ART EXPLORATION #9 - Guerilla Art

This is a meaning quote that I find 

inspiring and empowering to the individual self:

If you never try, you'll never know just what you're worth. 

I want to venture this inspirational quote out into the world. 

  

I started to share with my most immediate and closest family members.
I daringly shared the quote on my brother's walls with washable markers.
 

Not many people write longer write in hand-writing. Have you notice? I suddenly had the urge to write in cursive. Here is its, nice and big cursive writing across his wall.

Reaction to my Guerilla Art

My fifteen year old teenage brother may not have been the happiest teen when he arrived home to find writing on one side of his wall. However, recording his reaction to reading this quote, he stare at  the wall in deep thought for a fair amount of time . I thought about the possibility of my brother being able to gain some confidence or motivation in pursuing something that he might have doubted himself in completing, and that this quote could have acted as an inspiration.  I spoke to him afterwards about the quote and he expressed a lot of grumpiness in his response of my writing in his room. However, he also commented "At least the writing looks nice. Maybe I'll keep it."  Living with my 

 brother all my life, I interpret this response as a sign that he accepts this piece of art that I have created spontaneously. I feel extremely proud that my brother did not demand to wash it off his wall because this is a signification that he likes the piece. Perhaps one day when he's feeling incompetent, a glance at

"If you never try, you'll never know just what you're worth"

will give him another outlook on his abilities to success. 

 The urge to go further with my Guerilla Art

• I had just went out and purchase a take-out of Chinese food with Mixed Greens, Grilled Chicken and Rice. As I stood in an elevator waiting to get to my floor level, a lot of idle time was spent. I had the urge to venture out to the community and share this quote. I took out a piece of paper and jotted the quote down. However, I lacked the stationary materials to create artwork or at the very least, make my message stick on any surface of the elevator. Desperate for tape or a post-it note, I thought "what would make this meaningful piece of paper stick?" 
• I scanned all that I had on me and I desperately took part of the rice from my meal and create a piece of art to the message. The rice made the message it. 
• If you never try, you never know just what you're worth. 
• Who knew the value of rice can also act as temporary tape? I guess this adds values to the worth of tape in my eyes now. This certainly brings a new outlook. Hopefully, the next person whom came across the message was able to take away a reflection as meaningful as the perspective I've seen. 

ART EXPLORATION #10 - Community Arts Project

Speak Against Racism:

Our Logo

We are a group of students passionate to make a difference on the social issue of racism.
Mission
Our objective is raise awareness about racism and racial stereotypes going on in our society. We have proposed a project that may be of interest to stakeholders and students to reduce racism on campus as well as raising awareness for the services available in their community. We have created this interactive online community for people to share, comment, and give advice and support on experiences of racism as well as a list of online resources to seek help.
Purpose
A healthy growing community involves the well-being of its people – to have mutual respect for on another regardless of race. Therefore it is most important for each individual to reflect that we all come from different backgrounds and all have a different story to tell.
With the existence of racism still evidently around in our society today, despite the efforts of fighting against it for many years in the history, we continue to live in an environment where main causes of racism are not reflected by humanity. The social world continues to fed on stereotypes, lack mutual respect from various race and ethnicity groups because of unfamiliarity of the nature of its differing cultures from their own or simply selfishness.
As students, the Ryerson Campus is our most immediate community. We want to invite students, teachers and their families within the community to involve themselves in our ultimate goal to make the environment we live in a better place.
Vision
What can we do next other after our awareness is raised about this social issue? Our ultimate objective is to take the next step from simply raising awareness and advocate for others by bringing possible sources of solutions to support those who may encounter forms of racism, whether it be from the cause of stereotypes, unfamiliarity, environmental factors or selfishness of humanity.
Taking Action

Our Big Idea - In action

Our creation of SPEAK AGAINST RACISM stickers is our first step to raising awareness that racism still exist in our world today. In several urban elements around campus, stickers with a quotation from famous thinkers are placed, inviting to a reflection about issues on racism.
On the sticker, there is a website in which individuals can have access to a place to share, vent and outsource their emotions and feelings anonymously on the web about this social issue. This is a place where students, teachers, parents or anyone in the community can SPEAK AGAINST RACISM and express their shady views of this social issue in the perspective of each individual who has a want or need to share.
Join Us
Everyone has a story. From hearing about one’s story, this puts us in the position to consider their viewpoint. We believe that each individual has a right to SPEAK AGAINST RACISM and share their story. The individual self only knows best how they feel in their skin.


“You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view – until you climb into their skin and walked around it.”

ART EXPLORATION #8 - Pretend Play and Magical Thinking

Always Puts a smile on my face when I'm feeling blue

A favourite book.
Do you ever feel like you just want to be alone or just need some space for just yourself? When I experience these feelings,  I turn to a book.

Our Favourite Family Book  

       A book can almost feels like my best friend. It speaks to me and tells me a story. I'm spending quality time with a good company when I encounter a good book.It brings me through a drift of emotions. Sadness, happiness, fear, anger. The same way a relationship may bring you smiles, laughter, tears, fright, and anger. A book can bring you through a range of experiences: adventure, love and romance, comedy, action. 


Children's acquisition of language are most rapid during early childhood. They hear words and are able to fast map the words into sentences and incorporate new words into their vocabulary as they add new words to their lexicon.  They become more eager to learn to read as their vocabulary expands and they link new meaning to the words and images they see within a book. As they form connections with words and images, the book almost comes to life. The storybook characters  become a familiar friend, a real person, a favourite persona.    

