Lauren Purje is a cartoonist, which I recognize is not often seen as 'high art'. She studied art in college, but now is dedicated to comics and works for Hyperallergic, an art newsletter and website.
Purje got a painting degree at Ohio University. she says that she stumbled into comics - she originally was making 'fine art' paintings, but they begin to incorporate the cartoons. She showed several works that involved painted scenery with her cartoonish figures interacting with their surroundings, making a cool juxtaposition of these two fields of art.
Purje moved into just doing comics and not as much painting as a byproduct of her surroundings. It was easier to do drawing than painting in her small apartment with many roommates, and much easier to store drawings than paintings as well. In college, she worked on her first major comic project which was a 90 page comic translation of the play, "Waiting for Godot". She felt very connected to the characters and continued to make comic strips with them, mainly just for herself and her friends. It didn't feel as relevant after she finished college.
When asked why she likes comics as an art form, Purje stated that comics are straight to the point, rather than conceptually open ended like paintings. Keeping in line with the theme of immediacy, Purje said that she edits down her comics a lot, trying to use as few words and as few panels as possible. I think this is a cool contrast to painting, which often uses a lot of details to make a point.
I incorporate text into my paintings a lot, so it was cool hearing how writing plays a part into her work. She says writing makes it very easy to convey an idea, which I agree with and appreciate, and that neither image or text should work by themselves - they should only be complete when working together.
Purje feels that her work is more honest when looking naive. Her comic drawing style is very cartoon and simple, but because it can be done so fast with so few details, it feels more honest to her. I loved that theme. She said comics are also good for trying to connect with people like her.
Watch the Lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vR_531oVks
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Alison Stinely
Northwestern Oklahoma State University Artist Lecture series had a video lecture with Alison Stinely. This lecture was quite different that the ones I had watched before, as Stinely only focused on how she produces her works, not why she makes them or the conceptual ideas behind them.
Alison Stinely focuses mainly on the human figure - often faces and heads. She works both from life and from photo references. She uses photos mainly for expressions that models cannot feasibly hold for a length of time. Her work is very detailed oil and acrylic painting. She touched in the beginning about tight vs. loose marks. She explained to the group she was giving the lecture to how tight marks are usually made close up with the wrist, while loose drawing comes out more in pre-paintings, with tighter marks building on top of looser marks. A lot of her paintings seem very tight, which Stinely toughed on. She likes very detailed tighter works, and has been told by teachers and peers in the past to stop and not 'finish' her work. Her work from after college is a lot looser, as she purposely tried to not go overboard with the small strokes and detail in her paintings.
One think I really liked from Stinely's work is her dead animal works. She bought a pig's head from a butcher for $5, and had bird heads sent to her so she could paint them. This is similar to some paintings that I do, which is why I was interested. I also paint dead animals, and I thought her works were beautiful. She did not touch on WHY she did this, however, so my only assumption is that she wanted to draw and paint from life, as a still life piece.
I was really intrigued by one process that Stinely brough up, which included to use of shellac in her work. She starts with a thick rag paper, does a charcoal or pastel drawing, and then uses both spray shellac and brushed shellac to seal in her drawing marks. This way, she can oil paint over the drawing without tainting the paint or rubbing away the drawing. I liked the way the pieces utilizing this looked and kind of want to try this technique myself as a way of combining drawing and painting.
Stinely is also interested in glazing, the golden ratio, and mannerist painting. She uses bright "easter egg colors" in her works that she says were inspired by the pop of colors in mannerist paintings.
Some of her works that went past straight life or photo drawings were left unexplained. In some life drawings, she started flipping parts of the body, creating a slightly strange figure that was twisted in unnatural ways. I wanted to hear Stinely touch on the meanings of her pieces, especially one that I really liked, titled "Except Little Nan, Who Sits In Her Pan". (Seen below) I saw Christ symbolism, sexual symbolism, space and futurism themes, and an image of the artist as a child. I have no idea how to interpret this, but was very intrigued by the content.
