Category: ENG1101 Project #4

This exhibit is presented by Ayano Morishima, who was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, then moved to New York, where she now lives and studies. She was inspired by Tom Phillips’s work, Humument of transforming a used book into an art and poetry project. Morishima then created, La Fay-Vaile a new name she picked out from the original book she used for her project. She also changed the theme of a book to dark wonderland to show the difference from the original theme, Wish. She was also inspired by the original creator of Alice in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll in 1865. The three design Morishima created, Gates to Wonder, Book to Wonder, and Dreams to Wonder are from the book that represents to the theme the most and an message about how anyone can rewritten a destiny of the book. Though Morishima’s knowledge and techniques from her studies in COMD 1100 and ENG 1101, college courses that is part of Learning Community: Ways of Seeing, it helped her to be able to create this project. To create her designs, she used her technique in using ink brush pen, x-acto knife, old book and folding to show the viewers, the new kind of story that unfolds.

For the first design, Morishima title the design, Gates to Wonder. Because of multiple doors of the design, indicating a way to the wonderland. A starting point that everyone must encounter. She used the ink brush pen to make many repetition of connected diamonds to indicate a chandelier also, blocking out most of the text in the book to show how visible text are connected to the picture that is shown as a ground. Each words representing the meaning behind the design, such as went, door, worse, cry, wondered, etc. In addition, used figure and ground technique to show the viewers where exactly to see; in this case, the shapes of the ground shows more vividly since the black ink, the figure blocks out other negative space.

Down into the rabbit hole; the second design, Book to Wonder leads the viewers to go though the door to read a little book that came from the concept of the original, Alice in Wonderland. She used x-acto knife to cut open a block of text at the bottom of the page and glued only in the middle. By doing this, she wants the viewers to see that there is a book in a book. Same as the first design, she used the technique of figure and ground, showing the ground to block other negative space. In addition, by folding the corner to the right top, it shows the next design that shows the technique of a chromatic gray; grays that exhibit a subtle, but visible hue; created by adding larger amounts the complement and white.

Dreams to Wonder is a design that was created to show “the after math of Wonderland”. Story goes as the darkness in wonderland was finally came to the end. Many would think that the ballerina could be Alice, however being the character in the original story, Morishima completely disconnected the characters from her project. The ballerina indicates a spirit that it stabilizes the wonders in the wonderland. She also used ink brush pen to create curtains on the right and left sides to show that she is on a stage, and the visible words that fits with the story of the page, such as dancer, moment, felt, perfect, and choice.

Ayano Morishima, made this project from her understanding in COMD 1100 and ENG 1101, college course she is taking in New York, where she lives. She made this mainly to attract people who are interested in creating their own story. It conveys though out each pieces of art work and detailed design, where it tells the message in the theme. Single page contains a message where Morishima’s story that she made though out the art she loves, she wants the viewers to understand that stories can be can be rewritten to make new ones. Even characters, make them have their own destiny with out following the original story.

The artist Brandy Ortiz was born on 1997 in New York, NY. She currently lives and studies in the city she was born in. She was inspired by the works of Tom Phillips in his A Humument book to create compositions that combined linguistic language and art into three pages of her vision. Tom Phillip was an English artist who purchased a cheap book to use as the basis of an art project known as A Humument. Behind his artwork,  he paints, collages or draws over the pages, leaving some of the text peeking through in serpentine bubble shapes, creating a found text with its own story, different from the original. Ortiz made compositions with themes that juxtapose from the original theme from the novel Brimestone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. While Brimestone theme was thriller, the artist decided that her artwork known as Glass Child would have a softer tone. Within her creation of Glass Child contains Ocean Breeze, Picture Perfect Family, and Love Exists, which are different representations of the gentle theme behind Glass Child  .

Ortiz used Pigma Micron Pens(0.2, 0.5 and Brush), Faber-Castell Brush Pen, pencils(HB-6B) and a pair of scissors as her materials for her artwork. For her first design, Ocean Breeze, she shows a silhouette of a boy relaxing in a beach setting with the sun rising. She first made outlines of the boy and the waves by using the micron pens. Afterwards she used the Faber-Castell Brush Pen to ink the ocean and the sun. The top half of the page is left blank creates positive space while the inked image within the bottom area creates negative space. These spaces create a figure and ground relationship due to the equal amount of negative and positive space. The revealed message that the artist created says “Cool dawn air. Hear the surf thundering. Smell the salt air of the invisible ocean beyond”.  The boy in the image feels the cold breeze from the sea as the sun is rising. He hears the rippling waves thrash against the sandy land only to be pulled back into the ocean once again. The thrashing of the waves creates the smell of the salty air. He is taking in the different sensations that are happening around him.

For her second design, Picture Perfect Family, she first creates an outline of a frame within the margin area of the page with the micron pens. Next she uses the Faber-Castell Brush Pen to black out the rest of the page leaving out the frame and the revealed text. The revealed message that the artist created says “Family and friends perfectly never changed. Countless dinner parties, weekend parties, living room”. The message conveys a family that enjoys getting together for parties in their living room. A frame is a boundary made from either a rectangle, square or circle that is placed on the edges of the paper or the margins drawn within. The concept behind the frame was to transform the text to make it look like a family portrait since the idea behind the message was family gathering.

For her third design, Love exists, she used scissors to cut out pieces of the page to reveal words from other pages. Instead of blacking out the page to show her message, Ortiz creates a message from cutting out certain words from various pages to show all on one page. The revealed message that the artist created says “Love was fantastic to obtain in the vast world”.  The artist made a heart in the lower left corner of the page while everything was shaded by pencil to show low key, in which the values of the image is predominantly dark. The heart shows that love will always be there even when surrounded by this darkness. The idea behind the message was that love is a great feeling to have in the world we live in.

With her vision behind Glass Child, Ortiz wanted to show her ideas of different messages through the language and the art she depicted. The title of the artist’s humument is a piece of alternated text much like the pages inside. Glass Child was made by picking out letters from both of the author’s names behind Brimestone. The work of alternated texts along with visual images creates a new story from a preexisting one. It creates more room for stories that have yet to be told as the original source is left as inspirations behind those stories. Whether it be about relaxing, family gathering or love; each page correlates back to the original theme of Glass Child.