eva middleton's art blog

January 23, 2025 Winter Arts Trip  As a class, we were assigned to choose pieces to sketch that caught our eye in some way being that it relate to our thesis. During my day spent at the Museum of Modern Art, I chose a favorite detail from each piece that held my atention and sketched it alongside writing the artist's name and title of the piece. Some have more detail or extra annotation while others do not because of the lack of artist statement.  Today I also learned from a very nice museum staff member that Matisse's first iteration of Dance in 1909 originally had a sixth dancer. The dancer's form proved to be stiff and not allowing the piece to freely flow, as of which it is now famous for. If you look at the lower left corner, on the grass is the outline of a calf, and if you follow it, you can faintly see the dancer's arm in the painted dancer's thigh.  Cadence -- Otobong Nkanga  First impression of Cadence.  Sketch of museum-goers from above the Cadence i...

I struggle to talk–fluidly, concisely, in a way that feels worthy of the other person in the conversation, I mumble and am asked to repeat myself or speak up, or oppositely, I am asked to be softer. Throughout my life, I constantly tell myself to reflect later instead of focusing on the moment. Since I was around eight years old, I’ve kept a journal. My journals are filled with thoughts that I cannot let go of– some of it is complex, some of it is teenage garb, and a lot is a simple sonder for life and how I have experienced it. So why have I trained myself to recall memory if it just stays between myself and I, in the pages? What I wish to accomplish with my thesis is a satisfaction that I’ve pulled everything out of myself, that if I can’t say it in words, I can show it. I will finally read it all aloud, through the silly and the ridiculous and the exaggerated.  The project I wish to bring to life as part of my thesis in terms of space and material is convergent to the fact that ...

Uncovering -- Mask Project (Identity)  Materials: Wool, craft wire, dye, acrylic paint, glue, cheese cloth, beads  If you turned your brain inside out, what would you see? The hippocampus? Brain fluid? or your thoughts? A little bit inspired by dissecting sheep brains in anatomy class, I took that idea and thought of what my brain would look like in its abstract, conscious form. It unravels and twists so that it holds the head in a comfy embrace.  Over the course of several days, I soaked pieces of cheesecloth in different mixtures of dye and glue. The glue made some of the pieces hold more structure, something I was looking for initially for the design purposes of how I would bring the structure to life (Below).  When we got critique in class, I decided to additionally soak the cotton stuffing in blue and purple dye. The end affect ended up soaking through the original cheesecloth. The paint on top was done with acrylic and a thin brush. 

 Honors Studio -- Boundless  January 21, 2025  Materials: paper shreds, watercolor paper, gouache paint, color pencil, acrylic paint marker, thread  How to Talk to The Ants --  The text is meant to have a double entendre for anything the viewer would like it to mean. It can be folded up, tacked on a wall, or taken apart. If the viewer reads between the lines, literally, there is something we can take away from the piece--if we constantly ask to change ourselves, is it really that terrible if we turn into an ant at the end?  The paper and thread are intended to reference that of a book that lost its binding a long time ago. I wanted to make my own paper because I think the piece would sit differently if I used watercolor paper like I did for every other cutout. Because the paper is so fragile in some spots, it indicates life, something worn. The thickness of the paper took a little experimentation to get something thick enough to withhold glue, but not be so...

 Honors Studio: Alter Ego  December 2024 Think of words that describe yourself, and then think of words that are exact opposite of that. There's your alter ego.  Walter is fun to imagine. Although he is partly a failure, and a coward, he is human. This project was completed over the course of two nights, often filming between my sister taking over the bathroom with her extensive nighttime routine and ruining my hair with too much mousse and curl cream. Where Eva was unsuccessful, Walter came alive. Below are pictures and their accompanying captions for both drafts of the assignment that we were allotted.  All media shot with either a digital camera or iPhone cinematic mode, and a phone tripod was used for Draft #2.  "About once a month, forty year old finance/statistics/accounting/money laundering businessman Walter feels pretty enough to take haunting pictures of himself and takes a shower to wash it all off him. Apples, a favorite night time snack of his, are ...