Her Notebook

There is a plan in the works of an art show happening to exibit Lu’s newest pieces in Toronto.
Follow up on the site for more info. about when, where and how you can get in!

How can I mess with an everyday space at OCAD? What can I do to make people stop and think?
And it hit me…
This is my design for my Creative Process and Research class, taught by Lyn Carter at OCAD.
It required us to take a space at the University and somehow create an installation piece by changing the space and its function. Using plaster and chizzling away at my mold for 3 days, my “stop and thinker” came to life.

The first steps required us to take a photo of the space, and draw directly on it using paint and marker.
From there, the design of molding carbdboard to hold paster was created…and so on.

How do we use water? How clean is the water we drink from our fountains? I love tap water, I’d rather drink tap water then any bottled water out there…but how safe am I? How safe are you?
The toilet design does make people smile as they walk by. I have observed the reactions of faculty and students as they gaze over and laugh, smirk, stop..and sometimes worry.
Cheers to your next glass of the good stuff.

Stretched Canvas (36 x 44″)
Spray Paint, Acrylic and Latex
An Appropriation of Banksy’s umbrella tag
www.banksy.co.uk

A sincere thank you to Fred Vecchio and the Colours of Maple Team for their generous sponsoring of supplies for the remainder of my art year.

After a scare of toxins from the over-use of spray paints without proper protection, my body has been paying the price. Im learning the hard way from not protecting myself with a safe mask and spraying in a well-ventalated area.

The owner of Colours of Maple, Fred Vecchio, provided me with a 3M Innovation mask to wear for the remainder of my spray paint projects along with over 40 cans of spray paint, litres of paint colours, amazing service and overall genuine kindness upon my arrival.

Again, a huge thank you to Fred!! Here is to safe spraying from here on end!

Colours of Maple
20 Jacob Keefer Pkwy, Unit 2
Vaughan, Ontario
L4K 5E3
www.coloursofmaple.com

Using spray paint, acrylic, conte, gel medium transfers, fabric modeling and relief work, this mixed media creation based on the assignment “Hide and Seek” was created.

In relation to my personal religious experiences, holding onto my faith has put me in a space of scruteny and judgement. This is an empowerment piece towards women who physically carry their faith with them through every moment of their day. It is a tribute to empowerment. What is the true definition of freedom? What is true female beauty? I believe it goes deeper then the physical clothing of a woman. This piece brings power to women within the Muslim faith. Her body turns into pieces of her place of prayer, making her connected to her place of worship. The piece has “Her Life”, translated into Arabic written at the bottom in fine black ink. The Canvas board is approx. 4 feet by 1 1/2 feet long.

This is my story of how the colour orange came to be.
It was once a world with brilliant scenes and explosive colours of all shades and hues. A world that was lost and destroyed. Over time, people evolved and came back to only find themselves and their world in red and blue.
A young boy was playing in a local collection of past artifacts. He understood the waste came from another time, but he was curious to see what he could find. He was one of the first boys to find a lighter in this world. His blue hands picked it up and studied it.
He was warned by his elders that the world they lived in was all they needed. Colour in 2’s was all that should be. A world where colour was blown away.

He lit the lighter and was in awe with such beauty. The flame was like nothing he had seen before. It was a colour that he could not make out. He was baffled and confused. He took a breath out. He was warned. He lit up, turning from one shade of blue to another.
His red eyes saw something they have never seen before. He had discovered a bright, new, intensity.
As he exhaled, the bright yellow heat radiated into the red sky around him.
This is how he blew alive the colour orange and rediscovered a new world of colour that once existed.

A tribute to the Russian Revolution, the overthrow of a monarchy and the former USSR. This piece represents the struggle of a revolution, the lives lost within the fight, the commercial art used to promote war and one of the first Communist states to emerge.

This piece consists of mixed media, string, acrylic paint, gesso, gel medium and photo transfers. It has soviet commercial designs integrated into the USSR flag with The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, hidden beneath the images.

So we were assigned a Metamorphosis project for my Colour Exploration class and I tackled a bit more of an abstract idea of change over time. I wanted to focus on something I can’t seem to grasp fully–the idea of what makes a woman beautiful within the mainstream media. I really can’t relate to everything I see thrown infront of me on a daily basis, but I think it is interesting to question how intense the idea of “the beauty myth” has changed over time and how popular belief to the question of, “what makes a woman beautiful?” has taken a drastic turn.

From thick to thin, light skin to dark, this is a representation of woman, as a whole with her sisters of all shapes and colours beside her, floating in unity to make up a whole. I believe that diversity makes a woman beautiful. I think that her strength, independence and body makes her sexy, no matter what her size. I used bold colours and sharpie ink to outline my canvas images. This acrylic painting is 36 x 48 inches. It took over 50+ hours to complete.

A few shots of Sebastien taken downtown with his mom, Rosanna. This kid is eager to move and loves the camera! Besides pooing on my shirt, he was a great subject to photograph!

 The middle of the semester is quickly approaching and the amount of work is hitting me really hard. I can barely keep my eyes open as I write all of this down–to be honest, I have a lot more to do as I type. This is me procrastinating, so I may as well explain a bit about what I’m posting so you know where I’m coming from. I’ve been doing quite a bit of experimenting with transfer techniques onto wood and fabric. I am working alongside teachers such as Shirley Yanover and Lyn Carter at OCAD, who are influencing much of my new work. I have been sculpting out of wax in Lyn’s class, combining 2 or more objects together to create one solid piece. The cold, empty-eyed, empty bodied sculpture of a silenced woman is what came out of it. I’m loving working with wax. I’ve carved out so much of it with my tips of my fingers that I’m starting to feel as if I don’t have fingerprints anymore. I love producing work, but I’m creatively burned out. The other pieces are done with paint and charcoal. The piece with the guitars hidden away into the city was my take on a space I find myself in lately. The city carries it’s own melody and I rock out to it daily. The Mandala was an experiment with geometric shapes, which I hated and the blue, value piece of Susanna Kasen in Girl Interrupted wrapped up my “Textbook” assignment for colour theory. Alright-reading week, here I come (…and that means, sleep). I’ll be posting up some new pieces in the next week or so on Soviet Commercial Design and my take on “The Beauty Myth”.
Stay warm, Toronto.