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| Alex
Edelman HR Artist Statement January 18th, 2008 For my Harlem Renaissance project I decided to do a painting… I got inspiration from a few different sources. When I decided I wanted to do a painting, I went and looked at a bunch of paintings from the time period. I also looked into different significant events of the time period. When doing my research the main artist that stood out was Aaron Douglas. His color and silhouette paintings were inspirational. I enjoyed them and thought that I would make something that looked somewhat like his pieces. I also got inspiration from Louis Armstrong. When I was painting or making my outlines, I would always listen to him or other musicians from the era. This painting exemplifies the Harlem Renaissance theme of the Creation of a New Negro Culture. The culture of art and music that was up-and-coming and very popular in the community at the time. The process I used to create my original painting was as follows. First, I went online and I found pictures of Lois Armstrong and the Harlem Skyline and the Cotton Club. Next, I painted out unwanted background like other people or buildings. Then I colored shades to make them stencils with detail. My portrayal of Lois Armstrong is a tri-layered cutout, so I had to make 3 print-ups of him. After this, I went to Kinkos where I was going to laminate my copies, so I could have a sturdier stencil. Now I had the stencils I needed to paint. So I went to an art store and bought 10 cans of Montana Can Spray-paint and some different sized caps for different details. After I had all of my supplies, I started making my stencils. I used a variety of pen knives to make the stencils as crisp as possible. When I finished the stencils I started painting with the results shown. |