Laura's Review

"The Stolen Artwork Museum"

Laura's body of work has grown so much over this semester. She has taken her previous idea of art theft and pushed it to a whole new level. Her thread work is absolutely stunning and delicate. John and Adriana both appreciated the tedious detailed work. The only one they didn't like was The Boy In The Red Vest. They felt that the red was too bright and stood out too much. I think a more subtle red maybe something darker would have blended in with the rest of the painting better. I like her idea of cutting out the pieces and filling them with thread. The cut outs represent the fact that it is missing and was stolen. For me, the thread provides hope that these pieces are still out there, intact, and are just waiting to be found again. It's like part of it is still there connecting it to the museum, even though it is missing. 

It is such a shame that her piece was stolen from the All School Show. It also makes me upset that John and Adriana did not know about it and they are teachers in our department. Since it was an Art Ed and Art History all school show, every person in the department should have been notified about it. I also think the Arnhiem should have more security. It is left wide open all the time and a person could walk in and take something if they really wanted it. The Baklar and Paine gallery right next door has security and gallery attendants. Why should the Arnheim be any different? I can really relate to LAura because I had work stolen from me my senior year of high school. I know how frustrated she feels not to know what happened and to have little to no help from everyone. It is beyond frustrating. The fact that this happened makes me not want to submit work to shows at MassArt if we can't assure that they are going to be safe. I commend Laura for how she has handled the situation and how she presented the piece during the review. I am also really excited to see this idea develop even more in the future. 

Liz's Review

 

I'm so glad I got to see Liz's collection of work. Her love and care for tape is so awesome and intriguing. It leaves me wondering why she used tape in the first place. At her review, she turned the entire into an art piece. While somethings were displayed as full pieces, others were just documentation of her performance pieces from this semester. She was careful with how the documentation pictures looked to make sure it was just as presentable as the physical pieces. I love the way Liz's mind works. She uses this tape to create a whole new form of beauty. I'll never forget that one time in class she said that "tape is forgiving". Like what?! Who says that about masking tape? Pure genius if I do say so myself. 

I wish Liz had pushed the space of the room a little more. Both John and Adriana were talking about that. I would have loved to have seen giant tape forms or more tape protruding from the walls, or maybe just more tape on the walls or floor. It would have been interesting to see and entire section of the floor covered in tape. Adriana said that she would have liked to have seen the words she uses to describe tape (image above) actually shown to us instead of written. Maybe next time, Liz could play with those ideas and fill the space a little more. I can't wait to see where Liz's work with tape takes her next. 

Grace Black's Review

It was really exciting seeing Grace's installation finally put together in a space. She has worked really hard this semester, pushing herself and this childhood memory. The piece is about her experience remembering this memory and turning it into something physical.  When Grace was little, she slipped in the bathtub and hit her two front teeth on the porcelain tub. Her two front teeth were pushed into her gums and had to be removed.

Her suspended orbs represent memories and throughts floating around in her brain. Her color choices are muted tones that she associates with the memory. They work so well for me because all of the tones are sort of fleshy and remind me of the human body. Four of the orbs are clear- one empty, two with her actually front teeth, and one with a baby photo from after her teeth were removed. I love that you have to look through all the colored orbs to find the clear ones. The small teeth really make you look harder and spend time with the piece. A lot of people didn't like the idea of the photo, but I think it benefits the piece. The photo reminded me of my own childhood photos and make me think of some of my own memories. I think it helped make the installation even more personal for the viewer, but at the same time it makes you contemplate her memory and what is going on in the space around you. I agree with the fact that the space wasn't 100% perfect, but Grace didn't even like it herself. I'd like to see the piece in a smaller space, like maybe the one Kayla used! That way we could walk through the orbs and really have a physical experience with it. I know how hard Grace worked all semester and I think it definitely payed off.

**On a side note, I wish we had more information prior to review day as to what time specific peoples's reviews were and where they were. I had no idea that the times would be posted on the doors. I would have gone to look, but I feel like everyone in the department just assumed that we would know where to go.

Review Day!

Here is what my wall looked like for my final review! I'm really happy with how it went. I wish I wasn't so rushed/stressed with set up because I had so many pieces to set up and it took a while to get them to hang correctly. The order that we had planned on that morning of who was supposed to go didn't go as planned. I had to set up during Kayla and Darien's reviews. I wanted to be there to see their work and support both of them. I wanted to hear what John had to say about their work, especially Darien's because I had helped her set up the night before.

