FORMS AND EXPRESSION
ARTISTIC LINES FROM ANALYTICAL MINDS
Francesco Fedele, Ph.D. Rachel Grant, M.F.A.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering with the support of the Office of the Arts Georgia Institute of Technology
“After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.” – Albert Einstein “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
GESTURE STUDY
Painting on the cover: "Alizarin Wisp" by Rachel Grant, oil on panel 12"x12"
Contents 1
INFUSING ARTS INTO THE CURRICULUM FOR A HOLISTIC EXPERIENCE
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Visual Arts and Geometry
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Teaching Philosophy
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ARTIST RACHEL GRANT, M.F.A.
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Teaching art to engineering students
9 STUDENT EXHIBIT 9
Forms and expression: artistic lines from analytical minds
18 STUDENT ART 19 Kayla Allen 21 Carter Culwell 23 Eli Derrington 25 Santana Farrington Afton 27 Sakshi Hattargi 29 Shasha Liao 31 Josh Martin 33 Emily Sanders 35 Aleksanteri Vattulainen 37 Pengxiao Xu 39 INSTRUCTORS 40 Francesco Fedele 47 Rachel Grant 58 REFERENCES 60 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Infusing Arts into the Curriculum for a Holistic experience
VISUAL ARTS AND GEOMETRY “Each of us, we are all artists. If you put forth the dedication to learn the skills, it will come. We are born to create. The caveman didn’t even talk, and he was creating graffiti." Francesco Fedele
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While at Georgia Tech, I have been focusing on creating ways to integrate Arts into the course curriculum. I strongly believe that students must be exposed and explore the visual and dance arts to experience deep levels of creativity, abstraction and free mind expression in simplifying natural processes to their essential roots and elements of forms and movements. As a faculty, I believe our mission is to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers by synergizing the basic and applied sciences with innovation at the frontiers of both humanistic and scientific disciplines.
was not primarily mathematical. To Einstein, Maxell equations missed an aesthetic symmetry, which was essential to his discovery of relativity.
In this regard, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, icons of the twentieth century are and have been inspirational for generations of artists and scientists. Einstein represents modern science while Picasso represents modern art (Miller, 2001). Albert Einstein’s 1905 seminal paper on Special Relativity marks the beginning of modern sciences shaking the foundations of Newtonian physics. In 1907 Picasso had produced “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” the painting that brought art into the twentieth century and initiated the cubism movement. At the core of these rebellious changes was the debate about representation versus abstraction. In art, realism, perfection, and figuration have dominated since the Renaissance. In science, mathematicians started to explore exotic non-Euclidian geometries. Furthermore, there was the discovery of the conceptual quality of African art that influenced Picasso enormously. All of these ideas helped Picasso to free himself from earlier constraints of thinking and perfection of the Renaissance. He undertook the intellectual quest of reducing forms to geometry, leading to cubism. Picasso’s exploration of space in his groundbreaking “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” employed notions of non-Euclidean geometry, space simultaneity. Picasso discovered geometry as the language of the new art inspired by Poincaré’s (1902) widely read book “La Science et l’hypothèse”. Poincaré’s insights on time and simultaneity were also inspirational to Einstein’s discovery of Special and General Relativity. Both Picasso and Einstein realized that we couldn’t trust our senses when thinking about space and time. As a result, art and science become means for exploring the world surrounding us beyond perceptions or appearances. Picasso believed that the exact perspective and realism of the Renaissance art are deceiving and his cubism proposes a new notion of aesthetics as the reduction of forms to geometry. Similarly, Einstein’s approach to space and time
To do so, I had the initial support of the Georgia Tech Office of Arts. Their Creative Curriculum Initiatives (CCI) was dedicated to promoting connections between the arts and Georgia Tech’s core academic disciplines. Nurturing students' artistic sensibilities and exposing students to artistic process is essential to developing creativity and innovation. Thanks to a CCI grant, in Fall 2018 I have designed and taught for the firsthe graduate course “Visual Arts and Geometry” with the support of Atlanta-based artist Emily Vickers. We have introduced students to the geometry of space and manifolds and how these concepts influenced modern arts and sciences, i.e., Cubism and Einstein’s relativity. The 2018 course included, as the final class activity, exhibiting the student artwork at the Kai Lin Art Gallery of Atlanta (see book “Like Picasso and Einstein: lines, forms and dimensions” by Fedele & Vickers, 2018).
