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
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Annie Poon
Annie Poon is a stop motion animator who gave a lecture at the BYU Museum of Art in 2017. Her animations are done with cut out pieces of paper that are drawn on with ink. Annie shared that a lot of her artwork was influenced by the idea of play: she and her twin sister used to put on plays with paper and make little paper people, and this came back to her when she was in college in New York City much later in life, when she was an adult and married, and really influenced her work.
Play, paper, stories, childhood experience, and depression all were big influences in her artwork. Several of her animations are recreations of games she used to play as a child, or stories she liked. She also has done several animations based on her depression.
"The Split House" is one animation that she has worked on over the course of 10 years, and has several influences. The scenery was both influenced by the town of Split, Croatia, where she served her LDS mission, and also the start of bipolar disorder, which she began to develop, it sounds like. Split families also play a part in this idea as well. She references specific people from her life and also C.S. Lewis books several times.
I was really impressed by the technical idea of using multiple layers of plexiglass in paper animation to make darker shadows. It made a beautiful effect in her films.
Play, paper, stories, childhood experience, and depression all were big influences in her artwork. Several of her animations are recreations of games she used to play as a child, or stories she liked. She also has done several animations based on her depression.
"The Split House" is one animation that she has worked on over the course of 10 years, and has several influences. The scenery was both influenced by the town of Split, Croatia, where she served her LDS mission, and also the start of bipolar disorder, which she began to develop, it sounds like. Split families also play a part in this idea as well. She references specific people from her life and also C.S. Lewis books several times.
I was really impressed by the technical idea of using multiple layers of plexiglass in paper animation to make darker shadows. It made a beautiful effect in her films.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Aundrea Frahm
In the archives of studio seminar lectures given in past semesters, I found a presentation by Aundrea Frahm of the Art Ed. department at BYU. Her giant kaleidoscope, titled "We Revolve Ceaseless" was on display in the MOA between 2015 and 2016, if I remember correctly. I adored this piece when I saw and interacted with it, and was very interested to hear about what went into the creation of it.
The first thing that struck me was how helpful working with others was to the creation of Frahm's artwork. She mentioned how in constructing kaleidoscope, someone walked by, asked about it, and recommended someone who could help her build it better. She contacted him, and he ended up helping the piece function better! Students designed a 3d model of what the metal parts by the motor would look like, a friend of a volunteer had access to an industrial sander and wanted to help, and a store donated the mirrors to her when she pitched her project to them. Asking and finding people who are willing to help was really important to the project, and makes me feel better about attempting projects that I do not have the physical abilities or means to make myself!
Aundrea mentioned in her lecture that collaborating with other is important to her because she likes giving other people different experiences that they wouldn't get otherwise. She said people she works with - often engineers - say they are not artists and can only draw stick figures. To this Aundrea thinks, drawing is just one avenue to art - art can be bread baking, construction, anything. That point of view is really related to contemporary art, I believe, and new forms that artwork can take. Sure, art that can be shown in galleries is slightly more limited, but the idea of finding art in many different practices I believe will really help develop the creative mind!
Aundrea's advice to artists is to just make work! Good work, bad work, important work, non-important work - just make a lot! I think this makes sense because earlier Aundrea talked about how she had the idea first and inlaid meaning and contextualization into the work later in the process. I thought these two ideas work together well because sometimes I start making work that feels silly or unimportant, and as i work on it, a deeper importance or meaning can come through. So doing work, whether it is good or bad can help in the creative process and in coming up with ideas or what is important to you that you want to talk about.
The first thing that struck me was how helpful working with others was to the creation of Frahm's artwork. She mentioned how in constructing kaleidoscope, someone walked by, asked about it, and recommended someone who could help her build it better. She contacted him, and he ended up helping the piece function better! Students designed a 3d model of what the metal parts by the motor would look like, a friend of a volunteer had access to an industrial sander and wanted to help, and a store donated the mirrors to her when she pitched her project to them. Asking and finding people who are willing to help was really important to the project, and makes me feel better about attempting projects that I do not have the physical abilities or means to make myself!