I am really happy with the feedback I got though. I got some great ideas and a good critique from John, Lyssa, and my classmates. I'm glad everything went well because I put a lot of time and effort into this work throughout the entire semester.

Final Phase

Wow I have not been on here in a while! Too busy working on my final phase!
I decided to do a series of three wood burnings on tree stumps. The series consists of a female, a male and two birds. The faces of the people are slowly being turned into skulls, showing that it is there but not fully prominent yet. The birds I have decided to use are the crow and the yellow bird. The crow is a symbol of life, death, and rebirth. It represents the circle of life connecting to the skeleton I have chosen to show on the faces. The faces are living with a hint of death thrown in, making you aware that it is always there. The yellow bird is there to represent the relationships that we have with the people around us. It connects the male and the female and makes you think about their relationship. It also makes you think about their relationship with life and death. It further makes you think about our own relationship with life and death.
I am really happy with these pieces! Here are some process photos along with the finished pieces.

March 19th- MFA Visit

At the MFA, I found a piece that was very similar to my work, surprisingly. I thought it would be really difficult to find a piece that connected to mine. The piece I found was titled Folding Screen by Wharton Esherick, from 1927. It is a wooden folding screen made from walnut and ebony. The screen is covered in carvings of patterns. There are also carvings of bare tree limbs and flying blackbirds. I thought this was so cool because it was a work on wood with carvings and carvings of birds! It relates to my work because my work is all done on wood. I incorporate carvings and digging into the wood into my pieces as well. The blackbirds relate to my work as well because I have been focusing on this idea of the mythical bird, connecting my pieces with this idea.

I also found a piece that was different than my work, but still incorporated some of the similar conceptual ideas. This is Freeform (Dinnerware decorated with the primitive pattern) by Viktor Schreckengost from 1955. They are ceramic pieces that include a tea pot, plate, tea cup and saucer, salt & pepper shaker, and a milk/cream holder.

 These ceramic pieces are all connected by the narrative painted on them. This consists of deer and people. It almost has a tribal feel to it. This is different than my work because it is ceramic and really 3D, while my work is on wood and mostly 2D. It does connect to my work in the sense that the narrative or decorations of the dinnerware allow the pieces to connect and flow together. My work has a sense of a narrative having to do with birds that is incorporated in each piece, connecting them together.

Artist Visit #3

I visited a gallery showing “Forms in Flux” at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. This particular show is a collaboration between the SMFA and Aichi Univiversity, located in Nagoya, Japan. The whole idea behind the show was to provide a meeting place for something new to be created from two geographically very distant locations. Working on opposite sides of the world, in different media and in different cultural contexts, these artists address issues of transformation, change and fluidity of perception. The artwork was all very different, but somehow managed to flow all together. The pieces didn’t seem out of place or random even though they weren’t the same media.

When I first walked in the gallery, I was greeted by Nobuyuki Osaki’s  video installation piece titled “Portraits of Mirrors“. I found this piece so interesting because not only were they projected onto the wall, they were projected onto hand mirrors which then projected the image onto the wall. This idea completely serves the concept of transformation because the mirrors warped the images, and the images changed themselves over time.

Moving further into the gallery, there was an interactive piece by Michelle Samour called “Windows“. This piece consisted of a table with several clear tiles containing pigmented abaca designs on them. As long as we were wearing gloves, we were allowed to move them around, stack them, and ultimately transform this piece. It was interesting to layer multiple tiles together and to see what other people had done to the piece before hand. The fact that it was also an interactive piece really made it memorable. Its not too often that you come across art that is meant to be touched and/or moved around. There is something really intriguing about being able to transform a piece of art.  I really enjoyed looking and interacting with these pieces.

Continuation of Phase II Update

Here's some pictures of my piece halfway wood burned and how it is at the moment. I meant to take pictures at stages in between but I completely forgot so this is what I have now. 

Phase III Topic- Final

I was super happy with all of the feedback I got last thursday during our phase II critique. I got some great ideas on how to finish the piece I am currently working on and ideas sparked for the last phase. After looking at Juxtapoz Magazine online- one of the recommendations from class- I found the artist Carsten Witte who I used for my artist statement research as well. He is a photographer from Germany and I am absolutely in love with his newest work. He does these intense black and white photos of women with skulls overlayed on top of their faces. Obviously since it has skulls and bones I am drawn to it! I am completely inspired by his work.

For my photo imagery on fabric final, I have decided to shoot headshots of all of my friends and overlay their faces with skulls. I am either going to print them as cyanotypes or van dyke brown prints, or maybe even combine the two. There is also a possibility that I might try solvent transfers as well.