Inspired by the successful quest undertook by both Picasso and Einstein to free their minds from the absoluteness of our perceptions, my teaching philosophy is to aim at freeing students' minds from mechanistic concepts and recipes when they approach the solution of a problem towards an abstraction to the essential elements and forms of the solution.
In Fall 2019 I taught the course for the second time. The course was integrated with weekly lab sessions taught by Atlanta-based professional artist Rachel Grant. The realization of geometry is visualization, so she taught students drawing concepts, practice sketching, and both figure and geometric drawing. Students have learned how to draw and sketch by hand in order to stimulate and enhance their visual memory, imagination and practice abstraction of geometric concepts. Fluidity in drawing implies fluidity in thinking enhancing an abstraction of the essential elements and forms of the solution of an engineering problem. The student artwork was exhibited in the Mason Building on Dec 11 2019.
YOUTUBE video seminar: "Art & Geometry, unlocking Students' Creativity", Fedele-Grant, Sept 10 2021
LONG-TERM GOALS AND VISION Inspired by the successful quest undertook by both Picasso and Einstein to free their minds from the absoluteness of our perceptions, I propose a roadmap to creative intersections of the Arts and Civil Engineering Sciences promoting connections between the arts and core academic disciplines. In the short term, I propose to initiate a core of graduate courses at the intersection of art and engineering for the creation of a new graduate study minors for the college of engineering. Each course will be co-taught by a professor and a professional artist. As I want to connect with the city’s art community so that I can find more ways to link local artists with the school, I vision initiating an artist-in-residence program at Georgia Tech. The artists will be part of the campus community and will be involved in both teaching and research to cultivate interaction with both faculty and graduate students. The success of my initiative by way of a creation of a core of creative graduate courses will lay the foundation for the nucleation of a long lasting new graduate program on arts and Civil Engineering sciences which will be both broad in its scope of applications across many fields of engineering and at the same time intersecting creatively with the arts.
STILL LIFE BY PROF. BARRY GOODNO
I believe that the future of education may well be in the synergy of arts and sciences. There is not much difference; artists are scientists, they are thinkers. - Francesco Fedele, Atlanta December 11 2019
DRAWING BY CARTER CULWELL
STILL LIFE BY ALEKSANTERI VATTULAINEN
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TEACHING PHILOSOPHY “A creative course co-taught by an engineering faculty and an artist empowers the embedding of creative experiences into the lives and learning of students." Francesco Fedele I believe that Academia urges to rediscover the consciousness of teaching by infusing arts into the academic curriculum. We are in need to define a new paradigm of conscious teaching with a broader view of the arts, culture, and creativity as critical for the formation of “holistically and consciously aware students”. Teaching is at risk of becoming algorithmic, computational as merely executed by automatons as those defined by Roger Penrose (1989). I strongly believe that the most important impact of my Art-Science synergy initiative on students is an improvement of the student mental health and thus more self-confidence, more self-esteem because the student has created something. I have taught the special topics course CEE8824 "Art and Geometry" with the support and collaboration of professional Rachel Grant of the Atlanta community. It is important that engineering students are exposed to diverse sources of energy in their teaching experience in order to broaden their mind horizon. A creative course co-taught by a faculty and a professional artist will empower the embedding of creative experiences into the lives and learning of students. This will empower the creation of an environment that enables innovation at the intersection of art, science and technology. More importantly, students work in a gentle (stress-free) environment and they are able to focus on their drawing skills. They draw by observing nature in order to enhance student capability in capturing the essential elements of reality by means of the language of geometry. Drawing from observation helps develop critical thinking skills and alters how the artist observes and engages with the world around them. EMPOWERMENT OF DIVERSITY More importantly, Arts are universal and my art initiatives in Engineering will empower the discovery and success of talented students from racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds that are underrepresented in their academic field. The universality of the arts will also empower the discovery of talented female artists of the Atlanta community, who wish to undertake a career in academia. The teaching experience at Georgia Tech is a great opportunity to support their entrance in the academic world and undertake a teaching career. - Francesco Fedele, Atlanta December 11 2019
STUDENTS' DRAWINGS TO STUDY LIGHT AND SHADOW