Watch the Lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniDyhQOepg
Alison Stinely focuses mainly on the human figure - often faces and heads. She works both from life and from photo references. She uses photos mainly for expressions that models cannot feasibly hold for a length of time. Her work is very detailed oil and acrylic painting. She touched in the beginning about tight vs. loose marks. She explained to the group she was giving the lecture to how tight marks are usually made close up with the wrist, while loose drawing comes out more in pre-paintings, with tighter marks building on top of looser marks. A lot of her paintings seem very tight, which Stinely toughed on. She likes very detailed tighter works, and has been told by teachers and peers in the past to stop and not 'finish' her work. Her work from after college is a lot looser, as she purposely tried to not go overboard with the small strokes and detail in her paintings.
One think I really liked from Stinely's work is her dead animal works. She bought a pig's head from a butcher for $5, and had bird heads sent to her so she could paint them. This is similar to some paintings that I do, which is why I was interested. I also paint dead animals, and I thought her works were beautiful. She did not touch on WHY she did this, however, so my only assumption is that she wanted to draw and paint from life, as a still life piece.
I was really intrigued by one process that Stinely brough up, which included to use of shellac in her work. She starts with a thick rag paper, does a charcoal or pastel drawing, and then uses both spray shellac and brushed shellac to seal in her drawing marks. This way, she can oil paint over the drawing without tainting the paint or rubbing away the drawing. I liked the way the pieces utilizing this looked and kind of want to try this technique myself as a way of combining drawing and painting.
Stinely is also interested in glazing, the golden ratio, and mannerist painting. She uses bright "easter egg colors" in her works that she says were inspired by the pop of colors in mannerist paintings.
Some of her works that went past straight life or photo drawings were left unexplained. In some life drawings, she started flipping parts of the body, creating a slightly strange figure that was twisted in unnatural ways. I wanted to hear Stinely touch on the meanings of her pieces, especially one that I really liked, titled "Except Little Nan, Who Sits In Her Pan". (Seen below) I saw Christ symbolism, sexual symbolism, space and futurism themes, and an image of the artist as a child. I have no idea how to interpret this, but was very intrigued by the content.
Watch the Lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniDyhQOepg
Judy Chicago
As part of a group called "The B Word Project", Judy Chicago gave a lecture talking about her artwork and the many ways it has been censored over the years and the different forms that censorship can take.
The forms of censorship I heard her explicitly mention are as follows:
- self-censorship
- covert censorship
- misrepresentation
- art ending up in the basement
- people only knowing one artwork from a woman artist
- women's history not being taught
- hypocrisy.
I was (and still am) having a hard time seeing how these actions ALL fall under censorship, so I looked up the definition. According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of censorship is:
"The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
The forms of censorship I heard her explicitly mention are as follows:
- self-censorship
- covert censorship
- misrepresentation
- art ending up in the basement
- people only knowing one artwork from a woman artist
- women's history not being taught
- hypocrisy.
I was (and still am) having a hard time seeing how these actions ALL fall under censorship, so I looked up the definition. According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of censorship is:
"The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
I think Judy Chicago must be talking about suppression in most of these cases, because very rarely was her work prohibited under the guidelines she set up. While I don't quite believe these all apply in my own perception of censorship, I can understand that Judy Chicago has faced many obstacles in her feminist artwork.
In graduate school, Chicago began to self-censor. Her male teachers didn't like the female forms in her works, so she made her art work gender-less in the 1960's. She began working in monumental sculpture and minimalist, colorful artwork instead, but found that she was still being censored. A curator refused to look at her pieces, telling her later, "What was i supposed to do when i saw a woman make artwork stronger than male work?" She states that this is covert censorship - refusing to look at something.
In talking about her piece, "Dinner Party", Chicago said that misrepresentation is censorship. The New York Times published a review about her Dinner Party artwork stating that it is "Vaginas on plates". I can see why Chicago could see this as censorship, if the author is purposely making the work seem crass in order to dissuade people from seeing it, but to me it sounds like a bad review written by someone who did not understand the work. I think labeling this as censorship is extreme, especially since not everyone will like or understand your artwork.
