Exhibit Catalogue (Revised, Final)

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.

Exhibit Catalogue (final)

The artist Brian Mifsud was born on March 29, 1997 in Queens New York. He now currently lives in Manhattan and studies in Brooklyn. The artist drew inspiration from Tom Phillips “A Humument” to create his own versions of this style of composition which combines both language and art to convey anything the artist desires. 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. In this case Brian made three compositions with a theme that juxtaposes with the theme of the original Book. In this exhibit Brian chose the book Hunger Games Catching Fire which has more of a darker and serious theme to it so Brian juxtaposes this theme by making it a bit lighter and more into a comedy. To help convey this Brian also change the title of this composition to Off the Hinge.

Brian created the compositions using a variation of sizes of Micron pens mainly using 0.25, 0.35 and 0.45 mm. Also he used a Faber-Castell Brush pen. For his first design, your idea he creates a composition the perfectly conveys the title of the composition that being your idea using the universal symbol of an idea being a cloud which can be seen in different forms of media, from comic books to cartoons you can see the thought bubble used to convey an idea. The artist also uses different techniques like repetition of the clouds and variation of the cloud sizes to help create emphasis on the main large cloud surrounding the phrase your idea. This composition helps to also convey the theme Brian is trying to get across because the imagery of clouds gives the feeling of dreaming and happiness to help create that lighter theme.

For his second design, Unity, he first had to envision what color combined would make a nice color that is not too harsh so he came up with two colors blue and red which when mixed created a nice purple. So with that Brian colored in one half of the page with red and the other half of the page with blue so when they met in the middle they created a nice shade of purple to show the unity between the colors. The purple line in the middle also has this rhythmic vibe too it that also gives it a nice sense of design.

For his third design Brian wanted to have another design that was in black and white but also did not use the words on the page for his design either. In this design Brian tries again to convey a lighter tone compared to the darker tone of the book. In this composition we see a nice soothing line that goes in a type of wave formation that with dark lines that fill up around the line but not touching the main line with a gap between it. This to the artist gives the composition a lighter tone.

With his composition Off the Hinge, Brian wanted to convey certain ideas that can change the darker tones of the book too the lighter tones of Brian’s new creation. 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.

Exhibit Catalogue (final)

Jiao, inspired by Tom Phillips’ A Humument, exhibits her works and at the same time, tells a short-story plot about Macbeth, she also adds a new feeling to it other than the tragedy; a positive feeling of relaxation and warmness for readers. Tom Phillips created Humument by using a collage, placement, color value, and other skills as reference to that. Jiao created her own humument art known as The Stage of Value, Box of dimension and Music Party DO-RE-MI. Jiao conveys a lot messages in her humument arts, and also gives an effect of Macbeth itself. She chose Macbeth by William Shakespeare to be the paper layer for her humument, by using the same skills as Tom Phillips, she chose to use the three skills which are the collage-making, placement, and overlapping. Each skill used in a different piece of work.


The Stage of Value is her best piece of work. It may look easy and simple but, the meaning behind, is significant. For The Stage of Value the artist chose to articulate value, which is the lightness and darkness of a color, she used materials of inking brush pens (black, dark gray, and light gray). Using inking brush pens to block out specific words, Jiao chose the word “stage” to incorporate the fact that Macbeth is a famous play itself. Using the skill of placement, the page shows value from the darkest blacks to no color at all. The black and grays color choices refers to the evilness, hopeless, and the o a lot of negative messages conveyed from Macbeth. More than half of the areas were low-key, with only a small part left as white, because there remain little positive messages left in Macbeth, which are former king’s kindness and soldiers’ loyalty.


Her second work is The Box of Dimension, in this piece, Jiao shows technique of overlap. Using inking brush pens to color boxes into different values, the transparent gray colors merged up and becomes overlapped. By overlapping the boxes with different ranges of value together, it tricks the audience’s eyes and gives a 3D-feeling. The design makes it look like a time tunnel, the boxes represent tunnel entrances that connect with different time dimensions. They can transfer you to the another world, the era that had Macbeth’s existence is included in one box of dimensions; viewers could take a guess of which box is the entrance to the world of Macbeth. This page can be a little game for you, after you chose a box, flip to the next page to see if there is a word that says “Macbeth” behind the box you chose, if there is, it means you were right.