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FALL 19 CEE8823 "ART AND GEOMETRY": COURSE TOPICS HISTORY OF THE ARTS Week 1: From the Renaissance to the Modern Art period. Weeks 2: Studying the Masters of Arts: Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Michelangelo, Rubens, Bernini, Caravaggio, Titian, Giorgione Weeks 3: Studying the Masters of Arts: Vincent Van Gogh, August Renoir, Claude Monet, Eduard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Andre’ Lhote, Tamara de Lempicka, Edward Hopper, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio de Chirico, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock Week 4: Einstein versus Picasso. Picasso artwork: blue period, rose period, African period, Analytical and synthetic Cubism period, late years; geometric and esthetics concepts in sciences and arts. Poincaré’s insights on time and simultaneity and their influence on the discovery of Einstein’s relativity and Picasso’s cubism. GEOMETRY Week 5: Vector spaces, scalar and wedge products, covariant and contravariant vectors, dual spaces Week 6: Dual spaces, covectors, Cartan’s differential forms, variational calculus. Week 7: Geometry of manifolds: intrinsic formulation, the concepts of chart and atlas Week 8: Tangent and Cotangent spaces, tangent and cotangent bundles, concept of metric Week 9: Covariant derivative, fiber bundles, geometric connections, parallel transport, geodesics, geodesic equations Week 10: geodesic deviations, Riemannian curvature tensor, Ricci tensor, Bianchi’s identity. Week 11-12: Geometric approach of rigid-body mechanics; Lagrangian and Hamiltonian of a free particle and rigid bodies, holonomic and non-holonomic constraints. Week 13: Special relativity, time and space are relative Week 14: General relativity and Einstein’s equations Week 15: Wave phenomena: what is a wave? Definitions, Properties, Wave dispersion and physical examples, Einstein’s gravitational waves ART STUDIO LABS Week 1: Intro to the Artist, intro to art supplies, Positive and Negative Spaces Week 2: Gesture, Blind Contour and Contour Week 3: Still life drawing: Elements of Art, Picture Plane, use of the viewfinder Week 4: Intro to Still Life drawing/painting and principles of art, Introduce shadow theory, graphite value scales, sphere, cone and cylinder drawing Week 5: Drawing still life composition, use of negative space Week 6: Contour drawing with ink, line weights, gradient scales Week 7: Drawing using hatching, cross hatching, stippling, shading. Shadow theories Weeks 8-9: One-point and two-point perspectives and shadows Weeks 10-12: Principles of figure drawing: human forms, proportions and structure. From line gestures, essential forms to figures. Weeks 13-15: Life and portrait drawing, self-portrait.
STUDENTS' STUDIES OF HUMAN FORMS AND GESTURES
CHANNELING PICASSO'S CUBISM
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TEACHING ARTS TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS
“Artistic and intellectual growth is cultivated by fostering creativity, innovation, critical thinking and technical proficiency". Rachel Grant
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY As a professor of art, my objectives are to build visual, conceptual and creative abilities of students that develop and enrich their art making practice, with the overall goal of implementing a career building education. Through providing a dynamic curriculum, students are encouraged to advance their drawing and design skills, develop innovative solutions and build the visual language essential to their future careers. I describe my foundation for teaching art with “The Five E’s”, establish, educate, expose, engage and encourage. “The Five E’s” – My foundation of teaching art 1.
Establish a strong art-making foundation in drawing and design through academic classroom curriculum.
2. Educate students about the history of art and visual culture, from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the present contemporary art world. 3. Expose students to art beyond the classroom through implementing field trips to museums, galleries, art centers and artist studios. 4.
Engage with the community to create artworks that are relevant and meaningful to the present-day population.
5. Encourage students to create original artwork that is influenced by critical thinking and experimentation of materials and technique. As a practicing visual artist, I have found that throughout my career, self-expression has been key in creating artworks that resonate with me as a maker and a larger audience of members and art patrons. Through maintaining an active professional art studio I am able to share a real-world view of careers in the arts with my students. Artistic and intellectual growth is cultivated by developing creativity, innovation, critical thinking and technical proficiency. In the classroom I grow these skills by first focusing on the foundation of drawing and the history of art. It is important to me to teach a solid classical foundation rooted in art history and traditional drawing techniques while exploring contemporary styles, methods, and materials. My students study visual culture from a range of periods, regions and contexts to enhance their understanding of the artwork that they create. Students who create artwork within the context of art history can engage in critical discourse. I implement visits to museums and galleries as an important teaching tool to build critical thinking skills through critique and analysis. I believe that the arts are an essential expression of the human condition past and present, therefore community engagement is also an important component to building artwork that communicates relevant and timely messages. I am committed to excellence in teaching art, maintaining a robust studio practice, service and scholarship, providing students with the tools to be informed citizens in a global society and to succeed professionally. My classroom environment fosters a welcoming and collegial climate that promotes a culture of diversity, sensitivity, and inclusion. As an educator I believe in establishing a strong core of visual, creative and conceptual skills through knowledge of art history, contemporary art and developing technical proficiency in drawing and design. The result is learning outcomes where students think critically and creatively and are able to apply skills and knowledge to tangible visual art outcomes. Through teaching art, my goal is to produce students who will utilize their talents to not only cultivate successful careers, but to become engaged with the local community, and create art with a solid foundation of art history and contemporary art. Through implementing “The Five E’s” and focusing on a student-centered approach, my classroom environment fosters emerging artists to freely explore and innovate new and personalized methods of reaching their creative potential.
