Sculptures

We have reached week nine! This week we had a guest lecture speaker, Amanda Wojick, come in and discuss nine women who over 100 have really made an impact in creating sculptures. Furthermore this week we will be reading and learning about Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra and James Elkins.

           

Amanda came to our class on Tuesday to discuss with us the importance of nine talented artists who stand out to Amanda as being the leading sculpture artists over the past one hundred years. I was intrigued by all the work that was presented by these artists and how they use their creativity and combine it with scale and use of space. All three of those characteristics really caught my eye when looking at the slideshow. Even though I really enjoyed all nine artists that were shown in the presentation, I would have to say that my favorite artists are Yayoi Kusama, Petah Coyne, and Rachel Whiteread. Yayoi Kusama was an artist on the presentation that I was really fond of. Her style of art uses a constant pattern such as polka dots but she would add the polka dots to any and all surfaces. Best way to describe it is obsessive. I can relate to her in some way because I can’t draw the most amazing pictures but I often find myself doodling and using the same pattern over and over again until my paper is covered with this pattern. It was inspiring to see her take something so simple as a polka dot and transform it into something that is mesmerizing and jaw dropping. I was also amazed at how she would use the space in a gallery for her work. My favorite was the gallery room that had lights hanging from the ceiling but all the surfaces in the room were made of mirrors, which made the room look almost like an infinite space of lights. The other artist that I found creative and yet inspiring was Rachel Whiteread. I was amazed at how she used her work to counteract space. She would take casts of rooms and pull the walls and ceilings off leaving behind a cast of the negative space. What I found cool was how she turned that negative space into a positive space that people can look at and visually see space that wasn’t there before.  Amanda’s presentation was awesome and I’m glad that I was able to witness these sculptures. Amanda’s presentation came to an end after showing us the new generation of artists that were inspired by the previous nine artists and I cant wait to see what comes from these next up and comers.

            This weeks reading is on an except from James Elkin’s The Object Stares Back called “Just Looking”. To be honest this reading was a bit heavy and long for my taste but I feel that I got a grasp on some key parts. For the most part though the reading was interesting. I found myself thinking of different ways I use my eyes, and how my stare or look is used in multiple ways. What I found interesting when James writes, “ The moment I spend looking at sailboats and thinking of nothing is really an oasis for my eyes, a source of nourishment that lets me continue my pursuit of words.” I feel that everyone does that, me especially. Its weird to read how someone, like James, can explain that in a way that I would have never even thought of.

            There are two artists that we are looking at this week and they are Louise Bourgeois and Richard Serra. Louise Bourgeois was an artist that we were able to see in Amanda’s slideshow and she was number one of the top nine women, and her artwork can prove that. Louise is an artist born in Paris but soon migrated over to the U.S. and started her career in sculpture. She is very well known and is considered the 20^th century leader in sculpture artwork. Her work draws a lot inspiration from her childhood. When looking at her art I noticed how she liked to change the scale on her work such as her giant spiders to her “Touch of Jane Adams” piece, which was relatively small. I liked how she would also add a tiny object to an object that is bigger like in “Spiral Woman.”

            Our next artist is Richard Serra. Richard was born in San Fransisco and his early minimalist work consisted of using steel and other industrial materials. After his early years in sculpture he moved onto created pieces that used more space and were bigger. A piece that I found astonishing was the “Charlie Brown” piece. I was blown away by the scale of the piece compared to the size of the person walking next to it. What I also thought was neat about “Charlie Brown” was the medium that he used which, were four huge sheets of steel. To create something that massive with that material inside a given space was insane. Another attribute about his work that I liked was the constant use of the material that he grew up using but using that material that is so recognizable in such huge artwork pieces.

Comparing the reading from James Elkins to Magdelena Abakanowicz she says, “ Art needs somebody to listen to it’s message, somebody to desire it, somebody to drink it, to use it like wine- otherwise it makes no sense.” I believe that quote from Magdelena is similar to what James had to say in his excerpt by this I mean how an object needs someone to stare at it and look or see what the object has to offer. “It seems better to say that the objects are trying to catch my eye.” Art has a way of being created but letting the meaning of the art come from the person observing it. Art has multiple meanings and looking at the work that was shown this week it is fair to say that many people “see or observe” objects or art in different ways. That’s what makes art so unique to a variety of people because each of us have our own interpretation of what art means. Another comparison that I noticed this week was the artist’s use of space versus scale. Each artist portrayed their artwork perfectly with the space that was given to them. Combining space with scale I think is very important when doing sculptures because we get to see the size and placement of each piece, which gives the sculpture more meaning. 

