Response to Artists Talk, Monotypes

I went to an artist talk/panel on developing skills for creating monotypes. I had never created a monotype till then and was very intrigued by the way you actually create one. So pretty much you take any size of Plexiglas and round off the corners. Then you bevel the edges with a rough file at a forty-five degree angle. Then you start painting the image you want displayed on the Plexiglas. However, you paint the highlights on first and all the darker colors on last. So really, you are painting a picture backwards (compared to painting something directly on canvas). Furthermore, the more color you put on the Plexiglas, the better the final product will look. After you complete painting the picture, you soak a piece of print-paper in water for ten minutes or so. Afterwards, you dry with a towel and rub it slightly to remove its sheen. You then place the paper on the Plexiglas so that the paint seeps into the paper. With a rolling pin, you then press down on the Plexiglas so that the paper takes in all the paint; however, you do not want to rub the Plexiglas and paper together so that you would smear the colors and layers of paint. Lastly, you can take a wooden spoon and burnish the paper. By doing this the paint from the Plexiglas gets displaced onto the paper, which is your final product. The image looks quite unique compared to other methods of painting and you cannot replicate that same image twice. Conversely, with the left over paint on the Plexiglas, you could make a ghost copy of the image. To do this you simply soak another piece of paper and displace the leftover paint on it using the proper technique mentioned above. This image will look slightly like the original version but lighter, hence it’s ghost copy. All in all, this artist talk/panel on creating monotypes was very intriguing. She mentioned that there was a difference between monotyping and monoprinting but still did not comprehend what was the difference after her lecture.

Response to Artists Talks, Art Studio Exhibition II

I attended Ya Haddy Njie’s, Emily Norris’s, and Bonnie Veblen’s Art Studio Exhibition II. It was intriguing to me to see such magnificent art and have the artists there to explain what their art meant to them.
Despite what they said there art meant to them, it was hard not to draw your own interpretations. For instance, Ya Haddy explained that her art was a search for her identity and a way for her to express how past experiences have contributed to creating a false identity for her which she has been constantly fighting so that she can create her own identity. When I examined her art, I saw the intense emotions she felt coming from the expressionistic depiction; however, if I was not given the background information I would never have known that her art was describing her internal struggle to develop her own identity. In fact, I would have only known that her art was to express some sort of frustration because her work was only black and white with varying forms of harsh lines composed in different layers that seem to symbolize anger. It was odd though that Ya Haddy had pointed this out in the insert that was distributed at the show. In the insert, Ya Haddy states that her “symbolic expressions sometimes appear to be a portal pulling my viewers in and other times act as a barrier, stopping the viewers from knowing anything beyond that point.” It was also unique to see art presented in new ways which I have never seen. Emily Norris’s work used sharp, geometric edges to separate fluid and irregular objects. By doing this, it was like separating reality with some unreal parallel universe. The non-real, real images had some potent, perplex energy to them that captivated me. Lastly, it was very pleasant to view the nourishing artworks of Bonnie Veblen. Bonnie’s art was very nourishing because it was able to exemplify nature’s serene beauty and create a connection between you and nature. In other terms, the work itself was so powerful that you got lost in it and like a dream you were surrounded by nature and its presence (almost like reading a good book and being able to visualize everything taking place). The connection between me and her artwork was probably stronger than the other two artists because there is more I can relate to. When you see a picture of a tree, you know exactly what the picture is of- a tree. So when examining an oak tree foregrounded against a soothing, naturalistic setting, you are immersed by a pleasant, naturalistic sensation.
In totality, the Art Studio Exhibition II was very astounding and surprised me what great artists we have here at SMCM.