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TEACHING ARTS TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS Teaching art to masters and Ph.D. level engineering students at the Georgia Institute of Technology with Dr. Francesco Fedele presented a unique challenge and positive results. The students enrolled in an elective course to learn advanced concepts on geometry and studying Einstein and Picasso, influential figures who blurred the lines between science and art, and the foundations of drawing by hand. The overarching goal of the engineering course was to cultivate students who strongly connect art and science, evolving dynamic critical thinkers in their fields of study. We started the course learning the basic rules of art and laying a solid foundation in drawing concepts. These included observing and drawing positive and negative space. The first exercise was to draw a plant to encompass the entire paper plane, touching three sides to build a dynamic visual composition. Here students learned that one must pay attention to all aspects of space when drawing from life, including the negative space between plant leaves, creating depth and interest in a drawing. From here we focused on mark making, paying attention to contour line weight, learning how to draw gestures, and practicing the skill of sighting and measuring. Value scales were rendered in student sketchbooks utilizing random marks, stippling, cross hatching and hatching. Students learned about the seven elements of art, line, shape, space, value, form, texture and color. All of these concepts came together in a still life drawing of the artist’s shoe.
STUDENTS’ SKETCHES TO PRACTICE SHADING.
STUDENTS’ SHOE DRAWINGS
STUDENTS PRACTICE VALUE SCALES.
STUDENTS’ SHOE DRAWINGS
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The course took place during fall semester. The second still life drawing was a “Spooky Still Life”, playfully including themes of the Halloween holiday featuring skulls and pumpkins. In this work students learned about the principles of design to organize visual elements in their drawings with unity, variety, contrast, emphasis, balance, movement, repetition and rhythm. The still life arrangement included items that encouraged the students to explore all concepts previously learned, such as spheres, cones, and a variety of textures including fabrics and reflective glass. For this and previous drawings the students worked with vine and compressed charcoal. Next students learned about one-point and two-point perspective, identifying vanishing points and horizon lines to execute accurate shapes. During this exercise students were also introduced to the full range of H and B graphite pencils to render dynamic drawings.
SPOOKY STILL LIFE ARRANGEMENT
SPOOKY STILL LIFE DRAWING
Now that the class learned the basic “rules” of drawing, we started to take the road less traveled and draw from the imagination. To build a conceptual foundation we looked to art history. Starting with the traditional still life as we did in our drawing exercises, we studied the 16th and 17th century Dutch symbolism in art history. We also investigated the work of Surrealists from the 1920s, who took realistic objects and created a fantasy dream-like world in their art. For their next assignment, the class was provided a vase of flowers for drawing reference, and then to add imagined elements. The result was creative drawings that utilized the artist’s imagination to blend flowers with music, landscape, portraiture, and more.
CRITIQUE SESSION
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SURREALISTIC STILL LIFE BY A. VATTULAINEN
STUDENTS FIGURE DRAWING
Drawing the figure is a challenging task for introductory students, but can also be highly rewarding. As an introduction, students practiced drawing their own hands in their sketchbooks. We partnered with the Atlanta Artist Center to offer evening figure drawing classes during our course time exclusively for our students. The drawing sessions featured both male and female models. The students applied concepts of gesture drawing, contour line drawing and realistic rendering with shading during a variety of timed poses by the models.