Aundrea mentioned in her lecture that collaborating with other is important to her because she likes giving other people different experiences that they wouldn't get otherwise. She said people she works with - often engineers - say they are not artists and can only draw stick figures. To this Aundrea thinks, drawing is just one avenue to art - art can be bread baking, construction, anything. That point of view is really related to contemporary art, I believe, and new forms that artwork can take. Sure, art that can be shown in galleries is slightly more limited, but the idea of finding art in many different practices I believe will really help develop the creative mind!
Aundrea's advice to artists is to just make work! Good work, bad work, important work, non-important work - just make a lot! I think this makes sense because earlier Aundrea talked about how she had the idea first and inlaid meaning and contextualization into the work later in the process. I thought these two ideas work together well because sometimes I start making work that feels silly or unimportant, and as i work on it, a deeper importance or meaning can come through. So doing work, whether it is good or bad can help in the creative process and in coming up with ideas or what is important to you that you want to talk about.
Abstract: Paula Scher
The Netflix documentary series, Abstract, features an episode about Paula Scher, a graphic designer and painter in New York City. She works at a co-op firm called 'Pentagram' and has worked designing for the Public theater and Shakespeare in the Park for years.
In regards to typography, Paula talked about ways that changing small details in a letter can give the viewer an entirely different sense of time and feeling - the letter E can be moderne, vintage, classical, or illustrative. The small changes in typography can change the appearance and mood of whatever it is advertising or saying! This is important for me to keep in mind as i use a lot of text in my paintings and drawings, and should keep in mind the mood i want to display when i write on my work.
Paula's paintings still incorporate text, but more as a mass of information. She does paintings of maps that are covered in writing that dictates characteristics of the place -a map of demographics, a map of county names, and map of zipcodes, etc. She said she went back to painting because she missed working with her hands, and wanted the physical part of creation back, instead of just designing on a computer. I also thought it made a lot of sense how Paula combined what she grew up with - her father was a mapmaker - into her current artwork! Paula also mentions how important it is to be in a constant state of play - that ideas flow best when you let your subconscious take over.
"Design needs to take human behavior into account" - Paula says this in regards to creating signage that people can interact with, but I think it also applies to fine art. Thinking about how your painting will be received or viewed allows you as the painter to tweak it in a way to control perception of it. If I know viewers will be depressed by the content of my work, i add colors, i add funny text, i add other figures, and that will change the way people view it.
In regards to typography, Paula talked about ways that changing small details in a letter can give the viewer an entirely different sense of time and feeling - the letter E can be moderne, vintage, classical, or illustrative. The small changes in typography can change the appearance and mood of whatever it is advertising or saying! This is important for me to keep in mind as i use a lot of text in my paintings and drawings, and should keep in mind the mood i want to display when i write on my work.
Paula's paintings still incorporate text, but more as a mass of information. She does paintings of maps that are covered in writing that dictates characteristics of the place -a map of demographics, a map of county names, and map of zipcodes, etc. She said she went back to painting because she missed working with her hands, and wanted the physical part of creation back, instead of just designing on a computer. I also thought it made a lot of sense how Paula combined what she grew up with - her father was a mapmaker - into her current artwork! Paula also mentions how important it is to be in a constant state of play - that ideas flow best when you let your subconscious take over.
"Design needs to take human behavior into account" - Paula says this in regards to creating signage that people can interact with, but I think it also applies to fine art. Thinking about how your painting will be received or viewed allows you as the painter to tweak it in a way to control perception of it. If I know viewers will be depressed by the content of my work, i add colors, i add funny text, i add other figures, and that will change the way people view it.
Yang Yongliang: Fall into Oblivion
On April 3rd, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts did a screening of Yang Yongliang's art film, "Fall Into Oblivion", with a skype call to the artist in China afterward for a Q&A.
The Film was around an hour long and focused on a person in full kendo regalia. The main character would leap between modern Japan and a lush island, often freaking out and trying in vain to remove his kendo mask. While the film had no dialogue, there were music and sound effects accompanying it, and the music was similar in my opinion to ocean wave tracks and white noise. Several visual symbols accompanied the main character as he walked through the world, namely a white cat, crows, trains, and the character's panic attacks.
