Counterbalance

For my semester long project I decided to focus on the subject of abortion as my motivation for creating content. I find this subject particularly interesting because of the amount of propaganda that is created to advocate against it which is combined with a lack of information about the procedure itself or any reason a person with a uterus would want to get one. From what I've seen, this leads some people to form incredibly non-logical arguments against it. 

I decided to manufacture some pro-abortion/pro-choice propaganda of my own, sort of as a counterbalance. Less of an attempt to create pieces that could be used as pieces of evidence for the cause, this experimentation was carried out to see how humor and the particular style of media could be used in an alternative way to how it is normally posted. 

This billboard was inspired by the "my heart beats at 18 days from conception" ones you can find dotted along many highways. I think that it could be used in a fact based discussion, as it is rooted in science and fact versus humor or anything else.

This one was made to show that abortion isn't always the best option, but if it is physically and emotionally feasible for the pregnant person it can be one way to decide when, and how, to start a family.

This one is my favorite because it is so blatant.

This one was made because I knew I wanted to bring Christianity into the discussion. This is because there seems to be a lack of separation between church and state when the legality of abortion is being discussed. Another aspect of the abortion argument is when people believe a human is alive or sentient. This bible quote shows that man becomes a living being when he breathes the breath of life. Meaning takes a breath of air, which only happens for a baby when it is outside the womb. I also think this piece could be referenced in discussion as a logical and fair point to bring up.

This was created because of all the times I've heard that "abortion is murder." I thought it would be interesting to create a piece that instead demonizes the anti-abortion protesters. I also made this piece because I wanted to learn more about digitally manipulating photographs and working specifically with human faces. 

If I were to do this project again I would focus on making media suitable for social media platforms. I would have also liked to make a video but I didn't schedule enough time into spring term for that to be possible. 

Yoko Ono Research Project

For my artist research project I chose to study Yoko Ono. Many people know her famously as John Lennon's wife, but her conceptual artwork is the real reason that people should know her name. 

Some of Ono's most famous works are her publication Grapefruit (1964) and Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961). As a conceptual artist, Ono played with Barthes' idea of the "death of an author." Her book, Grapefruit, was compiled of instructions that the reader may choose to follow (or not) to create their own art works. In this case, Grapefruit is passive, and the text that evolves from it is active.









Her painting, Painting to Hammer a Nail, was hung in multiple museum/gallery spaces with the instructions "visitors are invited to pound a nail into this painting.” Each rendition of this conceptual work by Ono would produce a completely original finished piece.

My favorite thing that I found while researching this painting was the rendition of it that occurred at the Seattle Art Museum in 2009. In this case, visitors were so liberated by the break in rules of how they can interact with art that they took it further and nailed business cards, gum wrappers, notes, and posters to the wall around the painting.

Advancing Skills Through Advertising

Recently I have been learning a lot about Adobe softwares like Photoshop, Premiere, and Illustrator through making advertisements for my business SPAZCORE. I learned how to make basic animations using timelines on Photoshop which was a difficult process but definitely worth it in the long run. For most of my animations I would then import the gifs I made into Premiere and add sound effects. All of the content I made I designed specifically for Instragam, so I formatted them in 1:1 ratio and made sure the target bit rate was small enough to work on the platform.

I specifically started this advertisement project for a line of earrings I had planned for a while and wanted to have a big release for. The line of earrings is called the "Pleasure" line as it focuses on the idea of female pleasure and the stigmas that revolve around it. I hope that in the near future we get to a point where female masturbation is as socially normalized as it is for men. I know that we as a society have come a long way on this subject; we used to think that women were incapable of orgasming and it was impossible for them to enjoy sex. I am considering doing a rebut of this line with more gender inclusive toys in the future but will have to wait a while before I have the time to start this process over again.

Here are some of the posts I created for the SPAZCORE Instagram account that I run.

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PLEASURE LINE IS NOW AVAILABLE ON SPAZCORE.COM !

A post shared by julia balestri (@spazcore) on May 1, 2019 at 6:02pm PDT

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you’ll want to get your hands on a pair of these tiny dildo earrings from the PLEASURE LINE drop happening tonight at 8PM central time! • • • • • #jewelrymaking #jewelry #earringshop #accessories #earrings #madebyhand #handmade #original #jewelrydesign #originalidea #originaldesign #statementearrings #earfriends #smallbusiness #shopsmall #shoplocal #dildo #sextoy

A post shared by julia balestri (@spazcore) on May 1, 2019 at 11:50am PDT

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PLEASURE LINE OUT WEDNESDAY 5/1 @ 8pm CENTRAL TIME ! • • • • • • #jewelrymaking #jewelry #earringshop #accessories #earrings #madebyhand #handmade #original #jewelrydesign #originalidea #originaldesign #statementearrings #earfriends #smallbusiness #shopsmall #shoplocal #magicwand #vibrator #toys #pleasure #empowerment

A post shared by julia balestri (@spazcore) on Apr 29, 2019 at 11:28am PDT

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PLEASURE LINE TOMORROW @ 8pm CENTRAL TIME !! These battery operated vibes are a 1/1 design. Each pair of earrings in this line are limited, the magic wands have two pairs but the rest are 1/1 so you do not want to miss the drop!

