Semester In Review

My name is Natalie Bolton and this Fall I started my senior year Graphic Design Studio at Boston University. It goes without saying that this year was particularly different and difficult in its own way. After quarantining in my parent’s house all summer, I was incredibly happy to be able to return to campus. I know I am blessed to have the opportunity to be in-person at all this semester, so I tried to make the most of it.

HOT GIRLS MAGAZINE

My first big project I worked on was “Hot Girls Can…” My team wanted to create something that would encapsulate the complete range of bizarreness that 2020 is. We were also heavily inspired by a case study by the Brooklyn based Studio Hyperakt called “Girls who Code make Waves.” The concept of bringing people together for the common good in their community was something we wanted to carry into the concepts of Hot Girls.

Additionally, the concept of Hot girls transcends gender. It is about changing the context of what makes a person unique and empowering. It can be anything. Anyone can be a Hot Girl. Its less about gender and more about unifying people in general.

In order to get the momentum required for Hot Girls to start running, I did a lot of experimentation. We had a photoshoot with multiple cakes, masks, and bedazzled strawberries. We worked a lot with physical materials opposed to just digital. It gave the concept a much more real, physical feeling. It’s pink, its fun, its covid-friendly, and it emphasizes that Hot Girls can do anything.

For our final rendition of the Hot Girls concept, we created a magazine. Each page is a bright, glittery example of how to get through 2020. It features found articles about Hot Girls in media, day-to-day topics, photos from our past deliverables, and general inspiration about getting through this year and thriving through this year. We made a bright, colorful hand-held work of art that really expressed that even though we are in a gloomy time, there’s inspiration and strong hot girls everywhere.

THIS IS NOT ART

That’s not art was the 2nd project in my studio design class. We were instructed to read through an article from the 90’s about graphic design education, and how graphic design isn’t being taken as seriously as it should. We were then instructed to write out 25 questions in response to the reading, then make an installation based off of our questions. My group pretty much hated the articles. We thought it was pretentious, and weird how they defined graphic design. So, we set out to de-serious graphic design.

Here are most of the questions our group came up with. We were all over the map, but closed in on ideas surrounding “what makes art, art?!”, and began to question everything.

• Why can’t signs be art?
• How can Dada-ism break its way into this same concept.
• Is Anti-Art not already art?

In my small personal experience, As soon as you question if something is art or not, its art.

The next phase our installation was to MAKE. I created 25 Risograph machine-ready prints that we could potentially use to answer our design questions. Most of the concepts are focused on questioning what is and isn’t professional art, including a small alien-art critic, a burn on Jeff Koons, an amazon white-elephant gift list, and cvs reciepts.

While setting up our collection of RISO prints on the wall, we ran into a curation problem. There was a giant “Limit the spread of Covid 19” poster in the middle of our gallery space… and we were not allowed to move it or cover it. So our solution was to revisit our topics and question weather or not that in-the-way poster was art or not., and we decided that it is.

I created an updated “limit the Spread” poster, featuring quotes from the DADA manifesto. Then, we placed multiple around the wall, and didn’t cover the original protocol poster, and instead incorporated it with open arms.

I actually got in trouble for the poster after putting one up in the hallway at 808. But I think in its own way, getting in trouble for a dada-themed poster based off of a poster that most people don’t notice anymore, is meta as heck, and adds to the entire collection itself.

The end result was a wonderful collection of my group’s work using only the RISO machine and vinyl cut outs.

Stages — Research Project #3

The research project was a project we had over several weeks. Every week I would research a new stage designer, concert production team, or music artist. I decided on studying concert production art because I am a huge concert junkie and I really miss the anticipation of the events, the energy in the room, and seeing the incredible show that these teams put on. It’s a big part of my life and I miss it a lot.

Over the summer as homework to myself, I taught myself the basics of cinema 4d with the intention of creating things you might see behind an artist at a concert. I am still working on making more in my spare time, but I knew I wanted to use them for something this semester.

So one weekend I took over an empty classroom and used tape to create a fake stage on the wall, and project my 3D experiments onto the stage. I then recorded it all to overlay the footage in order to recreate the same energy you might find at a show.

In the video I created I start off by featuring a few of my favorite concert productions: Kanye West’s “Yeezus” tour by Trask House, ODESZA’s “Moment Apart” tour by Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight, Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” Tour by Possible Productions, Travis Scott’s “ASTROWORLD” tour by Trask House, and Childish Gambino’s “This is America” tour by Moment Factory. I built hype on the concert idea, and then the video turns to black when covid hits. Everything changed for the entertainment industry in March.

Every audio in the video is from a live concert, except for a few quotes from John McGuire about his works a production designer at Trask House. His statement “Every show is in contrast to black, taking the time in your day to make sure that the venue you are performing in…can actually get black.” resonated with me with reference to Covid. Things might be bleak right now, but you can’t make a show unless the room is dark to begin with.

The second half of my video is my Cinema 4d work that I created this summer and my process projected onto walls in my design studio. I recorded it on my camera and overlayed it on top itself. I wanted to make each frame stand alone as a piece of art. It is overwhelming, it is being at a concert, It’s escapism.

Thoughts on Thesis : KITSCH

So all of my projects mixed together pretty much add up to my thesis.

I want to research more into the ideas behind Kitsch and all of its weird elements. I’ll begin with the insane history of all things kitschy and make my way into personal kitsch and escapism.

For anyone who might not know, Kitsch literally means trash in German. Often, labeling something as kitsch means that it is in poor taste, ugly, and equates to mass-produced art or design with pop-cultural influence. Although I believe it is the purest form of entertainment.

All of this for me really begins with space.

Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school, who studied the ideas of people and the spaces they interact within.

There exists a dynamic, reflexive relationship between bodies and space as humans both respond to and mold the world around them — and vice versa. Personally I moved around a lot as a kid and still now as a college student I find myself living out of my suitcase in-between spaces all the time. I feel a strong connection to the places I have lived in my life and the objects that live within them.

So I recreated the drawing to fit me as a person. I am connected with a lot kitschy things and just objects in general. I find it really fascinating how one thing that might be trash to one person, can be an incredibly sentimental object, space, idea or concept to another person.

In parallel there is a beauty to kitsch because of its form of escapism. Over quarantine I made a bunch of kitschy bracelets and sent them to friends, and watched tiger king twice over. This escapism was necessary because it kept me from being depressed about the reality of the situation I was in. Also interesting is that many wacky cartoons were born out of necessity after the Spanish flu, world wars, and great depression. Similarly in the same boat was dada-ism and the arts & crafts movement.

Also important is creating art for art’s sake. Can I make something just because its fun to look at? Can I challenge the idea that every piece of design I create has to have some deep purpose?

These are the main topics I will be exploring in my thesis next semester.