To commemorate the end of my art school career, I present to you the start of my art school career.
This is way back in 2000 and I was at the University of Dayton (for reasons that no longer existed at the time). In my 2D Design class that semester we spent weeks on this “Black Strips” project. At least a month, I’m sure. The project was simply to take these strips of black paper, 2″ by 6″, and position them on squares of white illustration board. Technical perfection was emphasized as much as the graphics themselves. Early on we only had to follow simple rules, like only shifting the strips horizontally or only making diagonal cuts, but later we had to we had to try representing things like “war” or “rebirth.”
I didn’t clean any of these up in photoshop—these would’ve been pure black and white 8 years ago. Now they’re really showing their age. The yellowish patches are probably from acidic residue from the rubber cement we used. Make up!
Once upon a time I was a photographer. A real photographer! A real photographer who photographed real things! Real outside things! And I enjoyed it!