Rapunzel and LOST

“Rapunzel,” the fairy tale, was first published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm. Today, there are several versions of the story that exist, most of which were designed for children’s ears. However, William Thompson believes that despite the simplicity of the story, there actually lies subtle, complexities of the story that create different levels of meaning; in totality, there are four levels of a story: literal, structural, anthropological, and cosmological.
The simplest level of the story is the literal level, where everything is denotative. From the literal level you can sense patterns in narration. These patterns form the structural level of the story. For example, in “Rapunzel” one gains the sense that everything comes in sets or pairs. This is implied with the presence of the father and mother, Gothel (sorceress) and Rapunzel, the King and the prince, the twins Rapunzel gives birth to, and finally the complete union of Rapunzel and the prince. On an anthropological level, “Rapunzel” implies how a weak and unstable patriarchal society can be overrun by a matriarchy, but in the end the best relationship is a stable patriarchal society in the realm of Kings; however, for this patriarchal society to be stable you must have a unique balance of power and love between both sexes. Last but not least, there is the cosmological level of “Rapunzel,” were the story sets up order of the planetary systems. A Rapunzel is scientifically known as the Campanula rapunculus, a fivefold flower (five petals). Given the plants appearance, the character, Rapunzel, is portrayed by the planet Venus. If you ever observed Venus drift in the sky and connect the dots, it would make the shape of the Campanula rapunculus petals. Now you could dissect each and every story you have ever heard into these four levels.
Let us dissect “LOST” into these four levels. On the literal level, the story follows the lives of the survivors of a plane crash taking place on an uncanny, supernatural island. Structurally, you see that each person has their own problem, where the problem originated, and yet each problem cannot be completely resolved, just slightly improved. For example, Hurley won $144 million off of a lottery number; however, this number was not exactly randomly generated by Hurley. These numbers were seen by Hurley during his stay at a mental institution of which one of the insane people kept painting on a canvas. Ever since Hurley won the lottery, he has only been brought bad luck and many people involved with or around Hurley start to die. As a result, Hurley blames himself. Once crashed on the island, Hurley is faced with the several curses. In one instance, Hurley initially stashed a lot of food for himself, but feeling guilty for hording food and being so fat, he has his friends help rid him of the food. He comes to find out that there was a food drop from the night before. Hurley breaks away from his friends and restarts his bad eating habits. Again, his friends come to his rescue and help him reason. Even though Hurley solved his eating problem, he is still stuck on the island, which is still full of unwelcomed surprises. “LOST” is such an immense, detailed, and powerful story it is hard to accurately articulate every idea so when it comes down to looking at “LOST” at anthropological and cosmological levels, it probably would be better to generalize several theories. On an anthropological, “LOST” is all about how different people of different races must cooperate to survive and how you cannot have anarchy if anyone wants to survive. You see that order is only obtained when Jack is the leader of the survivors and you see how people like Jin and Michael must cooperate to get off the island together (even though their attempt fails). On a cosmological level there are so many people that groups of people can represent plants. There are the messengers, supporting actors, who represent Mercury (“the busy planet”). There are the main actors, who represent Earth and its fragile state, and the “others” (and other living evils) who represent Earth’s moon. I believe that the evil represents the moon because the moon is always orbiting the Earth and always has affect on the Earth’s systems and no matter what, we cannot not get rid of the moon without completely getting rid of us. Last but not least, the mysterious island represents the Sun which is the center piece of our solar system, and drives both creation and havoc on Earth.