A post shared by julia balestri (@spazcore) on Apr 30, 2019 at 2:57pm PDT

Term Project Update

I have done more research on the subject of abortions and made two new billboards. I am trying to hit many different angles of the argument with these different billboards. I think it could be cool to do some work with scanning in photographs and magazine clippings to add different types of dimensions to these billboards in an artistic sense. 

Here is my collection of billboards so far. 

1-800-CHOICES is a fake phone number I made up to make the billboards seem like real advertisements. I chose the word "choices" because I want to advocate that abortion is one of many choices women have to deal with pregnancy, it is not the ultimate choice for most pregnant people but it is an acceptable one. 

Recently I have seen lots of propaganda videos about how bad abortions are and want to use this footage to make a film about how demonic these preachers are. This will be my next step in this process of creating abortion propaganda.

Anger Management Interpretation

Rico Nasty's Anger Management

"Laughing Skull" by Julia Balestri 4/28/19

"Just as the reading of the modern text (such at least as it may be postulated) consists not in receiving, in knowing or in feeling that text, but in writing it anew, in crossing its writing with a fresh inscription" (Barthes 153). 

I like Rico Nasty's new album Anger Management because I feel like I can relate to certain aspects of what she is saying, like when she speaks with confidence about being the best version of herself she can be and owning her craft. I especially admire that she shows she has anger and can be "nasty" because those aren't things that our society vouches for our women to be yet. 

Rico released Anger Management on April 25th, 2019 (three days ago) and since then I have only listened to this album on repeat and nothing else. When I was looking at this prompt for a project that said to design artwork based off music but doing so without listening to it I knew I had to make something based off of a song from Anger Management. Rico's music in general but specifically this album makes me feel like the anger and fire energy that I have inside of me can be harnessed to do productive things, like fine tuning my crafts or developing myself into a better person. 

I made digital art based on how the song "Cold" specifically makes me feel, which is sort of the power in angry laughing and knowing that people can or are actively doubting you. I made a gif of a skull laughing because I felt that the grit of the skull and fire combined with the humor of it would accurately depict how I feel while listening to the track. 

Listen to the track "Cold" from Rico Nasty's Anger Management below:

Visiting Artist: Faythe Levine

On April 17th, Faythe Levine visited our class and gave us opportunity to have face-to-face conversation with her. Levine is a middle aged working artist that was born where I am from, Minneapolis, Minnesota. She currently works as a Assistant Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin. Before this job she worked as a gallery owner, wrote books, directed films, and general art maker.

I wish I had been more awake for the talk with her, as I would have been able to come up with more questions on the spot about things I am curious about in the art world. Regardless, I feel like I still gained a lot from the discussion we had with her as a class. One thing that I had already assumed about working in the art field but she solidified is the concept that an artist must be constantly networking in order to make a name for them self. One thing she suggested was to bring a token of appreciation to an artist if you go to a lecture or art opening of theirs. This shows that you care about them and think about their work while also setting you apart from other show goers. She also mentioned that you could contact them online, which I feel like the modern usage of this would to be to follow them on social medias and message them through there. You could also get someone's phone number for a more intimate access to their message board.

Overall I did like what she had to tell us but I feel like the scene that we as graduating students are going to be entering is so incredibly different than the one that older artists have grown in. The use of social media and constant access to cameras that take high quality photos and videos creates a completely different realm of interaction that an older artist cannot help us navigate. I appreciate all advice that any veteran artist can give me. I still carry respect for my elders and know that they have experienced life in ways that I can learn so much from. Regardless, the honest truth is that I really need to hear what the scene is like RIGHT NOW because that is the world I can be apart of, not the one that functioned decades ago. I need to understand how to market myself online as much as I do in person. To act as if the social platforms that have become so integrated into human activity cannot be used as a tool for success is an outdated and ignorant belief. 

The Death of the Author Experiment

"We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing
a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-
God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a 'variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and clash" (Bathes 146).

For my experiment I chose to combine the old style of artistic expression, blackout poetry, with a modern form of sentence formation, predictive text. Predictive text is a tool that many current day smartphones use to help users form sentences faster. These programs build custom dictionaries based off the typing habits of the user which allows them to promote the use of words they would most likely want to include on their own without having to type them out.

I had students pair up and use one phone with predictive text between the two of them. They then got to decide how they would go about forming a run-on sentence by choosing different words or phrases suggested by the smartphone. After they made a sentence they were to write it down in large font on a piece of paper. Then the papers were passed to the partnership to the left, and those people chose to blackout certain words or emphasize others with highlighters.

