Arts 102 UCSB


Multi-Layer Composite Project

Amanda Appel
This image was created by using an image of neurons to create a mask, and then using the mask to cut out a section from a new image with a predetermined composition. All of the images used were chosen because of their direct or indirect association with the nervous system or thought process that once addressed creates a much more complex image.

Cameron Boulton
In an homage to Baldessari's cutout mask pieces, I have created two symbol-based works. We are symbolic creatures by nature, searching for patterns as a means to bring order to our surrounding chaos. Symbols are like images in the sense that seek to represent--not so much an experience, but perhaps an idea or a concept. Just as the images I have chosen as the backgrounds for my pieces have very definite historical presences and modern connotations, the symbols I have paired them with provided the experiential trigger that brought me to use the images. In other words, as I was searching for images the peace symbol brought to mind, almost immediately the image of Tiananmen Square which I first saw on the cover of a magazine (I think TIME?) when I was young. The hammer & the sickle immediately makes me think communism, red, USSR, Russia, Stalin, the Cold War, etc. I thought the power of symbol and the image combined would produce an interesting mental pairing and subsequently I tried to compose them in an interesting way as to reach some blurry middle ground of being able to identify the underlying images but also struggling a little in doing so.

Kim Bui
In an attempt to create a Baldessarian-type work, I've created a set of 5 images consisting of 1 original mask of a man on lawn, riding a treadmill-style bicycle and 4 successive masks. By juxtaposing the machismo and nonsensical aspects of the original image against the following 4, I've attempted to contradict the base mask with images of femininity and childhood. By using images of a carousel, candy hearts, sunflowers, and a teacup, I imagined that these simple pleasures of a typical young girl are an oxymoron to the lifestyle of today's mindless entertainment as seen on reality television to the likes of Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera.

MC
This project stemmed from an image of young kids in IV, which always throws me when I see it. For a place that is so uncensored, it seems unnatural for kids to be here. Following that idea, I remembered a story about a man who roamed the streets of IV recently, looking in the windows of houses and taking pictures of girls for his own pleasure. Voyeurism is a subject that comes up often in the art world, which I realize, but this is an expression of that subject that I hadn't explored before. In imagery depicting pedophilia, whether it be motion picture or still images, the perspective is often that of the "predator." By cutting the image of the children playing in the park into the shape of a man lurking in the shadows, I took something completely innocent and turned it into an amber alert warning advertisement. I like the controversy when it is executed creatively. Also, to emphasize the non-rectangular shape of the image and to give it some dimention, I added a drop shadow behind the cut-out.

Christopher Faderan
The first image is titled Hope, indicative of the hope that President Obama has brought the American people. The image is outlined by angel wings, while in the the main theme is of a man looking up at Obama's image. This image was madewith simple quick masking techniques.

Paulo Fong
For this particular mask I took an outline of colorful drops in mid-splash with a liquid, and made that my base layer. I then took another existing image of a rocket being launched and felt that the rocket's visual information fit well within the perimeter of the splash mask. The decision of using these shapes and objects is purely to question the idea of boundaries and layer masks in art as well as eliminating the standard rectangle with image manipulating.

Melissa Hebeler
To create this image, I used the shapes of sea animals to embody images of zoo animals to juxtapose the two types of creatures.

Carmel Mays
Walking and standing became a theme last weekend and so that was incorporated into the project. I cut out the image of a high-heel shoe which is the shape where the two other images are placed. An image of baby's feet, that were being held in a hand, were cut out; a sepia like tone was added and the new image was positioned where the feet are normally located. Another image of Marilyn Monroe was sharpen and lightened, bands of red added to her high heels and to the right earring. The heel of the shape was painted red to match the other red in the images and to help move the eye through the composition.

Jana Sepulveda
I wanted a really complex shape to be the base so that I would be able to make interesting compostitions. I chose the rose because it's easily recognizable and because it had a lot of empty space in between. I tried to use the shape for some images you kind of associate a rose with and some that you don't. I tried to keep the center of the rose as the focus for the images and that determined where I placed the images. I also tried to cut the photos a little abstractly so that you really have to look in order to see what it is.