We watched someone’s cat for a week.

Some of Mark's thoughts and ideas
“Where are you from?” Whenever I travel, I get this question. I’m from San Francisco! Simple, right?
“But where are your parents from, originally?” China and Vietnam? But I’ve never been to either of those countries.
The most traditional Chinese thing we do is letting our passed ancestors eat first before we feast. I’m not sure how they’d feel about our meals now though, it’s nothing like what they grew up with. Being Chinese-Vietnamese, we had our classic egg custards, banh mi, and egg rolls.
But what is traditional? Banh mi uses a French baguette because of French colonialism. Chinese Egg Custards 蛋挞 were an imported concept from the Portuguese egg tart. The blistered egg roll was invented in New York City. Japanese shrimp tempura are derived from Portuguese tempura’d green beans. Hispanic churros come from the Chinese Donut 油条. Mashed potatoes were “invented” in the UK, but the potato itself originates from modern day US to South America. The Chinese fortune cookie was invented right here in SF Chinatown! What, if anything, is traditional?
Just like the food in my life, I’m made up of a diverse and complex history. I was born in San Jose, raised in San Mateo, settling in San Francisco. I went to Vietnamese Buddhist preschool and then a private Catholic Portuguese elementary school, finishing off in public schools. My mom was born in China. When the cultural revolution happened, her family refugee’d in Vietnam. When the Vietnam War happened, her family refugee’d in North Dakota. My mom speaks Cantonese at home, but runs a Vietnamese noodle factory in Little Portugal, San Jose. My dad was part of the Vietnamese Navy before refugeeing in China, then New York. My dad spoke Vietnamese to me while my mom spoke Cantonese. I learned English from TV, Portuguese from school, and Spanish from neighbors.
I was born in San Jose, California. Today it’s a part of the United States, but was Mexican land prior, and Ramaytush-Ohlone ancestrial land before that. We try to draw borders, define labels, and identify ourselves as best we can, but history is murky and complicated. Borders are a social construct. These black and white lines don’t reflect our shaded and graduated realities. However much we try to paint a black and white picture, we’ll always lose the details in the shadows and wrinkles of our realities.
I particularly like Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s “Portrait of My Father as an Alien,” 2018 because I remember seeing my mom’s Resident Alien ID card in her wallet once and thought it was SUPER weird.
Kimsooja’s “To Breathe – Zone of Nowhere,” 2018 is inspiring because it’s a blend of multi-culturalism, though it doesn’t seem personal. It’s an arbitrary 6 country flags.
Hayv Kahraman’s “Kurds,” 2018. The piece is not inspiring to me, but the quote is:
Today I physically find myself on the other side of the line, struggling to keep my memories afloat. You have made it clear that I’m an “Other” but I refuse to be erased. This is my position as an immigrant and refugee yet I still share the same vision of water on the road as anyone else.
Hayv Kahraman
Multi-culturalism is super hard. Am I American? Am I Chinese? Am I Vietnamese? What about Portuguese? What about Mexican? What about Japanese? I’ve developed as a blend of so many things that I’m none of the above. Just like color labels only exist in a very narrow window of the full spectrum of light and pigment, identity labels ignore everything in-between and push them into an “Other” category. A category that means nothing and has no value other than “we don’t know”.
I was thinking about the types of signs and sign systems that exist in communities throughout the United States. For example, “No Soliciting,” “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog.”
Patrick Martinez’s “Notice No Soliciting,” 2018
Edel Rodriguez’s “Strangers,” 2018 — Boat full of immigrant strangers. Really cool looking.
Art Spiegelman’s “A Warm Welcome,” 2015
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‘People cross borders. / It’s been that way ever since / borders crossed people,’
Antoine Cassar from https://artuk.org/discover/stories/eight-artists-looking-at-experiences-of-migration
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/map-animal-migration-climate-change-20646
The Two Fridas, 1939 by Frida Kahlo – Multi-culturalism, self identity
Cuban-American, came during the Mariel Boatlift, lived in Florida, and studied art in New York. Currently 52 years old. Primarily works in painting.
Why did the artist chose this topic? What events/forces prompted them to do/make the work they did?
Select work by artist, describe the work, format used, issues addressed, and why did I chose them?
Mexico, Died . Paintings
Why did the artist chose this topic? What events/forces prompted them to do/make the work they did?
Select work by artist, describe the work, format used, issues addressed, and why did I chose them?
Facts and stuff, 3 sources.
Table spread of a potluck
As an Asian-American, our large family gatherings of over 100 people were full of food from all different types of cultures. This table represents what I remember from our potlucks during Thanksgiving, but also where my culture comes from.
My father was born in Vietnam, my mom was born in Guangzhou, China and refugee’d in Vietnam. I was born and raised in the Little Portugal neighborhood of San Jose with an 80% Hispanic population snacking on tamales and duritos (con chile y limon) from the Mexican vendedores. I grew up on manga and anime, leading me to studying Japanese for several years. Now, I live in the Mission District of San Francisco studying Spanish and art! My life is a mosaic of cultures and histories. Today, I live on Ramaytush-Ohlone ancestral land decorated in a valley of Mexican mural art with food from all over the world.
