Jessica Pareja

Love

This artwork piece is designed to represent what love is, its bringing out an emotion in want is  “love” according from the text. The artwork is portraying how the character lost someone dear to her and now she can’t love a man. However, the true feeling is the viewers to understand her own inner feeling. The artist uses a text from Romeo and Juliet and the image is to show her opinion.

In this project we had to create a humument and write a description about it as if it were a gallery catalogue entry. My piece was called Dauntless and gave off a feeling of being brave, fearless, and determined. I think I did a good job at explaining all of the aspects of my piece and what they all meant. Creating the first draft of the humument took me about an hour and a half. Making the color palettes and references in class took about 2 hours. Then making the final drawing of the humument took about 2 hours to do. Writing the gallery note took me about 30 minutes and writing the gallery catalogue entry took me about 3 hours. It was a little hard to write as if it wasn’t my work of art. But I do think I ended up doing that really well while still describing the proper meaning of the piece. I could have expanded on my word choices when I was explaining some of the parts of my piece. This was overall a very fun final project to do. I enjoyed having to pick our own text from any book and creating something out of the words on the page.

The Humument piece called Empyrean, created by Moeen Razak is based on Dante Alighieri’s novel Inferno. A Humument is a piece of work inspired by Tom Phillips who created the very first one based on W. H. Mallock’s novel A Human Document. In the Humument presented before you, the artist tries to bring out a different interpretation of the original text. The artist uses a staircase style to help guide the reader from top to bottom. The artist uses analogous colors to help portray his meaning of the piece. From where it says” departing from the war errs O memory thy guidest thou father to the adversary who unfitting the empyreal heaven. After reading this piece the artist wants readers to feel enlightened by it. It should give its readers a spiritual effect.

By using an analogous palette for the color choices, the artist helps contrast heaven and hell. The colors used range from red to orange. It uses their chromatic gray hue along with their prismatic hue. Their are some colors that use a muted tone to express a duller hue. The colors, such as red and red orange are more hot and vibrant, so it helped fit with the hellish theme. Colors like yellow and yellow orange are a little cooler and aren’t as vibrant. The artist used these to represent heaven. When these colors are desaturated enough they can start to look cooler and have a darker value. With these colors the artist uses them for shading and produce a darker effect.

The artist uses red as his dominant color. Red has a negative feeling, like war or death. Also anything mixed with red, gives off a more vibrant hue, for example red orange. The sub dominant color would be yellow. You may ask why the artist has done this? The artist wanted to keep some of the original meaning of the text, so he used more red then yellow. The red shows more hell then heaven because the book is mainly about hell. The spaces that are left uncolored are there to help guide the reader along the piece. The artist makes it very obvious which side is hell and which side is heaven. He draws flames in red orange to show the hotness of hell. He uses the lighter colors like yellow, along with a picture of two angels to help distinguish heaven.

The title the artist chooses for this piece is Empyrean. It is a word that comes from the original text, but in a different form. It is stated in the original text as empyreal. The words basically have the same meaning (highest of heaven). The artist uses that word as his inspiration for the meaning of this piece of art. That word itself surrounded by a majority of word that have a negative meaning really catches the eye.  When the piece is read there is a message of how hard it seems to get to heaven. It makes you think as if you were on a journey and their are many forks in the road. You have to choose a way to go. That choice is what puts you closer to heaven or hell. The next few lines talk about ”all evil”. It shows how all evil is not welcomes in heaven. The precise word used is that they are unfit to be in the empyreal heaven. After reading the piece and the message the reader should feel enlightened. The message is different than what is printed on the original page of the book.

Many readers may have their own interpretations of this humument. Moeen Razak’s interpretation is just one of the many opinions out there. The main purpose the artist tried to portray  is enlightenment with spirituality. Having people see the differences of heaven and hell, would get them to choose. They would start to think where they would want to end up. They would think a little more before they make a decision. Using bright warm colors to portray heaven and hell helped support the artist’s view of the piece.

Dauntless is a humument created by Priya Maharban. The artist used a page from the book Divergent by Veronica Roth. The interpretation brought out by the artist in this piece is different than the interpretation of the text. The artist has designed the piece to be read from top to bottom with lines leading the reader from word to word. It reads “Dauntless I barely fear people judging and observing. All occupied. Dauntless only are left…don’t fear”. After reading this piece the artist wants readers to feel inspired by it. It is designed to give off a sense of bravery, fearlessness, and determination.

