APW - Amber McElreath (590 hits)
Category: GraphicsLabels: APW
Rating: 2 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by kaos-king (antius777) (View user info) at 2006-05-24 11:39:27 EDT
Amber McElreath's art is hanging all around my apartment. I have two of her paintings, one of her collages, a printed curtain and I believe three of her sketchbooks. I've known her since she was 14 years old, and in the last decade we've been everything from best friends to lovers to roommates to best friends again. I've watched her go from a high school kid playing with tempera paint on paper to a brilliantly skilled young woman with great promise.
These paintings below are some of the pieces from her senior thesis show at Kent State University, from which she received a Bachelor's of Fine Arts (BFA) last year in the spring of 2005. Along with these large paintings, that were all approximately three foot by four foot, Amber had over 25 small, three inch by four inch drawings in the show, all rendered in colored pencil. Some of the smaller images were unique unto themselves, some were scaled down, simplified versions of the paintings, and others were sections of the paintings that she had zoomed in and focused on.
What started out as an exercise in the school of "Pop-Futurism," Amber then took the work down a path of her own. If you think these images are reminiscent of Stained-Glass, then she has succeeded. The paintings started with a complex process of video taping herself performing menial tasks around her house. She then broke these videos down into still frames, overlapping them on top of each other. This was done to create both an abstraction and to cause the illusion of motion. Colors were chosen to both match their real life counterparts and to achieve a certain "Feeling" she wanted the each piece to have. The real life colors were tweaked to match "Interior Design" hues because of the statement of domesticity. Complementary colors, or "opposite colors," were also added to create more of a flicker effect to the movement of the images.
All the paintings are untitled, and while you may be able to guess at activities that may be occurring in the images, that really isn't the point behind the series. Everything that Amber was doing in each video, in each picture, was a "Snapshot" of her life. These moments were then broken down, manufactured and made something new.
The largest of these images shown below was accepted as part of secondary E-Show by Digital MoMa. (Museum Of Modern Art) http://www.dmoma.org/lobby/exhibitions/rejected/artists/amber_mcelreath.html
User Reviews
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-25 02:47:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It's original, I'll give you that.
I'm more of a traditionalist, like those jerks who say "I like paintings that look like the things they're meant to look like."
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2006-05-24 16:06:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good for her for pioneering a new style of her own. Personally those remind me of the cubist monstrosities I created a few years ago, if I got a better look... (not a fan of cubism)
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-05-24 14:39:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fucked up and cool
Submitted by Mario (user info) at 2006-05-24 14:04:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
They are overlapping images. The one on the bottom center is an asian looking guy and there's a red headed woman and her breasts/nipples there too.
Submitted by Mario (user info) at 2006-05-24 14:01:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is beyond cool. Thanks bud.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-05-24 13:12:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fab
Submitted by ubetidid (user info) at 2006-05-24 12:41:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
cool
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-05-24 11:58:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 cuz you explained her art and it's still got great technique and her own personal style which makes it real art instead of crap.
but dammit if i still don't hate it because i HATE that type of abstract art. it makes me think of projectile vomit of confetti onto a canvas .
Submitted by leilani (user info) at 2006-05-24 11:56:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
holy fuck i would go crazy if i had those hanging all around my house
they are definitely cool though.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2006-05-24 11:49:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-05-24 11:47:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Do I see a titty? I'm not clear on the process here. Is she breaking down one still shot or overlapping multiple still shots from the film? Also, is she painting over the still shot? Q & A time, but very nice work regardless of the process.