It’s important to remember our modern concepts of borders and identities don’t sit well on top of history. The land land was once Native land, then claimed by Mexico, and Spain, and then purchased through military force by the United States. Borders expand and contract, empires have rose and fell.
For our final project in CCSF Art125A 2D Design with Claire Brees, we redesigned some cover for some other art media. For example, movie posters, album covers, book covers. I chose lighter by yung pueblo.
Very silly busy. Too many book quotes in the back. Long quote on cover. Sticker.
Then there’s a lot of simple stuff. Plain yellow which is eye catching but not very interesting once I pull it off the shelf. Says very little about the content. Text design is simple, supposed to be less intimidating I think to imply that meditation is simple.
Things to take advantage of:
I want to make a gradient from purple to red to yellow, bottom to top. This will be a visual movement of getting “lighter”.
Lighter font should be much lighter weight, maybe of it floating away? Could be a bunch of balloons lifting you up
Figure of a meditation person in the middle, legs crossed
Shadow cast by the meditator is full of words like ANXIETY, BLAME, JUDGEMENT, RUMINATION, AMBIGUITY, FEAR, STRESS, TENSION, DEPRESSION, GRIEF, PAIN, LOSS
Feedback from group and profa.
Lighter letters for words
Dark yellows
Blues are too close to the blues. Maybe mix them.
Lighter is not readable
Quote in front could easily go o
To the back
Make more gradient for yellow?
Pile of words and letters is pretty cool. Color is less readable.
Hard geometry is counter to the text and image which is soft and yielding. Uneven. Maybe more radial. Harsh and sharp.
Bring in another image for the back?
Here I lightened some yellows, centered the back text more, and added “…” ellipses to imply continuation.
Overall, I’m happy but found the yellow to be too light. I worked on my piece at night so “True Tone” in my iPad made the yellow much more yellow.
Made the body more yellow saturated. Overall, I’m very happy!
I picked up “Be a Revolution” by Ijeoma Oluo from SFPL and absolutely hate the cover for so many reasons. First, lets’ talk about the stuff the library put on top of the book . They covered the author’s name with the barcode sticker and like 1/4 of the title with the “Lucky Day” sticker. The title and the author are the two biggest pieces of information on this cover and they’re both obscured.
If we just focus on what the cover says, it’s a really weird reading. The focus is “BE A REVO LUTION” in big bold font highlighted with various bright, vibrant, slightly de-saturated colors. First, the text itself reads kind of weird because “revolution” is broken up into two lines, but after you process that, you realize that there’s a subtitle woven in between the lines: “how everyday people are fighting oppression and changing the world – and how you can, too.” I found this to be really unreadable because the different parts of the sentence is broken up by the big loud title. However, I almost feel this is intentional. It feels like the representation of oppression, where a few big loud words override the narrative but the longer, more detailed subtitle gets buried in the noise.
I also think the design for the highlight on the title really interesting. The text goes the whole line height, leaving no highlight color on the top or bottom. However, the highlight stretches nearly the full width of the cover. It almost gives the title a heavier feel, like a stack of bricks when you also compare it to the thin full width subtitle text that separates the lines. By stretching the color to the full width, it becomes consistent with the width of the subtitles.
I started with a black, white, and gray design based around letters. That’s a re-design of a previous project on destructuring text.
Based on the black and white design, I just started painting based on colors!
1. complementary with red green, four colors with yellow red blue violet, and neutrals with a redish-brown, mustard-yellow, and a dark-violet.
2. Because the base of my design is letter shapes, I wanted to emphasize those shapes through color. I tried to use lighter colors for the letter shapes and darker colors for the “background”. For the four color image with yellow, I found the yellow to be almost distractingly bright, so I used very little of it as an accent in lines that move the eye around the piece. In general, I tried to have high contrast between neighboring colors to prevent them from bleeding into each other to increase readability. Either the colors are complementary, or the tint was extreme.
As I’m learning color theory, techniques with acrylic, and practicing mixing real paints, I wanted a way to practice mixing neutrals and more complex colors to match what I see. I found this fun little website game!
In today’s episode of “what is mark drawing?”, I’ve been working on drawing a photo collage! It has some wacky movement and flow because I cut out a bunch of black and white photos I took that somewhat related to the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and air. I then overlayed a grid and drew from the collage at 2.5x scale to really emphasize the details.
progress pics
Acrylic is basically glue and pigment. If it’s left exposed to air, it’ll dry hard. You can peel it off but not off clothes. Store brushes and tools in water. Add retardant to prevent drying. Leave in a pile rather than smeared to prevent drying.
Colors like yellow, orange, and yellow-green can be almost transparent. Remember, colors at the top of the wheel are “lighter” in value and tend to be more transparent. Magenta and blue can be kind of light too because they are student grade.
When painting edges:
For outlines in graphite / pencil
Acrylic paint darkens when it dries, just a little.
When loading up a brush: