Sculpture with Amanda Wajick

The final week of art blogging is here. So sad! Lucky for me, I really enjoyed Amanda Wajick as our guest presenter, and she gave us all a lot to think about. Sculpture is one of my favorite medias, and I like how she started by showing us a little bit of her own work, because I know that is something the class wants more of every week. I loved the variety in her work; she made sculptures anywhere from three inches to eight feet tall! The thing that I loved the most about her presentation though was the fact that she showed us one female sculptor from each decade of the 1900s until now, and I really appreciated that she clearly took the time to make such an informative slide show.

If I were to rate the female sculptors from my favorite to least favorite, I would definitely start with Yayoi Kusama. It wasn’t so much her work that I thought was so wild and memorable, it was her life as an artist. When Amanda told us that she admitted herself into an insane asylum and still worked in her studio, I couldn’t believe it, but I thought it was so awesome at the same time. No wonder her work was so crazy. She was crazy! Being true to yourself in your art is what makes a real artist. I’ve said this before in other blogs, but Yayoi is the first artist I’ve seen this whole term that really defines what that means. She knows her mind isn’t normal, so she faces that fact, and turns her bizarre thoughts into amazing works of art. Her obsession with patterns and making the body one with the art is also something that really intrigued me.

Another sculptor presented that I thought did really interesting projects was Magdelena Abakanovicz. After she asked what sculpture is, she continued by saying, “with impressive continuity it testifies man’s evolving sense of reality…” Her quote continued, but I think this is the part that meant the most with her work. I remember an image that was of a pile of different sizes and lengths of what I think were potatoes, and because she lived through World War II, I would assume these “body part” looking items were referring to the bodies of those who died in the concentration camps, and for people at that time, that was their sense of reality. I thought it was interesting that the figures she made were neither male nor female, and I liked that because it was up to the viewer to decide and make judgments about what they were seeing. I think that’s how it should be.

I didn’t love Meret Oppenheim’s work, but it was definitely thought provoking. Her piece that was the most difficult to think about for me was the one where the high-heeled shoes were bound together on a plate. When Amanda told us it was supposed to look like a woman’s legs were spread, and like a turkey, I definitely got the feeling it had a lot to do with the status of women at that time, and I thought that was brave of Meret to do. It possibly argued the fact that women were “supposed to cook” or something along those lines, and she must have had a strong personality to try and question that in that time period. Her furry teacup and saucer was also pretty weird, and like a girl said in class, I would assume she was just comparing two things that we rarely think of together, which is a really cool idea.

Richard Serra was part of our online material this week, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about his work. What I liked was his metal wall sculpture that was made of four pieces of a conical figure, because all of the walls were tilted in a way that made viewers feel balanced, off-balanced, open to the world, or extremely claustrophobic. By him playing with this idea of space and feelings people get from it, I felt calm and open when Ty had us imagine the walls tilted out, and I could see myself feeling closed in and suffocated when she has us imagine the walls leaning in towards us. The work that I didn’t like was his piece “Tilted Arc.” I can see that he was upset that people wanted his art taken down, but when he said that art wasn’t for the people, I immediately was not a fan anymore. If art isn’t for the people, who is it for? Him? Definitely not. That wasn’t his space, it was everyone’s space, and I would have been bothered by it just as much as the employees, because it did block them from seeing a really nice view. It made me feel a lot better knowing that they used the wall for scrap metal.

Louise Bourgeois was not only talked about in Amanda’s presentation, she was also part of our online media. Louise has a large range of work. In the Art 21 video, it showed her small sculptures with the child and adult hands and arms, and I liked how she said she was taking a risk by putting such small, delicate things into an open space in Chicago where someone could break them at any time. On the flip side of that, she created the large-scale sculptures of the spiders, and they were definitely my favorite of her works. I understood what Ty and Amanda meant when they said that you could look at these massive structures on the slide show and think it’s really great, but you can never fully appreciate their size until you actually go and see them in person. This is exactly what we talked about in lecture on Thursday when the whole class went to go see “Wind Fence.” Yes I have seen it before passing by to class, and yes I could see it up on the screen in lecture, but until I went down to it and actually took the time to look, listen, and take it all in, I never really knew what it was for. This simple fact about looking is exactly what the reading by James Elkins tries to put into our heads. I like how James talked about that looking is really more like hunting, because whether we recognize it or not, we are usually looking for something to stand out and grab our attention. This is also why he says when we look, we are also being hunted, because those things that stick out to us are actually luring us in. I’m not trying to say that I beat James to the idea, but I can honestly say I am one of the few people in the world who does stop sometimes to just look at something, with no goals to find anything and no intention of making a judgment about it, because most times I end up seeing even more. I don’t do this with art so much as I do with life. Just last weekend I went to the coast with my girlfriend to watch the sunset, and as it was going down into the horizon, we didn’t say a word to each other. We just watched, and looked, and enjoyed life at that moment. I think that is what I will take away from this class, and I want to thank Ty for that, whether she reads this entry or not. If her goal was to make at least one student look at art in a new light, she accomplished that.