The end result were poems made in correlation by humans and artificial intelligence with an allocation of power to the heavy hand of human choice.

Here are the three poems we collectively created.

A Message Without a Code

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meme as "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture" as well as "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media." Memes have become a large part of internet culture today. They are a way of sharing information (typically in a comedic way) that allows people to connect over a shared sense of humor.







This digitally crafted image is a crossover between a popularized meme and a television show. The source is unknown, but the image carries an immense amount of information regardless. The person depicted is Parker Dinkleman, one of the two main characters featured on the television show "Mr. Meaty" which was aired on Nickelodeon from 2006 to 2009, composed of 20 total episodes.










The background of this image is taken from a popular meme that originated in 2014 from Lucky Luciano with the caption "You know I had to do it to em" This quickly became a source of humor, image manipulation, and inspiration for other works of art. People photoshopped all sorts of parodies of this pose and even traveled to the site to take pictures of themselves doing the same pose in the same place as this iconic photograph.

This digitally crafted cross over meme juxtaposes a photograph which Roland Barthes states in Image-Music-Text is a "message without code" with a coded representation of a person (Barthes 43). This collage of imagery is culturally significant in that it demonstrates the power of the internet to circulate seemingly abstract information in ways that allow for specific derivatives that only niche groups of people can fully appreciate. Parker's pose perfectly mimics that of Lucky's which furthers the concept of the internet's power to create new truths.


If this were to be shown in an art museum or gallery I think it would make sense to print it on a canvas and hang it with a large, intricate, dark stained wooden frame. The reason this makes sense to me is that it would legitimize the digitally crafted image as a form of art that can be admired in the same sense as the paintings and drawings that would presumably be shown in the same space.

Artist Talk: Owen Schuh

Schuh flipping the pages in his notebook for some students.

A visiting artist, Owen Schuh, came and gave a lecture on his work hanging in the Wriston Art Gallery. His work is all mathematically based which was something I hadn't prior been exposed to. To me, his most amazing works were the ones where he mapped out the different ways in which you could cut a cube. I was thoroughly confused during multiple periods of his lecture. He would state which theory or type of math he used in a piece but didn't explain how it worked so the technical jargon didn't help my understanding of his works much. This doesn't mean, however, that I didn't form a deeper appreciation of his work through the context he gave it. He likes the idea that there is no correct way to cut the cube he uses in his work, which is something I wouldn't exactly expect from such a technically based artist. Schuh even admitted himself that his explanations do not help to understand the process of achieving the images he makes but that his notebook does. I haven't seen an artist's notebook in a gallery installation in a while, and I liked seeing his. I try to keep a sketchbooking practice and understand how important the doodles and half formed sketches are to creating greater works.

Final Project Proposal: Abortion Propaganda

I know that I work the best when the projects I do are inspired or based off of subjects I am already passionate about. For the trimester long project I will be working on I decided I wanted to make art about abortions. It is a subject that I love to learn about and one that I don't think is discussed enough. I believe there is a strong inequity in the access to information about abortions. They don't tend to be covered in health classes and there is an intense amount of anti-abortion propaganda littering the United States.

This is why I have chosen to make a few different forms of pro-abortion propaganda. I will digitally design pro-choice billboards, create portraits that negatively highlight Planned Parenthood protesters, and create a short informational video that outlines some basic facts about abortions.

Visual ppt
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11FxcpIvnKqbh4fCv13HFJNzWtWrUfMZUwJDOoz8fDiM/edit?usp=sharing

Artist Talk: Mary Griep

My friend Genevieve in front of "Ulu Camii, Divirgi, Turkey"

   On March 29th I attended an artist talk at the Wriston Art Center. The artist that was showcasing their work was Mary Griep, a professor of art and Dean of Fine Arts at St. Olaf in Minnesota. The project she spoke about that is also displayed in the gallery is her Anastylosis Project that she has been working on for over a decade. This project is comprised of many drawings of different architectural monuments in fine detail. One thing I didn't realize during her speech and actualized while looking at her work in person was that not only was her work drawings, but it was multimedia. In the case of Griep, multimedia means that she collages many tiny different pieces of paper onto her drawings, creating intricate mosaic details within her work.
   Something I really appreciated about her talk was that she gave a brief outline of her starting process for her project. She mentioned that all good projects must start with a question or problem to explore. She also noted that a good question will not be fully formed at the beginning of the process, rather it will be expanded upon along the way.
   When she spoke about the subjects she chose she said she drew things that "captured [her] imagination." I liked this phrasing because it implies more than catching someone's attention. It means the subject is rich enough that the mind can form other concepts that enrich their understanding of its subject.
   Griep stated that she created her work with the intention of making the viewer come up close and then step back to see the whole thing. While looking at the work in the gallery, I did just that. She includes such an intense amount of detail in each piece she makes, and then on top of that works on a large scale that can only be fully appreciated by looking up close and also from afar.