Melanie+Thomas

Paragraph 1- Why do you do the work you do? Support your statement telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. I do the work that I do because I like to be creative and use what inspires me to reflect in the work. My goals and aspirations vary and some are simple, but some are more complex. One of my goals is to make the viewer of my piece of art interested and want to know more about why I decided to make the decisions that I did when creating my piece of artwork. Another one of my goals is to get the viewer to know me (the artist) on a basic level through the different components that are incorporated in the artwork. Paragraph two- Tell the reader how you make decisions before, during, and after the artwork is created. How and why do you select materials, techniques and themes? Keep it simple and BE SPECIFIC. Before the artwork is created, what inspires me to make my decisions are the things that I am interested in doing or spending most of my time doing. The decisions that I make during the time that the artwork is created are inspired by the way that the art looks as I begin to make progress. After the artwork is created, the decisions are the way that the final product makes me feel. The way that I select materials, techniques and themes are the way that they fit in with each other. How they compliment one another also influences these choices. Paragraph 3- Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How did this work grow out of prior artwork or life experiences? What are you exploring, attempting or challenging by doing this work? The artwork that I created grew out of prior artwork or life experiences because for the most part, it reflects my interests and me. By doing this work, I am attempting to put my individual ideas down and focus them around one theme, which is peace in this case.

=**Quarter 2**=



Paragraph 1- Why do you do the work you do? Support your statement telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. I do the work that I do because I like to be creative and use what inspires me to reflect in the work. My goals and aspirations vary and some are simple, but some are more complex. One of my goals is to make the viewer of my piece of art interested and want to know more about why I decided to make the decisions that I did when creating my piece of artwork. Another one of my goals is to get the viewer to know me (the artist) on a basic level through the different components that are incorporated in the artwork. In this case, through the painting shown above. Paragraph two- Tell the reader how you make decisions before, during, and after the artwork is created. How and why do you select materials, techniques and themes? Keep it simple and BE SPECIFIC. Before the artwork is created, what inspires me to make my decisions are the things that I am interested in doing or spending most of my time doing. The decisions that I make during the time that the artwork is created are inspired by the way that the art looks as I begin to make progress. In this case, the piece of work that I created is a still life. I set up the items that are shown on the painting in front of the yellow wall of my room and decided that I would first draw, and then paint it exactly as I saw it or to the best of my ability. After the artwork is created, the colors and detail that I decided to demonstrate are the way that the final product makes me feel. The way that I select materials, techniques and themes are the way that they fit in with each other. Colors, what goes best with the setting and the mood that I am is reflected in mt artwork. How they compliment one another also influences these choices. Paragraph 3- Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How did this work grow out of prior artwork or life experiences? What are you exploring, attempting or challenging by doing this work? The artwork that I created grew out of prior artwork or life experiences because for the most part, it reflects my interests the colors that I enjoy seeing in pieces of art. The items in the picture that are painted is also a large part. By doing this work, I am attempting to put my individual ideas down and focus them around one theme with more than one item, in this case; sweet things that make me happy.

=**Quarter 3**=

Emailed 3 photos to science leadership address

Paragraph 1- Why do you do the work you do? Support your statement telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. I do the work that I do because I like to be creative and use what inspires me to reflect in the work. My goals and aspirations vary and some are simple, but some are more complex. One of my goals is to make the viewer of my piece of art interested and want to know more about why I decided to make the decisions that I did when creating my piece of artwork. Another one of my goals is to get the viewer to know me (the artist) on a basic level through the different components that are incorporated in the artwork. In this case, through the painting shown above. They can also know the mood I'm in by the different colors that are used when I paint, the colors in the paintings this quarter are bright, because it's spring and it matched with the picture. The last two marking periods, I drew a picture and painted them because I feel that painting inspires me and it's good to do and helps me to remain relaxed. Paragraph two- Tell the reader how you make decisions before, during, and after the artwork is created. How and why do you select materials, techniques and themes? Keep it simple and BE SPECIFIC. Before the artwork is created, what inspires me to make my decisions are the things that I am interested in doing or spending most of my time doing. The decisions that I make during the time that the artwork is created are inspired by the way that the art looks as I begin to make progress. In this case, the piece of work that I created is a a picture that I decided to draw and paint off the top of my head. I set up the items that are shown on the painting based on the season and how I was feeling at the time I drew it. I just started in the middle and worked my way from there. Paragraph 3- Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How did this work grow out of prior artwork or life experiences? What are you exploring, attempting or challenging by doing this work? The artwork that I created grew out of prior artwork or life experiences because for the most part, it reflects my interests the colors that I enjoy seeing in pieces of art. The items in the picture that are painted is also a large part. By doing this work, I am attempting to put my individual ideas down and focus them around one theme with more than one item, in this case. The season of spring has influenced me to draw and color this picture.