SELF-PORTRAIT BY EMILY SANDERS
SELF-PORTRAIT BY PENGXIAO XU
Practicing figure drawing was the perfect lead into our final assignment, self-portraiture. The class received a lecture on portraiture through time, from the historical Leanardo da Vinci’s 1510 “Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk” to the contemporary Yayoi Kusama 2010 “Self-Portrait”. The students were given the freedom to use any drawing material of their choice, and were encouraged to implement the elements, principles and techniques learned during this course to their artwork. The final class result was an exhibition and reception at the Mason Building, home of the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The student artwork was on display and the exhibition included artwork by the instructors. Throughout the semester the students participated in group critiques, developing a vocabulary to explain and discuss their work. The students used their new ability to explain and discuss artwork in a presentation of work by the artists. This conclusion to the semester provided an opportunity for the students to share their artwork with peers, professors and the community, exposing many to the unique intersection of art and geometry. - Rachel Grant, Atlanta December 11 2019 8
THE STUDENT ART EXHIBIT AT THE
GEORGIA TECH SCHOOL OF CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
The “Visual Arts & Geometry” Special Topics Course taught in Fall ’19 included, as the final class activity, exhibiting the student artwork in the lobby of Mason Building of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering on Dec 11, 2019. We ended the class with an exhibition simply because we wanted our students to be proud of what they accomplished over the semester. Here are some photos of the exhibit followed by a description of the student artwork.
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STUDENTS' SELF-PORTRAITS
ARTIST RACHEL GRANT: HER ARTWORK AND PALETTE
THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY THAT ATTENDED THE EXHIBIT
YOUTUBE video of the student art exhibit
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STUDENTS' ARTWORK
STUDENTS' FIIGURE DRAWINGS
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STUDENTS' SELF-PORTRAITS
ARTIST RACHEL GRANT: HER ARTWORK AND PALETTE
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ON THE LEFT ARTIST RACHEL GRANT AND ON THE RIGHT HER SELF-PORTRAIT
PROFS. HAIYING HUANG AND BARRY GOODNO
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ARTIST RACHEL GRANT INAUGURATING THE EXHIBIT
STUDENT SHASHA LIAO
STUDENT ALEKSANTERI VATTULAINEN
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STUDENT EMILY SANDERS
STUDENT PENGXIAO XU
STUDENT ELI DERRINGTON
STUDENT CARTER CULWELL
STUDENT KAYLA ALLEN AND ARTIST RACHEL GRANT
ZACH GRANT PONDERING ON A STUDENT'S ARTWORK
STUDENTS' SELF-PORTRAITS
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STUDENT ARTWORK
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KAYLA ALLEN Kayla is a Master’s student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering with an emphasis in structural engineering. I have always had an interest in the arts, from drawing to painting to music to poetry and so on. I find engineering fascinating because of the way that art can be found in many aspects of design and the way that engineering principles can also be found in art.
"THE LIFE BRINGER" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 15"×15” This is a surrealist piece done with graphite. I really enjoy surrealist art because I feel it is a way to express emotions that aren’t easily put into words or represented by everyday objects. In this piece we were required to start with a still life of flowers in a vase and then add surrealist elements that had meaning to us and represented more than what meets the eye. I chose to play around with the contrast of life and death in my piece with the live flowers morphing into bones, and the tank, an object which is often a symbol of destruction, on a record player, representative of creation of music. I also enjoy the possibility that the flowers are coming to life out of the bones because I feel like that is what music does for me. I chose to call the record player the life bringer because music truly does bring me back to life and I felt like that could also be happening to the flowers. The tank was initially thought of because I felt the arm of the record player resembled a tank and the surrealist element allowed to run with and explore that idea in a way that a traditional still life would not have. With this piece I enjoyed being able to take something I saw physically and morph it into something with a bit more meaning.
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"SILENCED" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 9"×12” This piece is a self-portrait with a spin. We were given creative freedom with our self-portraits to include a surrealist element to our portraits and I happily took that opportunity. As the title of this piece suggests, the idea behind this piece is one of being silenced. There are many ways that I as a person feel as if I have no voice. Though we have come very far as a society I still feel there are so many ways that we are silenced by the standards of the world. As a woman I feel silenced by gender roles, which often still play a role in everyday life. I also feel silenced by what I feel is expected of me to fall into the category of “successful” in todays world. It is also a very personal battle within myself to speak and have a voice for the things that I feel and wish to express. All these emotions came pouring out into this piece as I began to work and allow myself some freedom to explore thought and ideas. There are so many ways in which we as humans are silenced in this world, so I took this opportunity to hopefully bring a light to that. Who knows, maybe one day this woman will be given a voice and a mouth will once again grace this face.
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CARTER CULWELL While in his early years he showed an interest in drawing, at a young age Carter fell in love with the piano and has been a musician ever since. He has enjoyed playing many types of music: from playing the bassoon in the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony and the Georgia Tech Orchestra, to playing keyboard in the now defunct Atlanta rock band, Camera Box, to writing and producing improvisational dance music. During his time at university, Carter developed an interest in the art of mixing drinks and started his own cocktail catering business called Kindred Spirits, where he and his partners design and carry-out highly curated cocktail experiences for private events, parties, and weddings. Carter graduated from Georgia Tech in 2019 with Bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music Technology. Carter works full-time as a bartender and enjoys reading, drawing, cycling, cooking, and making music in his free time.
