Presentation at SD DEAFestival 2020
Description
Virtual presentation at San Diego DEAFestival 2020 (Oct. 10, 2020)
Transcript:
Hello! I’m Jon (Sign name). Jon Savage. My presentation focuses on art. What does it mean? Before I elaborate, who am I? I’m Deaf and grew up with hearing parents.
Both my parents were amazing; My mom was a hair stylist & craft artist and my father was a photographer/videographer, which influenced me a lot, but my decision to be
an artist didn’t happen right away. I have lived in several places in California and decided to settle here in San Diego. I lived here for over 35 years. What a
beautiful city and I still enjoy it very much.I had a lot of life experiences through my journey.
I would like to grab an opportunity to explain the importance of learning. Hope you will learn from this and what’s important to you.
What do I like? My upbringing helped me to build and see what I like by having influences. Yes! It’s really important. Those are my big influences big time!
Let’s start with MTV. The first time I saw MTV was in the mid 1980s. You think I was attracted
to it because of the music? No, I was attracted to it by editing, camera, filming, colorful, etc.
I was obsessed how they frame and edit from the camera’s perspective. Now, MTV has changed
quite a bit but it was still a big influence for me. You see the old video camera? My father used to
have one of those and it was very expensive back then. I will never forget how difficult it was to
use for filming/editing. We had to use VCR to edit the videotape. Can you imagine?! My father
bought another used VCR for blank tapes while editing. We had two VCRs, one for editing and
one for blank tapes. We had to record from one videotape to another. It was difficult but I’m still
inspired to look back on what we both did. You see the camera? My father was a professional
photographer but told me little about photography. When I started to look at Magazines, I understood the importance of focus and angle. Yes it’s important. Lighting and editing is
also important as well. Lighting in the background with the equipment or using sunrise or sunset for lighting when using the camera. Those features have inspired me to keep coming up
with ideas. You see the Famous Artists? When you see a painting from one of the famous artists, they tend to have a tag written next to the painting. People look at paintings and then
read the tag, my visualization had changed due to the artist’s story about what the painting meant. I thought, “Ohhh, a story is a must to tell is important as well”.
I was influenced that if you share a story on your end then others will be inspired as well.
All these four influences on my part being as the artist were important to me and inspired
me. So what did I do? I took an art class back when I was in high school. Why? I was full
of curiosity. You see this painting that I did, it’s a picture of a surfer surfing the wave.
I never forget this powerful inspiration moment I had. My art teacher said to all of us in
the class that we had to keep drawing for a full semester. If you see something that’s off
the point then you go ahead make a drawing of what you saw. I decided to draw a picture
of the surfer surfing and there were few things that I changed. There was no mohawk,
different angle of the surfer, skull head on the board or green water. I decided to added
mohawk on the surfer, moved to a different angle of the board, added the skull on
the surfer’s head, and changed the water to green. That was my art lesson of the class. You know what the teacher said? This is original. Original? That was a powerful statement.
I did not copy anything from other drawings. You can draw as much as you can being one of your hobbies. Practice as much as you can even if you can copy other artwork as well.
If you want to move up as artist, then all of your work has to be original.
You see YouTube? I want to express this in the videos but how? On TV? No way!
It’s too expensive! I first learned about YouTube in 2006, and It was free! I learned how
to make a video on my digital camera and connect it with my PC computer. Back then
Microsoft gave out a lot of free softwares so I made a video for free. See? Now, I didn’t
have to edit a video in VCR anymore! You see thumbs on the screen? Someone
clicked “like” on one of my videos. Who? I don’t even know the person but it made
my day that someone actually liked my video! I still use YouTube ever since and
this is 2020, so it’s up to you to know how many years it has been.
How did I decide to focus on the importance of colors? My thoughts while growing up, my fascinations of what I see, and conversations with people helped me with the decisions.
Back in high school, I took Commercial Art class and I learned the depth of color philosophy where the logo, fonts and colors are very important when it comes to art.
There are 8 different colors that represent different moods and meanings.
Green: This color is a very important starter of everything like a machine or a project. It’s new and fresh like freshly cut grass and brings brightness. Brightness can bring
out in people when they wear green shirts or when you see military people wearing green uniforms.
Blue: Like we look up a blue sky. Water. It gives you a calming and peaceful feeling. Mmmmm. Cool and Cold. The temperature sure does have its own rules when it comes
to colors. Like the colors of green and blue represents Fresh and Cold. When you tell a story and you hear colors like blue, you will feel cool like jumping in the pool. When
you see a place with snow and blue sky, you will feel cold. Brrrr! No thanks! It’s amazing that you can tell a story based on colors. It’s different between those two.
