Jiwon

Jiwon Choi =concentration statement: = =The image given to women has been undermining and too simple. The fact of the matter is, the women deserve to be respected no matter what quirks or obsessions they have. For the past years women have accomadated men with their penchant for sports and rough-housing; it’s time for everyone to respect the substances which drive a woman. My concentration pieces portray the reoccuring stereotypes, obsessions, and the reality of an average woman’s life. In my drawing called “The Great Diet,” the composition reflects the pain and patience that all women might have faced one time in their lives: weight is such a sensitive topic among all women of different sizes. Although some of my pieces are very comical, I did also try to incorporate serious aspects into my portfolio. The pieces like “Breast Cancer Euphoria” and “Cut and Lift” show the serious pressures women face in their lives. Statistically speaking, 1 out 4 women have the chance of being breast cancer patients, a fear men do not even have to consider. My concentration theme is very important to me because as an artist I have the power to express and explain to viewers things that documents, photographs, and speeches cannot do. As a female, I wanted to subject my theme to be one of the things I’m proud of. =

=CONCENTRATION 2= What your average Joe, doesn't know about Jane: 1. she diets 2. she loves the Visa Card 3. she loves to shop 4. he doesn't know what a full closet means until he sees Jane's.

1. She Diets: Every girls has at least once, tried dieting. I emphasize on the word TRIED because for most of the time, they don't work. Whether it's called the "Atkins" diet or all the other crazy names and crazy restrictions that are on diets, they don't work. Just to poke some fun, I wanted to convey the stereotypical diet. When I think of a diet, I immediately think: ONE GREEN LEAF. Of course the leaf is a vegetable. Sometimes girls get self-conscious over their weight that sometimes they think dieting means "not eating" or "cutting back." So what's the problem with this method? Once your cravings are too hard handle, that's when you know, diets don't work. (By the way, I thought about this when I was really hungry.) So, here are my sketches and plans. those were just really rough sketches and i didn't really know what perspective, composition, or subject i was going to use. I was just testing the concept out. finally, i arrived with this final sketch (which i think carries out my message about diets clearly. This is Thiebaud's "Banana Split". I really think my desserts are going to be inspired by how Thiebaud portrayed all of his desserts. I want the desserts in my piece to have a realistic element and also look very soft and delicious. I believe that conte would do the trick! (What do you guys think?) This is "Veggie Still Life" by Robert A. Sloan. It is worked with conte and this example shows the soft realistic component that I am looking to achieve. (Especcially on the squash? cucumber? where there light is hitting it.) In order to make the concept "diets" to be frowned upon, I'm also thinking about portraying my vegetable, which will be right in the middle of a plate, to be withered and rotten. I did manage to find a vegetable, that resembled a leaf in my fridge! This is what I had as far as January 2nd. =Concentration 3= For my second piece I wanted to portray the innate love that many women have: the love for shopping. Whether it be for clothes, antiques, or any other interest that women have, the urge for shopping is often uncontrollable. This is basically the very early plans and brainstorming of what I wanted to do. I was just playing around and getting a sense of what I wanted to do. I really wanted to incorporate a piece with perspective in my concentration folder so I was playing around with that. This is one of the sketch of the position and perspective that I decided to do after some contemplating. I decided to practice the perspective of the hand. In the end I decided to work on this piece with charcoal and conte and have a fading away effect onto the paper as the piece reachs the bottom right hand corner. vbvb
 * You start thinking about that cheesecake in your fridge and how one bite would satiate all your hunger. You think about those warm fresh-out-of-the-oven homemade cookies. You think about all the creatively named icecream flavors.**

=Concentration 4= For this piece I wasn't sure where to start off with but I knew I wanted to touch a controversial issue. The media these days is about trying to force girls in looking a certain way in order for boys to like them, earn respect, and sometimes have better priviledges opposed to girls who don't care about the superficial image. So, I picked out three things that girls were willing to do, at even a young age, to meet society's standards. 1. being a bulimic. 2. doing things like plastic surgery, botox, etc. 3. lyposuction, tummy lifts. so then I sketched out possible pieces each subject could look like and i got this: From this point on I knew what I kind of wanted to do but I needed to choose one idea, and work on how to get my message across. I decided that I wanted a girl who wants to be "in" or even a model, and listens to those who want her to fix something about her face. I've learned from other people that they're told to fix their nose or alter their faces in some other way, and no one wants to be told to change their features. This made me want to portray the idea of girls not wanting to change, but giving into society's pressures. In the end I narrowed it down to this thumbnail sketch.