"MY SHOE" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 15"×15”
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"SEL-PORTRAIT" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 9"×12”
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ELI DERRINGTON I am a 4th year undergraduate student, hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee. After a year and a half as an Aerospace Engineering major, I changed over to Civil Engineering and found my passion in transportation planning and design. My primary interest is with transit systems, and I have added a minor from the School of City Planning to better understand how transit should fit into and enhance urban areas. Before this course, I had no real experience with drawing and doubted how much that might change. Now, I am taken aback by how quickly I became comfortable drawing and how this course has changed how I see objects and the world around me.
"FLORAL SELF PORTRAIT" CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 16"x20” It is one thing to know you have an asymmetric face, but it is a whole different animal to reckon with that as you draw a self portrait. I also have always had an aversion to looking at myself in pictures, much as many people—myself included—dislike hearing audio of themselves speaking. Because of this, I found it more difficult to render myself in a satisfactory way than I did with any other drawing. To distract myself, I replaced my neck and body with a stem and leaves and gave myself flowers as companions.
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"HARVEST" CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18"x24" In this still life, I was drawn primarily to the two skulls on display. I was struck by how different their shapes were from how our heads appear on the outside, as well as how they seemed to express two different emotions— melancholy and anger. Their presence, together with the gourds, created a dark, autumnal feel in the composition that fit the time of year.
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SANTANA FARRINGTON AFTON I'm Santana Afton, a second year doctoral student in mathematics at Georgia Tech. I am a part of the Geometry and Topology research group. I received my B.S. from the College of William & Mary in 2018.
"SELF-PORTRAIT" GRAPHITE ON PAPER
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"UNTITLED" GRAPHITE ON PAPER
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SAKSHI HATTARGI Sakshi is a graduate student pursuing Master's in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her interests include building construction as well as technology. She is curious about many forms of art including architecture, drawing, painting, music, mixed media and this course was her first time creating some art herself. She graduated in December 2019 and started working as a Civil Engineer. She continues to enjoy art and spends some time drawing and painting once in a while.
"‘POUT’-RAIT 2019" GRAPHITE AND CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 16"x19" ‘Pout’-rait is a word play on self-portrait with a pout face. This is my first attempt at self-portrait and I thought the best way to do it would be portraying my true goofy self. While I started off with very little technique into the drawing, I eventually used different line weights, color gradients and adoption of various different pencils. The very important thing that I used in the drawing, which helped, was starting off with a base on the paper using Compressed charcoal.
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"SPOOKY NATURE MORTE" CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18"x24" Spooky Nature Morte is a still life drawing made with charcoal. The focus in this drawing was on the drapes. The texture of the drapes is achieved by blending in the vine charcoal with fingers. The darker darks were obtained by compressed charcoal. Some gradients in the drawing were brought about with the use of vine charcoal applied with different pressures.
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SHASHA LIAO I am a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mathematics. My research area is Numerical PDEs. Before this course, I had little experience on drawing. Through this course, I learned the fundamentals of drawing, got a lot of practices, and is excited to have the opportunity to exhibit my favorite art works. This course is a good start of my path of pursuing art. Special Thanks to Dr. Fedele and Rachel Evans for their guidance and help.
“SPOOKY STILL LIFE” CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18"x24" This work was done in the middle of the semester. It took me two studios to finish it. The technical challenges for me were dealing with the shinning spots on the bottle and the flow of the cloth lying under the objects.
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"SELF-PORTRAIT" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 18"x24" This self-portrait was inspired by the works of my classmates, from which I learned the technique of combining drawing pencils and blender. The challenges here were adjusting the sizes and positions of the facial features, as well as dealing with the shadows and contours on the face to create the facial expression.
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JOSHUA MARTIN Joshua is a Masters student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in his second year of study. His coursework focuses on structural engineering, and will continue on to be a bridge engineer upon completion of his masters degree. His creative outlets lie mostly in the culinary arts of coffee and cocktails, and is a new student to the visual arts. A complex understanding of geometry is a shared tenet among visual arts and structural engineering, and a deeper understanding in the visual arts capacity has helped facilitate understanding of structural mechanics.