Later, Chicago began donating her works to museums' permanent collection, hoping to get around censorship by gifting works. However, even though her works were a part of a museum, they would get shown in an unimportant place in the museum, such as the basement or a closet-esque room. She said this is censorship as well.
Probably the form of censorship that she stated that I least agree with is the idea that people only know Chicago and other women artists for one work. She said it is censorship that women's artwork is not more vastly known, which I think is absurd, since I feel most artists are known for one work! Many people only know Van Gogh's starry night or Picasso's Guernica. I think it's silly to describe the practice of learning about an artist's most important works as censorship.
She also mentioned that women's history is not well taught at schools, forcing womens artists to "recreate the wheel" instead of their art growing on or improving upon what came earlier. She called this censorship as well. She also said hypocracy is censorship, which I just really did not understand her reasoning for, since she did not elaborate on that concept.
While I disagreed with several things Chicago said in her lecture, I did gather some gems of knowledge. The idea of self-censorship was interesting to me. In her sphere, it was the idea of women making artwork that looks like a man made it, but in a broader sphere, I am interested in the idea of how sad it is to not make artwork that feels true to yourself. She said "If you censor yourself, you cannot be fully yourself as an artist", which I thought was a great idea.
I was also interested in how Chicago apprenticed herself to a china maker. That is interesting and made me think of how if your education does not take you where you want to go, you need to find a route to learn what you want to learn. Chicago also worked with organizations and collectives that supported her artwork, stating, "make your own support system if the art world will not support you". I liked that idea as well - it kind of goes against institutionalism. If the art world doesn't like your artwork, that does not mean you stop doing your artwork! You just find people who will look at your artwork and share with them.
Watch here:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjjTEydL3Q4
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHf6cJhgfeU
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AtSgHzp2bE
Later, Chicago began donating her works to museums' permanent collection, hoping to get around censorship by gifting works. However, even though her works were a part of a museum, they would get shown in an unimportant place in the museum, such as the basement or a closet-esque room. She said this is censorship as well.
Probably the form of censorship that she stated that I least agree with is the idea that people only know Chicago and other women artists for one work. She said it is censorship that women's artwork is not more vastly known, which I think is absurd, since I feel most artists are known for one work! Many people only know Van Gogh's starry night or Picasso's Guernica. I think it's silly to describe the practice of learning about an artist's most important works as censorship.
She also mentioned that women's history is not well taught at schools, forcing womens artists to "recreate the wheel" instead of their art growing on or improving upon what came earlier. She called this censorship as well. She also said hypocracy is censorship, which I just really did not understand her reasoning for, since she did not elaborate on that concept.
While I disagreed with several things Chicago said in her lecture, I did gather some gems of knowledge. The idea of self-censorship was interesting to me. In her sphere, it was the idea of women making artwork that looks like a man made it, but in a broader sphere, I am interested in the idea of how sad it is to not make artwork that feels true to yourself. She said "If you censor yourself, you cannot be fully yourself as an artist", which I thought was a great idea.
I was also interested in how Chicago apprenticed herself to a china maker. That is interesting and made me think of how if your education does not take you where you want to go, you need to find a route to learn what you want to learn. Chicago also worked with organizations and collectives that supported her artwork, stating, "make your own support system if the art world will not support you". I liked that idea as well - it kind of goes against institutionalism. If the art world doesn't like your artwork, that does not mean you stop doing your artwork! You just find people who will look at your artwork and share with them.
Watch here:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjjTEydL3Q4
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHf6cJhgfeU
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AtSgHzp2bE
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Laura Jean Gabert
Northwestern Oklahoma State University's lecture series had Laura Jean Gabert on a call to talk about her artwork. Her lecture consisted of a slideshow of her work while she talked about each one and her process. Gabert also works as an art therapist, and at the beginning of her lecture, talked about flow, the mental state she gets in when she works that combines hyper awareness and auto-pilot.
Gabert does a lot of mixed media. Her first shown works (older) included a lot of printmaking backgrounds with watercolor and ink layers on top, but as the lecture progressed, I saw a lot less printmaking and a lot more watercolors. Her subjects mainly consist of female figures. She was influenced by fashion drawings - the strong lines work their way into her work.
