Courtney's Blog

Specs

2010-12-21T19:56:00.000-08:00

Forgot to add some information about these projects.

The photographs, including the dyptich and tryptich, are all raw and uncut.

For the Final Project, not pictured here the information is as follows
Black- 080306
Hot Pink- DE0BC3
Pink taken from Picture- B5388C

Fonts used: Reprise Rehearsal Regular
Reprise Rehearsal Strong
Reprise Stamp
Curlz MT

Effects
Drop Shadow
Bevel and Emboss
Gradient Overlay

Other Illustrator Projects

2010-12-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

I am really proud of the work I did for the group project so I wanted to include my main contributions into this portfolio. They look professional, polished, and interesting to the eye.

The first flag is my first design and the second one is the revised one. I really enjoyed this short exercise. My first flag colors are terrible!! I wanted to incorporate my Mexican background by way of color but it just did not look good! So instead I found the symbol to be enough as it is an old tribal symbol from the Aztecs and then switched up the colors. I think now it looks very cool and the colors have a nice flow.

Personal Logo

2010-12-20T12:29:00.001-08:00

OK, so with this one, when I first did this project I was really stuck.. because I wanted to represent all that is on my mind and important to me but I cannot draw. So I made a medley of logos into one logo and I like it but it was not enough. It didn't fit exactly. So for the update, I took a picture of myself where I look like I am thinking and there is a lot of negative space where I thought I would just insert the same logos. I do not like pictures of myself so I tried to only get as much of my face as I had to for it to work. Then when I wanted to place the pictures, it just was not turning out right. So I decided to draw them and I like the way it turned out MUCH BETTER. I think why I like it is it reminds me of some early 1990's feminist riot grrrl fanzine art. I am very much influenced by the art and music from that movement so I feel a little nostalgic when I look at this piece. Going through the different symbols, I thought about the things that are important to me and stay on my brain in one way or another. The equals sign is pretty straight forward, as well as the peace and money signs. The cents sign represents "sense" rather than a monetary value. Africa stands for soooo much. Hope, inspiration, art, life, hunger, change, disease, privilege, racism/colonialism, and on and on. I did draw that Africa free hand too so I am very proud of that :) The two hearts mean different things, the heart with the arrow is romantic love while the other is the love for family and friends. The rainbow is a symbol of equality, diversity, acceptance and another way of showing support for people I love. Then I added Peabo Bryson because I enjoy being silly and it seems out of place but my dog is so important to me. I did not even attempt to draw a Peabo Bryson portrait...

New Dyptich

2010-12-20T12:21:00.001-08:00

It is no secret that this is my baby. This is Peabo Bryson and he is the closest thing I have to a child. Sounds crazy to people who do not have dogs or have kids, but I raised him from a 6 week old runt, basically the size of a hot dog, and now he is a 65 pound four year old lap dog. I took these pictures with my camera phone so they are not very good quality but luckily the lighting was good so they turned out clear. This is from a trip home to Ohio in November and we went to a beautiful park to spend the day together. When I was shooting these pictures, a woman came up and said "Is SHE an American Staffordshire Terrier?!?!" which is a fancy way of asking if HE is a pitbull. People always think he is a girl, I think it is his eyes.

I like these pictures because in the second one he looks real stoic and strong, like a pitbull, and in the first one he is much more relaxed and looks more like himself.

Pitbulls are the best dogs in the world and if you don't know that, you better ask somebody!

New Tryptich

2010-12-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

When I first shot this, I was not thinking about this project in the slightest. Only after going through the photos again did I see the relationship and really enjoy it. Although the second picture is out of focus, I could not reshoot and still capture the same moment and lighting. I also like the effect it has on the lights.

Portfolio PIctures

2010-12-20T12:10:00.001-08:00

These are some pictures I took over this semester and I am especially interested and or proud of them, surprised even. I received a camera as a present for Christmas last year and had only used it to document social events and time spent with friends. It was fun and a learning experience to use the camera for work purposes and to push myself.