For Phase lll I want to take a couple of the portraits and wood burn them onto tree stumps- an idea that came up last class. I might overlay some of the faces, I'm not entirely sure yet, but I'll experiment once I have taken the photos. I want to have the faces gradually starting to fade into the skull. I also need to incorporate the birds in some way but I haven't figure that out yet either. I know I still have some planning to do, but I'm really excited to get working on this!

Artist Statement Research

For homework this week, we have to research three artist statements. By doing this, we can compare the statements which will help us when we start to write our own. I wanted to start off this post with the definition of an artist statement just to get a general idea of what is expected of them.

Artist Statement: a short statement of one page or less, written by the artist, that provides background information and influences on the artist’s body of work, overall artistic philosophy, and a brief history of the artist’s development. 
(http://www.crt.state.la.us/arts/grantglossary.aspx)


I looked through a lot of Juxtapoz Magazine online and found a couple new artists that I enjoyed.
The first artist is Iain Macarthur.

 Iain is a surreal artist from Swindon, England. He works mostly with pencil, watercolors and pigment pens. In his work, he focuses on people and creating out of the ordinary portraits. You can find a lot of his work in shirt designs, tattoo designs, posters, album art etc. You can read his entire statement here. I personally love the amount of detail that he puts into each piece. It allows the eye to find something new in the crazy designs, each time you look at it. 


The second artist I found was Timothy Pakron. 

Timothy is a visual artist from Mississippi. He uses different mediums ranging from alternative techniques in the darkroom to medium format color film photography. Timothy is known for painting with the developer in the darkroom so that only parts of his photos are exposed. As far as subject matter goes, Timothy focuses on portraiture. He believes that a portrait has a sense of presence and weight. His goal as an artist is to make the viewer see differently, think differently, and most importantly feel differently. You can read his full statement here and visit his website here. I love the emotion that comes across in his work. The facial expressions and the strokes of the developer really give portaits a whole different feel. It really makes you think about his work and what message he is trying to get across. 




The last artist that I chose is Carsten Witte.

Carsten is a photographer from Germany. He is fascinated by beauty and the beauty that the female body holds. In his statement he says" It's always faces that fascinate me and this mysterious purity of really beautiful people. He photographs the female body focusing on the natural beauty and playing around with shadow and light to create these "icons of beauty". He wants to leave his work up to interpretation of the viewer calling his images "mystery plays" where you never know exactly what is going on. A main idea behind some of his most recent work is the "belief that everything is constantly changing, but photography can preserve the moment. Beauty is almost nothing without the knowledge of how fast it will fade". You can read his entire statement here. And look at his work in Juxtapoz Magazine here. I'm in love with his portraits with the skulls overlapping. The intensity makes the photos absolutely gorgeous. They connect to my work as well, and have inspired my idea for Phase 3.

Phase II Update! 3/25/12

I have finally finished my first piece for Phase II. Here are some images to show my progess! I'm really happy with the way this piece came out. I had some trouble with it, but was able to get past it and I love the outcome.

I have also started another piece for Phase II that I would like to have done, if not almost done by Thursday. This one is based off of an African myth about a Hammerhead bird. When a hammerhead bird learns that someone is about to die, it flies to their home and gives 3 cries of warning. I have taken my own interpretation of this myth and created my next wood burning piece out of it. The grain in the wood I have chosen to do it on is fantastic and I'm really excited to play around with watercolor on it. I've gotten a pretty good start on this and can't wait to finish it. Here's some photos from today:

Artist Event: Tufts University Gallery- Nancy Holt

I went to Tufts University and looked at an exhibit by Nancy Holt titled Sightlines. Tufts University has a really strong connection with the arts that I did not expect or know about.  This gallery exhibit for Nancy Holt had a lot of work and was very interesting to look at.

 Nancy actually went to Tufts and graduated in 1960 with a degree in Bio. She then decided to explore video and photo. Her work explores different parts of landscape, challenging you to focus on the little details of a particular spot. I particularly liked her piece Views Through a Sanddune, 1972 where she teamed up with URI and placed a cylinder through a sand dune making you focus on a small aspect of the landscape in the background. Depending on which way you looked through the cylinder in the sand dune, you saw two small landscapes of the ocean, both different.

You can see how she is combining her science degree and her artistic skills in a lot of her work. All of her work has to do with the surrounding environment of these cylinders that she creates. It is almost as if she is creating “the center of the world”. These cylinders are common in almost all of her work. I think this idea of focusing in on a small aspect of something really large goes along with noticing the little things in life. There is so much that we overlook and take for granted. I think  Nancy Holt wants us to slow down and look at the small things and appreciate what is in front of us. 