Gabert's process is what is important to her. She likes just enjoying the process of making things, not needing a rigid set of things to do or get to. This idea of continual discover and exploratory technique is central to her work. She believes in physically working on a piece until you figure out what you're doing. You explore the work with your hands on the paper, but you also do research to help build a theme or idea. She described this as starting a piece to kind of see where it could be going, and then stepping back and taking time to be inspired by things around you.
This whole process is very in line with Gabert's other line of work. She works as an art therapist and a crisis worker, so she spends a lot of time working as "a sponge" for other peoples' pain. Making art brings self care to her and heals her, which makes sense with her art therapy career.
As for meaning in Gabert's pieces, she is a big advocate of finding meaning after or while making a piece, not before making it. I think this is a fun way to work, though it is not really the way I choose to do my artwork. Asking the question, "What could this mean", though, also opens up new routes of discovery, which I appreciated. It helps ideas progress and grow.
Gabert does a lot of mixed media. Her first shown works (older) included a lot of printmaking backgrounds with watercolor and ink layers on top, but as the lecture progressed, I saw a lot less printmaking and a lot more watercolors. Her subjects mainly consist of female figures. She was influenced by fashion drawings - the strong lines work their way into her work.
Gabert's process is what is important to her. She likes just enjoying the process of making things, not needing a rigid set of things to do or get to. This idea of continual discover and exploratory technique is central to her work. She believes in physically working on a piece until you figure out what you're doing. You explore the work with your hands on the paper, but you also do research to help build a theme or idea. She described this as starting a piece to kind of see where it could be going, and then stepping back and taking time to be inspired by things around you.
This whole process is very in line with Gabert's other line of work. She works as an art therapist and a crisis worker, so she spends a lot of time working as "a sponge" for other peoples' pain. Making art brings self care to her and heals her, which makes sense with her art therapy career.
As for meaning in Gabert's pieces, she is a big advocate of finding meaning after or while making a piece, not before making it. I think this is a fun way to work, though it is not really the way I choose to do my artwork. Asking the question, "What could this mean", though, also opens up new routes of discovery, which I appreciated. It helps ideas progress and grow.
Monday, April 22, 2019
Jaime Foster
Northwestern Oklahoma State University's video guest artist lecture series did a lecture with Jaime Foster.
She is a self taught painter and photographer. She used to take old barn doors and paint them. This kind of propelled her into her current painting career. She does abstract work with acrylic, mixed media, and India ink on wood canvas.
Foster started to detail her process for working on her paintings, but I think she got distracted and did not finish it, because what she said didn't sound like it lined up with how long she said her paintings take. She said she starts with making a foundation for the background, then using a dip pen with India ink outlines areas that speak to her. She also mentioned that she adds paper and mixed media, trying to incorporate colors and ideas what what she is looking at. Her technique changes in each piece, and two of the pieces she showed took 100 hours each. I am sure she must do more layers of painting in between, since her background foundation painting looked very different than the finished result.
Her paintings are often based in nature - they are abstract but use features from mountains or glaciers. The titles all come from songs that she likes. I really don't understand how that works with her theme of nature, but she listens to music while she paints so maybe she just picks a song that sticks out to her?
One piece in particular, titled "Cease to Begin" was inspired by her move from the pacific north west to Chicago. The mountainous setting of the Cascade mountains was a big inspiration for the forms in the piece. When asked about her color palettes, she said one was inspired by place, but when asked about the colors in "Cease to Begin", stated, "That's the beauty of abstract", which I honestly thought sounded like a cop-out. I really liked the finished results of Foster's paintings, especially the India ink outlines over the paint, but I just could not understand the themes or why she does these works. I think she just paints to paint and uses random colors or does what she feels like, which is fine, but I wish she could have clarified that and not put her work in some mysterious category for people to interpret.
Watch the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN3ow3E6Eec
She is a self taught painter and photographer. She used to take old barn doors and paint them. This kind of propelled her into her current painting career. She does abstract work with acrylic, mixed media, and India ink on wood canvas.