 

The last one is Music Party DO-RE-MI, it shows Jiao’s learning of rhythmic pattern that she connects with her interest in music. This composition shows the two different rhythms of staccato and legato. Staccato represents sharp patterns while legato represents round patterns, Jiao combines them up and turned music into art. Macbeth is also a famous stage opera show, the actors sing out their lines while following the background music. In her last humument art, Jiao gives the message that Macbeth is not just a book, it is also an opera. By covering the patterns over the lines, she conveys these lines that could be sung out as a beautiful song. So when people read Macbeth, at the same time they can get a feeling of listening to music, feel relaxed, get a different feeling such as Macbeth’s tragedy. Same concept for Box of Dimension, interesting 3D-feeling that brings you out of a sad tragedy and makes you feel joyful.

End-of-semester checklist

A few reminders and follow-ups as we approach the end of the semester:

  • The glossary write-up is due. Today. Refresh your memory of the instructions here. As soon as I have them all, I can compile a complete glossary from the semester.
  • As you prepare for the final exam, remember to review the notes from our discussion about preparing for and writing this essay exam. Remember also that you can ask questions/answer questions/make comments in the comments section.
  • I posted instructions for the Project #4 cover letter. Please write this post so I can take your ideas into account as I re-read your work.
  • Many of the Project #3 posts did not have Works Cited lists–without them I can only assume that you either didn’t do any research, or that you used sources without giving them proper credit. If you add your Works Cited lists, I can take that into account as I finalize the grades for Project #3.
  • If we had discussed your plans to revise one or more of your projects this semester, would you remind me by sending me the link to the revised version? I have several, but before I return them on Monday, I would like to have everyone’s accounted for and graded.
  • I’m really excited to see your finished altered-book projects. Remember that we’ll take lots of pictures of them and of you with them on Monday in COMD 1100.
  • If you would like additional feedback on any of your work, we can schedule a meeting.
  • Good luck with all of your work! You can do it!

Exhibit Catalog (Final)

“Emma is Still Alive” is a piece created by aspiring artist Klever Javier Cobena. Drawing inspiration from Tom Phillips “A Humument”, the artist conveys a dark, mystifying, and gruesome atmosphere within his piece, using the contrasting original work of Jane Austen’s “Emma”. The concept behind both of these works is taking any medium of literature (i.e. a book) and turning it it into something completely new using different design aesthetics and artistic techniques. Originally a story of a young girl living in an upper class home in England, Cobena re-works that story with the the intention of driving it as far away from the original concept as possible. Using horror as a medium, Cobena decides to tell a tale of a a gruesome massacre, using only his design aesthetics and few highlighted words already within the pages of the book. Within the composition, a vast majority of the pieces are composed of either black ink, black paint, or black cut paper. Cobena, preferring black as a sort of “negative” color, utilizes materials such as Micron Ink Pens, Pigma Brushes, and Black Gouache Paints to re-work and block out certain words within the pages. With the given emphasis on certain select words that weren’t blocked out, Cobena re-tells the story through the artwork spread throughout the page. Certain examples within “Emma is Still Alive” include pages within like “Here Lies her Sins” and “Vision Of Shadow”, that use overlaps of two pages to create a single composition. Cobena uses nothing more than an exacto knife and a pen to create these overlaps, and express a single idea and theme with an overlap of two pages. Cobena also strongly integrates the concept of certain patterns of staccato nature, and legato nature. Using these concepts, Cobena creates certain moods and certain ideas using patterns differing between these two traits. On one page for example, one can view a sort of blood pattern running down on the words of a page, created using only a colored pencil and an HB sketch pencil. It has a a flowing, smooth pattern, and gives the viewer that feel and imagery of a bloody mess. On another page, there are images of sharp, jagged edges blacked out with a pigma brush, giving the viewer a sense of danger. Other design asthetics included with the piece also include ambigeouity, where Cobena utilizes the words on the page to create a layout that is very eye wandering and complex. There are also stable compositions, where he instead makes a focal point on the composition, drawing the viewers attention to a specific spot. Although most of these pages consists of mostly black color schemes, there are also works of color included within the piece. Cobena skillfully shifts certain traits of pure bright colors like prismatic blues and reds, to make them less saturated, decreasing their value, and keeping the visualities of darkness and negativity to stick to his theme. All while conveying their intense expressions and ideas they were intended to.