Space and Scale by Silk Road Trio

                           Michael A. Salter and Yayoi Kusama artwork 

Art and Craft

Well we have reached week 8 and it seems like the weeks are just flying by.  This week we had our guest lecture speaker, Anya Kivarkis, come in and talk to us about Craft and methods of production. I have to say that I was actually really impressed by the work she had shown us because when I thought of craft, I wasn’t really expecting the level of creativity or ingenuity that this form of art had to offer. I was really taken back by the different methods of production that were shown but especially by the handmade reproduction artwork. I really liked the piece done by Myra Mimlitsch-Gray. This piece was a handmade reproduction of a tea pot that had only been previously shown in a historical environment but never used. What this artist did was reproduce this teapot or copy it but instead of having the sense of visually seeing the teapot, Myra decides to encase the teapot with a box so we can see that it is in fact just a teapot and not some cultural masterpiece. I thought it was really interesting because it allows other people to actually use and enjoy this simple yet beautiful teapot in a whole different environment. Another artist that came from the handmade reproduction group that I thought was really creative was Wim Delvoye and his Marble Floor #2 piece. This piece was a copy of a historical marble floor but instead of using marble, he decides to use salami and meat. Weird huh? That’s why I thought it was so cool because most people wouldn’t even bother trying to use meat to copy a historical marble floor but he chose to step outside of the box and into a new element of art.  There were actually a lot of artist that came from this slide show that I really liked such as Erin Gardner, Rachel Whiteread, Allan McCollum, Jennifer Pollock-Harris and Ted Noten. Each artist is unique in their own way such as Rachel taking a cast of the inside of a house or Allan’s “Shapes Project”. Each artist uses their own style into this form of reproduction or mass production and all of their work comes out to be astonishingly different and cool.

            This week we are doing our reading on a funny artist named John Feodorov. He grew up in Los Angeles but comes from a Native American heritage. Being Native American, he likes to use his culture or ‘sacred’ beliefs to help influence his style of art. To be honest this guy is a genius, a really funny genius.  I have to say that my favorite work that was shown in his readings had to be “Office Deities”. This is a piece that I’m sure most people can relate to but for me it really hit home. Both my parents work in corporations and from their work stories over the years I always had this sense of CEOs just being godlike figures in our society today. What I liked about this piece was how it was put together, it matched perfectly to the image I already had in my head before looking at his work. This piece gave off a sense of humor but at the same time a realization that this is actually going on in the world. People kiss ass to corporate leaders and I think that this piece really speaks for itself. Another piece that I enjoyed looking at was the “Totem Teddy bears”. Its not everyday that we see something this unique as an art form. I liked it because the piece showed his cultural background as well as making it in a form that other people in this day and age can relate to. Its crazy to look at because you think you are looking at this cuddly teddy bear but then you see the Totem mask on its head and realize that its more than just a teddy bear but something symbolic to the artist’s culture. All in all I really enjoyed learning about this artist because its neat to see how incorporates his culture into items or ideas that are familiar to others that don’t share that same culture.

            

           When looking at both Anya’s presentation on reproduction and John’s unique artwork its easy to say that these artist want to take something that is familiar with people and then change them and tweak them into something with a deeper meaning. An artist from the slideshow that I liked was Allan McCollum and a piece that I mentioned earlier that I found interesting was his “Shapes Project”. This project was done with a computer program and took images of people and morphed them into shapes of people’s facial portraits. When he had enough of these portraits, he took them and rearranged them onto stadium seats. So when the work was done we would be looking at this crowd of computer generated faces in a stadium environment. I liked this piece because it was an environment that we were all familiar with but instead of people’s faces, they were computer images. John ‘s work with the “Totem Teddy bears” shared that same style where he would take a familiar toy but then transform it into a cultural object. I also think we can compare john’s piece to Myra’s historical teapot as well. Both share a sense culture of history but when reproduced they look different and have different meanings. 

Nature

We are now in week seven. I never thought that week seven would come this fast, just yesterday I felt like I was writing my first blog. This week we didn’t really dwell on looking at art in our lecture but instead looked at how we interpret art and what art means to us. We pretty much were figuring out art,  which I have to say is pretty hard to do. Our presenter for this week is Carla Bengston and our readings go over William Kentridge, Roland Barthes, and Kiki Smith.