My hometown of Grants Pass, Oregon uses sculpture in the downtown district every spring to lighten things up, and they do this by hiring local artists to paint bears however they like. The event is called Bearfest, and I think it fits well with this weeks lecture about sculpture.

Bearfest Website 

Craft and Methods of Production with Anya Kivarkis

            This week in lecture, the guest speaker was Anya Kivarkis, who talked about craft and methods of its production. Much of the lecture was about the art of jewelry making, and showed this media as being a type of craft as well as being a type of art. Not everything she presented had to do with jewelry, though. Roy McMakin created one piece she showed us, and it was titled, “Lequita Feye.” This slide showed a 3D recreation of Roy’s memory of his grandmother’s bedroom. It was made completely in shades of gray, and the proximity between different items in the room was often distorted. This represented the distortions that we have in our own memories, and I really liked this piece, because it made me realize the fact that many memories that I have of certain places are most likely different from what they looked like in reality.

            Another image that she showed us that I really loved was “House” created by Rachel Whiteread. This piece was absolutely amazing to me, but I can see why it may have upset some neighbors. Rachel filled an old, abandoned house with concrete, and took the outside walls, roof, and windows off. Filling the negative space of the house left a structure that almost acted as a ghost of the old house that once stood there. I loved this so much because my dad is an art teacher, and he always taught me to pay attention to the shapes that are made with the negative space, and this was a creative way of acknowledging that space.

            The online media this week is centered around John Feodorov, and the thing that I liked most about him is that he really lets his personality shine through his art. Sometimes artists get caught up in making their work too serious, and I can tell that he isn’t that way at all. In his video “Office Shaman” with Paul Stuart, it seems to be stupid and meaningless, but it just shows that these guys are really playful with ideas and they have a lot of personality. I don’t think the class really understood it in lecture, but the feeling I get from watching it is that you don’t have to understand it. It’s just dumb and fun.

            I really liked John’s work with the “Totem Teddies” because he gave power and meaning to simple teddy bears. I also liked the point that he gave when he said that these meaningful masked bears could be sold, which also gives an example of “commodifying spirituality.” We talked about this exact thing in lecture on Tuesday. For some Native Americans, the symbols of these bears stand for something spiritual, and it has great importance to them, but someone else could purchase a bear and want them to play with or for decoration. Different objects and ideas have different meanings and importance for different people. This reminds me of the idea of “preciousness” that we talked about in class. An item’s preciousness is going to be based on the person’s background, beliefs, likes, and wants, among many other things. I probably wouldn’t think that a Totem Teddy was a precious item, but a Native American might. It all depends on what we give importance to in our own lives.

            Another connection I see between John Feodorov’s work and the presentation on Tuesday is subtle, but I can still see it. Anya talked a lot about different crafts, and that is the media that I think John represents. His work goes beyond paint on a canvas, just like she showed us on her slides. Jewelry is a craft that I know well because my grandma makes and sells hand-made jewelry, so I have always thought of it as art as well. John’s work is also art because it evokes different feelings and emotions in people, and I think that is the purpose of art. It makes us think, and most times, we really appreciate the artist’s work and his or her talents.

            Ty also asked us to think about the ideas of ownership and power this week, and when I thought of everything we learned, Ted Noten came into my head. Ted asked if anyone wanted a broach made from his or her car, and I can’t remember exactly what kind of car it was, but the man who accepted his offer had a very expensive car. I really liked that the man let Ted do this, because it showed that even though he obviously bought the car to somehow symbolize his power and prized ownership over such an exquisite object, he still let Ted take a chunk out of it. I think that one simple thing really brought the owner of the car back down to our level, and made him more “average Joe.” He removed himself from the material things in his life, and let someone create some art. And, once again, it goes to show that absolutely anything can be art.

            My favorite example that Anya gave during her presentation was when she showed the “Do Hit Series.” Not only did I want to smash that box myself and make a chair or something, but I also thought that it was a great way to engage the audience with the work, just like Ted Noten did. It is so rare that the audience has that much input into the art, and that was the coolest thing ever! The viewer finally gets the chance to make of it what they want, picture, or feel at that moment.

We've all used clay to make art before, and clay is sometimes used in jewelry making, so I chose a clip of Polymer Clay Creations from ku-ki-shop.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ7QzAVWZwQ&feature=related

Art and Environment with Carla Bengston

            The most memorable thing about Carla Bengston’s guest lecture during week seven was the huge amount of amazing quotes that she provided for us, whether they were typed on the power point, or fresh out of her own mouth. It wasn’t the most exciting presentation of the term, but I could tell that this woman new her media like the back of her hand. One of the main questions she presented us with at the beginning of class was if we thought of humans as being part of nature, not part of nature at all, or if we thought they could be in both categories. I agree with people when they think that humans are not part of nature, because we are the main cause of all the stress being put on our fragile planet, but personally, I think we are definitely part of nature, because we are creatures living and working with our environment just like everything else. A main quote that I remember being shown to us also dealt with the ideas of humans versus nature. “If culture is always with us in nature, is nature always with us when we’re in culture?” To me, it is obvious that nature is always with us when we’re in culture, because I think that everything in our lives is based off of nature. Everything we own, everything we eat, everything we do, all involves nature in some way, shape, or form.           