I love Ohio. 2 reasons why

2010-11-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

Flora

2010-11-15T08:36:00.001-08:00

Battery Park at Sunset

2010-11-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

Buildings

2010-10-18T10:03:00.001-07:00

Assignment 2

2010-10-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Assignment 1

2010-10-18T09:59:00.001-07:00

Diptych

2010-10-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

Color/ South Indian Festival at South Street Seaport

2010-10-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Triptych

2010-10-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

Typography

2010-09-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

St. Paul's Chapel

2010-09-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

I do not like the order of these and blogger will not let me move them around so I am going to change the order later, just at least wanted to post them for now.

Broadway Graffiti

2010-09-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wow!

2010-09-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Can't believe how long it has been since I posted and I think it is time to start updating more frequently. However, all I can add today is that the Jadakiss mixtape "The Champ is Here 3" is hot!! ... and I am just now getting around to hearing it... oh well! Better late than never! xoxo

ब्रेन दरें

2009-10-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

The first time I thought about going to graduate school I was 9 years old and my mom was receiving her Masters। I was sitting in a stadium that could accommodate almost 100,000 people and it was raining। The graduates had been seated together for hours but one young man was just now arriving। Perhaps in an effort to move quicker, he slid across the field on his stomach, in a graduation gown with nothing underneath। At the time, I certainly had never seen anyone do this; I laughed and thought it was cool। It overshadowed my mother’s accomplishment, which I would not appreciate until much later.

Older and (hopefully) more gracious, I can proudly write that I have my parents to thank for providing me access to art during my childhood। The only things we were not allowed to watch were talk shows and soap operas. My dad was a security guard at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio’s premier art exhibit and performing art center. I have vivid memories of art exhibits, although names I never remember noticing. Film and music were appreciated by all members of my family and my parents’ taste varied. I enjoyed watching Man From Snowy River with my dad or Dirty Dancing with mom but personally I preferred Disney. Disney movies, notably Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were an obsession. The animation of Disney drew me into these respective worlds and I dreamed, even prayed, that places like that existed. Those movies have lasted more than the test of time, as everyday I see images of the main characters from those movies on children’s accessories. While Disney films and animation can be controversial at best, something about their visual renderings of classic stories appeal to generation after generation. It is this appeal that I desire to dissect and attain. In this sense, I can say that Disney films are a tremendous inspiration to me and have played a great role in why I am a Media Studies student.

In high school two things happened, I found out about foreign cinema and discovered feminism. Looking at the picture above, it becomes a little more obvious why I gravitated toward The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and German expressionism. I went to an alternative high school that offered different class choices than “regular” high school. It was a public school called Linworth Alternative Program and I took Existential Literature, Film and Theory, but it was Decades that turned me on to The Bicycle Thief, 400 Blows, Grand Illusion, and Nosferatu. Decades class entailed reading a book and a film from all the decades in the twentieth century. Even though I grew up appreciating animated art films, it did not occur to me until this class that live action films could also be art in the same way. What I like about Dirty Dancing is only a part of what film can do, entertain. When I saw the Seventh Seal, I saw complexity, beauty, art, and meaning. Another thing that I realized during this class was that I liked “old” films. I had no knowledge of the age of the Disney films I loved, only realizing age with the absence of colors, dialogue, and recognizable faces. I did my own research and came back to American film, starting with silent and discovering Greta Garbo of all people. In Garbo I saw a face that felt familiar, even if I had never seen it before.