My understanding of the film was that this character was out of place in the modern age: his traditional kendo uniform which he could not remove no matter how hard he tried stuck out in the contemporary crowds of downtown Japan, and he panicked as he was not able to conform. In the interview with Yang Yongliang afterward, he spoke about the setting as a dreamscape and mentioned how crows formed the guiding presence between the two worlds the main character was transitioning between.
Yang is very interested in the relationship between rural and urban spaces, as shown in his photography that I looked at through informational pamphlets. Applying this interest to film meant approaching it in a different way: instead of clever photoshop where the rural mountainsides are made of skyscrapers, as in his photos, Yang instead focused on leaping from place to place and transitioning as if by waking up from a dream.
My favorite part of the film was the end, when, after a gorgeously choreographed kendo fight with a different uniformed kendo man, the main character takes a second kendo mask off the wall (presumably his fallen opponent's) that seems bubbling with something inside it, goes to the top of an urban building, and releases hundreds of crows from the mask. I think, as crows represented the guiding force between the two worlds, that he was giving up leaping from world to world and would stay in the modern setting.
The Film was around an hour long and focused on a person in full kendo regalia. The main character would leap between modern Japan and a lush island, often freaking out and trying in vain to remove his kendo mask. While the film had no dialogue, there were music and sound effects accompanying it, and the music was similar in my opinion to ocean wave tracks and white noise. Several visual symbols accompanied the main character as he walked through the world, namely a white cat, crows, trains, and the character's panic attacks.
My understanding of the film was that this character was out of place in the modern age: his traditional kendo uniform which he could not remove no matter how hard he tried stuck out in the contemporary crowds of downtown Japan, and he panicked as he was not able to conform. In the interview with Yang Yongliang afterward, he spoke about the setting as a dreamscape and mentioned how crows formed the guiding presence between the two worlds the main character was transitioning between.
Yang is very interested in the relationship between rural and urban spaces, as shown in his photography that I looked at through informational pamphlets. Applying this interest to film meant approaching it in a different way: instead of clever photoshop where the rural mountainsides are made of skyscrapers, as in his photos, Yang instead focused on leaping from place to place and transitioning as if by waking up from a dream.
My favorite part of the film was the end, when, after a gorgeously choreographed kendo fight with a different uniformed kendo man, the main character takes a second kendo mask off the wall (presumably his fallen opponent's) that seems bubbling with something inside it, goes to the top of an urban building, and releases hundreds of crows from the mask. I think, as crows represented the guiding force between the two worlds, that he was giving up leaping from world to world and would stay in the modern setting.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
GÜLRU ÇAKMAK Lecture!
On Wednesday, March 27th, I went to Gulru Cakmak's lecture at the Utah Museum of Fine Art. Gulru is a scholar on French artwork and is from Turkey. However, the topic of her lecture was not on a french artist, but rather on a Turkish artist who trained in France and then went back to Turkey. This artist is Osman Hamdi Bey, and the lecture focused largely on one painting of his, "At the Mosque Door", seen to the left.
The high interest in the painting is mainly due to Hamdi showing a progression through history in a still image. The mosque that composes the top 3/4ths of the painting is not referenced from one particular mosque in Turkey, but instead uses elements of different mosques built at different times. For example, the solid, huge blocks of stone make up the earliest mosque architecture, and then the carved band of writing and design was implemented in mosques built in a much later time. Even further in the future, the blue stained tile came into play. There is not real mosque in existence that looks like this, but there are many mosques built at different times through history that have specific parts of this mosque. Some of the figures in the foreground, specifically the fancy ladies on the left, represent the contemporary time this painting was created - 1891. At least 4 different periods of history are shown in this work, which is important because it shows how Turkey has changed and evolved, and the new cultural influences of modern dress interacting with traditional ideals and traditionally minded individuals.