ART EXPLORATION #7 - Grocery Shopping with a twist

Desserts & Fruits  

My family enjoys the variety of foods from different cultures and are open to trying to new, authentic foods. As a family, we enjoy the food of different cultures. Indian, Thai, Chinese, Western, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Carribean are amongst the variety of foods that my family has enjoyed together at restaurants. However, one thing that remains the same for my family are their preference for desserts. My grandparents would only settle for fruits after a meal. They have this traditional Chinese cultural mentality. I never really understood growing up as a child. Today, the adult "me" respects this culture, and after reflection, I find these cultural differences pretty neat. 

Fruits come in all forms of intense beautiful colours and shapes. Grocery shopping for fruits always puts a smile on my face. Having the fruits layed across the table, we can see the boldness of each fruit and the art of having them contrast one another. 

After a meal, the western culture has been accustomed to having desserts, usually a sweet enlightening treat. 

Home-Made Pastry 

Mom's Fruit bowl 

Mom's art of assembling fruits

Grapes, mangoes, bananas, lemons, pears, strawberries, kiwi, star-fruit, honey-dew melons, cantaloupes, limes, apples, oranges,blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild-berries. 

In the Chinese culture, raw or sliced fruits are often our traditional dessert. At traditional Chinese restaurants, fruits are often served at the end of meals. Even in my home, fruits are the typical after-meal dessert by my mother.

Being raised in a westernized society though, I have develop a love from western desserts such as cake, pastries. This lifestyle of the after-meal sweet treat has been around since I was born. However, only until recently, have I been specifically been interested in baking and spending more time in being creative and having fun with preparing meals. The art of baking goods or slicing fruits to decorate a dessert can become an activity. Desserts with fruits. 

My most favourite three fruits: 

Blueberries

Kiwi Fruit

Strawberry

In comparing and contrasting the nature of fruits, I was inspired to create my own desserts with fruit:

Dessert with a Twist

ART EXPLORATION #6 - Representing My Identity and the World Around Me

scissors

Children learn a great deal about identity through reflecting on photographs of family, friends, and themselves. They develop a sense of whom they are through learning to look and internalizing what they find pleasing. They discover their interests and develop a sense of self through exploration of colours, images and while interacting with people. Inspired by Henri Matisse's painting with scissor project, I created an art activity while I babysat some children over the weekend:

 collaging with scissors. 


Things you will need & instructions:

Silhouette 

• large sheet of paper (child-size to lay on)
• have the child lay on the piece of paper and outline the child's body
• scissors
• children can cut out the silhouette of themselves
• photographs of family, friends and children
• have the children cut out the images and heads of their favourite family members, friends and themselves
• on the silhouette cutout of themselves, create a collage from the cutouts of the photographs

Steps to collaging with scissors.


1. Take a mix of photographs with a Polaroid and Digital camera
2. Play with the zoom and angles of the photos while snapping these photos.
3. Collect and snap some new photographs of family, friends and children.
4. Have the children examine the photos , reflect and recognize the faces 
5. Cutout their favourite photographs of themselves, family members and friends .
6. Create a collage with the photographs by piecing the collection of photographs on the silhouette of themselves, or on any surfaces.

ART EXPLORATION #4 - Looking for Patterns in Urban Setting: The City of Toronto

I was born and raised in Toronto, and have lived here all my life. Toronto being my hometown, I always thought I knew this city really well. This past week, I rose my awareness when I stroll around this city and realized that I've missed a lot of fine details about this city. 




nature in an urban city  Biking on the Woodbine beach trail, I captured a different perspective in viewing my surroundings today . I watched the blue sky slowly blend into rosy pink blotches of in the horizon as the sun set. I thought it was a beautiful view and decided to snap a photo of the view to capture it's beauty. I began angling myself left and right, trying to play with the lighting and open space. I loved seeing the glimpse of pink in the sky. After snapping several shots, I reviewed my photos and thought, "If only these trees weren't in the way, I'd have a perfect snapshot of the magnificent pink sky". 

spotted the patterns Afterwards, I came home and uploaded this photo on to my computer. I looked more closely into the photo and reflected that the trees created abstract lines.  They may have blocked the view of what I originally wanted to capture a picture of, however, the photos I resulted in taking gave me another outlook.  

abstract lines It was then I noticed the branches of the tree grew so abstractly. Each tree with branches springing in different angles here and there, so naturally. Nature really is a work of art.


Toronto has always been recognized as an urban setting, in which many people recognized as the second "new york". The busy streets, the streets lights that outline and brighten our whole city. But within this big city, in my very own neighbourhood in which I grew up in, patterns of all kinds occur at all scales. Toronto's urban setting are full of patterns.  

The view of a building with the little glimpse of light shining through each of it's room window is a beautiful pattern of our urban city.The streets lights that brighten up the outskirts of Toronto is another beautiful perspective of pattern of our city. 

Take a look at this photo I took from the view of Panorama and reflect for yourself!

Home Sweet Home town : Toronto city. 

ART EXPLORATION #3 : Fine Art Critique

What is going on in the work of art?

Peter Paul Rubens' The Massacre of the Innocents Rubens

My Initial Reaction

When I toured the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Massacre of the Innocents Rubens was the first piece of artwork that provoked a combination of emotions. I was exceptionally intrigued by this piece of art because I saw so much happening within one painting. To the right of the piece, there is the baby being taken away from the woman. To an extext, I believe that this piece elicits certain characteristics in classifying gender roles and levels of authority in the 1600s. I interpret the muscular man as a representation of masculinity and power in the 1600s and the poor woman as weak and helpless to protect her child.  I also find this piece exceptionally interesting because Rubens was able to bring out so many emotions within a piece of artwork, through the facial expressions painted of the many characters within the piece.  I feel that this piece is alive and truly surreal with amazing three-dimensional effect, emerging a wonderful representation of the lifestyle of their era.