 * I emailed you the pictures for this quarter*

=Quarter 4= For the fourth quarter, I incorporated my art project with my capstone because that's what I was using the majority of my time on and it's art work. I've created a catalog and my mentor and I will take it to Kinkos to make it look more professional and polished. Here are the sketches that I've drawn and colored and the final project will be ready on Monday because I have to give Kinkos time to put it all together but everything is in order. Below are my sketches, I sketched 21 different ones in total but I'm selecting my favorite ones because I don't want to put all 21 on here.

Artist Statement:

Paragraph 1- Why do you do the work you do? Support your statement telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. I do the work that I do for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I love fashion and everything about it so I figured that I should do a senior project around my interests and something on which that I could stay focused. My goals and aspirations for this project varied and evolved throughout the process. It was difficult to come up with an idea of the final product that I could create with the time frame that I had to work with and the resources available to me. Fashion has been installed in me since I was young and I can say that my mother has definitely had an influence my interest in the topic of fashion. Since I was younger, even when I look back at my baby pictures I can see that my mother followed certain trends that were out in the 90s and as I got older until I was able to dress myself and eventually form my own style. When I think of fashion I think of magazines like Nylon, Elle, Seventeen, what I see in advertisements around the city, as well as on television. I can definitely say that these sources have been an influence on my sense of style and how I want myself to be portrayed through certain types of clothing that I wear. When I was younger everyone that came across me would always say that I used to dress nice and that I was always coordinated and color coordinated, I would match my accessories with my clothing and shoes. I even won best dressed in middle school as well as in high school one year. Originally, I thought that I would design clothing on paper and purchase the material that would be necessary and learn how to sew so that I could start a mini clothing line and present a fashion show for my final presentation. Instead of doing that, I decided to design some of my own clothing but change the vehicle of presentation. My vision was to draw some of the outfits and ensembles I had in my head and present them professionally in the form of a catalog. The catalog would feature the material swatches that breathed life into the paper visions. My mentor helped me come up with the idea to create a touch-and-feel clothing catalog.

Paragraph 2- Tell the reader how you make decisions before, during, and after the artwork is created. How and why do you select materials, techniques and themes? Keep it simple and BE SPECIFIC.

I must admit that it was difficult for me to make decisions before, and for the duration of creating the work that I wanted. In the beginning, I didn't know what I would do for my project, no idea because I wanted to do something that was educational at first but then I decided that it should totally be something that I wouldn't get bored of, that I would be interested in and that I would be proud of once I created my final product. Even before I created some of my designs I faced several obstacles because for one thing, I can't draw that well but I can picture the images of the clothing in my head. During the project, I faced the problem of which designs I actually wanted to keep and which material would be the best for certain designs and I'm still slightly facing that problem but there are ways around that and I'll get the opinions of others as well. Inspiration was definitely present because I'm influenced everyday by fashion and the different styles all around me. I selected certain materials that would be used for the different designs that I created because certain materials would match up with certain styles more than others. All of the designs aren't only one material as a whole either because it just makes the designs more fun, creative and unique. The colors are any colors that I feel fit the design or would accent it the most, and there is more than one solid color in certain designs as well. I'm not an artist but the techniques that I used to draw certain designs were based off of the images that I pictured and my head and some of the designs that I saw in popular fashion magazines and the stores that I like.

Paragraph 3- Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How did this work grow out of prior artwork or life experiences? What are you exploring, attempting or challenging by doing this work?

At first, I planned on creating a fashion show, designing and actually creating my own clothes through sewing. My mother and grandmother both know how to sew and I was going to see if they could teach me but that would have been a project that would have taken longer than a year. My current work, grew out of prior work or life experiences because I've been around fashion all of my life and I've always been interested in this area. Sometimes I can picture creative and unique designs but sometimes they are more simple but I draw more dresses than anything else because they look the most professional because I'm not a true artist but I still have a knack for design. My father used to always buy me fashion magazines and I do believe that this has had an inspiration on my desire to design clothing that's unique. By doing this work, I challenged my artistic skills and my talents and knack for design and I discovered that I can design and draw dresses better than any other article of clothing. I am also exploring how far I can go putting my different talents together like my knack for fashion, my "drawing" and coordination.