Issues In Color

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is still one of the most racially segregated cities in the Midwest. A good friend of mine, who’s a Russian immigrant who moved here when he was six, remembers living in Milwaukee in a time when there was still a pretty real Russian district. Even now it’s still easy to tell when you cross cultural lines, whether it’s in the downtown Third Ward White bread part of the city or the darker Marquette university area. Race and color are still a pretty real issue in our society. Being black or white or all the colors in between still creates severe stereotyping, and minorities still make less money then the average white person with the same job. We’re finally at the age when it’s very possible that a black man might be voted president, and the thing that’s still sad is that it took so long.
I grew up at the most diverse high school in Madison, Wisconsin, which is the second most diverse city in Wisconsin after Milwaukee and definitely more integrated, but still relatively white bread compared to most cities of the US. At the end of the year the state newspaper printed quotes and thoughts about graduating from various valedictorians from different Wisconsin high schools. One student talked about how his student body would have to be in much more culturally diverse situations and that would be a big step for them, which honestly was alien to me. The year before that there was a situation at a basketball game where the rich private school started chanting statements remarking on our large poor student body, saying “Food Stamps clap clap Food Stamps” and “Your dad works for my dad.” It of course almost caused a huge fight and I still think those students deserve to get the crap beat out of them. The idea that anyone would think that something like that would be remotely okay just blows me away. I’m saddened by the issues that should already be past, whether its race or genders or homosexuality. All differences should be celebrated, and risking a terrible cliché, like a rainbow.
This past year I painted a mural for my school, which pictured me and two friends, a white girl and a black boy. I’d never really painted anyone of color before, not really because of any reason other then I’ve only really painted self-portraits. Painting my friend was a large challenge. He’s got beautiful chocolate skin and the best smile of anybody I’ve ever met. But you don’t use just browns, but also oranges and pinks and purples. Chocolate has so many amazing shades. I can’t say I was blown away but this discovery, as if African American people are automatically just one color, but I’d never examined anyone’s skin color so closely before, if only just because painting pale skin colors comes naturally since I look at my own pale skin every day. I’m proud to say the murals done by me and my other friends’ displays all different kind of students, colors, beliefs, and lifestyles. We are diverse and I’ll always be proud of where I came from, especially coming from generally White Wisconsin.

Dark And Light

I never really used to understand why Black and White aren’t technically described as colors, until recently. When I was little, they were still colors in a crayon, so what difference did it make? It was one of those statements like my fourth grade teacher saying, “There’s so such thing as can’t.” Kids can’t take things conceptually. Everything’s so literal. “Can’t” is a word. And that’s that.
Black used to dominate my wardrobe, and now I really understand how devoid of color I really was. Wearing black predominantly makes you look paler then you are and you’re not very approachable, Black doesn’t reflect light, it swallows it.
White, on the other hand, is of course; also colorless but is nothing but light. It tints light instead of takes over it, when mixing paints or pastels.
I used to only draw with charcoal, just black, and maybe some white accents. Painting opened me up to a whole new world of color and understanding and expression. I love skin colors, and how subtle things like veins and blush and shine in the hair. I filled my sketchbooks with acrylics and sharpies, layering colors and cutouts and sketches on top of each other.

Taste, Smell, Feel, See

Red is dry skin, itchy contacts, and too much marijuana on April 20th. Discomfort thrives on the most passionate color, and the most bitter of people would apply that statement to love, romance, paper hearts and Valentine’s Day. But red doesn’t really remind me of any of things. Tomato sauce, yes. Beating heart, blood on the floor, maybe. But not love.
Yellow reminds me of flowers, first. Starting with sunflowers, and of course that connects to the sun, the kind children draw when learning about planet alignment, a yellow circle starburst, usually with sunglasses. We thought we were clever.
Yellow makes me think of the Simpson’s, Jaundice, and ugly upholstered La-Z Boy chairs.
On bad days it reminds me of sickness, of not enough sleep and the stomach flu, like the color my vomit was the day I went to GW hospital.
On better days yellow is the color I wear when I’m feeling well. I like being sunshiny, some days.
Blue is robins’ egg, the sky on clear days but not in places like Seattle or Denver or Beijing where the smog doesn’t let the grey go away. Blue is a newborn infant’s thin, delicate skin with the veins showing through, and my favorite pair of blue jeans. Blue is the southern parts of the oceans, and the color of almost all my boyfriend’s eyes. Strangely enough.
Tomato sauce plus Denim blue equals eggplant, plums, and grapes, a wide range of fruits. Bruises and Welch’s grape juice, violets. Sunflowers plus baby’s veins showing through skin equals wheatgrass and kiwis, cactuses. Live things like to be green. Valentine’s Day and the Simpson’s makes for a quirky television show and citrus-ey things like Oranges and Cough medicine.

