Standing in the Shoes - Alison Jungfleisch

I truly have only this to say: I severely underestimated the difficulty and frustration that would ensue when I undertook this project. I would go so far as to say, and I will quote the 43rd President on this, that I mis-underestimated sculpting. Though I would never claim to be an artist, and I think my sculpture only provides testament to this, I feel as though this process has given me a deeper understanding of the artistic mind.
Now not claiming to be an artist doesn’t mean that I’ve had no experience. I took high school art classes, but that was child’s play. We made crude paintings, collages, line drawings, etc.; but nothing prepared me for the undertaking of sculpture. I have never had the experience of attempting to draw shape in a three dimensional way from a stone (or in this case soap). There was much trial and error, with significant emphasis on error, and nearly half a dozen bars of soap were ruined as I attempted to grasp the technique of sculpting (in the picture you'll notice the pile of soap shavings behind my finished product). When I first sat down at the kitchen table with my bars of soap, my spirits where high; “I can do this, no problem,” I thought so foolishly.
I spent the next hour mutilating bar after bar of soap. I tried first to make rudimentary shapes, discovering that making a simple pyramid or cube where far more difficult tasks then I had presumed. Then finally, when I felt I had grasped the basics, using slow deliberate chips with my knife, rather than the broad strokes I had began with, I undertook my most ambitious plan. I was going to sculpt a bust, or lose a finger trying. Each undertaking was even more difficult than the last; from shaping the head, to crafting the shoulders, carving out what was meant to be a manly chest (but looked more like crossed arms), delicately chipping away his face to create a nose and eyes. My meager block of soap gave way to the figure of a man, or at least the best interpretation of the male form as my limited skills would allow.
In the end my bust, that of “Macho Man” as he was affectionately named by my fiancé, looked more like an Easter Island statue than a man; but I was proud of him/it. Spending nearly an hour to carefully and purposely carve each intimate detail gave me a connection with my creation I had not experienced before; and allowed me to better appreciate the finished product. No matter how much he failed to resemble the creation I had set out to make, I think my Macho Man is beautiful.

Standing in the shoes

Ashley Lightley

I scanned my image to the computer and for some reason it didn't come up clearly. I drew an image of a road with houses on either side. The vanishing point was where the road ended on the horizon. I drew a house up close to show distance for the viewer and I also drew two houses half way from the first house and then a city near the vanishing point to show three different distances.

Standing in the shoes of...

Rania Khoury - Leonardo da Vinci

I tried to play around with the atmospheric perspective and came up with the fuzziness/lighter lines. This gives the illusion you are looking at something that is further away. I am not a good artist so it was hard to really get the distance and the sizes of the boxes perfect. I made the bigger/closer box darker to help emphasize the depth of the photo. I used shadows to try and emphasize on the direction of lighting. Da Vinci is known for lighting and his depth perception.

Timothy Laudan- Michelangelo

I am sending my work of art that took a lot of skill to create.Seriously, I'm sending a picture of wood sculpture that I bought inJamaica, and "My Masterpiece" A car I attempted to carve out of a bar ofsoap. It's very hard to sculpt anything, because if you make a mistake,you have to start over. I've included the Bob Marley sculpture from Jamaica because it was carved by a 10 year old Jamaican boy with aknife, and stained with shoe polish. That little kid was a very good artist! Me...not so much!

Brittane Jenkins

My artist was Michelangelo, I chose to express my experience in Nursing
School, so I chose to represent "Perserverance", even though there are
many obstacles, one has to stand strong. I represented "Perserverance"
with a sculptured bar of soap; I used a sharp kitchen knife. I took away
the top layer and angled the bottom layer, leaving a strong foundation
which represents "perserverance" and I chisled the sides away which
represents "obstacles".

Artist Description- Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France in 1848. His father was a French journalist. When Gauguin was three, he and his parents moved to Lima, Peru. Unfortunately, his father passed away during the trip and him and his mother remained there for four years. He eventually returned back to Paris where he became a stockbroker for twelve years. His main hobby was painting and by 1876, his artwork was accepted in a salon. By 1883, he gave up his career as a broker and decided to focus all his time on painting. Within this time period, two of his main paintings were Yellow Christ and Vision After the Sermon/Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. Peasents played a big part in Gauguin's paintings. They were depicted a lot in his paintings. Eventually, he moved to Tahiti where he began to appreciate warm colors and used his environment greatly within his paintings. He is regarded as a highly influencial painter in modern art. He used a lot of techniques known today as surrealist painting. Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th century painting andsculpture; characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems,geometric designs and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin.


The Yellow Christ:
Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolvedtowards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic ÉdouardDujardin in response to Emile Bernard's method of painting with flatareas of color and bold outlines, which reminded Dujardin of theMedieval cloisonné enamelling technique. Gauguin was very appreciativeof Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style whichsuited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in hisart.In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnistwork, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavyblack outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classicalperspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, therebydispensing with the two most characteristic principles ofpost-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards Synthetismin which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.


The Breton Girls

In 1883 he decided to devote himself full-time to his art. He quit his
job and found himself living on his own. His wife and children were
confused by Gauguin's all-consuming passion for art, and they moved to
Denmark. Though they remained apart, Gauguin corresponded with his wife
throughout his life; his letters give us a personal look into the
thoughts and motivations behind his art.

Gauguin was drawn to "primitive", mythic, and mysterious subject matter.
His unique style developed during trips to Brittany, a rugged land in
northwest France. There he hoped to tap the expressive potential of an
unspoiled society. He made bold paintings of the Breton people in native
dress, work that influenced a group of painters who became Gauguin's
devoted followers.

The Vision of the Sermon:

Gauguin's work was concerned with inner rather than external truth. He studied Japanese prints and began to incorporate their style. He began to use bold, flat areas of solid color to depict his figures. In this painting, "the figures are distributed unconventually, cut off and framing the canvas edge at the left and in the foreground." There is no identifiable source of light within this photo. This technique is similiar to Fauvism.

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-Rania