Outsider Studio Visits

Last Friday I brought my friend Alexa to my studio and introduced her to my work. Alexa does not have an art background and has never seen my work before, so my challenge was to have a discussion with her about my work in a way that was straight to the point. It was meant to be practice for senior orals. All in all, I think it went really well. She seemed to understand what I was trying to do and asked really good questions.

Meet Alexa!

I talked with Alexa about how I was creating a visual experience inspired by my memories and that my layering process was a way to play with the levels on the surface creating movements throughout the support. She talked about how the different patterning made her stay "in" the paintings longer. The more time she spent looking at a piece the more excited she got and the more she talked about the physical aspect of the paint. She appreciated the text as telling a story for the artist but acting as a visual component for the viewer. She understood that the actual stories of the pieces only go as far as influencing the piece or acting as a visual stimulant. The finished product is meant to let the viewer have their own visual experience without any preconceived notions. 

After we talked for about an hour I took Alexa to a couple different studios and she was very generous and talked with other artists in their studios. For someone with a non-art background I think Alexa could hold her own here.

Mini Group Critique

I really enjoyed the intimate group critique. I feel like I got a lot more out of a small discussion like this rather than the standing in front of the entire class talking about my work for a few minutes then answering questions that are generally only asked by the same two or three people. I'm not sure what it is but discussions seem to flourish with less people in it. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to be able share with the entire class and get feedback from everyone. Maybe it was just the people in my group or the size, what ever it was it was way more beneficial than a class critique.

My group consisted of myself, Paul, Sean, Jack, and Meagan.
Here they are!

(Paul, Jack, the back of Sean's head)

(Meagan, Paul, the back of Sean's head)

What also made the talk interesting was hearing the view points of my peers that do completely different work than me. Not everyone was from a painting background and it was somewhat refreshing to listen to comments from people of sculptural or printmaking background. 

I got out of the mini critique that I have a good direction of exploring the theory of therapy through art making. We talked about the ability to announce or own the right to accepting things, bad things, that have happened to us. There's something about making a proclamation about it that tells ourselves that we are okay and can move on. We talked about it that it was just as important to use the process of making a painting inspired by an incident to make something positive for a viewer to experience. It wasn't that I was trying to change things that have happened to me, just process them in a way that I can continue moving forward.

I was asked how my work had changed since I came to Ringling and we started listing past works that I had done. And holy crap...it's dramatically different. In a great way though. I feel more confident about what I am making and excited to keep pursuing it with different processes. Another question was raised of why I use paint to make my statement. Why not sculpture or printmaking? That is something that I have not actually thought about. Recently I have been thinking about incorporating my painting with some printmaking and more suggestions were brought up today that I would love to try. 

Overall, I am happy with the experience of the mini group critiques. It should be interesting for the next round with all new people. 

:]

Recent excitements

Thesis is making me more and more excited about finding and learning about artist that are interested in the same ideas, materials or processes that I am. There have always been artists that I have been attracted to and inspired me but they didn't look like anything that I had been exploring. Recently I was introduced to artists with similar aesthetic as me.

Here's a couple for you!

Sean Landers:

Sean Landers was born in Massachusetts and currently resides in New York. A lot if his work contains written or painted text. I saw some of his work at the SYNTAX show in the Tampa Museum of Art. The pieces I saw there had dealt with free flowing thoughts and spontaneous writing, something that I have been interested in. He has other  works that introduce imagery with his text. I am personally more of fan of the ones with just text and color treatments. I find the text to be more of a visual aspect of the piece rather than serving as a story telling element.

Glenn Ligon:

Glenn Ligon was born, raised and stayed in New York. His work deals with race, identity, language, desire, personal and cultural history. The main concept behind his work explored the struggles of being and African American, homosexual man living in the United States. Ligon relates to my work in the sense of being strongly influenced from personal experiences and how he got through them. He uses a lot of text dealing with civil rights and sometimes creating images out of the text itself by manipulating the density.

I like to think that artists today are never original. As weird as that sounds. We are all influenced by other people and works, we appropriate things to fit our own vision. Not being original does not mean that we are not authentic to the ideas that we, as artists, explore.  I have no problem at all that my work is like other artists and visa versa. Its some what comforting that other people process and think the way I do. Makes me feel not so crazy.

 :]

Reading Response 2

In Peter Halley’s article “Nature and Culture” I found it interesting that the dynamics in art changed as society changed. He used the example and time era of World War II a lot. Art in that time period, and shortly after, was greatly influenced by the war. People that experienced it and lived through it became use to the idea of war and its affect on society. It became normal to hear about it on the news. It became an every day occurrence for people to die, for something to blow up, for some one to protest. It became second nature. A lot of art is based on the relationship of the artist to their immediate environment and emotions. Artists during World War II were heavily influenced by their immediate reality. Their emotions and experiences of that war influenced their work. Halley also stated that back in the Bourgeois period, a lot of laws prohibited any sort of impulsiveness and emotionality.  This goes to show how the constantly changing society evolves the style and approach to art. The generations of artists after World War II changed the art scene as well. War was not a second nature to them. They never experienced it in person. Photographs and stories may have given a taste of what it may have actually been like, but this generation couldn’t make any authentic work about World War II. Because their natural world was different from the World War II generation, their art was based on a different relationship. It was still a relationship with nature, just a different one. Halley asks the question about why certain practices of art that have been around for decades suddenly disappear and new ones emerge. I believe it has a lot to do with our changing culture. Things natural and common thirty or forty years ago either are or are becoming obsolete. Artificial and synthetic things are referred to as “natural” like perfume or deodorant because it is a normal necessity. Intellectual philosophy causes people to develop new trends.

Walter Benjamin talks about the importance and difference of replicating work. Making a replica of a painting almost devalues it. Take for instance the Mona Lisa. This is a beyond priceless piece. All the money in the world couldn’t buy it. It began to appear more and more as posters, cards, umbrellas, napkins and so many more things that could be bought for less than ten dollars. The authenticity is stripped not from the original piece but the copy. It doesn’t have the same essence as the actual Mona Lisa. Benjamin describes it an “aura”. It was not originally paint on a calendar. Benjamin compares it to film and the relationship between the actor and the character they are playing. No one will ever truly know a character in a movie 100 percent. The character is being channeled through the actor, like the original Mona Lisa is being channeled in a book. It’s not the real thing. It gives the viewer or audience a taste of the authentic character or painting. An actor will always portray a little bit of him or herself through the character they are playing. They are merely a representation of someone else.