Molly Parker Smith

I chose Molly's piece because it really popped out to me. It wasn't really colorful or shocking so I'm not sure exactly why it popped out at me. It may have been because it looked alive with the way the babies were "rolling" around. The mom figure had a distinct face that kind of drew me in. I feel like the piece possessed all the elements of art except for maybe value. The colors were pretty straightforward. The "animals" in the piece were very soft looking and had two basic colors: red and white so in a way the piece was aesthetically pleasing due to it's simple color scheme and the seemingly innocent scene it portrayed. Ironically, even though the piece was pretty soothing in my opinion, Molly was inspired by her fascination of watching animals, in particular deer, decay. She said her fascination with death and the idea that we don't quite know when it's coming mixed with her vivid imagination sprouted her work. You can't really see it in the picture, but the "babies" have visible rib cages and the mom has a very bone-like spine that she said was also inspired from the deer carcass.



Billy Fry

Again, I'm not completely sure why this piece drew me in, but it did. I can speculate it is because the color scheme, the style of painting, the eyes of the dude in the picture but I'm not completely sure why I found it more interesting than the others. It could have also been the look in the guy's eyes. Very serial killer 'esque, so whether I wanted to look at it or not, it still had a very memorable look that I thought was cool. It's safe to say this painting had all the elemental qualities of art: line, shape, texture, value and color. The piece was very aesthetically pleasing because of the color scheme and the look in the eyes of the guy. This was actually a self portrait of Billy, the artist, himself. When I found out it was a self portrait it scared me that someone looked like that on campus and I feared for my life, but after seeing and hearing Billy I was no longer afraid for two reasons.
1. The drawing did not really look like him and I think it was supposed to be a little overexaggerated which was relieving, and
2. He was a really nice guy who did not seem like a serial killer.
Billy said he wanted it to be shadowy and he liked how the red modeled things. He said the colors: red, white, and blue ironically were not meant to be patriotic but were meant to represent confusion and frustration.

The two works were pretty much completely different in their meaning and layout: one being a painting, the other being an actual 3 dimensional scene. They both used red in their work. Reading the explanations also answers the question of how the works are similar and different.