folded accordian style, with pictures of the woman's chores on each page. It would have a tab to pull to open it up. Then the following pages would have other images of sun and rain falling on a woman, wind blowing a woman across the sky, snowflakes with lips in the middle falling on a face with eyes closed, and the last page would have another open box with a long accordian paper that would open to show images of sun, rain, sky, mountains, oceans, leaf, and stone, stars, and moon, with two arms holding the pile shut. The arms would open with velcro. Maybe there should be arms holding the first pile of chores also.