Who are you and why are you here?

I am Samuel Bielawski. I am a college student that loves music, art, media, being social, and creating new things. I have spent much of my life living in the same house and going to school every day except during the summers. I am a person that believes much in my passions and dreams, and I spend much of my time working on setting up myself for success in these ventures. I am human and I make mistakes sometimes. I am caring and trustworthy amongst all of my friends and family. I am an artist, a designer, and a barista.

I believe I am here to be challenged with the set of skills and coordinating passion that drives my desire to become whatever I want to be. Through the drawing exercise I was able to create what I thought could be art in a certain way that one would look at it. I believe I am here to take this class and have experiences like it to discover what I will create for the world and leave behind many years from now.

Bible Dipping

For this exercise I wanted to "reuse" supplies I found lying around the house to make a cool decorative piece transformed from something else. I started with an empty jar that I found in my recycling bin that I washed and took all the labels off of. I then sprayed and varnished it with "santa snow" that I found in my garage to give it a frosted glass look that fades up from the bottom of the jar. I thought this was interesting as I composed my ideas for what to do next with the jar. I thought that it would be interesting to make a candle holder at this point and to put a silhouette around the jar to make cool shadows from the pictures I was to cut out. I used leftover scrap booking paper I found in my closet to make the animals and objects image that wraps around the jar. I used gravel I found in a bag in my garage to fill the bottom of the jar to have something for the candle to sit on. Lastly, I tied around the top of the jar with a string that I found in a drawer in my kitchen. I like the interesting look that this creation resulted in, and the fact that all I used to make it was things that had other purposes to begin with.

Class Take away 5

For this class I really felt inspired by the ideas discussed by the rest of the class. I feel like my mind is being opened much more freely while I take this class. I'm not afraid to try more unique ideas and take risks creatively because of what has happened in this class so far. I liked to see how all the students that presented were able to "Break the rules" in whichever way they chose. It certainly made me feel more comfortable with what I was able to make, because as long as whatever people did make, it just needed to make sense to them in a way they could explain to everyone else. For next week's project I'm having trouble deciding what to do for something that is "reused" but I am certain I will come up with something great, because I love to reuse things all the time.

Rules were made...

I made a video with absolutely no plot and no meaning. Rules for most short films are to have a plot, varying camera angles, and a solid clean look. This video uses one constant shot of me sitting in my room while I study. One surprising thing about the footage is that it actually consists of over an hour of footage all shortened into two minutes by speeding it up. The background sound was just something I found and thought didn't really go along with it at all, so I had it play while the entire film goes on. I added a hue change to it because it makes the footage look less good quality and certainly changes the mood of it. Other effects and overlays are placed throughout just to add to the nonsense of this video. I made it while studying for a test and chose the title "correlation" by opening a dictionary and picking out the first word I saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvWmpFdYY4&feature=youtu.be

Class take away 4

Class was very interesting this week and was a very good time fore me to get my ideas together. I greatly enjoyed hearing about all of the new ideas that I got from seeing what other people had to say about their books. I also was intrigued by my own idea, and how I could have changed it. Right now I am just trying to find out how to incorporate my ideas and everything I want to from this class into the book. I have had trouble remembering to keep up with the deadlines for several of my class take aways thus far, and hope that I can keep myself from doing that again next time.

50 what ifs

What if I…

1.      Fill the book with words that I think are positive

2.      Use the pages to create something new

3.      Use the book as fuel for a fire that I use to melt candle wax and create an artistic candle piece

4.      Make the pages into a canvas and paint something

5.      Read the book to other people and ask them if they think it is as bad as I do

6.      Make a paper mache sculpture

7.      Take the book around with me and write my thoughts on the pages

8.      Make doodles on the pages of the book

9.      Give people pages from the book

10.   Turn the book into something artistic

11.   Throw the book off a building

12.   Give the book to someone and write down their thoughts

13.   Take a nap and shred the pages and put them In my pillowcase

14.   Pour water on the book and cut it up

15.   Use the pages as a napkin

16.   Take a picture of the book

17.   Fold the pages into origami

18.   Cut out a hole in the pages and put something inside

19.   Get the pages wet and put them in the soil of a plant

20.   Turn the book into a case for something

21.   Make a hole in the book and turn it into a planter

22.   Replace adjectives in the book with new ones

23.   Duct tape the entire book

24.   Take out the pages and put them backwards

25.   Write to swap the genders of all the characters

26.   Paint the book

27.   Demolish it with sharpie

28.   Burn it and put the ashes in a sculpture

29.   Put the pages on a cup and drink from it

30.   Melt crayons on it

31.   Make it into a poster

32.   Let it soak in alcohol and melt

33.   Throw it into a lake

34.   Rip each individual page out

35.   Shoot the book and fill in the holes

36.   Put up the pages like posters around town

37.   Scatter the book pages on the ground in a comfortable place

38.   Use the pages to make a picture frame

39.   Make a video of doing something transformative with the book

40.   Run the book over with my car

41.   Leave the book in my car and punch it whenever I get angry

42.   Hit it with a bat until it is nothing more

43.   Put firecrackers in it and watch it explode

44.   Bake it into a cake and see if I can make people eat it

45.   Fold the pages into flowers

46.   Spray paint a stencil on a laid out sheet of pages from the book

47.   Have people sign the book

48.   Make a documentary on how the book is burned

49.   Make a Photoshop image using the book

50.   Make the pages into a map by drawing a map on top and framing it or printing it on

Class take away 3

Something that resonated from class today most was getting to know someone so suddenly. Even though I had no intent to make a connection with someone today, It really made me happy that I did. Although I didn't see everything to be the same between my partner and I, talking to him made me realize that I have a lot in common with many people in my major, and that I should take advantage of getting to know more people like me through it. I also thought really hard about which page to give to my partner. I didn't want to give a page with a boring picture or one that wouldn't be fun coloring, but I also didn't want to give up a picture of any of my favorite animals. I really enjoyed hearing about Beth’s painting style and how she is able to express herself in the way she does through all different art forms. I love expressing myself creatively in many different ways too, and hope that I can show that more and more through the projects we receive in the future.

Doodles

I had trouble thinking about the different topics while doodling. I was mainly focusing on trying to incorporate different thoughts in my mind into my doodles. I was thinking about things that make me happy and interested. I love cats so I drew a lot of them around my page, along with several other animals. I feel like this somewhat connects to serendipity through the fact that it was helping me feel better drawing animals that I like. A lot of other things I drew had to do with what was happening the day I drew this. I was having a very boring day and was just drawing anything that came to my mind. The word “Blah” drawn in the middle page is a good description of how I felt while sitting in my house all day doing nothing. I included mountains because I had really wanted to go on a hike or experience something with nature. Some of the aspects of my doodles like the penguin with the palm tree coming out of its mouth I think have to do with synchronicity because aspects like that just flow together and look interesting.