Our Inspiration

What inspire me to do art may be the same things that inspire other great artists. In every art piece of work, the artist does not create it to be about himself/herself, it’s usually about the things around them, their environment, surroundings, how they feel, what they see, etc… Like many other artists I am inspire by the many different kinds of arts around the world coming from different cultures. All cultures have a fascinating artistic background that is known throughout the world today. Examples and designed masks inspired by African masks are sold everywhere, Japanese kimonos, Chinese china collections, Indian pattern blankets, etc… All the art and design around the world inspire tourist, artists, designer, and architecture to make what they made. The world is filled with arts and designs. The designs from American designers came from designs from the past. So these designs from around the world and designs from the past inspire me to want to create something new, innovate a design from something has been created and make it better.

           

            Japanese Kimono                                                                  China Collection

  

         Indian Blanket                                                                                                            African mask

Creativity from Without

What is art? Does art have to relate to the artist? Art is about inspiration and that is how it is created.  What inspire great artists from all over the world and from the past? It can be just about anything, it can be their everyday lives, what they eat, what they see, how they feel, what they like, what attracted them, and so on. The art does not have to be about the artist inner self. Dale Chihuly is an artist who is inspired by Native American Trade Blankets because of its colorful designs and patterns. His recreated what is similar to the trade items of Indians and display them in a museum to show how the items look like. 

Stone Soup

The purpose of Stone Soup is to bring people together to create something extraordinary. In the book Stone Soup, the characters are suppose to make soup out of stone, but in the process of making it, everyone add in something to make it better, in which the result was not a disappointment. We made our own stone soup just that it’s not actually soup, but we utilize the idea and use crafts and are materials to create an art piece. Everyone brought something from home to be used in the process of Stone Soup. Our group decided that we will make an abstract tree on a light pole. We start out with the trunk and continue to ad branches and design to make it look more abstract and unique from a regular tree. 

 Everyone working together

The branches were made from cardboard and rubber bike tires, while the leaves are bows and papers. What makes the abstract tree extraordinary was the small box covering the trunk of the tree.  That gave us a new name and explanation of the tree. We called it the Tree out of the Box and when you look at the box it is very small and out of proportion for the huge tree. Our explanation for that is, something big and extraordinary can come out of something really small, presenting the idea of the quote, “Big things, comes in small packages.”

my bow made out of someone's jean.

Candy Design

When you look at candy, do you ever wonder, why does it look like that? Why is it design in that way? Candies come in many shapes and sizes and in many colors. They are design in various ways that will attract the customers’ attention. For example, I just bought a bag of Gummi Candy Trolli Sour Brite Crawler Eggs from a convenient store. The reason why I bought it was because of the design of the candy. They are in small egg shapes, colorful and small bite size. Or some people may describe it as “cute”. It’s less complicated than eating a gummy warm. If you want to eat a gummy warm but want to take just one bite off of it, you still have to hold on to the other half. As for the Crawler eggs, you just have to pop one or two in your mouth without dirtying your fingers or hands; it is less of a hassle.  

The Past, Present, and Future

“The Etymology of Design: Pre-Socratic Perspective” an article written by Kostas Terzidis, explains how design is a paradox. This article gave me a more precise explanation than what I had in mind. Back in high school a friend and I were discussing where the trend and fashion today came from. We realized that if we look back at the fashion history we see many of the fashions today resembling the fashion in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We came up with a theory that fashions today were design based on the fashions from the past. This article has proved our theory, by talking about etymology, innovation, origin, and novelty.

The First Encounter

Everyone have their first encounter with design. Some have similar experience and some have different. We all have a history with some sort of design, meanwhile that certain design has its own history. My first encounter with design was with bell bottom jeans. That style of jeans dated back to the 1970s and carried on until the 1990s. The first jean brand was Levi, and is also the first to come up with bell bottom jeans. Not long after many other manufacturer began to produce bell bottoms or denim. The design of the bell bottoms was unique and fashionable at those times. The idea of bell bottoms originates from the sailor suits back in 1817, it is design so that while working on the deck it would be more convenient to roll up the bottom of the pants, have more leg room, and can be easily taken off without struggling. That was how bell bottom jeans became so popular in the 1970s to 1990s. Another way of making it famously popular or to lead the attention of the public attention towards that fashion, is designing it for celebrities. The audience will notice the style and want to be like their idol and will start to wear that style. Such as Elvis Presley, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, Aston Kutcher, and etc… Many of them may have worn bell bottoms in movies, TV, or just going out.