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.