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JAZZ BOOK
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DIAGRAM POSTER
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THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA
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PRIMITIVE DERIVATIVE
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JAZZ PORTRAITS
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SKATEBOARD GUITAR
JAZZ BOOK From a young age I have been very interested in the music that falls under the idiom known as jazz. When given the opportunity to study and later design a book on jazz, I decided to try to gain a more in depth grasp of this music.
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I started by looking for the origin of this music. I learned that the slave trade brought the rythms of Africa and European harmonic structures together around the West Indies for the first time. From there this combination of ideas made it’s way to the New Orleans and then further into North America, gaining new perspectives and incorporating new instruments.
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I was now faced with the choice of which direction to focus my study of this vast music. After learning more about the musicians I was most interested in, I found out they were part of a section of jazz known as BeBop. I learned that these musicians rarely played with set groups. Instead they all collaberated with one another at different times throughout their careers. I decided to represent this visually with intertwining color coded timelines.
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For the last section of my book I decided to use a few spreads to type set some quotes from these intellectuals using insight I gained while creating the timelines.
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DIAGRAM POSTER For this project I was asked to make a poster showing a step by step diagram of how to do a task. Being that I have been part of the lifestyle and culture of skate boarding for a long time I decided to depict how one applies griptape to the top surface of a skateboard deck. This sand paper like surface is applied for superior control of ones skateboard. Many skate boarders get more creative with colored griptape and different cutting techniques. Shown here is the standard way to apply a sheet of solid black griptape.
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HOW TO APPLY 1. 2.
GRIP TAPE 1. SKATEBOARD DECK
2. SHEET OF GRIP TAPE
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3. RAZOR BLADE 4.
4. SCREWDRIVE
Peel paper from grip tape.
Place sheet of grip tape on deck sticky side down.
Slit grip tape on sides paralell to hardware holes.
Scrape grip taped edges of deck.
Cut off excess grip tape.
Poke out mounting hardware holes.
THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA I was assigned to make a drawing with no other specifications. So I began to make curving lines that weave in and out of each other. I became curious about what other variables I could experiment with, and began to differentiate line weights. I kept it in black and white so I could focus purely on the form until at the very end, I added one blue mark close to the center.
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Ink and oil pastel.
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I became interested in adding more colors. My first drawing felt very cohesive so I sought to break this and make a drawing that felt more segregated. I first tried this by encapsulating an area of the drawing. I was pleased with my results but I did not feel I had thouroghly harnessed the feeling of seperation I was seeking. So I made a second drawing of similar forms entirely isolated from one another by empty space.
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Ink and oil pastel.
My first two drawings had a more organic quality, whereas my third was more geometric. In the set of drawings that followed, I tried to depict each feeling separately in two drawings; two organic and two geometric. I also decided on a multi-medium approach to this set of four drawings.
Marke
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Ink and watercolor.
Marker, ink, and acrylic.
Oil pastel and acrylic.
er, oil pastel, ink, and acrylic.
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Upon reflection of the previous four drawings, I deduced they all seemed too similar even though it wasn’t my intention. To further push the “structural” feeling I was aiming for, I made the drawing to the left based off of a grid.
Ballpoint pen, oil pastel, and marker.
After making a fairly complex grid based drawing, I wanted to scale back the grid. I began making a series of paintings on canvas of similar paterns, with two lines overlapping to unite the triptych. The second triptych features similar patterns, except this time it’s in black and white, with colored lines uniting the series.
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Acrylic on canvas.
Acrylic on canvas.
Acrylic on canvas.
After stressing precision and structure, I decided to go back to more “organic� work and increase the scale. I cut out four wavy shapes from cardboard and stacked them on top of each other. I painted them alternating colors and drew lines on each one to accentuate the free flowing edge.
Spray paint and oil pastel on cardboard.
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Ink on cardboard.
Wood on cardboard.
I wanted to experiment with the idea of making something literaly structural in an organic-looking way. So I painted buildings on cardboard and let the ink absorb differently in different areas. Then I reversed my idea by making something structural out of some thing that is literaly organic. I used like pieces of wood showing their grain to create a structural pattern with a flat background.
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PRIMITIVE DERIVATIVE Using what I’ve learned thus far about design, production and marketing. I decided to apply my knowledge to a real world situation. In April I started printing my own line of skateboard wheels. It has been a tremendous learning experience. I am proud to say roughly four months later I have sold over sixty sets of wheels in four states and have made a gross profit of over six hundred dollars.
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JAZZ PORTRAITS Through my studies of the BeBop jazz classification, one of the most interesting facts I learned was that due to the musical style’s large reliance on improvisation, the same song often sounded completely different from take to take. In a series of screenprints I wanted to visually display this concept of constant manipulation.
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The musicans I chose depict a story. The first series illustrated trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie who is commonly respected for the founding of the BeBop movement with the alto saxophone player who is portrayed here know as Charlie “Yard Bird� Parker. There is an underlying idea here, the evolution of jazz juxtaposed with the evolution of my screen printing abilities. This set of prints is my first exerpience with screen printing. With each set I tried something new. In the previous set I experimented with drawing and collaging over prints. Here I analyzed combinations of colors and overlaped them to make more colors. The colors in the out come were unforeseen similar to the out come of a BeBop recording.
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In my third and final series of prints I characterized Miles Davis. After a falling out between Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Parker sought after a new trumpet player to take place of Dizzy as his counterpart. He found the young Miles Davis and played a large part in his musical education. Miles went on to become arguably the most famous jazz musician to date. With this set I introduced two variables to emulate the random out come style of BeBop. I printed on the uneven surface of corrugated cardboard while experimenting with registering different layers of dark, middle and light colors to give a greater feeling of detail and depth to my images.
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SKATEBOARD GUITAR I recieved an Epiphone electric guitar and was told to repurpose it into a guitar that could be used to promote a non profit organization. I chose an organization I have worked closely with for many years called Solid Foundation, who does a lot to benifit the skateboarding community in northern New Jersey. Solid Foundation has a skatepark with free admission, and organizes skateboarding trips among many other things. I turned my guitar into both a functional guitar and skateboard. This skate board gruitar is fully rewired within a body made out of multiple skate board decks.
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