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About Me:

My name is Bekah and I am a freshman here at Butler! I am an Art + Design major and love sewing and being creative. I also love dancing (I'm on dance team!), eating cereal and shopping at Target.

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Posts Tagged “art”

Finals

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Thursday everyone! I do apologize for my lack of creativity in these blog posts lately. Just like everyone else on campus, I have been incredibly busy with finals shtuff. Wrapping up loose ends for the end of the year/studying for finals has been consuming my life, but it will all be over soon enough!

Since I am an art + design major, a lot of my work for finals was due last week at Art Now. Although I had a lot due then, the fun didn’t stop there! I have to write a manifesto for my art history class, which is proving to be incredibly challenging, as well as make a visual for it. I also have to create an artist website, complete with a bio, artist statement, and resume for another one of my art classes. So much art, so little time.

The final for my FYS was simple enough. We just had to answer some short essay questions. The only test final I have is for my urban ecology class, and let me tell you, I cannot wait for that to be over. I am not a sciencey person in the slightest, so I am anxiously awaiting the day that science can be out of my life forever.

The awkward, "finals are over!!" celebration dance.

My journalism class’ final was a paper, which I turned in last week, so I just need to finish up my art and urban ecology stuff and I will be free!

Have a great end to the week, thanks for reading, and keep rockin’ those finals :)

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Art Now

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Thursday all! Art Now was this Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was a success! If you are unaware, Art Now is the art show put on by Butler’s art students at the end of each semester. The show takes place in the Reilly Room and lasts two days. Being an Art + Design major, I had all of my work from this semester in the show.

I displayed my body of work, which was a relational art piece about how people interact and forge friendships. I also displayed a piece I made out of a busted up George Forman Grill, as well as a collage of sexual innuendos. Art is fun.

"Innuendo? InYOURendo"

I absolutely loved all of the displays, and seeing all of my fellow classmate’s work was great. My favorite aspect of the show was the dance floor. There was a taped off section of the floor that you had to dance through whenever you crossed it, and on Wednesday, one of my professors and two of my classmates and I had a silent dance party. This consists of each participant listening to music on their iPod and dancing together as if the music is playing throughout the room. We looked like fools because there was only music playing in our ears, but it was great.

I also really enjoyed an interactive piece made by my friend and classmate, Britt. She made a mermaid tail and encouraged people to get inside the tail, take a picture, and post it with the hashtag #ArtNowMermaid. I most certainly took a picture, as did many other people. It was great fun!

P.S. If you missed the show, or if you just really love art, swing by the Art Annex past AV and check out Art at the Annex, featuring work from two senior majors. It will be open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. tomorrow!

Me, being a mermaid.

Good luck on finals, and have a great end of the week :)

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Blue II’s Birthday

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Friday everyone! Today is Butler Blue II’s birthday. The former mascot is turning 9 today, and there was a big party in the bookstore and Starbucks earlier this afternoon. There were cameras, cookies, cupcakes, and a lot of people. Let me remind you that Blue II is a dog.

A picture of Blue II.

 

Personally, I have nothing against Blue II. He’s been our school mascot for many years and everybody loves him. The thing I don’t understand is why there was a birthday party for a dog. All I know is that I have never had such a bangin’ party (my family forgot my birthday once, but that’s a story for another time), and I’d like to think I’m more likeable than a bulldog. Apparently not. Apparently no human being is more likeable than an bulldog because I have never heard of the news being at an average human’s birthday bash.

I’m not complaining exactly because I would by lying to you if I said I didn’t take advantage of the free Insomnia Cookies at the party, but I would also be lying if I said that I thought throwing a dog a birthday party was a casual thing to do. Oh well, whatever floats your boat I suppose.

I was informed that Tripp’s birthday falls over Christmas break, so I wonder what the party situation will be for his birthday next year. We should probably have one party before break and one once we come back, just to be safe. I mean, that’s the logical thing to do. As long as there are free cookies, I guess it’s alright.

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading :)

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Advising and Art Stress

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Thursday to all! We have about one month left of the semester, and you know what that means- it’s time for advising appointments and end of the year shenanigans! I blogged last semester about how stressful it was to figure out my schedule, but I wasn’t nearly as stressed this time around.

Although my advising appointment didn’t give me too much worry, all of my art projects most certainly have. I have mentioned many a time before that I am an Art + Design major. I absolutely, positively love being an art major, but there is quite a lot happening in the art department these days, so I am wigging out a bit.

My most recent project.

The biggest thing I have to do is create a body of work.

For the body of work, the class has to make 5-10 pieces that are related through a concept, and we have to have them done to present at Art Now. Initially, I was going to go to Value World and buy items from the song “Thrift Shop” and create my own interpretation of the song through photographs, but I wasn’t totally feeling it. My new idea was inspired by a video of strangers sitting in a ball pit and asking each other questions so they wouldn’t be strangers when they left the pit (the video is below!).

