Graduation and Help Support Artist's Rights

Tuesday, April 29th was the last day of classes for the year at Ringling, and on Friday the qualifying seniors walked across the stage to receive their diploma cases. (The real diplomas are in the mail.) As my name was called, I was elated and deeply gratified to hear my friends, faculty, administration, and family cheering and clapping for me. In the final hour, it still felt more like everyone was just leaving for the summer, and we'd all be back in the fall. But no, not this time around, and I'm happy to walk away with connections to an amazing group of people whom I will support and who will support me.

The photo is of me and my parents, Dave and Deb, in the big purple building known as the Van Wezel, with my new diploma case.


After officially becoming a working professional, my fellow artists and I are now faced with a challenge to the intellectual copyrights of our work. Two bills about U.S. Orphan Works have been introduced to the Senate and the House. From the Illustrators' Partnership of America, "The Orphan Works Act will affect all images from professional paintings to family snapshots. This includes any image, whether published or unpublished - or any that resides or ever resided on the internet. It will force [the artist] to register every image [made] with privately-held commercial registries. All unregistered works will be exposed as potential orphans for commercial infringement."

The bills infringe on current individual creator rights and laws which are necessary for visual artists to successfully maintain their businesses and protect their work. At this time, the moment an artist creates a piece, that piece is under the copyright of the artist. The artist is then protected from others stealing their work without having to register the piece with the U.S. Copyright Office and paying the incurring fees. The wording and definitions of the Orphan Works Bills are too broad, and if passed, individual, self-employed artists would suffer in their attempts to protect the copyright of their own work through fees and actions that are unreasonable to sustain. The IPA provides information about the bills and makes it easy to fight against them.

Please take two minutes and help protect artist rights by filling out an email take action form to your Senator in opposition to S.2913, and an email take action form to your Congressman in opposition to H.R.5889.

So far, through the IPA over 68,000 email messages have been sent. I have sent my letters, and, for good or for bad, I have received the responses as follow.

"Dear Ms. Sweep:

Thank you for contacting me regarding copyright protection issues and the development of digital media.

As you know, many bills introduced in the 110th Congress address legal issues surrounding licensing, digital reproduction, and distribution of artistic works. As a pro-consumer Senator, I believe it is important that our laws adapt to new technologies, with the aim of increasing consumers' access to the widest possible range of digital media. At the same time, I support efforts to stop the illegal piracy of copyrighted materials and ensure that copyright holders are compensated fairly.

I appreciate hearing your views and will keep them in mind as this issue is debated before the Senate. If you have any additional concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me in the future.

Senator Bill Nelson"

"Dear Ms. Sweep:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Orphan Works Act. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

Patent rights and the protection of intellectual property are the fundamental building blocks of commerce and innovation in our country. I believe that artists and innovators should be fairly compensated for their work, and that reasonable efforts to find and reward these individuals should be made before allowing works to be used or copied by others.

On April 24, 2008, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S.2913). An orphan work is a copyrighted work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder. The establishment of the Orphan Works Act would provide restrictions and limitations to the remedies that could be awarded to those involved in copyright infringement that entail orphan works. This bill would require that the infringer takes diligent effort to locate the author of the infringed copy before using the work and require a Notice of Use to be filed with the Register of Copyrights before the work was used.

The bill specifies that monetary relief may not be made for damages, costs and attorney's fees, however reasonable monetary compensation can be made to the owner of the patent or copyright. Other limitations include that compensation may not be collected if the infringer is a non-profit educational institution, museum, library, archives, or public broadcasting entity. S.2913 was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Although I do not serve on this Committee, I can assure you I will keep your comments in mind as we proceed in the 110th Congress.

Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced similar legislation (H.R. 5889) in the U.S. House of Representatives. H.R.5889 was referred to the House Committee on Judiciary, where it awaits further approval.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. If you have any additional questions or comments, please do not hesitate to let me know. In addition, for more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator"

The 2008 Senior Thesis with Crown Molding

The last month and more as a senior at Ringling College was a non-stop run of activities here, there and everywhere. Senior thesis and the senior illustration show opening reception preceded the final two days of classes and events, packing and family time, graduation, and finally, moving and sight-seeing. These occurrences sound so benign and casual when listed out, but they were jammed on top of each other, followed by a week spent in the car driving around the country and sometimes getting lost. For now, I'm answering my emails and such, and just trying to recover a little.

