Over the course of the summer, I was able to practice many different forms of graphic art and design, mainly through the use of Adobe Creative Cloud. I learned theoretical skills, such as typography and color theory, as well as practical skills, like digital painting and shading. However, I decided to create my final project as an animation. I experimented with different styles of animation, such a frame-by-frame and body tracker, but decided on a mock-up. This video is based off of a cartoon rig designed for animation, but also demonstrates some of the other artwork, inside the video.

Click here to view Alex’s animation on Vimeo.

This summer, inspired by Jan Svankmajer, Gekidan Inu Curry, and other interesting works of animation, and being as enthusiastic a storyteller as ever, I embarked upon the rather tedious voyage of attempting to author a stop motion short film, using both clay and paper. For hundreds of hours I molded clay onto wire skeletons, took pictures, adjusted, took pictures, painted, cut out cutouts, took pictures, and edited—in the end (that is, by now) I accomplished about half of the film’s total vision, having not even touched audio besides. The effort, though tiring, was endlessly rewarding, and what this video contains is the script’s middle section which I tackled in parts as follow: first the runaway scene, then the scene in the insect reality, and finally the cotton candy reality (this final part will have to go up later due to some temporary technical issues).

Don’t worry about understanding the story quite yet—it is only half after all—but I’ll try to get subtitles (just have fun imagining what they’re saying for now), and shall provide a brief summary. The kid in the purple dress is Sirsep Queen, a dancer at a ballet academy run by the ambitious Daimyo, who is attempting to create reality through dance (as introduced in the yet-to-exist beginning). At the time of the beginning of this video, SQ is recoiling from the recent mysterious loss of a friend, and though SQ holds no memory of him, the emptiness still lingers, until even the rest of the dancers seem alien. One might say the rest of the story follows SQ’s attempt to find or grapple with what was lost during that yet-to-exist beginning, after running away from the method outlined by the Daimyo.

Click here to view Ben’s animation on Vimeo.

While I was at NJIT, the goal for the week was to design and construct a home for mussels. Why not design an entire building at an architecture camp? We only had a week, and the instructors assured us that one week was not enough time. Mussels love acute angles and unexposed corners to hide from crabs. The rope wraps around the small angles and crevices, and the rope is for the mussels to cling to. Coming in, I had an interest in making a model with some level of simplicity, yet still, one that incorporates its own unique characteristics. My design accomplishes both, with the simplistic triangular prisms in addition to the way in which the prisms are rotated and repeatedly stacked at the same angle. To accomplish this design, I had to use the computer software, Rhino, from a 2D drawing on paper into a 3D model on Rhino. From there, I cut the design into individual parts and then laser-printed it before assembling it.

The Fallingwater Institute’s residency program differed from many other architecture programs because of its ease of accessibility to the site. We visited Fallingwater every day. Instead of just touring the site, we studied the physical layout of the home as well as the material, immersion of nature and the inclusion of perspective in its planning. The camp also held group activities and an immense amount of studio working time. During these studio sessions, we would study documentaries, the makeup and core ideas of other buildings, and Fallingwater to contribute to the design of our final project. This project consisted of workshopping and drawing an originally designed floor plan for a building near Fallingwater. With the knowledge I gained from the class I produced the plan for a common area building residing along Bear Run, that included a chapel and private reading room as well as an indoor garden.

This summer I took an online course in hopes of furthering my drawing and portraiture skills, as well as learning how to paint. In this class I learned about using value and color theory to make more interesting art works. I also learned how to mix paint effectively and how to create skin tones and other colors with only the three primary colors. Both of my portraits were done using acrylic paint on canvas, one only using black and white and one using blue, red, yellow, and white. While I think my drawing has come a long way, I believe that I can create more interesting pieces by using paint. With these new skills I am excited to continue to push my artwork further and create bigger and better works in the future. Thank you to the Parent’s Association for giving me this opportunity.