March 12th, 2012- Phase II Update

With Spring break and everything I realized that I haven't been on here in a while! I've been working on more wood wood burnings. For Phase II I've decided to use bird myths as my influence and inspiration for my pieces. I found an Irish myth that says when loved ones pass away they come back to sit on their family member's shoulder as a Raven. I've taken my interpretation of the myth and brought it to life in my wood burning, still incorporating the body, watercolor and carving. I plan on having this one done and another piece done for the critique at the end of the month.

Artist Exhibit- 100 Years at BU

The 100 Year Exhibit at BU was a collection of performance work from the 1900's up until today. It was set up in a timleine-like fashion with everything stapled to the wall, so you can take things down and put things back up. The works ranged from photographs, to actual physical pieces of art, to videos displayed on small monitors. The curator Kate talked about how all of the work is basically an archive saved onto a hard drive that  they could take anywhere and print everything out and set the show back up.

There were a lot of pieces that I liked, but there were a lot of pieces that I just didn't get or didn't care for. There were also a lot of pieces that made me uncomfortable and others that I just didn't like looking at. Although performance art is thought of as weird or there to make the viewer uncomfortable, there were many pieces that I liked. I started at the beginning of the timeline around 1911 with Serge Diaghilev's Petrouchka and 1922 Oskar Schlemmer's Triadisches Ballet and The Figural Cabnet.

All three of these pieces were ballets. Performance art back then was mainly theater and ballets. The costume designs and the movement of the body on stage were two "artistic" characteristics of plays and ballets. Whenever I think of performance art I think of more modern videos and I guess, focus on the more odd aspect of modern art today. I completely forgot that ballets and theater performances are definitely in the category of performance art. I think today though, those types of things are not necessarily but in that category because they are able to stand alone in their own categories. 

There were a couple piece where I had to ask myself, is this art? A common question with most modern art today, especially with performance art. A piece that really stuck out to me in terms of "Is this art?" was a piece titled Baby Ikki by Michael Smith. In this piece, Michael Smith is dressed as a baby and crawls around the street of Hartford, CT acting like a baby. Heres a short video that isn't the entire piece, but gives you the gist of what is going on in the video--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oZfbCm4UeM. I know this is a performance piece, but I don't necessarily understand it. I'd like to hear someone's opinion on why this is considered art. To me, I feel like he is just this man doing some kind of odd street performance that is commonly found in cities. I don't really see the point behind it. 

One piece that I really liked was 2008- Measuring the Universe by Roman Ondak. In this piece Onadk has audience members come up to the wall where he marks their height and the their date of birth. The idea is to have the entire galley covered. There are no breaks between the measurements so the process is completely ongoing. They also measure kids and adults so there are all different heights and marks on the wall. Here is a short video where he talks about this piece and shows the piece "in action"--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNiwsDnzFiw. 

When it comes to performance art I find that I tend to like performance work that involves the audience to make a physical piece of work. The process of creating a piece of art can be considered artwork all by itself, but to have an actual physical piece of art on top of that is awesome. I think this is why I like the Measuring the Universe piece. It such a simple idea but the process and the outcome make the idea so much bigger. 

Overall, I enjoyed this exhibit. I think that it opened my eyes to a lot of older work that I had never heard about and also newer work that I had never heard about. It also made me think a lot about performance art which is a topic that is not necessarily a common one to come across. I think now with more modern art it is something that we come across a lot more. It is good to get introduced to new ideas and new ways of thinking as far as art making goes, and I think this 100 Years exhibit did just that. 

Studio Today 2/23/12

So today in my studio I thought a lot about what the birds mean to me in the last piece that I did. Here is what I came up with: The birds are set up in a sunset-esque splotch of watercolor. They represent freedom and the idea of letting go. This is something I find beautiful in the decaying body. Our insides hold so much beauty that maybe we can only see after we let go of everything. This is the time where we can fully let go of the chaos of life.

I really like the concept of working with the birds, so I decided to do some research on birds in mythology. There is so much information to research and incorporate into my work with more meaning and context. I want to dive deeper into the meaning of birds in different cultures, incorporating them with the body. I'm going to spend more time researching and once I have almost all of it together I will blog about it!

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Be-Ca/Birds-in-Mythology.html#b

On a side note I added some carving to the piece I was working on. Still need to go back and fix some of the color and have them bleed together better.