           

Carla came into our class and told us that she was a painter but during the lecture she never discussed her paintings. Instead of showing us her work, she talked to us about how we look, feel, respond and interact with nature. As we talked about that we also discussed how we, as people staring at a piece of art, look and feel about the work. We looked over other artist work such as DeMaria and Daniel Buren. What I liked about these artists was how they physically used themselves with nature to create art. It is one thing to paint a landscape but to actually use the environment around us I thought was pretty neat. What I mean by using the environment around us, we saw in class artist bending their bodies to the mold of the ground or using the ground as a canvas. I found the lecture to be really intriguing because personally I would prefer to be outside then inside and seeing these artists on the slide show doing creative art work out in nature is really cool.  A piece from the slideshow that really stuck with me was Earth Room. Just the concept of putting earth into a modern building really interested me.

            “Art is just a way to think”.  Kiki Smith was a really fun artist to read about and watch. I really enjoyed how she was explaining how art was to her. I always like hearing different artists discuss what art means to them and each person always seems to have a different response, but I really liked Kiki’s.  I also liked her response in the videos towards re-doing a sculpture; she would rather not start over but keep going at the wax sculpture. She doesn’t seem like a perfectionist but someone who lets the art do the talking. I like Kiki but I have to say that some to a majority of her work kind of freaked me out a little. For example her dead animals gallery installment. It freaked me out and just had a deathly vibe to it.

           

For this week we had to try and dissect the reading from Roland Barthes “Death of the Author”. Well I have to say that the reading wasn’t easy but was cleared up in class the following day by one example from Professor Ty, which was the picture of a man and his dog. We were supposed to explain how this picture made us feel and what the F%*$ is going on. After listening to other people’s responses to the picture, it soon became obvious that the picture had a life of its own and we can respond to it in any fashion we want.  What I kept finding interesting in the reading was the constant artist/author to viewer debate on what the work was meant to portray. I’m not sure if that makes sense but if you let go of your art, it will build a life of its own. When discussing the writing in class, we also talked about signs. I thought that this was an important discussion too because signs are universally born with a meaning. A cross symbolizes a religion even if it wasn’t meant to by the artist. 

             When trying to tie all these people together that we learned about this week all I can think about is how we interpret art and what do we get from art. All the artists share a similar quality when showing their art, which is tying art with emotions. When I looked at Kiki’s work, I felt an eerie dark feeling and while I looked at work such as the spiral jetty, I felt tranquility. It nice to look at art that has that much depth to it that doesn’t immediately pop right out at first glance.  Another important trait that was shared this week was art and nature and how they are tied together.

Art and Humans

            We are now in week six and our art class is taking a look at digital arts and interactivity. Our guest lecture speaker for this week was John Park who is one of the new members of the digital arts program at the U of O. His slide show was different then the other presentations that we have seen, not based on the art but how we can interact with digital media. We went over the different problems that we face when working with digital media. John spoke of four problems that arise with digital arts and they are the screen, commerce, zombies and art itself. I found all the material that was shown in the presentation to be helpful and enlightening.  The material that intrigued me the most were the examples of how technology can be interacted with art and humanity. An example from his slide would have to be the Volkswagen innovation video.  Someone designed a trashcan with a motion sensor to make the trashcan seem endless inside. The sound that the trashcan produced made people gather more trash off the ground just to hear the sound again. I liked how this simple piece of technology could make people more interested in picking up litter. Its little things like that that shows the power of digital arts. Another example that was presented was “reactable”, a piece done by the Pompeu Fabra University. This piece is a screen that has blocks on top of it. Now the blocks and the screen work together to create music. I personally love music, as I am sure most people do, so I was really interested in this technology. The blocks on top of the screen could be moved around and twisted to produce different sounds and beats. A piece on the slideshow that I found eye opening was the piece called “I want you to want me”.  In this digital arts piece we can see a bunch of balloons, red and blue, blue for males and red for females, these balloons symbolize people trying to find relationships across the Internet. I was blown away at how the design of the program was formed and how well the finished product looked. I really enjoyed learning about different ways problems could be solved in digital arts. I loved all the examples and came out of the lecture with a smile on my face.

