The Manifesto:
Good art
makes uses illusion to present the familiar in a new way.
It takes
what you think you know and turns it on it’s side.
The whole
purpose behind this kind of art is to make us tap into our creativity which
allows us to invent and create new things. When we see such common
processes in a new light, it helps us to view our whole world at a different
angle. This helps us make unobvious connections that we may not have seen
before.
Art that
presents the everyday in a new light takes us into new ways of thinking.
It makes us see everything we know (or think we know) in new angles.
It can be created with all types of mediums, as long as it makes us
rethink our views of the world.
The main goal of good art is to take what we see as familiar and
flip it, mix it, and recreate it.
A Story:
Rachel walked down the street of her neighborhood, concealing a
package of Girl Scout cookies for her grandma under her sweatshirt. It
was dangerous to be walking around that area with any possession someone might
deem worth taking, and Girl Scout cookies are definitely on that list.
Rachel tried to block out the constant wail of sirens and sad people, sounds
that eventually morphed into one strange entity. Sometimes Rachel wanted
to stop and look at the more curious graffiti amongst the sea of it, but she’d
been taught not to linger too long anywhere in Pinewood Acres.
The sun began to set on the horizon as Rachel finally came to the winding road
at the end of the block. If she could just make it to the end of the road
where her grandma lived before dark, she would be okay. She picked up her
pace just to be sure.
Rachel had reached the halfway point and everything was going smoothly.
Suddenly the next few streetlights ahead of her went out with a few bangs and
flashes of sparks. Rachel jumped, but quickly collected herself.
She could see the light pass the shadows, and decided to keep moving as quickly
as she could.
After a moment or two, someone spoke to Rachel out of the darkness, “Ya’ know…
you shouldn’t be walking around here in the dark at this hour.”
Rachel frantically looked, expecting to see a scary man, but the
voice belonged to a calm and normal looking guy, no older than 17. His
face was charming somehow, and Rachel was no longer afraid. Abandoning
her cautious attitude she replied, “You’re probably right. I’m trying to get to
my grandma’s house in Paradise Grove. I know this road will take me to it
eventually but is there a faster way? What with it getting late and all,
I’d like to get there as quick as I can.”
“Yes, I do,” said the boy as he took a step forward. The wail of sirens
suddenly got louder and the boy hesitated. He then spoke, “There’s a
trail off the road here that goes through the park and eventually hooks back up
with the road right before Paradise. It’s faster ‘cuz it’s a straight
shot.”
“Thank-you!” said Rachel, and she gave the boy her most dazzling smile.
“No problem,” he said, “see ya’ ‘round.”
Rachel took the shortcut and made the rest of her journey
without any other delays or distractions. When she got to her grandma’s
the house was dark. Rachel knocked on the front door and it fell
open. She moved inside slowly. “Grandma?” she called, “Grandma, are
you here?”
Suddenly Rachel felt one hand cover her mouth, while another grabbed her
hair. She struggled to get away, knocking over pots, pans and picture
frames. The hand was removed from her mouth for a moment, and she was
able to let out a short scream before it was stifled and she was forced to the
ground. It was then that she saw her attacker to be the boy from the
street. “Shh,” he said.
Rachel looked past the boy to see her grandmother’s bedroom door open.
Behind it, lay her grandmother on the floor unmoving. Rachel began to let
out stifled sobs. The next thing she heard was a bang so loud, her ears rang.
She looked up to see a man in a blue uniform standing in the doorway with his
gun raised.
“Ma’am are you alright?” said the officer.
“Yes, but my grandma...”
Rachel looked to see her grandmother rising from the ground.
“I think she’s okay,” said the officer after tending to Rachel’s
grandma. “How’d this guy know to come here? Do you know him?”
“No, but I accidentally told him.”
“Jeez kid…” said the officer, “Didn’t you ever read Little Red
Riding Hood?”
A Picture:
The Artists' Statement:
Good art makes us think. That is the purpose of all of our classmate’s
manifestos. But in our specific manifesto, we tried to show how good art
should make you think of what you think you know in a different way. Our
goal was to start a movement that has people flipping what they think they
know. We want art to be challenging and creative. We want it to
inspire. We want it to twist your thoughts.
Our Manifesto’s main objective is to take something most would
consider ordinary or commonplace, and to see it in a new light by flipping it
on its side. One of the ways we thought of to do this would be in a story
in which your expectations are upset. I tried to do this with my Little
Red Riding Hood story. Whether or not I succeeded is up for debate since it
probably wasn’t hard to see what the story was early on. Nonetheless, the
story adheres to the criteria laid out in the manifesto. Little Red
Riding Hood is a story we all know, and for a time, this story is
unrecognizable (or at least it was supposed to be) though it is completely
based on Red Riding Hood, and follows the same plot line nearly
identically. This could be done in a number of ways through story.
For instance, The Matrix, takes a look at what everyday life might
really be.
Kind of like the piece by DJ flood, while trying to define what
we were trying to create, we had to search for other artworks that match our
movement. The interesting thing is that the art we found through research
defined our manifesto as much as our manifesto defined the pieces we created.
There were a few ideas I bounced around in my head before
settling in on the person dunking a basketball. I considered turning a person
leaning back on his/her chair against a wall so that it looked like the person
was on the wall and leaning against the ground. I also thought back often
to a piece I was shown in the drawing class I took last semester where a person
photo shopped the metal base of a light bulb underneath a hand that was making
the shape of the “light bulb” that wasn’t actually there.
The
mind is a tricky thing. Much like the light bulb example mentioned above,
my drawing is an illusion. Not only did I change the way we normally see
someone hanging on a rim in preparation to dunk a basketball, but I was also
quite particular in the style I used to create the piece. In the real
world, very few things have an actual outline. Really we see texture,
shape, depth and contrast and from there we create assumed lines in our
brain. My piece was based off of contour line drawings where thicker
lines suggest minimal shadow. I did the background using only line, again
because of the illusion line drawings are. I can make things look rather
realistic and create textures and portray depth, but in this piece, there is a
deliberate lack of such things and yet we accept an image, flat though it may
be.
