And so IP begins...

What I did:I think I spent as much time this week being overwhelmed as I spent being productive. Even though I know I have quite an exciting journey ahead of me, it is still very daunting.

I spent the majority of the week buying things for my studio and bringing things back and forth. I just want it to be set up already! I still have to paint it and decorate it, but for the most part I have most of the furniture in it. I have probably spent a total of 3 hours so far buying things for my studio and bringing things into it. Here it is so far:

This week I also spent some more time researching different artists that work with found objects and art that is mailed such as Davy Rothbart who founded Found Magazine in addition to Darren Di Lieto who founded a project called Mail Me Art. I probably spent about 45 minutes doing this, however I spent a good 5 or 6 hours doing research this summer.

I also spent a lot of time this week just thinking and contemplating my project. Meeting and being interviewed by one of my peers was so helpful and really allowed me to sort out my ideas. It is so helpful to try to articulate what I am thinking since it all has pretty jumbled up in my head.

So, this week was pretty much a week of getting back into the swing of things, trying to get my studio set up, calming myself down and sorting things out.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered:

Here are a few images that have gotten me thinking lately and that have been inspiring me.

These images are all from Frank Warren's project, Post Secret. Warren gives postcards to random people and asks them to share their secrets. The reactions that he gets are so intriguing. It is this notion of receiving something intimate from a complete stranger that I find so interesting. Each postcard becomes its own work of art. I think it is so fascinating to see how each person writes their secrets and depicts them.

These 2 photos are photos that I had taken for a project for my advanced studio Sophomore year, Marking Memory. Writing that is often found on desks and in bathroom stalls can be fascinating, however it often goes unnoticed. I am interested in how strangers here are having a conversation with each other, and how people keep adding to the conversation. This has been inspiring me to create a project with a similar idea in mind of strangers having conversations with one another. I also love to look at the different ways people write what they are trying to say.

As stated above, I found this artist, Darren Di Lieto who basically collected both professional artists works as well as amateurs all around the world. People sent in things from postcards to pieces of wood. Di Lieto then compiled all of the art in the form of a book. With this work, I am interested in the aspect of receiving things from strangers, as well as how Di Lieto produced a book with his findings.

On a completely different note, in August's "Print" magazine, I found an article about a group of Carnegie Mellon professor and her design students as well as 5th graders from Pittsburgh public schools teaming up with local doctors and the community to create a new model for healthy eating education. I have a strong interest in graphic design, and know that I want to incorporate it in my project somehow (through creating a book I believe), but I really like this idea of working within the community to create a change through Graphic Design. I also love working with children.

What I think I should do next:

When talking with Chelsea, we came up with the idea of combining my ideas of vandalism graffiti (?) with collecting things from strangers and finding things. I just really interesting in interacting and having conversations with people through visual expression. What I would do would be something along the lines of creating postcards from things that I find, both notes etc... as well as scanned photos of writings I find in bathroom stalls and desks etc... I would mail these postcards to many many people and ask them to do something really simple such as just "react." I could then send the response that I get to another person and have them react to that and a conversation could form.

I know this is all over the place, but since I am also very interested in typography and how different typefaces read, perhaps I could do something similar to this idea except with using typography. Maybe I can do different experiments with different typefaces and send them out on postcards for people to react to.

Anyways, I think what I should do next is focus on these found items and graffiti and start collecting. This means collecting things that I find in the street as well as photographing things written in different places. I also want to create a sample postcard for myself to get an idea of what it might look like, and how it might work. In addition to this, I want to be completely moved into my studio by mid next week, latest. Lastly, I am going to keep researching artists and projects throughout the week to gain more inspiration.