Blog Post #1

    Hello! My name is John Slowiak and welcome to my first blog post. I've always loved writing but doing so in a more casual manner like this is something you don't get to practice much throughout school. I'm 22 and live in Wisconsin. I grew up on my family's dairy farm and agriculture has always been a big part of my life, an industry I still work in now professionally. I'm also a business student at UAF and ultimately hope to apply both my education and skills learned on the job toward my future endeavors. 

    I wasn't sure where to start when looking for a work of art that I found appealing. Nothing immediately came to mind, so I decided to scroll through my camera roll until I found something that could potentially be considered art (and something I liked of course). That's when I came across this:

    While digital and more casually-directed, I'd still consider this 'art' for the purpose of this assignment because it's beyond the skill level of the average person. (I know the objective is probably to find something by a well-known artist, but this is the best thing I can find without Googling "appealing art"). I like this drawing because it involves a cat, which is always a good thing, and is overall just cute. 

    I've always loved art but never had the motivation or confidence to follow through with it myself. I like to draw here and there, but overall I don't do much with art personally. My sister is very involved in art ( http://danaslowiak.com/ ) and she's someone I've looked up to when it comes to art. In general though, I always appreciate the work that goes into art regardless of the medium and the meanings behind different pieces. 

   

    Embedded above is a time lapse of the 2022 r/Place piece (link if that doesn't work). The event took place in April of this year after a several-year absence. The concept is that it starts with a blank canvas that any Reddit user can contribute to, one pixel at a time (a user has a cooldown of 15-20 seconds before they can place another pixel). Users can place over others' pixels, creating sort of a war for territory as different Reddit communities try to establish their area. The entire event lasted four days and resulted in an amazing final piece. I love the r/Place event because it shows how people can work together to accomplish something that would take forever for a person to do by themselves. It's also great to see communities uniting toward a common goal (something that always feels good to see nowadays). From the video description:

"r/place has once again proved that anything is possible when Redditors collaborate to build something creative. 

Watching r/place unfold in real time was incredible, but seeing it again as a time lapse is even better. Catch up on the moments you missed while you were asleep or offline, which for some of you were few and far between.

Thank you to everyone who came, collaborated, and dropped a pixel (or a hundred). Maybe the real art was the friends we made along the way."

    Thank you for reading this, whether you're a classmate, professor, or random person on the internet. This ended up being more fun than a random assignment and I hope it was somewhat enjoyable to read!