Colors In Thoughts

I think in colors. Days of the week, schedules, I envision as almost a Candyland map. Each day has a different color, and I almost have to graph my days out in my mind to keep straight when I have to wake up, when to go to what class... My mind is highlighted for me. I find it fascinating the different ways people think and what different flashes of color mean to them- how can you can see a flash of red and be automatically reminded of something. How we can imagine music to have it's own color scale along with its music scale, flowing up and down around your mind.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smthngtwenty/

I never really like a ton of realism when it comes to my drawings. Colors are more like accents, and there's usually only one or two colors used. When it comes to painting I'm usually pretty realistic when it comes to color palette.
I don't really think about it, either. I'm not picking pink because it's girly, or because blue is sad, it's just whatever feels most natural.
Sometimes I feel that the art world over analyzes things. Yes, the painting has meaning, sometimes more obviously then not. Frida Kahlo wanted you to think about the symbolism, but not everything has to mean something. Sometimes the painting's red because you like the color. Not saying that my work is meaningless. I just get tired of the analyzing.
Yesterday in Doug Lang's writing class we were talking about how going to an art school really effects you in a day to day way, how instead of just seeing a neon yellow traffic sign we think "ooh, colors!" and how we observe the color palette used on the mannequins in clothing stores. We critique everything, and we have a harder time appreciating things as they are.

Growing Up With Color

I've always loved color. When I was younger I'd constantly bug my mom for only wearing earth tones- even now I generally eschew the color brown within my fashion palette. (Excluding boots belts, and eye make-up.) For me color doesn't right away bring up social issues such as food processing. Instead, it reminds me of childhood, of bright colored toys, clothes, and days. I appreciate how important getting your favorite color of whatever is to children, and how it leads a lot of their "decision making" when choosing new toys or clothes or which marker to use. That's part of the reason I chose the picture of the old shoe in my last blog. That children's sandal being found in an abandoned village was so poignant to me. Chances are the child didn't get to buy their shoes by color- the part of El Salvador I was in is pretty poverty stricken.
I just see it as such a small thing- getting to have something the shade of your favorite color.

This summer there's a pretty good chance I'll be working as an intern at the American Girl headquarters. American Girl is the company that makes the dolls that are from different periods in American History. American Girl is all about Girlpower and good self esteem and acting like a kid when you're a kid, which is an interesting juxtapose, since Mattel owns American Girl. Mattel being the company that owns Barbie dolls, which are pretty much opposite of the stocky American Girl dolls who look like they would be young girls instead of the 20-something super thin barbie doll.



I'm glad there's at least some company advocating for girls to just have fun, be the young girls they are, to like animals and colors and reading or whatever it is they do instead of growing up too fast.

Yeah... With Color!

Color is one of the first things we learn to want. As children we were given brightly colored plastic toys to hang above our cribs. The reds, greens, yellows and blues caught our eyes and we slowly learned to reach, to grab for what interested us. We also learned meanings behind the colors, such as pink for girls and blue for boys.
Even now, we assign feelings and ideas to different colors. Bright pink for girly, red for passion, whether it be love or anger. Green for sick, yellow for happy, and blue for sad.
More so, colors are used in advertisements to grab our attention and make us want to buy the product. Bright yellow suns are on put on tanning lotion, pink for barbie dolls and breast cancer awareness yogurts. When shopping, we usually tend to go for the recognizable colors, fonts, and logos. From everything from shampoo to ham products, we eschew generic and unrecognizable brands.