After the show opening at Foley's Fine Art gallery, I rushed to finish my thesis project for the last day of Advanced Illustration on April 22nd. The show then needed to be hung by the 101 participants before the afternoon of April 25th. I was able to sleep plenty during the final crush, but I'm glad bruises heal and skin grows back when you slice a bit off with an exacto blade.

Despite some initial doubts and worries, everything came together and the illustration class of 2008 put on a truly fantastic show. That night, it showed that everyone involved, including the faculty, administration, family members and friends, were extremely proud of the work that had been accomplished through this singularly driven group of young artists and illustrators.









As you may be able to tell from my statement of intent, my thesis project was a self-promotion campaign. To attain this, I completed new illustrations to supplement my existing work, and I made a new brand/identity system for myself. I designed and bound multiples of five unique handmade portfolios to display and promote my work in. I applied the new brand system to these books, as well as standard promotional items such as my business card, letterhead, and postcards. From the display side of things, I pulled everything together in the presentation with an "office" theme.

For the professional artist, their portfolio is the equivalent of a resume. I designed my portfolios to be not only functional showcases for my work, but to also directly reflect my style and aesthetics. A portfolio typically contains ten to fifteen pieces of the artist’s best work. A freelance artist will constantly update their portfolio with current work, so my portfolios are designed to allow me to remove and add pages so that I may update them when necessary.



My primary portfolio is a softbound book. It contains a broad showcase of my artwork executed in a variety of artistic media and styles.





My monochromatic portfolio is a hardbound book. It contains editorial illustrations that are intended to be reproduced in black and white publications, opposite the excerpts of articles that inspired them.





My gallery portfolio is also hardbound, but designed differently. It contains the paintings and etchings that I will promote to private gallery owners.







My secondary portfolio is a hardbound folder. It contains images displayed on separate pieces of matte board.







My mailer portfolio is softbound, and fits into a plastic envelope. It contains select postcards of my work that I can mail as a mini-portfolio. The postcard fit into glued tabs, so they can be removed and changed.





In addition to these books, I have my business cards, postcards, letterhead, greeting cards, and I am re-designing my website and blog. I'm pretty sure I've got everything covered, unless anyone has any suggestions, please.

April 5th

The opening reception for the show was fantastic! Thank you everyone, new friends and old friends, who made it to Foley's Fine Art for a little food, wine, chatting, and art last night. It was a grand, successful night, and because of your encouragement, I am setting my goals for the future now even higher than I had imagined a month ago. I greatly appreciate the comments and advice everyone gave me.

I need to post some photos of the event later.

And for the third year, my pieces have been accepted into the Best of Ringling Annual Juried Student Show. The opening reception will be on the 18th, and the show will run through May 2nd. The two pieces that I got in are my little sketchbook full of drawings and process work, and my portrait of the soft side of Sarah Watts.

"Picasso Meets the Future"

This coming Friday, April 4th, Jane Radstrom and I will be showing at a local gallery opposite a collection of Pablo Picasso's prints and drawings. The opening reception will be from 6 to 9PM at Foley's Fine Art, on Main Street. If you are in the area, please consider stopping by to support us.

A huge amount of thanks goes out to all of the people who made this possible for us. Thank you, Thiel and Christian!

The 2008 Senior Illustration Show

The brochure and postcard invitations for the Ringling College of Art and Design 2008 Senior Illustration Show are currently being printed. Poster image and title text by Erin McGuire, building diagrams by Andrew Wright, and design by Tina Sweep.

Off, Music & Voice.

I'm preparing for a little re-design. I love shoes, especially brown Mudd shoes with chunky heels or Skechers flats with embroidered red and blue and yellow and purple goldfish. But I might love antique AM radios even more.

From Mom with Love

My mom had originally given me this recipe, and it's a great one to share. For my Friday critique and bake group, you guys make all the difference.

Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Competition 2008

It's been posted before, but now Basic Needs is one of 27 Ringling College entries accepted into this year's Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Competition! I am extremely honored to once again be a part of the show, and I owe many thanks to the Society staff and jury members who made the competition possible. Thanks for all of your hard work especially, Scott!

The show will open on Wednesday, April 30th at the Society in New York. I wish I could be there, but the final classes, senior show cleanup, graduation and moving all fall within that week. The good is that I'll be moving to New York, or thereabouts, and such schedule conflicts should be easier to avoid.

For the fun of it.

A little commission I'm working on, based on my Tea illustration.

Sketchbook Pages II

Printmaking and a painting

My grandfather makes small metal vehicles and other objects, cars, tractors, trains, bulldozers, excavators, et cetera. Last summer, my grandfather and grandmother asked me if I wanted any of the creations, and I came away with the Model T and the little windmill that became the subject of my first woodblock print.



