Concept: ASL

I had a great idea yesterday for my Aesthetics project. I would create an aesthetically pleasing logo and banner for the ASL club here at BYU-Hawaii. I quickly emailed my Aesthetics teacher to ask her if this would be a good project. She replied,

“Yes, absolutely. Those projects are good and meaningful. The only thing is that you need to justify them being art work, using anything theory that we study or will be studying. Obviously commercial arts are very different from fine arts, so you need to think of the nature of the things you will be creating--what is more important in the process of creating them: aesthetic values, or commercial or social values (in this case, causing awareness...etc.).”

My response to Aesthetic Theory: 

Plato wasn't necessarily wrong when he said that art had one common thing about it that made it art. However, I believe that everything you can look at or sense (including hearing music and poetry) is art. All you need to do is look at it without regard to its purpose, similar to what Kant said. Look at it for its lines, texture, form, color, and all the elements of design. Whether it is beautiful or ugly to you, it is still art. Nevertheless, a “Work of Art” must be something that was designed or created. Nature is a work of art to those who are religious. But just because you can’t seem to see something as art, doesn't make it suddenly become non-art. Art is still very subjective because something can be good to one individual while bad to another. A good work of art can cause an emotional reaction. These types of artwork have aesthetic qualities. To me, everything with aesthetic qualities is art but not all art has aesthetic qualities.

Even a logo or banner that has the purpose of creating awareness and communicating a message can be considered art. The reason I chose to create awareness for American Sign Language is because it is a beautiful language in and of itself. Just as people can say audio languages such as French or Spanish sounds lovely, romantic even, ASL looks beautiful and very often times, passionate. Just look at the ASL music Video with Sean Berdy. Doesn't his signing just make your heart stop?

I asked the ASL club presidents at my college if they would like me to make a logo for the club, and they agreed with excitement. I will meet with them later to discuss my ideas (in sign language!).

Until Next time,

~Brittany Rose