W I N T E R

Like a Stark would said : "The Winter is coming" (Only a fantasy reader will know this)

Although in this case would be better to say: "The winter has already come"

An old project: APPEARANCE

Variations in the physical appearance of humans, knows as human looks, are believed by anthropologists to be an important factor in the development of personality and social relations, in particular, physical attractiveness.

Last year I had a course in my university called: Audiovisuals, in which on groups we did a series of different kinds of videos. My group was composed by: Clara Navazo Pintor, Naiara Martín Haro, Ana Poza del Hierro and me.

This video was the one that I liked the most, this is the main reason why I´m dedicating a whole entrance for it. It´s name is: APARIENCIA, that mens APPEARANCE.

I hope you like it as much as I do. And, of course, you are free of think and draw your own conclusions as you want. The good thing about this video is that it could have many different interpretations.

A new book...

I´ve just received a new book that I bought in Amazon because it seems to be very interesting for my project.

It´s not the first book I read since I started this project, the other was a smaller one but also with a lot of useful information. In fact, some of the thoughts that I´ve written are based in the other book. That book is: "More than a Label".

The thing is that this book although it has a lot of interesting things, it´s oriented to principaly highschool´s people in USA. And the label thing it´s not only a problem of the teenagers, it´s true that in the high school it´s when it becomes to start. Maybe this teen thing implicit in the book it´s because it´s been written by a sixteen years-old girl. By the by, a very smart girl.

So, looking through the internet I found this new book, that apart that it´s written by a sociologist women, for the moment, it seems to be more focus on people from different ages and countries. Somehow i´ll be informing you about what interesting things I´m reading in this new book. I hope it´ll interested you as much as it does to me.

(Also the cover it´s really nice, isn´t it?)

Curious fact of the day: The name of Brugges (that fantastic city of Belgium) in spanish it´s Brujas that literally means witches. The spanish name of this town in northem Belgium has its origins in the Spanish presence in Flanders, a few centuries ago. At that time, and yet is still made, was very fashionable to translate all the names so that their pronunciation was a little bit more affordable for the spanish. So when the soldiers of the spanish troops arrived in this lands and heard the name in Flemish /Dutch, which is Brugge decided that because it was "similar"(everything is subjective in this life) Brugge would become Brujas in the spanish maps.

So the spanish name has no association with any property of the city. By contrast, the name in Dutch/ Flemish does. Brugge derives from Bruggen, that means bridges, and this that could see everyone who has visited the city it´s something that surrounds you in the streets of Brugges.

Now, I feel a little unconfortable every time I pronounce the name of this city in spanish.

The five factors

There are five factors that we take into account to make a label:

1. Clothing style/ Appearance

2. Interests/ Activities/ Music preferences

3. Behavior/ Personality

4. Intellect

5. Friends

I must add to this post a videoclip of a song. What is really interesting for me of this video are the images, look through it and draw your own conclusions. In reference to the labels subject, don´t you think it´s amazing?

This video clearly shows the labels thing...What do you think are the factors (of the 5 factors) that are implicit in this video?

Also I like very much the way it is recorded.

An old project: Ex-pressive portraits

"What we call contemporary portrait can be understood as a result of a neccessary evolution: the search for other plastic and expressive resources to enable the paint to continue to represent people in a time when the subject and art have been seriously questioned."

Based on previous thoughts my personal proposal is based in a series of paintings, whose main element is the face, and moreover the paint contains other pictorial elements. In this way I used other resources: plastic and expressive, specially patches of different colors and densities that add personality and beauty to the paint. In this way the paintings are composed by two main parts: one figurative and the other abstract-gesture.

Thus, starting of my own pictures of people around me, I made a series of tretments to the image that make it very simple: in black and white, with a very distinc surfaces without gray. In this way it´s easyly to include the portrait without clash with the other parts of the paint, that are more expressive.

To choose the photos I use a criterion which is dominated by photographs that emphasize expressions showing the feeling and everyday life. In this way the portraits look also express the personality of the person through a tiny fragment of time in which that person was herself.

"Elena", 130 x 43 cm. Acrylic and marker on canvas.

"Laura", 116 x 89 cm. Acrylic and pen on canvas.

"Laura y Azahara", 130 x 97 cm. Acrylic and marker on canvas.

"María", 130 x 43 cm. Acrylic and marker on canvas.

"Collado", 116 x 89 cm. acrylic and pen on canvas.

Labels are like the back of a book, a brief summary

LABEL: A word used to define or make assumptions about an individual. Labels are usually based on how someone looks, dresses, acts or talks - or who the person hangs out with.

Well, this is exactly the subject of my project. I thing that nowadays it´s a very interesting topic because it is present anywhere in the world, specially in the young people. And why not take advantage of this subject and convert it into an artistic project? I will explain how...

Labels. They´re everywhere. You hear them at school and out in the world. They´re part of our language. Labels are so fixed in everyday speech that you may not even think twice about them.

The aim of social labels are exclude, and differing from the others. It´s like a necessity, which we have become accustomed. Is no longer a way of reclaiming the acceptance of something that should be acepted naturally, but it´s not about being different, and different you know, it´s scary. Fear of exclusion, fear of not belonging to our reference groups, or fear of belong to those who we despised, in many cases, without any objectivity.

On the surface, labels seem to simplify the process of getting to know other people. You don´t even have to meet the person who´s being labeled - the label you´ve heard is the only introduction you need...or is it?

So, the thing it´s that the people tend to be scared of diging deeper and find out more about a person who is different. People are scared of what they don´t know. Partly. we label to try to make life simpler. We skip the part about getting to know someone and go straight to making assumptions. This saves us the trouble of connecting an individual identity with every individual. It actually sounds silly- we don´t have enough time to get to know someone?

It´s true also, that as human beings, we like to put things into categories so they´re easier to understand and communicate about. We categorize our to-do lists.

Does lebeling actually simplify- or does ir make more complicated? In some ways, it does both. That´s what makes labeling so confusing.

"They´re just labels. What´s on the label is not what´s in the package."

Curious fact of the day: The croquettes are originally from France, from there went to Holand where it has become tremendously popular, in Spain and Portugal with less success, other european countries with varying levels of popularity. However my french flatmate had never eaten or even heard of them...

While I am listening to "The Kooks"...

While I am listening to "The Kooks" are coming a lot of things that I would like to write here...But I must do it little by little and with a good organization, so I take this first entrance as a brief introduction of myself and of what I expect from this blog.

At first, telling that I had never had concern about blogging and less in english. (so please sorry if my english it´s not correct, I must improve it)The thing it´s that I am a spanish erasmus student in Sweden, and this it´s my last and fifth year of degree: Fine Arts.

In this blog I would like to explain a lot of things of the project that I´m developing now, and another projects that I have done in the past, although they are not complete.

Of the project that I´m developing it´s good the thing that it´s starting now thus I can be explaining step by step during the year. Also I will be writing things that inspire me day by day, maybe not concerning my project, but also future projects.

Why I named "The Kooks"?Because they have colaborate as a inspiration to me as a little part of the whole idea behind the project that I have talked about. The reason?...You will discover it.