Foster started to detail her process for working on her paintings, but I think she got distracted and did not finish it, because what she said didn't sound like it lined up with how long she said her paintings take. She said she starts with making a foundation for the background, then using a dip pen with India ink outlines areas that speak to her. She also mentioned that she adds paper and mixed media, trying to incorporate colors and ideas what what she is looking at. Her technique changes in each piece, and two of the pieces she showed took 100 hours each. I am sure she must do more layers of painting in between, since her background foundation painting looked very different than the finished result.
Her paintings are often based in nature - they are abstract but use features from mountains or glaciers. The titles all come from songs that she likes. I really don't understand how that works with her theme of nature, but she listens to music while she paints so maybe she just picks a song that sticks out to her?
One piece in particular, titled "Cease to Begin" was inspired by her move from the pacific north west to Chicago. The mountainous setting of the Cascade mountains was a big inspiration for the forms in the piece. When asked about her color palettes, she said one was inspired by place, but when asked about the colors in "Cease to Begin", stated, "That's the beauty of abstract", which I honestly thought sounded like a cop-out. I really liked the finished results of Foster's paintings, especially the India ink outlines over the paint, but I just could not understand the themes or why she does these works. I think she just paints to paint and uses random colors or does what she feels like, which is fine, but I wish she could have clarified that and not put her work in some mysterious category for people to interpret.
Watch the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN3ow3E6Eec
Roni Feldman
Roni Feldman skyped into Northwestern Oklahoma State University to do a guest artist lecture. He is currently working as a lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design. His website is http://www.ronifeldmanfineart.com/ .
At the beginning of the lecture, Roni Feldman listed some of his art influences as: baroque artists (As pertaining to the figure), mark Rothko's color-field painting, and James Turrell. I didn't see the influence of baroque art or Turrell as well when I looked at his art, but he does point out where color-field painting influences his work.
Roni paints with an airbrush! He does airbrushed acrylic on wood panel. In the beginning, he masked off part of the wood to get sharp lines using tape cut out with an x-acto knife. However, very quickly he began to transition to using the airbrush by itself, leaving softer edges.
He wanted to react towards political art, so he began documenting protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles that he saw - trying to hit on the anger and non-peace of antiwar protests. He wanted to talk about how violent anti-violent protests can be. From there, his work gets hazier (first as he stopped using tape to create hard lines) and he begins to focus on crowds rather than protests - his work gets more colorful and the people begin to dissolve, touching on the Rothko color-fields that he loves. He also brings in more abstract and geometric shapes, adding grids or lines over the work: in his words, giving himself more freedom.
My favorite of Feldman's work are his black paintings! These are done in glossy black and matte black paintings, so that they looks completely black until the light hits it in a certain way. He said he was interested in how light interacts, and he wanted to make viewers interact with his work. He touched on the meditative experience of art: that art is not instantly gratifying and the viewer has to take it in slowly and think about what it means. I was impressed with how well Feldman's concepts interact with his methods: because he wants viewers to spend time with his work, he purposely uses materials that require people to take the time to view his work from different angles. It cannot simply be glanced at and passed over, because the viewer needs to work to see it.
I also felt that I could never do work like Roni Feldman does. He mentioned several times how his medium is unforgiving - that it is impossible to correct mistakes with an airbrush, (Specifically in his white paint on white fabric works) and how when he messes up, he has to start over. This is definitely not how I want to work, but Feldman is all about how precise his work is, so it makes sense why he does that. I thought it was ironic that his works are so precise, but he works in a blurry medium of airbrushing.
Watch the Lecture Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRCsz861G7g
At the beginning of the lecture, Roni Feldman listed some of his art influences as: baroque artists (As pertaining to the figure), mark Rothko's color-field painting, and James Turrell. I didn't see the influence of baroque art or Turrell as well when I looked at his art, but he does point out where color-field painting influences his work.
Roni paints with an airbrush! He does airbrushed acrylic on wood panel. In the beginning, he masked off part of the wood to get sharp lines using tape cut out with an x-acto knife. However, very quickly he began to transition to using the airbrush by itself, leaving softer edges.