            The readings this week discuss how art can be interacted with humanity. This was something that was truly cool. It can be sometimes boring looking at art but when the piece needs to be handled by people, I find that really awesome.  The readings look at the work done by David Byrne, Paul Pfeiffer, and Janet Cardiff. Each artist has their own unique style of allowing the audience members to interact with their art.  First up we have David Byrne and his musical building. David hooks up an organ player to an abandoned building but instead of hearing typical organ sounds, we hear the different sections of the building being played. I wish that I could try this out; I mean how many people wish they could just turn their house into an instrument. I really enjoyed this piece and the video of the children playing the instrument; I found it really funny because that would look like the reaction I would have had when trying to figure out this organ. I thought it was really cool too how the participants had the power and control over the art piece. Our second readings were on the work of Paul Pfeiffer. I thought that his work was very bizarre and different, yet fun. It was cool watching the video of the boxers but just seeing ghosts. It’s something that I was a little tripped out on at first but as I kept watching his other work I found myself being more drawn in.  I was also amazed at how patient he is while working. He needs to photoshop or edit during each frame, which I find time consuming but he finds meditative. I think that is cool how he can stay so calm in a form of art that I would just be really frustrated with.  I also like the Stanley cup piece because I was just trippy seeing the trophy float around instead of someone holding it. I like his work because he takes something that we are all familiar with, such as sports, and makes in unusual. Our third artist for this week is Janet Cardiff. She likes to take different approach to interacting the audience with he work. For example she uses audio to connect people to her artwork.  For her installations I watched the video “ The Killing Machine”. I didn’t really know how to react to this installation but I found it very eerie and mesmerizing. I especially liked how the robotic arms would move around giving the machine life. We had to listen to one of Janet’s audio walks as well. I chose to listen to a walk titled “Her Long Black Hair”. I was really not looking forward to listening to these pieces because I thought that they would be really boring but I was wrong. I thought I was a really creative way to get people involved with her art. It tripped me out a little because the audio tracks were so well done that it felt like I was walking around with her. Some parts even got me to jump a little bit because since we can’t see what is going to happen next, the new sounds seem to just jump out at you.  Another installation that I thought was really cool and different was the “Storm”. Even though we watched this in class I still wanted to write in my blog stating that it was one of the most profound installations I have seen.

            The artists that were chosen for this week I thought were beyond exceptional. The way they would create art that at the same time works with human interaction is beyond me. I would have to say though that my favorite artist from he three would have to be David Byrne. I say this because his piano playing building was just phenomenal. It was something that I would love to still try and/or create one day. What ties these artists together I think is humanity. They all could have done artwork that resembles all the others but they chose to step outside the boundaries and push the limits. A piece that John showed us in his slideshow was graffiti work drawn by a human eyeball. A man lost control of his entire body but still has a well functioning brain and with the use of technology he was still able to draw and then project his work all across the city. I thought I was just really cool how powerful art can be with human interaction involved, especially to that degree. I thought that all these artist were extremely talented and I’m glad that I was able to witness some of their innovations in art. 

PHOTOGRAPHY

                  This was week five of our winter term and on Tuesday we had a guest lecture presenter come in and show us a style of art that he finds interesting. His name is Craig Hickman and he came to show us the style of art called photography. I personally have always been intrigued with photography and how it can capture moments in real life. Another reason that I was interested with this lecture/slideshow was the different techniques that photography, as an art, has.  By this I mean how a photographer can add flash, change lighting, add or drop color, add artsy qualities to the photo and also how an artist can use Photoshop. There seems to be so many elements involved with creating photographs or adding to the finishing piece. I have to admit that I wasn’t much of a fan of some of the work that was shown because it wasn’t a style that I am particularly fond of. For example the photos of two people standing together, I just wasn’t to moved by it.  The work that I did really enjoy was actually the work that Craig did himself. The work that he showed us at the end of the presentation was really neat and creative. Craig would take photos of random sightings that he found interesting and then he would go back in later and add creative features to the photo. I thought that was cool because it added something unrealistic and different to what seemed like a normal photo. His work with finished photos kind of reminded me of Michael’s work because its taking something that we would look at then take a double look and realize that something is off about it. Its taking the normal and making it un-normal. To me this type of art is awesome and I can tell that Craig uses his imagination constantly to be able to take a photo of something then go I want to add this in there and so on. An artist that Craig showed on his slideshow whose work I find to be equally as entertaining as Craig’s, was Tony Mendoza.  The photos that Tony takes are different then anything I have seen before. I was prone to laughing while we viewed his work because most of the work that he has on his website is photos of his dog and cat. It was bizarre seeing these photos but at the same time I found myself wanting to see more. Tony takes his camera down to the dog’s feet level and snaps a photo of the dog, but what’s cool with Tony’s style is that he has these really cool environments in the background.  This makes the dog or whatever he is taking a photo of really stand out against the background and also adds life.