reflection/response for Art21

Some artists’ techniques always fascinate me more than other artist’s techniques. I have always enjoyed creating drawings and making very precise, objective works; and when I view other artists’ works, I usually prefer to see more of the Chuck Close styles than Alberto Giacometti styles. Despite, the fact that some works preserve almost every single detail even if the work is transformed, I do not look for the artists’ reason or objective behind their work. I just simply like to enjoy their work. So why don’t I like abstract art as much? Typically because I feel that more effort is put forth to preserve every lasting detail and impression rather than just slop some paint on a canvas and call it art. I never said it did not take Giacometti hours to create his sculptures or drawings; I just did not enjoy looking at sketches that even I could have created. So now I want to give you an idea what I think about several artists I learned about during the Art21 viewing.
The first artist I viewed was Sally Mann. Her photographs were extremely exquisite in such a way that her photographs persevered almost all the detail in her pictures and yet gave them that old, historic, 1930 glass plated appearance. She was always spontaneous, and her work was like “her bible.” In fact, she had such a strong passion for her children and her work that she used her children as the center piece of her work. I liked her work because she was so dedicated to make her photographs perfect that they pretty much were. The next artist, Mel Chin, can be considered an interdisciplinary artist. His work is very admirable and ingenious. He takes decrepit, ruined houses and transforms them into something of worth and gives value to the city. Mel is also involved in preserving nomadic cultures by incorporating real nomad carpet patterns into a videogame that has you trying to figure out puzzles and you ways out of labyrinths for particular nomad tribes. Last but not least, he works on the revival field, which I think is the coolest art project ever. The revival field was designed so that plants called, “hyperaccumulators,” can take high concentrations of metals out of the soil allowing other plants to survive. The hyperaccumulators actually would absorb the metal into their system and be able to be harvested so that the metals could be recycled. What is cooler than a plant taking metals out of the soil and refining the metals by itself so that it can be harvested and allow the surrounding environment to sprout life in a once toxic wasteland? James Turrel is the third artist I evaluated. He is an environmental artist and an architect. His heart seems to be pure seeing as he designed a meeting house for Quakers and has been working on his Roden Crater Project for years, both which have been created to bring inner peace. With much dismay, the Roden Crater Project has caused Turrel many financial problems and consequently cost him two marriages and a relationship. I would at least wish him the best of luck of finishing the Roden Crater Project which already looks spectacular despite not being finished. Last but not least, I looked at Jabriel Orozco’s work. You could almost say that Jabriel is an inventor or a very abstract artist (except this is the type of abstract I like seeing because he is not the typical abstract artist who only paints or draws). Jabriel takes different mediums into different spaces and invents something total new. For example, he took potatoes and put them on books in a store and he took cat food cans and put them on watermelons (which I find very amusing). Let alone the fact he designed a cool looking car (even though it’s not functional), a clover-shaped ping pong table that four players could play on with a pond in the middle, and a circular billiard table with one ball suspended from the ceiling. The most outstanding concept behind his work is that he uses tools that everyone could use and yet, somehow, he makes masterpieces.

Digital Pictionary Project Response

The Digital Pictionary Project was very intriguing and showed us our own ingenuity potential. I enjoyed making the collages but it was even more amusing evaluating others. While evaluating others’ projects, you could also analyze the artists. Through the works, you could guess the word that the collages were designed to represent but in totality you could see how the artist thinks. It is odd to see how each artist thinks on their own scale despite limitations. So all in all, this was a great project.

After Life, the film

The film, After Life, might have been one of the most outstanding and creative movies I have ever seen. However, if you do not enjoy long or complex movies, this movie is probably not for you. The movie revolves around a special office building in which newly dead spirits are sent to. The spirits are not the typical ghost we usually imagine, but just an ordinary being. These newly dead people have to pick their most significant memory to take with them in their afterlife and only this one memory. To facilitate the memory picking process, there are a set of counselors to advise them; these counselors are also dead spirits but they have not picked a memory to take with them to the afterlife. Thus they are stuck to help the newly dead. After the dead people pick a memory, the counselors develop a movie for them. Then the dead watch their movie, and vanish into the unknown afterlife.
The two main characters are Takashi and Shiori, whom are both counselors. Shiori has a secret passion for Takashi; however, Takashi does not have the same burning fire for Shiori. When Takashi counsels one of the newly dead, Ichiro, he finds out that Ichiro married his (Takashi’s) wife after he (Takashi) died in WWII. Ichiro gets placed under a different counselor but Takashi is still troubled by his past memories. Throughout the movie, Takashi questions his love for his former wife and his somewhat interest in Shiori. In the end, Takashi decides to go in the afterlife and chooses to pick a memory of his former wife.
The After Life is creative because the movie does consist completely of actors but improvises with memories from real people’s lives. And oddly, the entire film is in Japanese and as the movie goes on and you read the subtitles, you give the characters specific and distinguished English voices (very strange if you ask me). Also the plot is very out-there and to have such strange situations (as giving the dead an option to pick only one memory to have for the rest of the afterlife, and to have romance between two dead people, the way their lives were portrayed in an old office building, etc) was a masterwork only a genius could design.