When a guy sees a girl, what does he see in her? Can he see past the makeup? Does he notice how many hours- literally- it takes for a girl to get ready? Or does he realize the struggle and debate that goes on in a girl’s head when trying to decide between the Christian Dior and the Coach bag? I would like to introduce, the true colors of a female (no pun intended). I emphasize on the word “true” because my subjects aren’t going to be model-size figures, but females with a bit of weight and an average height. The way I would like to bring females to a new light is to capture the girls shaving, shopping, putting on mascara in the car, checking their clothes out through the windows of a tinted car; my main objective is to show candid moments where women are vulnerable and beautiful.
 * My Statement:**

i think i'm going to work with acrylic mostly, because i love acrylic and what kind of textures you can make from acrylic painting. i'd like to work with oil painting, but then i have never used that media before. i like my drawings to be very realistic yet stylized at the same time by including my well-known marking and color choice (i have a specific color palette that i stick to, and it varies from time to time so i can't specify it here on the spot...but i do like colors that look very soft and nice together..) oftentimes, it's upsetting when i finish a piece and realize that my figure does not look at all like how it looks like in my eyes. so i hope to practice that a lot. i also would like to incoporate a still life from my theme (like a lot of shopping bags or earrings from a jewerly shop) with pencil. lately i've been thinking about specifying my theme down into "women at the beach." it sounds fun but on a deeper level, the only time i remember going to the beach was last summer. i think the waves crashing and people sunbathing is a peaceful picture. The thing is, I won't get a lot of variety in subject matter, and maybe people will get too sick of it. Maybe i can include some "beach" pieces in my original theme? as for the preparation, i'm planning to get real photos of my friends while incorporating what i see in magazines. for the still life i'd like to work from it in front of me!

I thought this clip was very interesting because it focuses on how every detail derives from something else. //The woman describes how the simple sweater came from a bigger source of importance.// Likewise, we can apply this art because every detail should be well thought out and purposeful. I agreed with what the commentary at the end of the sound clip about the details.
 * The Devil Wears Prada Commentary:**

i meant details as in, how much thought the person who came up with that color had to put in. i honestly think that in an art piece, nothing happens randomly. one might get spontaneous ideas, but one has to think over that idea carefully to make sure that the idea will enhance the piece. likewise, the clip talks about successful the shade of blue ended up receiving from careful thought. as far as who decides what is good art, even though meryl streep decided whether anna hathaway's sweater was stylish enough, i believe in art it is up to everyone...but no one has to change it. the artist can be satisfied with his/her painting, and that's the only satfisfaction the painting needs when it comes to it being changed. the viewer can also decide if it is well painted or not, but he/she does not have the power to change it.

Title: Grace Location: Suwon “Mini Gallery” Artist: Insun Russell Dates: December 19 2007 Media of the work: Watercolor
 * MUSEUM VISIT**

Describe the work in the show. Try to categorize the stylistic genre of the work. Give a little information about the artist if available. Make an effort to put the work in art historical context by making comparisons to other noteworthy artists either contemporaries or historical. 200-350 words:

The artworks in the show were all paintings that had flowers as the artist’s concept. Along with a uniform subject, the artist executed similar layers of watercolor, brush strokes, and color scheme. For all the flowers, the artist depicted them with warm colors, which give off a soft mood. If looked at closely, you could tell that there are layers and layers of water color as you can see some of the brush strokes come through regardless of what medium was put on top. Unlike some artists who work with watercolor, Insun Russell ultimately tries to make her brush strokes and color scheme work like a gradient. Brush strokes can only be seen in areas of emphasis and colors smoothly change as if it were worked with pastel. Along with similar brush strokes, the background treatment for all most of the large paintings was a sense of vastness. For the paintings, you can tell there was a lot of consideration for depth and space based on the light and dark colors used interchangeably. The sense of uniformity from the entire gallery is mainly due to the way the artist made sure that the color scheme, brush strokes, and subject matter correlated altogether.

Judge the show as if you were an art critic. Evaluate its merits and shortcomings. Make particular references to strong or weak points to the show. 300-400 words.

First off, the show was a major success as it was clearly visible the artist spent a lot of time trying to finish these pieces. There are lot of different pieces that have something different to offer to the critic whether it be an unusual flower or an unusual color. I believe the show was very sophisticated as the artist portrayed cliché subject matter in a very interesting way. Although Georgia O’ Keefe used a different medium for her paintings, the artist from this gallery treats her subject matter the same way by incorporating magnification on some pieces and other types of interesting composition. Perhaps the only thing that can be improved is some of the backgrounds on some of the paintings because there’s a lack of understanding for the critic/viewer on what it is, especially if the background has the same treatment for all of the paintings. Despite this, the attention to the little details makes each and every painting superb to look at from close-up to far back. For the pieces that are on very big canvases, they show great merits because the color range and brush strokes are executed perfectly. There is extreme attention when you see how the artist portrays how each leaf colors and how each petal has curvatures and folding. I believe the color scheme in all the paintings was very nicely suited to fit the flower subjects. Since there were so many pieces that had such grandiose reaction and execution, the paintings that were physically smaller with less interesting composition contrasts greatly. Although it is good to have a big range of paintings in terms of sophistication, style, size, and composition, perhaps the smaller paintings could be perfected to its potential. As a critic, I would recommend saving smaller pieces to magnify the certain sections of the bigger of pieces and making them more interesting and detailed. Such improvements could altogether make the pieces in the exhibition appear more uniform.