As you know from reading my blog, I am all about becoming friends with strangers. I am really curious about people’s relationships and how they come to meet and grow in friendship, so I am going to create spaces and instances that, like the ball pit, encourage strangers to interact. I am going to document these interactions through photos and writing, so it’s different from most other projects I have done. This type of art is called relational art because it is about human relationships, rather than a tangible piece of artwork. I’m kind of nervous that no one will want to participate, but you better believe I’m going to try!!

In other kind of artsy-related news, I got an Instagram, so you should follow me!

YouTube Preview Image

Have a great end to the week and thanks for reading :)

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Art on Art on Art

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Friday everyone! Last Friday, I went on the First Friday gallery tour with some other students from the Jordan College of the Arts. I have blogged about this before, but first Fridays are when local art galleries are open for the evening, and a bunch of people come to view the work. We went to the Harrison Center for the Arts and the Murphy Art Center.

The Murphy building was my favorite destination on the last first Friday I attended, so I was anxious to return. The best exhibit I saw there was by Robert Horvath, titled Braincandy. This exhibit consisted of large-scale oil paintings of nuclear, candy looking creations.

Robert Horvath

All of the paintings looked airbrushed or digitally altered, so it blew my mind when I spoke to the artist and he said it was oil paint and described his process. He said if he works in the studio every day, he would only be able to produce about 10 paintings in a year because they are so labor intensive.

Speaking of more crazy art, I met an artist the other day who ate the Bible. The Art + Design program is currently interviewing for another professor for next year, and one of the candidates came and taught two of my art classes the other day. He is a performance artist, which, in simple terms, means you record yourself doing strange things. For one of his performances, he fasted for seven days, and at the end of the seven days, he boiled the pages of the Bible and ate it. He also described how he lived in a bubble/dome structure for a whole month. That is serious dedication.

One final art encounter- the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards exhibit is currently in Clowes Hall. This exhibit showcases the best work from middle schoolers and high schoolers in the area. A few of my classmates and I went and looked at the exhibit this morning, and let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more inadequate than when an 8th grader has more artistic ability than you do.

The work I showed last year.

I showed work in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards show in Illinois last year and received a gold key, but after seeing the great work at Clowes, I feel less special about that accomplishment.

Have a wonderful spring break and safe travels to wherever your destination may be. Thanks for reading :)

 

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Struggle Bussing

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Bekah

Happy Thursday, friends! This past week I have been incredibly busy and stressed. I had a ton of Urban Ecology and art homework that was due at the beginning of the week. My family visited this past weekend, and since I spent a lot of my time with them, I did not do much of my homework for either of those classes until Sunday night, prompting me to be on the struggle bus all week long.

For Urban Ecology, I had about 100 pages of reading, a lab report, and a test all due Tuesday. I did the majority of all of this work on Monday and stayed up till about 3 a.m. Well played, self. On Tuesday I turned in all of my work for that class, but had meetings out the wazoo, plus an art project to do for Wednesday, so the stress was far from over.

For my art project, we had to use another artist as a source of inspiration and create work from that. The artist I chose was Maria Magdaelna Campos Pons. She does a lot of photographic self-portraits, so by golly that is what I did for my project.

My project.

I took the pictures Tuesday evening and uploaded them into iPhoto with no problems at all. After that, I was whisked away to hours of meetings and practices, and did not get back on my computer to edit the pictures till midnight.

SURPRISE! iPhoto is broken and refuses to open! I restarted my computer about seven times, but to no avail. I had to put the pictures on my roommate’s computer and transfer them onto mine to edit them in Photoshop. Isn’t school fun? At about 1:30, two other art majors texted me saying they were still working on their projects. The three of us sat on the floor in the hallway, eating goldfish and working on our projects until 4 a.m. Good times.

Needless to say, I was very tired yesterday. I also had to dance at the basketball game last night, plus had a meeting after that, so yesterday was a very long day in which I was struggle bussing all day long. Fun fact: Around noon I decided to have some cereal in my room. Whilst chatting with my friends, I became so delusional that I was subconsciously cradling the cereal box like a small child. Neat.

Let this be a lesson to not wait so long to start your work because your iPhoto will screw you over, vastly complicating everything, forcing you to stay up into the wee hours of the night, munching on artificially flavored fish-shaped snacks.

Have a great rest of the week, and thanks for reading :)

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Breakity Break Break

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Bekah

Winter break has officially begun. Yippie skippie!!! As I said in my last post, I finished finals on Wednesday. Since I was done with finals, I went home with my roommate Ashni for the afternoon. She is from Westfield, Indiana and lives only about 20 minutes away from Butler. Westfield is close to Carmel, so while we were home, we hit up the Carmel Arts District.