Exhibit Catalogue: final

Inspired by Tom Phillips’ humument, New York city artist, Marcus Ceron creates Wonderfilled using old material. By Re-configuring Brian Zelzack’s Wonderstruck, Ceron juxtaposes the themes of realism and fantasy. Juxtapositions are observed through a novel that discusses realistic journeys and through poems exploring copious impossibilities . Wonderstruck also displays how all things can relate to one another, so for this purpose, Ceron uses numerous fantasies to project how humans are unique in their own way. Words are a means of communication and has been for many years. Aside from type, visuals are another way to speak to viewers. Starting as far back as hieroglyphics, graphics posses a great power in grabbing attention. Together both type and visual embody a powerful strategy for communicating fantasies onto book pages. Through three works of art, Ceron demonstrates the overlaps of fantasy and reality.

In the two page spread, The lightness of dark, Ceron articulates a story about believing in fairies. Using marker to block out areas, Ceron left words that worked coherently and spoke of a fantasy. With remaining space, he incorporated visuals of fairies. A cut out was applied to expose words from pages beneath and to create depth. The power of placment helps direct the viewer around the image. Fantasy tranlated visually with the help of color, placement, and focus.

For Treasure Island, fantasy was displayed through a fictional world. In Ceron’s artwork, a young girl opens a bush to witness a candy utopia. Emphasizing variety, a broad range color scheme was chosen. To focus attention, a one point perspective was used. His piece juxtaposes the idea of realism because such a place could never exist.

For the last work of art, Glowing curious, the design tactic of simpicity was kept consistent throughout. Using a page of all words, Ceron articulated a poem revolving around super powers. Simplicity was kept by using a minimalistic layout that featured a poem in the center and the visual on the bottom. Ceron used color pencil as his medium and stars to select words.

In all, Ceron takes on a dream like approach by talking about fantasies as if they were memories. But using visual and English language, Ceron personifies fantasy in to book pages. Contrast can be found in many forms whether it be color, size, shape, etc.. but sometimes two things that contrast can work together harmoniously. If there are two elements that work against each other, there is always a way to find common ground.

ENG 1101 Project #4 Cover letter and process post

Please write a private post to share your thoughts as you ordinarily would in class on paper for the cover letter, and on the site for the process post.

To make your post private when you write it, click on Edit next to Visibility in the right sidebar, and choose Private instead of Public or Password protected.

In combining both letter and process post, please write about the following:

  • What are you most proud of in Project #4?
  • What challenged you the most in Project #4?
  • How did you figure out your approach to the topic, both in terms of page choices and in terms of the theme?
  • How did you approach writing critically about your own work your project?
  • How did you approach writing didactic panels that were exactly 60 words?
  • Did you meet the requirements of the assignment?
  • When you found out you had more time, what did you change?
  • How much time did you spend on each phase of the project?
  • What did you take away from reading your classmates’ work, from their comments, from my comments, and from class discussions?
  • If you could have changed the assignment, how would you have changed it? What would you insist on not changing?
  • Is there anything else I should know about your work or about you as a writer or as a student?

Please categorize your post as ENG 1101 Project #4, and find and use the tag Phase 4: Deliver, plus any additional tags you find useful.

Exhibit Catalogue (Final)

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.

Exhibit Catalogue (Final)

This exhibit is presented by Ka Yee Tsang. Tk is the abbreviation of her name Tsang, Ka Yee. She was born and raised in Hong Kong, then moved to New York where she now lives and studies. She inspired from Tom Phillips, in his A Humument book to create composition that draws and painting into the book pages, that combined the language and art of the vision. The concept of the Humument artwork, is creating the shapes, founding a text of the pages that have the different meaning of the original.

After understanding of the concept, Tk try to create the first humument design, she combined the skill of learning from the COMD 1100’s project. She used the line, repetition, variety, pattern and texture of her first design, which called “Flower” of the Enrique’s Journey book. In this work, TK wanted to create a simple idea that represents the Flower pattern. Set up the pattern like the painting book called ”Secret Garden”. This beautiful and interactive coloring book features delicate and highly detailed pen-and-ink illustrations. When she got the idea from the secret garden, she was using the black and white composition, then lay out the curvy figure, randomized draw though the page. To create the first humument page, she used ink brush pen and sharpie on paper. She was using a legato pattern to create the flower pattern. Legato mean in a manner that is smooth and flowing, I learned the concept to lay out the smooth and flowing line that creates the pattern look like the flower and bloom in the page.