For the St. Albans Parents’ Association Visual Arts Fellowship this summer, I took a woodworking class at Woodcraft of Rockville. During this course, I learned basic safety, design, and technical woodworking skills. I took the “Fundamentals of Woodworking” class, which introduced me to the basic skills and tools of woodworking. As a part of this class, I made a National Cathedral inspired bookshelf. I learned about the selection of wood based of the direction of the grain, presence of knots, and any imperfections. Before assembling the piece, I had to consider its composition, or the way in which many sections of wood form one piece. Once I was happy with the composition, I glued, planed, and cut the wood. For the Cathedral bookends I carefully traced and cut the shape I wanted, making changes until I was happy. This was the most tedious part of the process as I had to trim the ends on band saws and sanders until I got them to be identical. Finally, I sanded every piece multiple times over to ensure a proper finish on the surface. This class gave me the fundamental knowledge and skills I need to begin to make my own woodworking pieces.

During my fellowship, I photographed the forgotten coal mining towns on the eastern flank of West Virginia: Thurmond, Prince, Kaymoor and Nuttallburg. Once booming, the decline of coal took with it the mining jobs that were their lifelines and left behind the shells of towns: abandoned buildings, shuttered mine shafts and empty storefronts. I juxtaposed my photographs with archival material from the Coal Mining Heritage Association to contrast life before and after the collapse of the coal industry: the Amtrak train that no longer stops, the uniquely modern jumbotron in front of an empty depot built in 1904, an overgrown mine shaft, the abandoned coal shoot turning shades of orange and brown, and what remains of a historic train station established by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in the 1800s.

In preparation for my family’s trip to Botswana for safari, I used the St. Albans Parents’ Association Art Fellowship to take a one-on-one photography class at the National Zoo. My teacher, Emily, helped me adjust different camera settings that changed light levels, helping me produce the best picture possible. She also showed me how to capture wild African animals in their natural habitat—while they were moving, sleeping, grazing, or hunting. During my class, I learned how to adjust the 3 main camera settings ISO, aperture, and shutterspeed which all affect how much light is let into the lens. The ISO is how sensitive the lens is to light: a higher ISO is more helpful in a dark setting while a lower ISO is more helpful in a light setting. The aperture is the size of the hole in the lens that lets light in. Finally, the shutterspeed affects the light and how fast you can take pictures. With a high shutterspeed, my camera can take multiple pictures in just a few seconds helping me capture a moving animal. I used the skills I learned on my trip to Botswana to help me take pictures of lions, leopards, elephants, zebras, hippos and more amazing animals.

My experience in the two-week summer architecture program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago taught me the importance of site and function when creating architectural designs. Due to being taught virtually, the class focused heavily on learning to use the functions of the online 3D design software, Rhino. To find a way to use my other architectural knowledge from the class, I devoted my attention to site and function. In thinking of ways to better the St. Albans campus, my thoughts turned to the art department. In taking three art classes at STA, I have found that spray painting is one of the most desired mediums among students. However, needing to be outside to use spray paint often deters students from using it due to the risk of poor weather. My project idea was to design possible structures for the small area just outside the art classrooms that could accommodate students’ spray-painting desires and serve as an outdoor learning space on nice days. In the show, I have included pictures of the site and two ideas for structures to serve this intended purpose.

For the St. Albans Parent’s Association Visual Arts Fellowship, I attended one drawing and painting course at the Yellow Barn Studio in Glen Echo titled “Landscape, Figure and Studio Painting”. The class occurred once a week over the course of 5 weeks and I produced two oil landscapes from photos I took from my travels this summer.

The class focused on techniques used to frame landscapes (or a subject) with a strong emphasis on scale, perspective and line value. We also learned and studied the importance of the order of light values used to depict depth and dimension, and how to achieve harmony and balance in our paintings.

While my artistic strength originally lies in drawing and sketching, working with brushes and oils this summer pulled me out of this comfort zone. I took inspiration from black and white photos and experimented with color, composition and contrast working in the abstract. I wanted to paint the landscapes in a different way than they were photographed with my goal being to offer a different perspective than the literal image captured by the camera lens. I exaggerated the scope and used color blocking to heighten certain aspects of each image.

This course enabled me to evolve as an artist by challenging me to vary my mediums and explore different perspectives to make my paintings more interesting.