Week Two (Bookmarks)

This week in Art Appreciation, We completed our "Creativity" Bookmarks. Originally, I bought some canvas paper, an acrylic paint set and brushes and started painting each of the five bookmarks after one of the five definitions of creativity. After looking at the project instructions again, I noticed they were meant to be "identical", so I scrapped my original idea and decided on a different path. I took a picture I had taken of a statue in Split, Croatia, of Gregory of Nim, a medieval Croatian bishop, ran it through a filter and cropped it to size. I then transferred the five definitions I had chosen to the top of the bookmark. I printed them on Photo paper, and gave three to classmates, one to my instructor, and kept one for myself. I'm not really an artistically gifted or creative person, but I think it turned out just fine.

My "Creativity" Bookmark

We exchanged copies of our "Creativity" bookmarks with those of classmates. Here are the three I received.

Kate Hein's "Creativity" Bookmark

Sean Stolfi's "Creativity" Bookmark

Jake Lasiewicz's "Creativity" Bookmark

What I Learned

A work of art is any expression of an idea or experience, by use of a medium, or the material an artist selects to work with.

Creativity is, among other things, Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking and Experimenting.

Artists with little to no training are referred to as "Folk artists", and their art is considered "Outsider art".

The terms representational, abstract and nonrepresentational are used to describe an artwork's relationship to the actual world.

In representational art, the art depicts the actual appearance of subjects.

Figurative art is when the primary subject is human.

Trompe l'oeil, or fool the eye, is realistic art.

Abstract art depicts works that have no reference at all to a natural object, or works that depict a natural object in distorted, simplified or exaggerated ways.

Nonrepresentational presents visual forms with no specific references to anything outside themselves.

Form is the total effect of combined visual qualities with in a work.

Content is the message or meaning of the work.