Using these concepts, Tk created the second humument page of her book, which called “Shackles” the idea of this page was intended by the artist to represent the idea of imagination. She used the markers drew the sun in the middle, and putted the chain to connect the sun. Everyone know that sun surface temperature of approximately 5,505 °C / 9,941 °F, Nothing can be closest to the Sun. In this second design, Tk putted the chain to connect the sun, that was her imagination of the page. Even though she didn’t used any concept of this pages, she tried to create something impossible but simple design of her artwork. At this page, she just used color markers and color pencils to create, because she thought the color markers will be more useful of drawing the sun in the middle without using the inking brush pens. The color was the perfect way to represent more detail of the Sun like she used the yellow and orange color markers. Then the chain used the color pencils to create it, who used the green color on the chain that has the contrast between the yellow, orange and the green color.

At Tk’s humument artwork, the last piece of her design called “Don’t You Love Me?”, the idea came from the page who was highlight the text to show the main idea of the character’s feeling. Drawing this page, the concept is selected text to go though the character’s feeling, his mad, sadness and helpless of found his mother. Tk was using the text, “Don’t you love me?” “No one love me” that represents the feeling from the page, then drew the broken heart on the bottom to mention the idea. At the last text of the page, which was “Please bury me.” The sentence raised the character’s feeling of everything that can’t change at the reality. Tk used inking brush pens to cover the word that she didn’t want to show it, and lay out the main sentence to represent the main idea of the feeling. She also cut out some page to paste near the broken heart, when people opened the page, “the boy behind” those words will appear in front of you. Those words was deeply increase the sadness feeling of the this design. All the humument artwork was convey the message who try to contain the idea of her design, even though the story or the characters have their own plot, meaning and story.

Exhibit Catalogue (Final)

To change a theme of a book by using the text from the original book is not as difficult as it sound. This exhibit is presented by Xingfu, Ye. Ye was born and raise up in Zhejiang, China. Then he moved to New York where now he live. Ye is a student of New York City College of Technology whose major is graphic design. He get inspired by a British artist Tom Phillips’ recreation “The Humument”.

“The Humument” was first publish in 1970, it was a recreation of W H Mallock’s Novel “A Human Document”, and the name “The Humument” was come from the original novel name. Tom Phillips took out “an” from the word human, and “Doc” from document, then he put two words together become Humument. The purpose of this is to recreate a different theme and story of a book to let reader have a different experience of reading the original book and recreated version of the book.

Alice Taylor’s novel House of Memories is a story of resilience in the face of family tragedy. Ye have recreates few pages of House of Memories with different theme, his favorite three pages are “Great Position”, “Death and life”, and “Twisted space”. In first page, Ye try to convey a great position, so he used Ruler, Pigma Micron 05, and PITT artist Big brush to draw lines and solid bridges to support the center. The idea was come from the text where he found the words “Great position”. He is trying to explain that how could a position stand out, a great position is where the surrounds are supporting one area to make it a great position. For this page, if views did not see the word great position, they might be confuse and not understanding about this page. In the second page, life and death, Ye also used Ruler, Pigma Micron 05, and PITT artist Big brush to drew circles and line taps, half of which were filled in with black ink and the other half left blank. The idea was came from the text, the words “dead,” and “live”. Ye is trying to express that live and death are so close. The lines was drawn twisted, because he wants to show that life is difficult so is death. Views might confuse about the circles, Ye said he drew circles was trying to represent spirit, but he did not write in the description, because he think the circles could also represent as events that makes how the life is going to be, different person has different views. In the third page, Ye drew a snake goes in circle like a sea shield also with Ruler, Pigma Micron 05, and PITT artist Big brush, this is trying to convey a Twisted space. Ye said this is how he thinks a twisted space look like, a twisted space in his mind is like a space that everything is twisted and has no end. In this page, views might think that this drawing look like a portal, Ye also had a thought about that, however he thinks inside of the portal there must be another space, and that space is just like what he have described.

Understand Tom Phillips’ Humument project, Ye used with all skills and techniques from Graphic design principle 1100 and English 1101 class to create this humument book.

Ye’s recreations give readers a different point of view of the original novel. From a resilience in the face of family tragedy story to a imagery of fantasy story. Each page contains a small message about the new theme of the story.