She inspired the application of my feminist consciousness with my film studies. When I reached college, my grasp of feminist theory was practically non-existent. In high school I had read books dealing specifically with the 3rd Wave of feminism and enjoyed the music and art created by young feminists. Basically, I did not know my roots, the backbone and struggle that provided my generation with many things I still take for granted. I declared Women’s Studies my major but after taking Women and Film with Judith Mayne, I knew I needed a little more leg room to pursue everything I was interested in. I took Walter Benjamin, Laura Mulvey, Tom Gunning, and I switched to Comparative Studies making visual culture my focus. Under Comparative Studies the curriculum is interdisciplinary, so I was free to combine women’s studies with film studies, which was not a major yet at Ohio State. In the Comparative Studies department, I was moved, challenged, and supported by Ruby Tapia, Lindsey Jones, and Nina Berman. Along with Dan Farrell from Philosophy and Frederick Aldama from English, these people inspire me to be a better person and learn all I can while I am alive. The passion with which they teach the material, the personality they bring to a sterile classroom, and the experience and knowledge they impart are all things that these professors have in common and I hope to embody.
In the meantime, my job as a YMCA aftercare teacher has added another element to my research interests. Almost everyday I ask my students, “what did you learn today?” and they look blankly at me before remarking they had gym, or music, or most enthusiastically, they went to the computer lab. Although they are hard pressed to name one thing they talked about in their classrooms, ask any one of them about the most recent Spongebob Squarepants and they can talk about it for 20 minutes while laughing hysterically. Two things are most striking to me here, the dire need for educational reform and the impact that media has on children. In the news, we really only hear about the negative influence that media (movies, video games, computers) can have on children. An education that incorporates the power of media positively, not to mention a curriculum that is more sensitive to diversity, sounds like a winning combination and I want to be a part of the team. Girls Studies is a field I was introduced to by Ruby Tapia and created in me the desire to work with children. I know I do not want to teach at an elementary school, but I do want to impact their socialization at those ages. Many of my students are bilingual, have traveled to Asia and Europe, own ipods, go to the movies, and they all love art. My co worker and I can encourage their art, promote multiculturalism, show films and play instruments but we only have the kids for 2 hours before and after school. I am also bound by my relationship to my employer to act and speak a certain way while representing them. On a positive note, I know the kids enjoy being at “Latchkey” and I hope it is in part because we incorporate their interests into a schedule that promotes learning and fun. A challenge I look forward to investigating is how can I tailor exciting media to a classroom setting/be age appropriate. Since I know I want to work beyond a school environment, The New School Masters program is appealing to me above all other film programs. The program has many facets and directions, and although I feel most comfortable writing, I want that to change by trying my hand at the technical side. I rarely indulge in creativity outside of writing and it is solely because of time constraint. I am thankful to go to a school that nourishes the things I love to do, why would it be difficult to do this at a younger stage?
I cannot work a full time job that does not give me an outlet to pursue my passions. When I am inspired, I free write all the things going through my head and then I find the books that will help me learn more and support my own ideas. If I worked 40+ hours a week as an insurance agent (I almost did), my time to be inspired and create would be affected by my work demands. I want the two to go hand in hand, I want my work demands to be my passions. Russian film and revolution, medieval literature, psychoanalysis, the whole animal kingdom, and gardening are just a few of the things I enjoy learning about and Media Studies allows me to explore any of these topics. I am gaining the knowledge to create and critique using a variety of mediums, in a way that is beneficial to more than just myself. This empowerment is invaluable and to show my gratitude to everyone that has helped and supported me along the way, I have made it my goal to create meaningful and lasting material.

Alice in Wonderland Image
http://barista.media2.org/?m=200609&paged=2

Greta Garbo Image
http://cameraobscura.busdraghi.net/2008/tecniche-antiche-alternative/gomma-bicromata/fra-il-pittorialismo-e-il-modernismo-di-edward-steichen-e-la-maledizione-di-ansel-adams/5/

Battleship Potemkin Image
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/jan/28/week

My First Post

2009-10-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, this blog will remain pretty formal until my schedule provides time for me to personalize it. Until then, my name is Courtney Mericle, I am a first year grad student in media studies at The New School. I am 24 years old and live in Columbus, Ohio. I went to Ohio State University for my undergrad and received my BA degree in comparative studies with a focus in visual culture. My current interests are Spanish and Mexican film, the Sedaris family, teaching, gardening, and cooking. If you come across this blog randomly, feel free to post something about yourself.