thinking thoughts

What I have gathered so far from the Theme Sequence course is that it is a course about keeping an open mind and treating the artistic process as an open-ended journey. This journey begins with experimentation, something we have been doing a lot during the first part of the semester. Some of the experimental exercises that we have done have included altering black and white photocopied images and altering postcards that we found. When first attempting these assignments, I tried to create stylized controlled images that for some reason I found compositionally interesting. With so many exercises all about altering images, this composition creating and sense of control got very tiring very quickly. After I couldn't stand making one more controlled composition, I just decided to give up my control and let the materials guide my compositions. For the photocopied image assignment, I kept ripping and gluing and re-ripping and re-gluing and re-re-ripping until the material developed a certain quality of complexity that I found appropriate. For the postcard assignment, I began experimenting with spraypaint and holding the spraypaint really close to postcard to see how the extremely compressed air would affect the paint. Over the course of these assignments, I tried using many different techniques, many of them stemming off of other techniques that had developed off of other techniques, and so on. Although I was very open with experimental techniques, I tried limiting myself to use only one technique that I found fitting for each postcard. I decided to work this way in order to create simplified emphasis on the qualities inherent to the individual postcards.

So far, I have really enjoyed my time in Theme Sequence. Throughout all the intense studio classes that I have taken at WashU, I have rarely had the opportunity to really sit, think, process and experiment. I have rarely had the time to think about my personal artistic process, something that is an integral part of discovering myself as an art student. This chance at artistic freedom has been an extremely refreshing change of pace, and I look forward to what the rest of the semester will bring.