           

              For this week we are doing our reading on photographer Alfredo Jaar. Alfredo gets his inspiration to do art from tragedies that are happening around the world. It’s a real life event that he is trying to respond to in his work. Before going to Rwanda for the project he tells us that he was astonished that more people weren’t trying to help after being told what was going on there, “35,000 bodies in a 5 line story, on page 7”. Alfredo had enough and he went to Rwanda for 6 years and made twenty-one pieces.  I really admire Alfredo because he is able to take one single photograph and in that one single photograph, there is a whole story. A gallery piece that he did that touched me was the stack of pictures that represented the amount of people who had died. But what was the most shocking was the picture of the child’s eyes on all the photos that portrayed sadness and anger at the same time. This was a photo taken of a child who had watched his motherand father die right before him. In the photos we can see the child’s pain and suffereing.  Alfredo does a great job in capturing emotions in one single shot and then being able to add to that afterwards in his gallery is just amazing.

            

          To state the obvious, both artists Craig and Alfredo use photography as a tool or outlet to show what they are feeling.  Craig likes to take photos and add his sense of humor to them. Alfredo likes to get involved with what is going on in the world today and wants people to learn something from his work. But what I thought was cool that Alfredo mentions is that we need to blend beauty with horror.  I think that this applies to all artists. In Tony Mendoza’s photos of flowers we can see that they are beautiful but with Tony’s skills at the camera we are able to get more life from the flower. I find that an interesting thing about photography is how much emotion can come from a picture. I really enjoyed looking through all these photographers’ pieces because even though they all use the same tool for art, each picture has its own personal story and creativity to it. 

Fibers!

                                        

              As a class we were asked the question, “ What is Fibers?” We seemed to all be taken back a little by the question because even though it seemed like a straightforward question, we knew that there was going to be some trick involved. Our class as a whole depicted the art of fibers as working with fabrics, weaving, small components, dying and surface techniques. Well we were kind of right. This week we had another guest lecture speaker, Sara Rabinowitz, come to our art class and discuss her style of art with us. This weeks presentation I thought was very different and to me, very unique. When I think of art I imagine paintings, drawings, digital arts etc, but this weeks art was, as I say again, unique.  We were shown art created by the use of Fibers.  The art that was shown on the slideshow was really cool, from pieces created by agave to a life size images created from fabrics.  One of my favorite pieces of work that were displayed on the slideshow had to be the work done by Claire Zeisler. She is an artist that also works with fibers but what was neat to me was how her artwork was able to be free standing. I’m not quite sure how she was able to perform that task but from the images it looked pretty unreal.  Other artists that had an impact on me were Karen Reimer and Do Ho Suh. Do Ho Shu especially because it was amazing seeing his work and just the scale of his pieces; it was really cool.

            

              This week’s readings and media focus on two crazy and visually creative artists, Ann Hamilton and Cai Guo-Qiang. Ann Hamilton’s work from my point of view goes beyond just artwork. After reading about her and how she works, I got a sense of unusual depth and creativity from her.  The way that she goes in depth with her art, such as researching and how the outside world influences her, is very cool. She also likes to put herself in front of the work and visualize it from another perspective,   “And so, as a viewer, to come in, it's the experience the minute you cross the threshold: it's the smells, it's the sounds, it's the temperature, it's how all of those things have everything to do with the felt quality of ultimately what the thing becomes.” She understands that as an audience member and looking at a piece we should be able to feel the art and overall experience what the piece has to offer. A piece that I thought was interesting and very different was her suit made of toothpicks. She tells us how she felt vulnerable while in the suit because she too is also on display, but to read how she felt about herself in her artwork was neat. To me it showed a unique sense of creativity, I would have never even thought of doing something like that, a quality that is also found in the other artists as well. A trait that I found interesting about Ann was the way she puts herself into her work, “And so it's interesting to me to think about needing to work at that edge, but then actually living physically in the middle.”

