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.