This lecture was interesting to me because I appreciated how minor details could have such a major aspect on the theme. It's definitely a lot to research, and Hamdi must have know than many viewers of this work would not understand the message employed by these small details, but he did it anyway. Hamdi was also one of the only artists in Turkey working in oil paints, and this was due to his French education. I like how he crossed cultures by taking what he learned in France and applying it to Turkish themes.
Friday, April 12, 2019
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Opening
On March 22nd, I attended several opening receptions! The UMoCA had several shows open that night, including "Shady Acres' and "Sit Comfortably in a Darkened Room and Think of Nothing". I was very excited for the latter of these two, because it consisted entirely of the work of Heidi Jensen, who shares a name with one of my close friends in the art department. I was interested to see how far the similarities would go. Both do work about gender, which was a definitely current in Jensen's work in 'Sit Comfortably".
Jensen's drawings and paintings consisted mainly of hyper-feminine objects that were drawn together, creating new and incredibly foreign objects. The most common objects re-purposed in this way were ornamental fans, ruffled cuffs, and feather dusters - traditionally female items. The information card given out at the reception stated, "When drawn, [the feminine objects] regain the vitality and intensity of color they may have had when first created and used. The drawings pay respect to these things that women made and carried, objects that defined and displayed ideas of femininity. Jensen's reaction to them, however, is one of estrangement". While the drawings definitely had some bright colors - some consisting of neon reds and greens, the atmosphere of the artwork in my opinion was more gloomy and dark, which is supported by the title of exhibition. I personally didn't feel like the objects 'regained the vitality' they once had. Instead, I thought the artwork removed these items - the lack of colors and detailed marks pushing the pieces more into a historical, dusty cabinet of mystery. While the objects were combined, the historical aspect of the individual objects was hard to overlook. I don't doubt that this was Jensen's intention, and I personally agree with the statement that the objects bring a sense of estrangement. Overall, it was an interesting look at the aspects of gender that are often pushed into history, and how the objects interact in a contemporary sphere.
The Larger of the exhibitions up, however, was "Shady Acres", a multi-artist look at suburban spaces. I won't go into detail on these artworks, as there were several differing viewpoints, mediums, and artists. The artwork ranged from scrap metal sculptures composed of advertisements and signs, to photographs of things seen on streets, to a large cinder block 'house' with no possible entrance or exit. I thought this idea was interesting to have in Utah - where there are many suburban spaces and people have so many differing opinions on them.
The image above is of me in front of Erick Michaud's piece. I feel like it best captured how I feel about the suburbs.
Jensen's drawings and paintings consisted mainly of hyper-feminine objects that were drawn together, creating new and incredibly foreign objects. The most common objects re-purposed in this way were ornamental fans, ruffled cuffs, and feather dusters - traditionally female items. The information card given out at the reception stated, "When drawn, [the feminine objects] regain the vitality and intensity of color they may have had when first created and used. The drawings pay respect to these things that women made and carried, objects that defined and displayed ideas of femininity. Jensen's reaction to them, however, is one of estrangement". While the drawings definitely had some bright colors - some consisting of neon reds and greens, the atmosphere of the artwork in my opinion was more gloomy and dark, which is supported by the title of exhibition. I personally didn't feel like the objects 'regained the vitality' they once had. Instead, I thought the artwork removed these items - the lack of colors and detailed marks pushing the pieces more into a historical, dusty cabinet of mystery. While the objects were combined, the historical aspect of the individual objects was hard to overlook. I don't doubt that this was Jensen's intention, and I personally agree with the statement that the objects bring a sense of estrangement. Overall, it was an interesting look at the aspects of gender that are often pushed into history, and how the objects interact in a contemporary sphere.
The Larger of the exhibitions up, however, was "Shady Acres", a multi-artist look at suburban spaces. I won't go into detail on these artworks, as there were several differing viewpoints, mediums, and artists. The artwork ranged from scrap metal sculptures composed of advertisements and signs, to photographs of things seen on streets, to a large cinder block 'house' with no possible entrance or exit. I thought this idea was interesting to have in Utah - where there are many suburban spaces and people have so many differing opinions on them.
The image above is of me in front of Erick Michaud's piece. I feel like it best captured how I feel about the suburbs.
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