This area was incredibly cool. There were a bunch of different shops and bakeries, and some really neat art galleries. My favorite aspect of the district was the various statues sprinkled throughout the area. Me being the expert model that I am, had to take a picture with each and every one of these statues. Here are a few of my faves!

Assaulting a police officer

My husband and I teaching our daughter to ride a bike.

Having a snack

Trying to steal a kiss. Don't tell my husband!

This trip was a great start to my break, and yesterday was fun too! I got home yesterday, but on my way out of town, my friend Kelsi and I hit up the mall and did some shopping, kicking our break off right. I am really looking forward to being home, relaxing, and spending time with the fam. Have a fabulous break, and thanks for reading :)

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Art Now

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Bekah

Happy Friday everyone! Hopefully everyone is finding ways to be productive and stay calm whilst preparing for finals! (Did you read my post about stress managing tips?)

This past Tuesday and Wednesday was the annual Art Now event in the Reilly Room. Art Now is the art showcase that displays the work from the art classes throughout the semester. Since I am an Art + Design major, I featured my work from my drawing class in the show.

My display.

The show was absolutely fabulous! I was so excited to see the work from artists other than the lovely work I see during class. There were a lot of interactive pieces, which was super fun. One of my favorite interactive pieces was a chalk board in which people wrote things that they want to do before they graduate. It was really exciting to watch the viewers interacting with the artwork. My favorite thing on the board was a student’s desire to join a twerk team. To whomever wrote that: I will gladly join you!!

My favorite piece in the show was a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio done by Shelia Tomasbi. I just can’t get over how smooth his face is and how the smolder in Leo’s eyes has been captured to perfection. This picture is truly glorious!

Leonardo DiCaprio by Shelia Tomasbi

If you didn’t get a chance to make it to Art Now this week, do not fret! There will be another one next semester! Have a lovely and productive weekend, good luck on finals, and thanks for reading :)

A student's creative display.

 

 

 

Life-size portraits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. First Fridays start today! I am showing two pieces at the Harrison Center this evening, so if anyone is interested in viewing some artwork, be sure to check out the various galleries opened tonight!

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My First Friday Experience

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Bekah

As I mentioned in my post from last Friday, I went and visited three art galleries last weekend: The Harrison Center for the Arts, Gallery 924, and the Murphy Art Center. I had an absolutely fabulous time at all three galleries and would one hundred percent recommend a First Friday trip to anyone even slightly interested in art.

The Harrison Center was our first stop! What was cool about the Harrison Center was that

Painting hanging outside Amy Reel's studio at Harrison Center

we were able to not only see amazing artwork, but also take a peek into some of the artists’ studios, which was awesome! The space featured artwork from a bunch of different artists.

Next we went to Gallery 924, which was my favorite stop of the evening. This gallery featured artwork by Pete Brown. This exhibit was so cool because the concept was seeing art without your eyes, or from the perspective of a blind person. The

Fellow art students touching artwork by Pete Brown

special thing about this exhibit was that you were encouraged to touch the artwork, something that is usually frowned upon at galleries. All of the pieces had 3d aspects and many textures.

The final place we went was the Murphy Art Center. This was an insanely cool venue. The building was like a maze full of creativity and hipsters. There was art on the walls in hallways and in gallery rooms, and there were several bands and people selling clothing sprinkled throughout. Another cool aspect of this stop was that in the main entrance, there was an exhibit set up where you could paint on the walls.

Drawing on the walls at the Murphy Building

This First Friday was a complete success and I am definitely going to continue going. I would definitely encourage anyone to come! Have a wonderful fall break and thanks for reading :)

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Art + Design

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Bekah

Hello all! As you may or may not know, I am an Art + Design major here at Butler. Since this is just my first semester here, I am only taking one art class right now. I am enrolled in Drawing, which is one of the basic required courses of someone in the art program. In this drawing class, we present three sketches each week, plus one big project, as well as in-class drawings from observation.

Tuesday is critique day where we bring in the project we worked on over the weekend and present it to the class. We also present our sketchbook and get feedback from the class. I love crit days because I love discussing art and seeing what everyone has created! Thursdays are a little rough for me. We draw what is in front of us for three hours straight. The class sets up a still-life, which is basically a bunch of objects grouped together, and then we draw it. By the end of class on Thursdays, I am mentally drained! It is a long three hours! We are then given another homework assignment to present on Tuesday, and so the cycle continues. Below I have listed some of the work I have created in this class so far! Have a wonderful Wednesday, and thanks for reading! :)

Project 1: Self Portrait

Project 1: Self Portrait (Chalk pastel, sharpie)

 

 

Project 2: Object Still-Life

Project 2: Object Still-Life (Graphite)

 

 

Project 3: Mark-making

Project 3: Mark-making (Sharpie)

 

P.S. A Fun fact about the third project- that entire thing is composed of little tiny dots. This technique is called stippling. It took me three days to do. Fun stuff!

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