SELF-PORTRAIT CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18"x24" This drawing was completed in one sitting using a handheld mirror to observe my face while drawing with the other. The expression and angle are a result purely of the fact that I was drawing from an uncomfortable angle (as evidenced by the slight grimace and not quite symmetric view of the face). In drawing my own portrait, I learned that I exaggerated any flaws in my complexion and was more drawn toward a stern view of myself.
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"SHOE" CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18"x24" This shoe is the first large drawing that I have ever made. I very much wanted to emphasize the age in the leather, as that is a quality in apparel by which I am fascinated. The more creases and scuffs in a shoe, the more days that it has seen and people that it has interacted with. This particular shoe was purchased in Germany by a dear friend and has been worn generously and resoled a number of times. My style of drawing focused on the texture and imperfections in the shoe, as it is those things that make the shoe valuable.
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EMILY SANDERS
Emily is a PhD student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on computational algorithms for design of efficient structures and components with potentially novel functionalities (structural topology optimization). Additionally, she works to fabricate the (complex) designs using various additive manufacturing techniques.
"SELF PORTRAIT" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 14"x22"
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"SHOE" CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 14"x22"
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ALEKSANTERI VATTULAINEN
Aleks is an exchange student at Georgia Tech from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, as a recipient of the Robert T. Jones Fellowship. He is studying a for an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a concentration in topics related to Digital Signal Processing.
SUNFLOWERS IN THE DESERT GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 18"x24" This drawing is inspired by surrealism, where I wanted to create a sharp contrast between subject and background in both style and form. The vase of flowers is more typical of a domestic setting, whereas the desert is broad and inhospitable, the former being rendered in a more sketched manner as opposed to the smooth shading of the dunes. The placement of the egg opposite the sun, and the dark foreground and sky, are aimed to create a balanced and harmonious composition. Simultaneously the floating egg and dark sky with a bright sun are completely incongruous. The background together with the sun create an atmosphere of intense heat, which is intended to highlight the improbability and transience of the scene – the sunflowers, supported by a delicate table set to topple at any moment, will surely soon wilt in the sun. 35
"SELF PORTRAIT AT 23" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 18"x24" In this piece, I wanted to create an impression of how the forms of the face curve, using the direction of the shading marks in the manner of a vector field. These marks help to produce form and the impression of movement. The similarly rendered background is intended to appear as if receding and ascending, to create the sense of a large, dark space surrounding the subject. The enveloping darkness is designed to create a dramatic atmosphere which contrasts with the neutral facial expression, serving to accentuate the subject.
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PENGXIAO XU Pengxiao is a second year PhD student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, majoring geochemistry. He is currently working on constraining oxygen level in Earth history and is interesting in exploring habitability of exoplanet.
“FADING MEMORY” CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 18" X 24" I believe memory is the thing that defines who we are. For good or bad, with joy or sorrow, memory connects me to the person that I was, the person that smiled and cried to become who I am. But memory can’t last forever, it fades through time. Sometimes we can turn to specific objects like old photos to wake distant memory, sometimes parts of our memory just disappear in time, like tears in rain. When memory fades, I feel like a part of me dies. So I drew the left part of this portrait as abstract outlines to represent the dying or disappearing process. That clock in the background is a symbol of time. Unlike me, the clock is not fading, because time is eternal.
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“CIRCLE OF LIFE” GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 18" X 20" The flowers are blooming, the eye is bright. Forget the routine but go grasp the light. In dream they laugh and in laughter they fall. If they have done once, they will do once more. Who is now living, must go beyond border. Who is now in chaos, might return to order.
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INSTRUCTORS FRANCESCO FEDELE RACHEL GRANT
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FRANCESCO FEDELE, PH.D.
Dr. Francesco Fedele is an Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. He joined the faculty in 2007. His scholarly research spans Nonlinear Wave Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Probability and Random Fields, Computer Vision, Geotechnical and Structural Engineering. Dr. Fedele contributed significantly on the physical understanding and prediction of rogue waves. His research appeared in prestigious journals: Scientific ReportsNature, Physical Review Letters, Journal of Fluid Mechanics among others. Fedele’s research had an impact in ocean and naval engineering. NOAA has implemented his stochastic model for spacetime extremes in their operational forecast wave model. Fedele has also supported the National Transportation Safety Board into the investigation of the 2015 sinking of the El Faro cargo ship. He received the OMAE 2011 Best Paper Award and the Class of 1934 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award. In 2017, he has been invited as a speaker at the G7 High-Level Meeting on Maritime Security. Dr. Fedele has started drawing and painting in Fall 2016 inspired by the artwork of Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. Fedele's Scholar Google
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"LINDSEY" 16×20″ ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 2016 PRIVATE COLLECTION
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"LOVERS" 18×24″ ACRYLIC AND INK ON PAPER, 2017
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"SEPTEMBER 16 2017" 16×20'' GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 2017 This drawing was made on the tragic day of the shooting of Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz. It symbolizes living in a violent divide-and-conquer society with no values of community and fraternity. The artwork was donated to the Georgia Tech LGBTQIA Resource Center.