He wanted to react towards political art, so he began documenting protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles that he saw - trying to hit on the anger and non-peace of antiwar protests. He wanted to talk about how violent anti-violent protests can be. From there, his work gets hazier (first as he stopped using tape to create hard lines) and he begins to focus on crowds rather than protests - his work gets more colorful and the people begin to dissolve, touching on the Rothko color-fields that he loves. He also brings in more abstract and geometric shapes, adding grids or lines over the work: in his words, giving himself more freedom.
My favorite of Feldman's work are his black paintings! These are done in glossy black and matte black paintings, so that they looks completely black until the light hits it in a certain way. He said he was interested in how light interacts, and he wanted to make viewers interact with his work. He touched on the meditative experience of art: that art is not instantly gratifying and the viewer has to take it in slowly and think about what it means. I was impressed with how well Feldman's concepts interact with his methods: because he wants viewers to spend time with his work, he purposely uses materials that require people to take the time to view his work from different angles. It cannot simply be glanced at and passed over, because the viewer needs to work to see it.
I also felt that I could never do work like Roni Feldman does. He mentioned several times how his medium is unforgiving - that it is impossible to correct mistakes with an airbrush, (Specifically in his white paint on white fabric works) and how when he messes up, he has to start over. This is definitely not how I want to work, but Feldman is all about how precise his work is, so it makes sense why he does that. I thought it was ironic that his works are so precise, but he works in a blurry medium of airbrushing.
Watch the Lecture Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRCsz861G7g
Kristin Texeira
I watched a guest lecture from Northwestern Oklahoma State University. Kristin Texeira is an artist located in Boston. Here is her website: http://www.kristintexeira.com/ .
She shared about her residency with the Golden Artist residency - a residency with the golden paint company. She shared how she learned a lot more about acrylic painting, while she normally is an oil painter. Structure is important in her work - her work is often based on interaction and new experiences. She tries to "preserve and document" objects as proof of her life.
She walked us through her art chronologically - starting with very representational paintings in 2009, then focusing on shadows and getting more abstract, moving towards simple mark-making after school, playing around with marks and reacting to them, then moving towards pinpointing certain moments or places from her life. This last theme is very important to her for documenting the proof that things, events, or people exist in time and space, which seems to be a central theme for her artwork.
When asked in a Q&A how she transitioned from representational work to the more abstract work she does now, Texeira mentioned that it was due to seeing and learning about more artists. I never really thought about this as a way for artwork to develop, but it makes sense that seeing art that you like or dislike will change your way of thinking about your own practice and help you develop or change your focus.
I was interested in Texeira's memory maps - a series she has where she talks to her Grandmother about memories and tries to paint a scene based on the descriptions and feelings she gets from the conversation. This was interesting to me because it shows how the artists documentation is abstract - she is documenting real events, but through a lens of perception, memory, and feeling.
Watch the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbDvvUvlTBI
She shared about her residency with the Golden Artist residency - a residency with the golden paint company. She shared how she learned a lot more about acrylic painting, while she normally is an oil painter. Structure is important in her work - her work is often based on interaction and new experiences. She tries to "preserve and document" objects as proof of her life.
She walked us through her art chronologically - starting with very representational paintings in 2009, then focusing on shadows and getting more abstract, moving towards simple mark-making after school, playing around with marks and reacting to them, then moving towards pinpointing certain moments or places from her life. This last theme is very important to her for documenting the proof that things, events, or people exist in time and space, which seems to be a central theme for her artwork.
When asked in a Q&A how she transitioned from representational work to the more abstract work she does now, Texeira mentioned that it was due to seeing and learning about more artists. I never really thought about this as a way for artwork to develop, but it makes sense that seeing art that you like or dislike will change your way of thinking about your own practice and help you develop or change your focus.
I was interested in Texeira's memory maps - a series she has where she talks to her Grandmother about memories and tries to paint a scene based on the descriptions and feelings she gets from the conversation. This was interesting to me because it shows how the artists documentation is abstract - she is documenting real events, but through a lens of perception, memory, and feeling.
Watch the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbDvvUvlTBI
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