This has been the most exciting week in London for me. I travelled to sites that furthered my knowledge of street art and architecture in London. On Monday I had the decided to go on a street art guided tour with a street artist in order to learn about street art for my project. I wondered what major themes are seen throughout all of street art and how it has evolved over the years. I am planning on contacting my tour guide to ask questions such as these. This was a great experience as I had little prior knowledge about street art. I found out about this free tour company because Julia and Sam went on a Harry Potter tour with this company the previous week, and they enjoyed it. The street art tour mostly took place in the Brick Lane area of London. The tour guide brought the tour to many sites and knew the back stories behind all of the art. I thought it was incredible how knowledgeable he was. He also explained that some of the best street art in the world is in London because street artists travel to London to do street art. London is such a popular place to do street art because it has so much exposure to people. He explained the difference between different types of art such as 3D, stenciling, and graffiti. He also pointed out pieces of art that street artists see as vandalism versus what is actually considered street art. I did not know what to expect as I had never learned about street art prior to this experience. There are certain techniques artists use that prove that they are street artists rather than people just using spray paint. I wonder how the artists learn all of these rules when they begin creating street art. It is determined by factors like the lettering the person does, whether or not the paint drips, and what they are creating. This was all new knowledge to me, but I remember seeing street art around New York City when I was younger, and I was always curious about the meaning behind it. My tour guide said that I could connect with him in the future for any other street art questions I have. I really enjoyed having the tour from his perspective because he is a street artist himself. I feel the tour gave me a perspective on street art I would never have had if I just walked and attempted to discover the art myself. My absolute favorite part of the tour was the fact that the tour guide declared that he had no specific places that he was going to take the tour because new art pops up every day. He knew the neighborhoods to visit, but the art that would actually be there was a surprise to even him. I did not realize how often street art changes in different locations. For example, one site that we visited, near a train track, apparently had a beautiful mural that was there the day before we visited, but it was already painted over by the time my tour guide took our tour to the site.
Tuesday was a long but thrilling day. Lacock was such a cute place, and I love that it is the home of Britain photography. As two of my classes are centered around photography this was an amazing place to visit. Before I began taking pictures of the architecture I spoke to our tour guide Andrew about the church because the architecture was so beautiful. He said it was Norman architecture style, and Norman style was popular during the 11th and 12th centuries. I curious about the architecture, but after researching online I figured out that Norman architecture is similar to Gothic architecture. When viewing the church in Lacock for the first time I thought the church was Gothic architecture because it looked similar to buildings that I have seen in the past few weeks like Westminster Abbey. The ceilings were vaulted the same way and the structure looked like a castle. I was surprised when Andrew said the church was Norman style, but after further research I have realized that when buildings were being created a long time ago the variation between building types was minimal. Visiting Bath was my favorite part of Tuesday. The architecture was picturesque. I loved looking at all the little shops and houses. I even walked into the Bath local sweet shop. As the architecture of Bath amazed me I was curious what type of architecture it was. I did some research to find out that Bath is made up of beautiful Georgian architecture, named after King George. When I was walking around I had to remember to pay attention to where I was going because I kept looking up at the magnificent architecture. After further researching the architecture I believe one of the reasons I loved it so much is because Georgian architecture is known to have symmetry and to be very proportionate. It is aesthetically pleasing to me when objects like buildings are even and proportionate, so I enjoyed walking through the streets of Bath and seeing this. In the future I will continue asking questions about architecture to any guide I have, and I am hoping that by the end of this program I can identify most of the architecture that I see on a daily basis in London. Overall, I have really enjoyed my experiences this week because I got to see a lot of different parts of London and I accomplished a lot of research for my street art ISP and my experiential portfolio. Without the London Humanities Program I would not have made the trip to visit places such as Lacock and Bath. I wonder why Lacock and Bath were the places chosen to visit for this excursion. I did not realize the variety of architecture that existed as long ago as the 11th and 12th centuries. Additionally, before deciding to pursue a project on street art I would not have thought to go on a street art tour. I thoroughly enjoyed not only seeing the different street art, but learning about the culture of street art. I decided to reflect on these sites because they were the most interesting places I believed that I visited this week and I was astounded by the architecture I saw in these locations. I chose to attach these photos because they portray the variety of architecture I had the opportunity to view this week. I also was trying different effects on photoshop to see what brought out the best aspects of each picture. The picture in black and white is of a wall in Bath, and the wall had a hard and rocky texture. The best way for me to show the viewer this texture is to change the photograph to black and white and enhance tones on the picture. Additionally, every picture besides 1 and 2 are from Bath. Every single one of the pictures I posted from Bath have symmetry in them whether it is the windows, molding, or the bricks. Works Cited Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Norman Style.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 20 Apr. 2016, www.britannica.com/art/Norman-style. “Georgian Architecture.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 May 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_architecture. |