Paper boats!

posted by : JERRY!

so teaching drawing this semester, i had a group of great students who wanted to work with color. and as enthusiastic as they are, i offered the challenge of working with wet media. actually, i told them they would work with water color.

as I've grown quite fond of gouache, i thought not only can i practice my color theory in the classroom setting, but also i would improve in my used of the gouache.

I started the class with a Color Inventory in which i handed each student a different piece of decorative paper. They had to inventory each color they saw and paint the amount of each color...(i'll post an example tomorrow) and then create a flat color composition using those colors, then finally folding a piece of paper either into origami or an abstract 3-D object.

Using the colors they identified and mixed from the their inventory they had to paint the paper structure.

So i was surprised that none of them made the most basic paper boat fold. Even more surprised, when i asked about it and they had no clue what i was talking about. I even made one and they still had no idea what i was talking about. *I felt very distant from their generation... and now i feel really old*

any who, i make it a point to do the assignments i give my students, with them. So I completed an inventory, a flat color composition, and the 3D paper structure painting. It was a lot of fun and so i started thinking about the paper boat.

I remembered the photograph that adrienne had given me for helping frame her show. and I was hit in the face with the perfect metaphor and image for my work! The paper boat!

A boat is a mode of transportation that allows people, objects, animals and other stuff to traverse over open water. But the paper boat may be representation of a real boat but it can not complete the voyage of it's sturdier cousins.

I remembered when i was little i really did think that if i made a bunch of paper boats i could float across the ocean.. and then BAM! NEW work!!!!

paper boat portrait 01, 2009

gouache

Tyler is a tall guy and I asked him to sit down next to my painting for size comparison.

LOOK! It's me working after a 24 hour painting and mezzoting rocking night in the second floor gallery space!

Here's a in progress photo of the painting! it's huge!

it's taped to the wall outside of printmaking, and i started to add sunken paper boats. hopefully it will become a site of multiple shrip wrecks.

It's sad to think that for myself that the paper boat isn't capable of taking me Palau, but i also associate it with the many Palauans that leave the Islands in search of making a new life in America or else where but never seem to be able to make back home. I'm just like them...making many paper boats in hopes of returning, only to have them sink part way across the ocean.