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"MIND FRAGILITY" 10×15" OIL ON CANVAS, 2020
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"UNCERTAINTIES" 18×24″, OIL ON CANVAS, 2021
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"ESCAPING THE PLATO’S CAVE IV" 18×24″, OIL ON CANVAS, 2021 We explore the universality of human vulnerability and strength during times overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. These silent and invisible beasts can drag us into the Plato’s cave. Here, we only see the intermittent reflected light of small fires and the shadows of our fears, our distorted perception of reality. We empower the two beasts to keep us hostage in the Plato’s cave. It is within us the strength to win over our fears and walk away toward the true light of reality.
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RACHEL GRANT, M.F.A.
Artist Rachel Grant explores the natural world and our atmosphere through studying and depicting clouds. Rachel is known for her sweeping paintings that depict the natural environment, free from human presence. Her painting style is influenced by the post-impressionist landscape painters who were inspired by the south of France. Rachel adapts these ideals to contemporary painting in the Southeastern United States. Clouds over landscapes are a recurring theme in her work. Rachel’s painting style is expressionistic with bold brush strokes and emphasis on the artist’s present hand. An Atlanta native, Rachel is a former studio resident at the Goat Farm Arts Center and currently works from her home studio. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Art with a Psychology minor from Auburn University and is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design [SCAD] earning an M.F.A. in Painting and M.A. in Arts Administration. Rachel has exhibited throughout the United States, in Hong Kong, France, and completed a residency at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City. She has served as a volunteer art instructor with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite and has taught art workshops with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. She was selected as an Art on the Atlanta BeltLine artist and her artwork is included in private and corporate collections including Hotels by Hilton and Sotherly hotels. When she is not creating or teaching art, she enjoys spending time with her husband, baby girl and their rescue dog. WEB: www.rachelgrantstudio.com
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"LEVEL 5" 48x65.5" OIL ON PANEL
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"SERENDIPIDITY" 48x48", OIL ON PANEL
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"PRIME GRAVITATION" 36x36", OIL ON PANEL
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"URBAN SKY" 36x36" OIL ON PANEL
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"BLOOD MOON" 30x36" OIL ON PANEL
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"SELF-PORTRAIT" 16×20″, OIL ON PANEL
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"REFLECTION DIPTYCH I"
"REFLECTION DIPTYCH II"
32×28″, MIXED MEDIA, 2011
32×28″, MIXED MEDIA, 2011
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"THE ORIGINAL MISS AMERICA 1921 SERIES" 72×48″, SCREEN PRINTS ON OIL, 2011
"THE ORIGINAL MISS AMERICA 1921 [RED] 72×48″, SCREEN PRINT ON OIL, 2011
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"INTERESTING FACTS SERIES" 2010
"NATURAL ENGAGEMENT: WHERE THE EARTH MEETS THE SKY" 2021 56
"LACOSTE II" OIL ON CANVAS, 2009
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References Atlanta Artist Center, https://atlantaartistscenter.org/ Einstein Albert (1905) "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper” (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) ", Annalen der Physik 17: 891; Einstein Albert (1915), "Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation", (The Fields Equations of Gravitations) Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: 844–847 Miller, Arthur J. 2001 “Einstein, Picasso, Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc”, Perseus Books Group Fedele F. & Vickers E. 2018 “Like Picasso and Einstein: lines, forms and dimensions” Georgia Tech Office of Arts, http://arts.gatech.edu/ Roger Penrose 1989 “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics”, Oxford University Press Poincare’, Henri (1902) La Science et l'Hypothèse, Paris, Ernest Flammarion Edituer
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"SPOOKY STILL LIFE AND THE SPOOKY INSTRUCTOR"
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Acknowledgments FF acknowledges the financial support of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and the technical support offered by Josh Stewart in designing the book template.
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
GESTURE STUDY
Painting on the back cover: "Serendipidity" by Rachel Grant, oil on panel 48"x48"
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“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” – Pablo Picasso
