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
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