This deep copper plate etching was in the acid for about five hours. I used China marker and lithocrayon to explore different etched textures in addition to using the asphaltum.



My antique Arvin radio only gets AM stations, takes four C-size batteries to power it, and the grill reminds me of fish scales. Linocuts are not for me, but I do want to try making my own stamps.



Tearing up the surface of a copper plate with a mezzotint rocker over and over is painful work for my right arm, but the results are exciting. The texture is gritty and adjusting the values is much easier to accomplish than with aquatinting. Mezzotint wins hands-down against modern aquatints.





Almost two years ago ago, the price of gas was $2.95 for Regular Unleaded. It was high at the time, and now I wish it was that price, especially with the long road trips that I'll be making in two months.

Preview of things to come.

Drypoint copperplate etching.

Hint: it's battery-powered by 4 C-size batteries.

Sketchbook Pages

Artist's Books

In the class Artist's Books, we made many different kinds of books to explore the different ways of binding books and presenting the content inside. We had five main projects to complete along with about 13 dummy books that the instructor demonstrated during class. The course was a lot of work, but highly informative and inspirational. Now that I have the practical knowledge of making handmade books, I am looking forward to creating more of my own self-promotional books and materials.

The first assignment was to recreate an existing book as a sculptural object. I took the book "Pink Box" and turned it into a peep box, controlled by hand-cranks on each side. The main contents of the book are photographs pasted on a vertical roll of paper and wound between two dowels connected to the cranks. The text pages are glued to the insides of the box.





For the second project, we needed to make a book with eight signatures sewn and glued into the hard cover. My quarter-bound book called "Excerpts" contains 15 article excerpts juxtaposed by a black and white illustration. The text and illustrations were printed by lacquer transfer onto off-white Stonehenge paper.





The third assignment was to create a series of three related books. For my books, I made a special snap-closure container book to hold them. I like how tall and skinny it is.



Inside, the three books can be folded out from where they are held in place, or removed to view them separately.



The books are accordion-fold books, and the content is a conceptualized time-line of my methodology behind making an oil painting, a watercolor painting, and a charcoal drawing. The content is printed on vellum and looks fantastic.



The fourth assignment was to create a clamshell box containing a book and at least three additional objects in individualized compartments. My box is a personal kit for loose-leaf tea and it smells wonderful when it's opened because of the contents. The first layer inside is 12 sheets of paper that I handmade. Each sheet has a different tea mixed into it, and information about the kind of tea is printed on it.



The second layer contains a Japanese stab bound book about life with tea and it's influences on
Western society, printed on Japanese paper. The compartment that holds the book is easily removed by pulling on the hemp strings, revealing the hidden layer beneath.



The third layer contains individual compartments for filled tea bags, empty tea bags, and a teaspoon. I purchased empty tea bags and altered them with thread and hemp cord, giving them pull-string closures, if that makes any sense.



The final book project was a collaborative assignment with another classmate. My partner and I decided to make a personal coffee table book by combining my drawings with her photographs. We printed my drawings on coverstock paper, and put her photos over each of them on vellum. We were required to make three copies of the book, which we called "Perspectives" for how it expressed our personal perspectives in our images and also how it created a new perspective through the overlay of her photos to my drawings. The books are Japanese stab bound with snap button closures.

Excerpts

In the bookmaking class, part of the actual book that needs to be made is the content. For one of my books, I read various issues of The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book review (and one short story from last year), and picked articles from them to draw a variety of charcoal illustrations.

"Sowing for the Apocalypse" by John Seabrook (The New Yorker, August 27, 2007) is about the world seed bank. In the illustration, I focused on the man who began collecting seeds for plant breeding, Vavilov.



"How Can You Distinguish A Budding Pedophile From A Kid With Real Boundary Problems?" by Maggie Jones (New York Times Magazine, July 22nd 2007).



"High and Mighty" by Sasha Frere-Jones (The New Yorker, August 13, 2007) is about Lil Wayne. In the article, Lil Wayne is compared to Bob Dylan. I want to go back into this one and add the foreground objects from the original Bob Dylan image.



"Until Gwen" by Dennis Lehane is a short story about a son released from prison, his conman father, his girlfriend, a diamond and a grave. It is currently in production as a full-length feature film.



"The Dark Side" by David Owen (The New Yorker, August 20 2007) is about the disappearance of the night sky through light pollution.



