wallpaper drawings

For my wallpaper design I started with simple back line drawings. I chose the plant Pachysandra because it is commonly used as a ground cover in landscapes so I thought it would be interesting to translate that to a wallpaper design. I used Illustrator to live trace the drawings then I played around with size, placement and color until a pattern was created.

Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese artist who seeks to blend current and traditional styles. His works tend to have the bright, illustrated colors often seen in Japanese pop culture and anime, yet also the flatness of traditional Japanese art. Below you can see his wallpaper work Jellyfish Eyes.

Tom Slaughter

Tom Slaughter was born in New York City in 1955 and has since had more than 30 solo exhibitions in New York, LA, Miami, Vancouver, Germany, and Japan. He has worked as a printmaker in collaboration with Durham Press for 20 years, and his editions are included in the collections of MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

"New York City Watertowers" features the silhouetted cityscape of downtown New York. In this graphic pattern, Tom Slaughter translates his signature images to designer wallpaper available in 3 colors.  

The graphic nature of his work appeals to me in that it creates a seemingly simple repeatable pattern.  However, upon closer inspection, Slaughter uses black and white to subtly play with the background/foreground and light/shadow relationships in this design. 

Michael Craig-Martin

Michael Craig-Martin isn't what you would call a wallpaper designer but his large scale mural paintings can resemble wallpapers. He doesn't use patterns that can be repeated, as seen in the lower picture, but patterns more like the top picture could potentially be repeated to continuously be repeated around the room. I love Michaels use of a simple line drawing that is transformed into a busy yet simple and not overwhelming wall. His eye for color is also very bold and unique.

Davis Reading; Art in the Digital Age

I found this article to raise interesting points and support for the on going debate on how the digital age of art will effect the idea of "original" art. Im not Davis ever really makes it clear on how he feels, as I think he himself is torn on the subject and all the different forms of technology that come into play. I personally think that the idea of "art" is ever changing and that 'traditional' forms of art are not dying out or being reproduced beyond repair, but simply that new forms of art are being born. These new forms open the doors to so many new ways of working and creating and the digital world is there to embrace in terms of these new methods. A painting will never look like the original on a computer screen but it is still a great way of circulating your art work to an audience you never would have been exposed to otherwise. I think any artist who does n0t embrace the existence of the internet is in many ways limiting themselves.

I found davis' explanation of "the world's first collaborative sentence" to be very interesting. This is a perfect example of the power of technology and the digital age can reach people in ways that were unimaginable before it's existence in our world.

Wallpaper Artist: Talia Greene

Our discussion in class today about finding artists who incorporate the idea of wallpaper patterns into their work immediately made me think of a current contemporary artist named Talia Greene. I first was introduced to her work when I was assigned a research paper assignment in my Contemporary Art class last winter session, in which we were to visit the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE and chose an exhibition to develop a thesis about. I was very interested in Talia Greene's exhibit the minute I stepped into the room and only continued to be as I researched her work and the concepts that drive it as well as her influences. She is a great example of an artist who incorporates wallpapers and patterns into her work and her exploration of order vs chaos through nature. Here is an example:

Two signs in the installation, Entropy Filigree, at American University. Left sign: Stairway Exit. Right sign: Electics. Each 12" x 9.5", Framed Wallpaper and Silhouette Paper.

Reaction to the Davis reading

Davis' The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction is kind of confusing, because he seems almost to change his point of view halfway through. After reading through important parts again, I believe what he's trying to say is that it would take some study to find the difference between the original and a reproduction because we don't have the same ideas of originality because of digital influence. His second point, I think, is that because of this, the original art and the digital reproductions are merging in our minds.

I disagree with some of this. Digital reproductions of paintings are not the same as viewing a painting. It's hard to know the size of the painting, particularly if there's no context. Even if there is, it's not the same as experiencing it in front of you. I can Google "Mona Lisa" and see the painting in seconds, but it may be cropped, the colors may not be right, etc. But how do I know if it's seven feet wide or thirty inches? What if it's an oil painting? I can't see the dimensional quality of it.

It's not just limited to paintings. A Photoshop file may be flattened and exported as a JPG or a PNG, but you can never get an idea of HOW the file was made unless you have the layered document. The same with a RAW photograph.

I believe the ideas of originality are still in mind. You can find originality anywhere. It's true that reproduction and editing have become more popular in our digital age, but to say that the original and the reproduction are merging is silly. Marketability is also a factor. When something sells well, other people want to sell something similar. This has always been, but now, it's just easier.

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