20 Line Project Response

The 20 line project was certainly a way to test our creativity and our artistic ability. The project was difficult in the sense that you were limited to only using the computer to draw 20 separate lines, each continuous from endpoint to endpoint and the lines could not have any real life representation (such as using 20 lines to draw a house). And we knew that we had to draw our lines better than the other students made us work to be more creative and inventive. It was pretty neat how much you could do with a simple line just by changing its color, size, and conformation to make the line not traditional line. So overall, yes this exercise did in fact make me aware of all the choices that I had to employ to make my art better than the other students (even though, there were plenty of other 20 line projects with more unique lines). By making me comprehend all my options, I was able to enhance the meaning of mine and other artworks; for example, even simple lines can take on an overall form and develop a sense of emotion. I had created over 40 lines before I picked which lines would be suitable for my display. Most of my lines were small bright red, orange, and yellow jagged lines with a smear of blue and purple in the middle to soothe out the violent emotions that the bright lines had brought out.

Internet Video Response

Even before Facebook and Myspace there were internet chats like Aim Instant Massager and Instant Relay Chat, and the only difference between the networks were the numbers of users and their sophistication. Facebook is an internet network in which millions of users sign on to and use this network to find their friends’ or potential friends’ links so that they could visit their webpages. On these webpages you could write your friends messages and these messages go straight through the network and right to your friends so that they could read it on their computer. Then they respond to your message and you would get to read the message they sent you. Even though Facebook is a “secure” social network, Facebook requires you to display a fair amount of personal information such as your birthday, likes and dislikes, etc. Facebook compartmentalizes such information; it displays a picture profile in the upper left corner, ads are the right side, and people’s messages are in the middle of the page. Even though I could add as many friends to my friends list, I do not feel like adding people to my friend list who I do not know in person (no matter how much information is displayed about them).
When Marshall McLuhan stated “the medium is the message” and in terms of Facebook, he meant that Facebook is a medium which has a message of its user and company owner. Facebook page is categorized into: “Home,” “Profile,” “Friends,” “Inbox,” “Wall,” “Info,” “Photos,” “Boxes,” and “Advertise.” Your home, profile, friends, wall, photos, and boxes categories are all dealing with your medium space and your message. In your medium your message is to all your viewers telling them “this is who I am” and “this is why you should be my friend.” The rest of the categories are the company’s space. In this space they tell you that you should buy these products, take these surveys to improve their products, and such. Even though the message might be clear, as in “this is why you should be my friend”, you cannot always trust what you see.
There are “predators” online that pretend to be your friends and in several cases, these predators have helped (persuaded) their friends commit suicide. In addition, some predators, stalk you and find where you live…
Those people who rely heavily on internet chats to communicate with their “friends” should be warned. With over 160 million Facebook and Myspace users, who knows who is really who? One out of seven Myspace and Facebook users had been sexually solicited through Myspace and Facebook. Our generation’s parents complain that they do not have an iron fist and cannot control the situation; however, the problem is not us, it’s them. According to most, this is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. This is because parents are not up to date with technology. If parents knew how to put internet and program restrictions and passwords on their computers, they could prevent their kids accessing harmful websites and limit their computer playing time. For those who know how to do this, they could set up passwords that popup before booting the computer, passwords for certain desktop users, limit certain desktop users to certain activities and a certain allotted time to play, and even a program that forces you to do math problems every so often. In fact, my dad designed a computer program that would start when you signed on the desktop. The program would force you to do as many math problems as you could in a minute. The more problems I got right in a minute, the more game time I would have before the program would popup next time and force me to complete it again. It was a good thing that I got to relax and play games but it was even better going outside playing ball with my dad or going to play football with my friends.