The artist used an analogous palette for the color choices of this piece. These colors are more of cool colors to go with the bravery theme. The blues and greens give off a positive effect. The artist also chose to use a wing to draw around the words to be read in the piece. The wing is the a symbol of bravery in the piece. It can be related to the bald eagle, which is a very brave animal. Always determined. The outline and inside of the wing are colored in shades of blue. The outline of the wing is a muted blue while the inside is filled with a violet blue. These colors both help with the bravery theme as intended. The words to be read are all outlined in a rectangular shape. The shape is also a dark green color. The reader is also led on to what word to read next by lines leading from one to another. Those lines are a yellow green color. Green is an overall positive color that helps with the positive impact of the piece. The outside surroundings of the wing are also colored in a yellow green.

The dominant color of the artists piece is the violet blue inside the wing. The sub-dominant color is the yellow green surrounding the wing and also the lines inside of the wing that guide the reader from word to word. The accent colors are the dark green that make up the rectangular shapes and the muted blue that is the outline of the wing.

The title of the piece is Dauntless and the word is also used in the reading. That word itself means fearless and determined. When the piece is read there is a message of not caring or fearing about people who judge you, especially if they are trying to intimidate you. This is comes from “Dauntless I barely fear people judging and observing”. The next few lines “all occupied. Dauntless only are left.” tells readers that they will keep doing what they’re doing but remaining brave and fearless will keep you going and staying determined. Then there is the last line “Don’t fear” which has the obvious message of telling all the readers not to fear those who judge them, especially if they’re doing it for negative purposes. The overall piece after reading and viewing it makes the reader feel determined and inspired if they see the strong message within it. This message is very different than what is on the original text of the page in the book. It is just a scene that actually gives off a nervous feeling. The message in the humument is the opposite.

Readers may find their own intepretations of this humument by Priya Maharban. Its main purpose is to leave the readers/viewers inspired and determined. Having them feel brave and fearless at the same time too. The artist used bright and cool colors to emphasize the positive impact/meaning of the piece and its message.

Empyrean a Humument  by Moeen Razak

This piece is designed to give its viewers a spiritual feeling. Looking at this piece should have you feeling enlightened. This piece should help show, the comparison between heaven and hell. Moeen chooses to use the analogous portion of the color wheel. (Reds & Oranges)

Through Defeat is a humument by Alexander Guerrero that was inspired by Tom Philips’s original artistic rendering of text, A Humument. Guerrero’s humument contains a copy of a page located in Act II, Scene III, page 83 of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A raisin in the Sun. The designing of the humument was done by using two tints of brown, one green, black and two tints of gray colored prismacolor colored pencils along with a black .08 micron pen to make the words stand out from the colored pencils. The humument made out of the text from A raisin in the Sun is a trio of flags upon mountains which brings upon the subject of this humument. Alexander also uses the psychology of color to go along with the meaning of the text to further drive the feeling of despair that defeat brings. Simply trying your best does not always mean you will succeed, and that defeat is simply inevitable.

Guerrero uses Hansberry’s Act II, Scene III from A raisin in the sun to completely switch the context of a major turning point in a character and driving it to the ground by making it grim and essentially driving it’s original meaning to the ground. This is where Guerrero puts to play the psychology of color into play by combining the context of the original text along with the colors and the image that is being presented by this humument. Green can be symbolic of envy, in India the color brown denotes mourning, white represents emptiness, black represents pessimism, and finally gray represents isolation.This goes along well with the image being presented in the humument as it shows a field with a trio of flags that represent defeat upon a battlefield or the mourning of a failed dream.

The decision of creating a humument came from one of Guerrero’s experiences in his journey as a graphic designer with little to no experience, as a young boy who has enjoyed drawing to the college student he has become now, he did initially faced opposition from his parents which quickly shattered his dreams in which he felt all the colors that created this humument, however his parent’s opinion were quickly changed and Guerrero began once more with his dream. A Raisin in the sun was also chosen for this sole reason, Guerrero originally planned to go with a more lighthearted humument that spoke about being prideful of one’s roots and origins, however quickly changed it upon realizing how much more fun it is to completely switch the context of a text by simply choosing a few words. Upon discovering the fun in switching the context and being a “villain” to optimism Guerrero created the humument that is presently being shown right now.

As for the text A raisin in the sun by Lorraine Hansberry was chosen for it’s theme of dreams and whether or not one lets them “dry up like a raisin in the sun”. This text also reflects on Guerrero’s past experiences, as well as his morals and how he himself, nearly let his dreams become just that, a raisin that has dried up in the sun. The piece of text that was chosen takes place around the end of the climax and is a major turning point for a character who nearly throws away the pride, future and among many other things of his family all for the sake of money however this character instead decides to reject the money and continue with their original plans of moving forward. In the end this humument was created from flipping the meaning of the text by adding more despair and defeat into the mix, but just like the text the humument can be flipped over to present another meaning of simply not giving up and following those dreams.