"The Taliban's Opium War" by Jon Lee Anderson (The New Yorker, July 9 & 16 2007) in which everyone's hands are tied, from the farmers to the authorities to the government officials.



"The Discreet Charm of M. Sarkozy" by Michel Onfray (Harper's Magazine July 2007) is an excerpt of an interview of Sarkozy by Onfrey. In the interview, Sarkozy says: "For a long time, I got drunk on crowds, from their applause, their excesses, perhaps even their hysteria. And now I am more appreciative of their silence. It expresses much more than applause."



"A Dishonorable Affair" by Katherine Zoepf (The New York Times Magazine, September 23 2007) is about the recent case of honor killing of Zahra al-Azzo in Syria. I'm giong to make a painting of this illustration.



"Body of Work" is a book by Christine Montross, reviewed in The New York Times Book Review (June 24, 2007) by Mary Roach. Montross wrote the book during her first year at med school, and in the article, Roach calls Montross a poet.



Next semester I'll be doing more of the same, reading magazines and publications to create illustrations for the articles and stories. Except this time, I'll be locked away in the printmaking labs, experimenting with monotypes.

Fall Semester (in part)

For Gary Kelley's blue conceptual illustration assignment, I did a portrait of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Alice blue is a light or steel blueish-cyanish color that was favored by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. In my view, her wit and her mouth was the most dangerous part of her, especially for her time. I painted her portrait with her mouth covered, like a concealed weapon.



Each year, the illustration seniors put on an exhibit at the end of the year of their thesis work. To advertise for the show they make a themed poster featuring pieces by every senior in the class. In the past five or so years, the seniors have made self-portraits for the poster. This is my submission, combining oil painting and pen drawing.



This summer I had entered the Illustration West 46 Exhibition of the Society of Illustrators LA. Four of the pieces that I sent were accepted! The pieces are:

The holidays, changed.

Thanksgiving, along with the rest of the major holidays, is a family event. Grandma cooks and bakes and hosts the family party, and spreads her love among us. She has always been the center of the holidays.



This October, my Grandma had an accident at her home and passed away. It's hard to experience the effects of the loss away from my family, especially during the holidays when she meant so much to us. I worry about my Mom and my Grandpa, and I think of what is now missing.

I also think about the memories that I carry to remember her by. In August, when I visited my family for my sister's wedding, afterwards I spent a few days with my Grandma. Together, we went to the Kandiyohi County Historical Museum, home to the Great Northern passenger train No. 2523.



"Twenty-Five, Twenty-Three" is a collograph print, created in memory of my Grandmother and the day we spent together, not knowing it would be one of the last.

I am appreciative for all of the memories.

"The Arrival" by Shaun Tan

I've just received my copy of Shaun Tan's new book, "The Arrival," and the first read-through had me gaping in awe. After the usual 32 page children's books he's done, "The Arrival" is 128 pages of gorgeous completely text-free illustrations. It reads as a sequential graphic novel, with the illustrations structured on each page through multiple panels with as much as 30 panels on a page up to full two-page spreads.

The story and subject matter combine his imaginative style and with realism, in a setting that is aged and nostalgic. The antique photograph design explores a different way to use the collage elements typically found in his books. The illustrations are all monochromatic pencil on paper, drawn with warm detail and value control. He had to have been crazy to do this book, but I'm loving every bit of it.

New

The bad is that I haven't posted in a while. The good is that means I have a lot to post.



"Basic Needs" is based on the New Yorker article "The Last Drop" by Michael Specter, featured in the October 23, 2006 issue. The article focuses on the global supply of freshwater, particularly in India. The actual condition of the assignment was to creatively illustrate four terms, of which I picked "it's a gray area." Then I searched editorial websites for "gray area" and found articles that I would want to illustrate, including this one.

I've posted "Basic Needs" to my site, and retired a few images that I may post here later.



"Thylacine" is my first copperplate etching. I've posted the aquatint of it over at girls who draw. The etching is inspired by an article in Plenty Magazine, "All Creatures Great and Small" by Alisa Opar, about cloning zoo animals and extinct animals.

And Old

Last spring, Dunnick gave the class an assignment to do five sequential images. I chose an origin myth of the tea plant, because any excuse to paint tea is what I do. In the myth, the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma attempted to meditate in front of a wall for nine years. He made it seven, before he fell asleep. In anger he cut off his eyelids and where he dropped them to the ground, the first tea bush/tree sprang up. My goal was to create a sequential story of five individually designed images. As well as just have plenty of fun.

"The Origin of Tea"
Tea, Watercolor, Acrylic & Pen