Purpose of Art

Is art defined by one purpose? Could every single piece of art have the same purpose? The answer is simply no. Art can be designed to entertain, persuade, or inform. We know that art is humans’ effort to mimic, enhance, modify, or offset nature. We also know that art is a conscious effort to stimulate our senses. But the meaning behind why we would stimulate one’s senses is up to the artist. Since every artist is a human being and every human being is different, we could assume that almost every artist has a different purpose for creating art; thus art has countless purposes and we may never be able to comprehend every specific purpose for every individual piece of art. Such as some art serves as a memorial, and some art serves religion. Some art is propaganda, and some art is simply made for entertainment. Some art is made as a warning, and some art helps us understand a concept. So in totality, art is complex and unique just like the human beings who make art.

Art21 Viewings

I examined five contemporary artists: Vija Celmins, Elizabeth Murray, Ann Hamilton, Bruce Nauman, and Mathew Barney. Even though their processes drove them as painters, each artist had a very different perspective on art and how to create art.
In Vija Clemins’ youth, she thought she would do the same painting of the ocean water all her life. Of course this got tedious and boring so she moved on to better things even though she did paint the same image of the ocean water on different canvases and with different utensils. She sees herself as a creator and even though she paints “corny images” with no symbolic meaning, she takes pride in her work. Her last painting which was on the stars in the night sky, has been redone nine times. Overall, she seems to be a very diligent artist and knows how to create genuine art strictly for pleasure and entertainment.
Even though Vija Clemins thought that her art was corny, I truly believe that Elizabeth Murray’s art tops her charts. She “harnesses the energy from paint” to create exotic shapes and images that produce conflict and tension. She creates enormous canvases with the oddest shapes and colors that looks cartoony in attempt to evoke questions. Even though her art seemed corny, odd, and misplaced when alone up in her studio, placing the pieces together in an exhibition gave the art a sort of theatrical function and seemed really neat.
You may consider Ann Hamilton even more out there than the other two artists. She used an old empty factory to setup fabrics dissecting the empty space into rooms. The lights of the factory were turned off and the only emitting light was the projectors and the projections revolved around the room. She also has the idea of putting a camera in her mouth to take pictures of what was going on in front of her. Even though it was a bit odd, I found her art intriguing. My favorite art work of hers was when she was at the Venice Biennale and she used spread large Braille markings on the wall of a room and a pinkish red powder flowed from the ceiling onto the Braille making their message visible. She used this to represent the issues of slavery and oppression in America’s society.
The artists just keep getting a little bit odder. Bruce Nauman tells himself that his art is presentable to one person then he could present it to a large audience. He also wants to make sure that what he is doing stays really clear even if he makes numerous accidents. He claims though, accidents “keep it real.” Even though he seems like a normal, sensible person, his art is not. His art drives me crazy and not in the good sense. For example, he has a video of him yelling “thank you” continuously over and over again; it only takes ten seconds before the yelling gets to your head. Even if he thinks he plans out what he does, it would seem to me that his art is more spontaneous. It appears to me that his art comprises mostly of videos repeating themselves. Some of my favorite pieces of his work are the objects that he creates that appear to have a function but cannot function. For instance there is bleacher that starts to go up but then is inverted so that it goes back down. There are also the stairs that go almost horizontally across a stretch of land.
Another intriguing artist is Mathew Barney. Mathew claims that he is attracted to even the most repulsive objects. His work involves the processes of life and evolution. He once wanted to be a surgeon but he just did not make it. Even though he left medical school, he was very educated in the biology, anatomy and physiology, and even art history and cultural production. He has used his knowledge to create very abnormal films to portray physical rigors and activities to explore the body’s limits. I believe that his dead horse film was one of his most interesting artworks. He created some sort of fabric that could go over a horse which was decorated to make it look undead. Even though I did not find out its complete meaning, Mathew surely created an eye-opening film.

Response to "Reading Images"

The “Reading Images” assignment was very intriguing and a very big eye opener. Overall, the task helped me learn how to analyze an image and determine where the image could have originated, how to translate what an image denotes into what it connotes, what is its significance, the method which was used to communicate (language), the differences between that language and another image’s language, and how transparent the piece of art is. Furthermore, I thought the assignment was a brilliant way to get everyone involved and thinking “visually” and it was unique to hear other people’s interpretations.