Teal: My favorite color. It strongly represents intuition. It’s an example between fresh and calm. It’s a development for knowledge, awareness, community, and unity.
When you see the color teal in a painting, it represents importance. Being deaf, it’s important for us to important to spread awareness within deaf community due to
there are not many deaf people out there in the world. That’s the reason why I pick teal, it represents the tightness to bring the deaf community together. Important!
Purple: Wow. Rare to use in paintings. The color itself is very rich and I don’t use it for the whole painting that much. It represents loyalty and wisdom. Like how
the Purple Heart represents military honor and the sashes represent the positions what the royals are where the royalties wear it in an honorable way. You don’t see
many purple vegetables or fruits. They are rare to find meaning they are good to be true. I don’t use a lot of purple like the whole background since we are so precious
of who we are regarding to loyalty and wisdom.
Pink: I often get confused with two colors. Red and Pink. I had to separate them for different meanings. Pink means Love! It is not related to girls only. No. Men and
Guys can love as well. Like when you see a fluffy pillow that is pink gives you a loving feeling when you are at home. Do you get mad for wearing pink socks that happened
to change from white to pink in the washing machine? No. You will laugh at them and accept wearing pink socks! Ha!
Red: I’m always fascinated with this color. It strongly represents Passion. Red lipstick. Red dress. Red car. Blood. Bold. most of us often see a red heart and interpret it
as love, right? My own interpretation can do the trick that it would be love with passion with love. For example, if you see a pink heart, it could interpret it as soft and
gentle love compared to heart pumping red, pumping hard with love.
Orange: Citrus flavors and tart taste! It’s an exciting color. Makes you excited with things that you do in general. Like drinking orange juice in the mornings makes
you ready for the day. When you see the stoplight with red, orange, and green lights, the middle tends to be yellow but I think it’s more of an orange color due to it
making people anxious and excited. The Reason why is because it makes you think if you should stop or want to drive through the orange light. When you see a
person wearing.
Yellow: It’s not the last color but it makes you relieved. Happiness! Bright and sunny! This color gives you high energy. People chuckle when they see a
yellow VW beetle driving by, it makes people feel happy.
Now that I have mentioned all the colors and explained how each color has its own story and different message, you can understand why I choose those colors to put into
art, photography, filming, and etc and represents into a story. As you can see from green to yellow, it represents earth to sun. That’s another story!
As you may have noticed that all of my artwork has stripes. Why stripes?
When you stand on earth, did you know that the earth spins? Everything is
in movement and they all become stripes. Neat! Stripes are an important
part of the artwork. When you take a blurry photo, things in the background
become stripes, giving you the focus.
For example, it could be a person, pet, landscape, etc you take a photo of
the subject and you add the stripes in the background of your chosen colors
that represents the earth spinning. The subject in the artwork can become
the main focus and becomes a story to share. Stripes represent that the subject
in the painting makes you feel alive.
Spray paint and painting! How did I put them together? I fell in love with spray painting because it gives you the control how you want to spray by holding the spray can.
Even better when I use the razor and tapes, when I could be able to cut with razor and I could have more control as well while I spray paint. I noticed that I’m not satisfied
with just spray paint by itself. So, I thought about both spray paint and painting. Yeah, Why not! It makes my artwork to be more interesting. They both can make me go
in depth when I do the painting. My ideas for painting are starting to line up and I very much enjoy it.
Remember that I mentioned that I enjoy filming? I LOVE filming and it gives me a lot of creativity with editing. How do I merge with filming, photography, and painting? Back
in the early 2000’s, I taught myself basic filming/editing skills and I knew that I needed to increase my experience with the filming. I decided to go back to school to get
a certification for film/editing for a year. I always have plenty of ideas but I did not know how to put them together. The film school taught me how to use the right tools
and skills to use while filming a video. That’s where my ideas could be able to blend in with my filming skills. I created videos that they could become prints. See examples.
You see when I explained my journey in art, the whole experience became a story for me to tell. I realized that telling a story is very important in art. When you can share
your story and I can create an art for you with your story, It’s called Contemporary Art. It’s the right fit for me. For example, when I’m thinking of an idea like right at
this moment and when I see something in front of my eyes, that’s when I captured an idea to create more art. Seize the moment! Look at my artworks. [Click: Original Artworks]
Commission. I enjoy stories even myself as a storyteller. I enjoy it even more when people share their own stories. I can collaborate with the customers to create
an artwork based on a story. You can pick your own colors and photos to represent what you want. It could be from a family, friend, pet or landscaping. See the examples.
Now that you’ve seen my whole presentation on art, now you understand the importance of art. When you go to museum, friend’s house, or see a magazine,
you can see that you could be able to recognize the meaning of art.
Thank you for watching this video. Cheers!