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.