2012, don't even get me started (2011 movie list & brief update)

2011 Movie Compilation:
Magnolia
Tree of Life
Never Let Me Go
The Remains of the Day
The Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)
Sarah's Key (Elle s'appellait Sarah)
Requiem for a Dream

It's been over half a year. I've started another blog, started a tumblr, started a pinterest (and deleted a pinterest), was on and off of facebook (like activated and deactivated) like a bajillion times, got into the graphic design BFA at BYU, fell in love a few times and promptly fell out of it, got a job as a corporate designer intern, am taking spring and summer classes (God, AGAIN), and I've managed to survive it all. I made it through 2011, and almost halfway done with 2012. Bring it. 

Alabama Folk Art

Well, it's almost embarrassing how much I love Alabama now that I've left it. I can't deny the fact that I spent most of my thirteen years there victimizing myself as some poor, liberal arts minded individual. I was pretty skeptical of the art scene down there, but I have to admit that I never really gave it a welcome eye (of course, is this any surprise given my worship of French Realists and Modernist fiction? I mean come on). It's only now that I live on the other side of the continent that I realize what an amazingly raw artistry Alabama, and actually all of the South, actually has. Now, most of these examples here are self-taught, post-fauvist/post-primitive painters. There is an enormous variety in South aesthetics, especially if you start looking at antebellum architecture and interiors. But as the title presents, this is folk art. This is a completely different realm. 

There is such a new-found resurgence in the interest in art like this. I'm sure everyone has their own theories, but I personally believe that it is birthed from a natural, cultural hesitancy to be swept up into the internet age of grey and blue computer interface, and mindless binary code. The new worship of the organic and the vintage (hello, hipsters) is cultural phenomenon that is rooted in our own self-questioning and instability. Unsure of who we are in the 21st century, wondering how to work the seven hundredth update of iTunes, and wondering what happened to the ideas of lying cars and intergalactic vacation homes. But I digress. Along with this anti-techno aesthetic movement, there is also the aspect of New Internationalism, or as I would say, Global Nationalism, where the world, however divided as it may be, has connected and merged to a new, all-encompassing breed. I'm sure you've heard the saying of the American man who drives a Japanese car, wears Italian patent leather shoes, drinks a French coffee, and has Korean take-out for lunch. Or at least something along those lines. I am huge advocate for this new omni-culturalism, however, this also causes a bit of a backlash. A new global mono-identity prompts to question, if not who we are, at least who we were. At that we turn to the cultural backbones of our roots: in my case, Alabama folk art. 

Vintage Labels

Image Dump IV

Recent design favorites--also, I'm not sure how long I'll go with putting Roman numerals on these image dumps. I have a feeling it'll be getting to pretty high numbers eventually, and I have absolutely no desire to start filling my post titles with those X's, L's, and M's.


Also, Beirut is all I've been listening today. I thought I'd grown beyond them by senior year in high school, but gosh, that brass. It gets me every time. Also, I sing pretty much exactly like the vocalist, so my karaoke is killer.

On a side note, personal reflection has brought me to the possibility that maybe having two google chrome windows open (with about twelve tabs open on each), as well four word documents, an image editing program, and itunes, all running at the same is the reason why my computer keeps freaking out. Hmm..


Anyway:

Path Patterns and Fill Patterns

Less than a month into my graphic design classes and I'm already in love with them. In a computer software class, we're learning about the power of the Adobe Creative Suite (namely Illustrator), and we've been working a lot in it. The pictures on this post are all various results.

Our latest assignment was to create fill patterns (repeating patterns within a shape) and path patterns (basically just borders). My design à la gauche ->


I'm incredibly drawn to textiles as well as vintage things, folksy things, and foreign things. What better inspiration then than traditional Russian embroidery? Their patterning is breathtakingly detailed and gorgeous. I took various  cross-stitch patterns, mixed and matched, and made them into vector patterns: Each cross stitch of the original pattern (which is so conveniently a square) is represented by a single, computer vector square. Every single one. Once I got the hang of it, it just became a lot of double-checking and aligning, and it wasn't too difficult. 


Definitely time consuming, but what amazing results. I've now got great patterns to use as stationary, borders, letters, wrapping paper, or cloth.