Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Conceptual Art Piece: A Junior Conceptual Project by Katherine Dillon (2015)

During the conceptual unit, I explored the feeling of elation through making excuses. In my conceptual piece, I used photography, illustration, and melted crayons to create my mixed media piece. I started my project by photographing a light bulb. I used photoshop to edit my best photo, and then I printed it. I then melted red crayons onto the printed photo to create the illusion of a wave surrounding the light bulb. After melting the crayons, I scanned my conceptual piece and I further edited it in Illustrator. In Illustrator, I added white geometric shapes at half opacity to look like shards of glass.

The way that I interpreted my conceptual statement was that elation can come from surrounding yourself with excuses that cover up the truth. Whether these excuses are meant to deceive yourself or others, excuses are lies that can make people content, or elated. In my conceptual piece, I used the light bulb as a metaphor for an elated person because being extremely blissful and elated is like being full of light. The melted crayons represent excuses that one might use to cover up the truth. I physically covered up the photo with these excuses, positioning them to surround the light to show that elation comes from being surrounded by excuses. I used red crayons to represent these excuses because I wanted the color red to represent the sinister nature of deception. After importing my conceptual piece into Illustrator, I finalized the piece by adding white geometric shapes in the red crayon area, and I put them at 50 percent opacity to emulate shards of glass. These shards of glass further represent the sharp, sinister nature of deception in the form of making excuses.
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