            

              Our other artist that we read and learned about this week is Cai Guo-Qiang. I mentioned this artist in my previous blog because I find his work really creative and just plain awesome. I have seen some of his other works that weren’t shown in the readings and they still blow my mind. This artist is again very creative, I want to emphasize again on the creative part because it’s so true, from explosions to huge pieces that would hang over your head to pieces that most people wouldn’t even consider art. The reason he considers it art is probably why I admire his work so much. Work that he has done that I found interesting and radical was his work with explosives. His reasoning for using explosives is this, “Why is it important to make these violent explosions beautiful? Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.” What I found interesting was that the final piece, after the explosions, was unpredictable. He mentions that he will either like what was produced or dislike it.  I also liked how he compared his drawing to love making, he seems to really enjoy his work and has so much passion for what he does. In the video “Inopportune: Stage one” the artwork that he does is just beyond me, but what I thought was cool was how he saw this gallery and immediately imagined the space as a road. He then mentions that he took that idea and it began to flow like walking. It is cool to hear an artist speak about his work and how he processed the idea of creating it.

        

            Sara, Ann, and Cai all take their artwork to new brilliant levels. They all seem to use their culture and backgrounds to create such amazing art. Whether it is knitting, using explosives, or using the space that was given to us and making something beautiful with it. What I thought all these artists had in common was how they used their background to help influence their art. In Sara’s slide she mentions Ann Hamilton and shows us a video based on a gallery that she did involving textiles. I enjoyed seeing how Ann was able to take the history of the area and use that in her art to help show culture and her influences. Cai I thought did the same but used his traditions to help show where he came from and what influenced him. 

Week Three YEE

We have now reached week three in what seems like a fast moving term. This week our guest lecture speaker was Michael Salter, our readings were from Chris Coleman about the digital/ new media art and we learned about the complexity of Comics from Scott Mccloud. This week our focus is on icons and digital media and how they are a vital part of the art world.

Our guest lecture speaker Michael Salter stopped by our art class on Tuesday to show our class how he got to where he is today. Presently Michael has galleries on the East Coast as well as the West and is a Member on the Board of art. He began by showing the class what he loved and still loves to do which is graphic designing and drawing. He created logos and icons and became very successful in doing it through action sports companies. What I admired most about Michael as an artist is that he chose to opt out of the corporate art scene and decided to do his own work and “let the work sell itself”. He then began running his own gallery letting his work be shown as well as his friends work.

         When it comes to the style of artwork that Michael does, I find myself very interested and eager to see more of his artwork. My favorite pieces that he showed us on his slide show were the heads with necks as hands doing some type of action. Others pieces that I liked were the gigantic robots that were 20-30ft high. My favorite robot was the one sitting on the floor bummed out because he couldn’t fit in the gallery. The way Michael chose the idea of using Styrofoam, as the foundation of his robots was insane. The reason behind it was really cool too; to use a material that other people would just toss out or save, could be used to make statues of creative things such robots. While he was being questioned someone asked what Michael would do with the 24-foot tall robot after he was done using it in the gallery, and Michael’s response was similar to “toss it”. From this lecture I got the feeling that Michael, as an artist, that was laidback and realized that art is art and should just be fun.

         The Vocabulary of Comics, an excerpt from “Understanding Comics” by Scott Mccloud was the reading our class had to do this week. Before discussing about what I found interesting about the reading itself, I have to say that this weeks reading was more enjoyable thanks to the comic form. Anyways, this excerpt was about how comics are categorized, the different ways of drawing comics, how comics affect us and how the use of icons is important. First off, the way that this reading assignment was created was cool, a comic teaching us about comics. In comics icons are a big deal, they represent a person, place, thing and/or idea. The main types of icons are symbols, icons of language/science, and pictures. A circle with two dots and a line across it reminds me of a face, its trippy to think about how even the simplest of icons, can immediately tell us what they represent.  Another idea that I thought was really interesting was how certain items in drawing will gain life when interacted with the main character in the drawing, like an extension.

Our other artist that we had to study and view this week is Chris Coleman. His work too me is trippy and weird, at least until I read the description of his work underneath to understand what the hell is going on. His artwork holds more information than meets the eye. His work uses a ton of metaphors about the government, racism, nature vs. human related problems, borders, and problems that the world needs to solve. Work that I really enjoyed were the videos that used images from brochures. Those images, I thought, added more creativity to his work. Creativity was definitely a quality that I enjoyed seeing in the videos that I watched. An example would be his videos of his previous work in galleries that required the use of technology such as, Scape and Points of Volatility. The use of fans and conveyer belts was rad.

