Portfolio Prospectives.

today was an interesting day. i woke up at 1pm to a text from my so-called "first love" to go see a movie. i facebooked/myspaced for 2 hours, showered and got ready around 3, chatted with my aunt and cousin for a bit, then headed out in the rain to meet up. i have to admit that i was a bit of a nervous pervous, seeing as though we hadn't hung out in three years, and our last run-in at comic con found me with butterflies in my stomach, despite the fact that i was with a guy i was presently talking to. they say that the first love never dies, and i will have to admit that maybe they're right. it felt the same, still comfortable, and i felt like i was in a strange time warp. he took me to this park near our high school where we used to fuck in the back seat of my car. we caught up, and decided we're still pretty much the same people, except i'm a "hooligan," and he drives. ;) i'll refrain from all the "rekindling an old flame" bullshit, cuz i'm not sure if it's even headed in that direction anyhow. updates later, i'm sure.

in other news, i'm meeting up with my high school photography teacher tomorrow morning, so she can help me build my portfolio. which leads me to the purpose of this post. portfolio prospectives (click on the images to see them larger)-


"OBJECTS"- this was a performance art piece created for my VIS2 class. it was inspired by a laura mulvey quote that said something about how analyzing beauty destroys it and a filmmaker who took 60's porn clips and covered all of the naked females with nailpolish, creating the illusion of males fucking an amorphous blob. its purpose was to test the limits of female sexuality. i surveyed several people via myspace bulletins asking people to name random objects that would never remind them of sex. i accumulated the best suggestions, and fashioned them in lengerie form. the idea was, if an almost naked female adorned herself in nonsexual objects, would you still think of sex? i sought to create outfits so ridiculous they were no longer sexy.


"NAKED PROJECT"- another one for my VIS2 class, we had to be "naked," in whatever way to chose to interpret the term. i chose to interpret it literally, and somewhat connected to my "OBJECTS" project, i sought to present my body as an object on a pedestal (because my friend once told me to "put the pussy on a pedestal"). i played off those cheesy black bar censors seen on television and magazines. in the heart of hillcrest, i dressed myself in nothing but black painted cardboard and stood atop of a bus stop bench. the reactions i received ranged from strange looks, to looking away, to screams and honks. it's funny that plenty of people love looking at naked bodies, but it all depends on context. in a situation so blatantly public, people feel as though they're not supposed to. i guess being a voyeur is a private, secretive act.


"UNTITLED STICKER PROJECT"- i was given a sticker novel project to do in my COMT108 class. the rules were simple- write on stickers and post them somewhere. because i have an affinity for sex and controversial topics, i decided to write about deceivingly sexual situations. i wanted to prove a point as well, that human sexuality is conditioned in us as we grow up. thus, i posted the stickers in a children's park. if a child were to read any of the stickers (except for maybe the one that blatantly says "sex"), they would think nothing of it, but if one of their parents were to read it, they would most likely try to shield their child's mind from becoming corrupt. the last "SEX" sticker on the drinking fountain was placed there mostly for fun, but also partly because if you think about it, drinking from a water fountain is quite sexual- c'mon.. water squirts, someone drinks (and swallows) it, and there is also the possibility of consuming the saliva of the preceding thirsty individual. i also just like the word "sex."


"REVEALING THE APPARATUS"- a project stemmed from the clever idea of my friend ralph, it's relatively self-explanatory. while revealing the apparatus in the medium of film is primarily a bad thing (i.e. a boom mic slip on the edge of a frame, the camera man in the mirror, etc.), i subverted the idea, and revealed the apparatus in a somewhat absurd manner. my VIS165 final project was an extension of this, but in my mind, the original still reigns supreme.


"THE CLOTHESLINE"- my best work seems to have been done for my VIS2 class. another performance art piece involving hierarchies and the class implications of clotheslines. along with roxsan and phil, we strung our unwanted clothes in the heart of an affluent neighborhood in la jolla. performance art is all about context, and we took a lower class symbol out of its element. as expected in uptight la jolla, an angry observer reprimanded us for defacing his property and threatened to call the cops.


"TEXT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF AN IMAGE"- this is the finished version of the VIS164 final project i blogged about a couple weeks back, which looks a lot more impressive in person. it spans about nine feet in length, and is my favorite project to date. once again, i wished to rebel against the assignment and touch on the fact that when text is added to an image, it automatically directs the audience to take in a certain meaning. while that may be the purpose of several works, in the greater sense of an image and the idea that "a picture is worth a thousand words," several interpretations are prevented once text is added. most images are literally blocked by the text, and they depict barriers, starting literally (fences, gates, locks, closed doors) and becoming more metaphorical (sleeping, time, money, the sky as a barrier from the rest of the galaxy). the images within the spaces between words are photos of openings, permission, or allowance, reflecting the opportunities between words, whether in the form of spaces or pauses, to change the direction of a conversation or for someone else to interject. this project also accurately depicts my aesthetic and lifestyle... in a nutshell, of course.

i have to add more, but these are the shoe-ins in my mind so far. brace yourself for an intensely long portfolio prospectives pt. 2 post.

huzzah! gnite.