Artists' Statement

Busy, busy weekend. What I love most about art school, and especially about going to art school in such a cool urban environment as Boston, is that there is always something going, something to go see, something to spark that ol' inspiration light. Now if only the weather would stay as nice as it was this past week...


Mine and Erin's Artist Statement for our Installation Project:


Ever wondered what the future would bring? Have you ever had that silly itch to read your horoscope, or gain some insight about what comes next tomorrow, next week, later this afternoon? As much as anyone might like to deny it, it is natural of humans to wonder and think about the possibilities of the great unknown. Maybe you'll win the lottery, find true love, or avoid getting pooed on by a passing pigeon.
Lesley University is known for it's commitment to promoting communal and inquiring attitudes in its faculty and students. Whether it be a Shakespearian text reworked into a rap song, or a simple poem transformed into a screenplay, curriculum has been modified in ways to create a more hands-on atmosphere in the classroom, thereby igniting a personal experience and memory in the student and helping them to carry the information further. In today's day and age, public schooling in America had boiled down to much less of an actual education and much more of a vicious cycle of cramming and memorizing vocabulary lists. We study dates and names and places we have no physical or emotional attachment to only to delete that memory in the brain right after, making room for the next set of information for the next test. In this techie age, if one can't provide information fast enough, a machine can do it for you. But there is hope toward breaking this repetitive motion. Through teaching students activities and much more valuable hands-on approaches to learning information, Lesley University provides new teachers and aides to younger generations with the patience and guidance most critically necessary. Through this sense of community and provoking inquiry, American students can further broaden their horizons and learn a love for the classics and tradition.
Keeping these ideas in mind, we have created a fun, engaging activity that connects the viewer to a place so often overlooked; their own home city. Using local newspaper clippings, we have created "lyrical fortunes", silly, serious, and nonsensical messages to fulfill that desire of knowing. By doing so, we hope to remind the viewer of not only the possibilities materials found within their own community can provide, but also that sometimes the simplest answers can satisfy our greatest questions.

Welcome, welcome...

Hello everyone!

I'm Courtney and this is my blog for my installation class. A few things about me:
I'm an illustration major minoring in animation. I was born in California, and have moved to and lived in Boston, New York, Richmond, and Charlotte. I spent the last year studying abroad in Leverkusen, Germany; in fact, although I'm technically a freshman, I'm 20 years old because I took a year off in between high school and college to travel. I love ice cream, pickles, and cats. I enjoy using a wide variety of media and medium in my work, employing everything from traditional skills like watercolor, pastel, charcoal, acrylic, craft making, etc to all kinds of digital skills such as photoshop, flash, and html/css. I love working in mixed media. My goals in going to art school are to someday work in the animation industry as a visual design director, character designer, and giving my input in art direction of children's televised and feature film animation. I also have a strong desire to illustrate and write children's books. Taking this installation course, I hope to be intrigued, develop new ideas and ways of looking at an artistic problem, and to have some fun working collaboratively with equally as ambitious art students.