         

The artwork and information that was given this week was overall interesting to me. Michael and Chris are both very creative artists and it was cool seeing their work. Both artists have actually collaborated before to give us the series My House is not My House. I think the title comes from the human race building homes in nature and how it is actually nature’s house. The series was really slow but occasionally animals would appear and would be seen living their lives around our homes that were built on their land. A part that I thought was funny and surprising was in the third installment a bird is sitting on an electrical wire then out of nowhere the electrical box explodes as well as the bird. Random but funny. Connecting the readings to the artists I would have to say that icons and the use of digital media really connects these guys together.  

Chris Coleman
Michael Salter

Week 2 Art 101, Margaret Kilgallen and Laura Vandenburgh

The lecture, given by Laura Vandenburgh that was discussed in class on Tuesday January 10 was directed at the art of drawing. Drawing is a form of art that in some way or another has been done by every person on earth who has touched a pen, pencil or type of tool. Drawing,  “is the mark or trace done by an artist on a medium” – Laura Vandenburgh. After listening to the lecture and seeing the different styles of the way drawing can be done; I found myself puzzled at how complex and diverse drawing can be. In the lecture our class was able to see how drawing doesn’t just have to be doodles or just the use of pens and pencils but can be created with string, ropes, barb wires and other mediums. An example piece would be the cage of barbwire that looks to be levitating off the ground. Another example would be the three-dimensional pieces that seem to flow off the surface such as ink beginning to come off the paper in the form of a wire.  I really enjoyed the pieces of work that seemed to have more complexity to it rather than just drawings. It shows how creative people can be and how art is truly complex and diverse. Other art pieces have drawings that cover the entire surfaces of the gallery walls. 

 Some examples of drawings from the slide show were really interesting to me because of the mistakes that were left on the artwork. It’s always neat for me to see the mistakes done by artists and see where he went wrong and how they were able to change the mistake to form the final piece. Lines left on the artwork show the artists brainstorming and the decisions that they made. Another example of a unique drawing style that I found interesting and creative was the gunpowder piece. This piece was created by Cai Guo-Qiang and used the medium gunpowder as a tool for drawing. It was weird to see because I always envisioned drawing as solely the use of a pencil or pen to create art but was proven wrong because there are several tools that can be used to create drawings.

Cai Guo-Qiang

This weeks reading assignment, “Art Theory for Beginners” was chosen to give us some background knowledge of art history and where art is currently headed. The reading was without a doubt long and tedious but contained so much useful information on the several different groups of art. The readings mentioned how art can affect us and how we choose to interact with it. “The sensation of art, its transgressive feeling, is more important than the interpretation of it” – Jean Francois Lyotard. The reading took us into the more detailed aspects of art showcasing how a variety of art can be formed and created.

Margaret Kilgallen is our artist chosen for this week. Folk art, printmaking, letterpress and flat painting were influences for her work. She also as a child enjoyed looking at pictures of old topography work in books. Margaret found the colors that they were using really emphasized the “folk art” aspect.  She also seems to draw a lot from the strength that women have and I feel that she portrays that in her artwork. Margaret chooses to do all her work by hand without the use of any other mediums such as projectors and mechanics. “My hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting...that's where the beauty is." – Margaret Kilgallen.

Different points that I thought were noticeable and interesting between the artist Margaret and the photos from guest lecturer Laura, was how drawing can be portrayed on material that may not be the standard material to have drawings on. Examples would be how Margaret would draw full wall canvases as well as using trains or other surfaces to work on. Some of the artists that were shown on the slides were using different surfaces also such as writings and illustrations laid out across the walls of the gallery. The cool thing with artists using different surfaces to work on is how the surfaces can add depth or help the drawings feel more alive and vivid. Margaret mentions in the video, the one where she draws on trains, that the train itself carries history or has a folk aspect to it. She mentions that since the time when trains have been around people have been adding drawings to them. The trains themselves seem to have history written all over them and Margaret uses that to her advantage when she draws. In the video about Margaret’s piece at UCLA she talks about how at a distance the lines will look even and straight but when you walk up close to the piece you can see the curves and the humanness to the artwork. I liked that because it shows that she isn’t perfect and that you don’t need to be perfect to be an artist.  In the photos from Laura’s lecture, the drawings shown had similar attributes. Many of the pieces didn’t necessarily have straight lines but that’s what made the pieces unique.