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Jen Cornwell H-H HISTORY Settled Medium: Graphite on card stock displayed as photocopies & wallpaper paste
Artist Statement What does it take to get from point A to point B? What happens in between the beginning and the end of a project? The answers to these questions are always more important to me than the end result. Process defines what you’re actually doing to get from a beginning to an end point. Process defines my work. As an artist and a designer, what I am able to get out of a project isn’t based on the final product, but rather what it takes to get there. The efforts, sketches and researching that goes into any design project is so significant to the entire production, much more so than then whatever the endpoint may be. Design is my outlet for process. In order to create something new and effective, I believe it’s important to reflect upon what has already been done. Researching past projects and information when designing keeps me thinking, inspires new ideas and continues to push me and my work in a forward direction. Research and spending more time within the technical parts of a project help make that project more relevant and allows me to produce work while still allowing me to be curious.
Project Statement There are a lot of things in our lives that we encounter daily or that we love to do or see, and we know little or nothing about these things. Hiphop was and still is that for me, I really enjoy it but I never knew much about its history. Deciding to make this the epitome of my project was an important decision because at the ‘end’ of my process, I wanted to create something as well as
have a grasp on a new topic. Spending a majority of my fall semester doing some intensive research, reading and searching I was able to further understand the next steps of my project. Like any art form, hip-hop progressed from roots in other genres into several forms before we know it as we do today. A major decision in my process was which songs I was choosing and why they were important so it was important to include the element of progression within the final piece. Next creating a guideline for the songs within each time period: choosing songs that had content dealing with issues within their time periods of release. This meant reggae songs dealing with revolution, 70’s and 80’s dealing with gang wars and oppression, and the 90’s and beyond where songs dealt with relevant content less frequently, but what was relevant included drugs and humanity as a whole. Hip-hop is frequently overlooked as a genre that deals with real issues. Of course not every song will and popular songs are frequently shallow. Proving this relevance of a genre that deals with cultural issues was a huge part of my concept and development in this project. Content was followed up by construction decisions. Determining a medium and presentation was key in developing this project into something more than just a collection.
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