            I always complain about how the guest speakers never show enough of their own work, and this week is no different, but I understand she was short on time. Something that I thought was amazing was how she incorporated nature into her art by letting ants step in paint and spread it around over the material. I never would have thought of this concept, and to see it in action on her personal video was incredible. I also liked how she decided to leave the materials with the ants, because they were using it now, and she didn’t want to take away what she had given them. Her videos and images all around were very interesting. The video that gave an insight on the journey of a cockroach was unbelievable, and it almost gave me a real ‘Bug’s Life’ point of view. There are so many movies out there that try to put you into the eyes of the insects, but the detail in this clip went above and beyond that.

            The thing I liked about Kiki Smith is that she referred to her family as being similar to the Addams family, and before she even said that, I totally thought of scary movies when I got my first glance at her dark eyes, scraggly hair, and crooked teeth. She is one of those artists that really fits into the mold of what she is trying to portray, and I like that, because an important quality in a good artist is staying true to his or herself. The imagery of the dead animals freaked me out and intrigued me all at the same time. I didn’t have an issue with the death part of the work at all, but I was bothered to think about what goes through this woman’s mind. This work with the animals was her link to nature, like we spoke about in lecture. I was fascinated with Kiki’s work because she truly engages with her art, like when she used the cast of her own face and body parts for the person huddled up and dead on the ground. She had the same extreme passion and love for her work that I could see in Carla Bengston.

I started by reading “Barthes for Beginners” because after listening in lecture, I was afraid to read the real one, but I didn’t understand what it meant at all. So, I prepared myself, and moved on to reading the real thing. Even though it was only four pages, it was loaded with brilliant concepts, and I didn’t fully grasp those concepts until our discussion on Thursday. In short, Roland is trying to say that a million people can look at one piece of art, or read one piece of literature, and each will have a completely different idea and personal understanding of what that material is about. Ty asked, “does it really matter what the artist intends?” My answer to that is yes, of course it matters, but the opinions that the viewer makes about it and the meaning that they take out of it is equally important. This talk in lecture also works perfectly for the online materials for William Kentridge, because the purpose for his own work was important, but the students had to make their own opinions and meaning about his work. I am generally interested by everything we see in this class, whether it is my style or not, but I have to say that I have never hated any art more than William’s. I can’t even tell you exactly what it was, and I felt like I was the only one in the whole auditorium feeling that way, but I honestly almost had to leave because I hated his videos so much. I couldn’t stand the darkness, I couldn’t stand his illustrations and cartoons, and I was disturbed by the dark feelings it gave me to watch those images. I’m not really sure what he intends the meaning to be for his work, but all I saw were gloomy and depressing themes that didn’t interest me at all.

On a brighter note, since I liked Carla’s ant paintings so much, the art I chose this week was a video of elephants painting on a canvas. In a way, it’s nature involved in art. Most people have seen these videos before, but it’s still amazing to me how smart animals can be.

Elephants Painting 

Digital Arts with John Park

            For week six, our guest speaker was John Park, a Digital Arts specialist whose slide presentation really caught my attention. My favorite part of his presentation was when he showed us the video of the Mortal Engine Dance group, where the lights and animation followed the dancer’s every move. I have never seen anything like this before, and it was one of the craziest and most creative ways of expressing dance that I have ever seen. I thought of what that dance would look like without the animation, and yes it would interesting, but it wouldn’t have taken such a toll on my emotion. My eyes were glued to the screen with all of the colors and flashes, and no normal dance performance keeps me that connected with the movement. It took dance to a million new levels.

            Another thing I really enjoyed about John’s presentation was the way he presented the four main questions and problems with Digital Arts. Ty said in lecture on Thursday that the most important question was “where is the art”, but to me, this isn’t the most important. I loved the reference to zombies, and so the question that I asked the most in my head was “where is the humanity?” It takes me to the short video John showed where the cars were being constructed on the assembly line without absolutely zero help from a human hand. Yes, digital arts are created with a person’s own ideas, and I agree that the audience or viewers can watch and interact with the material. But when dealing with works created on a computer, a human hand didn’t make any of it, and I think we are losing ourselves to all of the technology we are provided with today. I have a huge amount of respect for digital artists today because it takes an extremely creative mind to do what they do, but I wish that for a short time I knew what it was like to live in a world without advanced technology, so I could really see art before this period in time.

            On the flip side, I think technology is a beautiful thing, especially after seeing the clip of the paralyzed man in the hospital that could continue drawing his graffiti just by moving his eyes towards a screen. I have never seen anything so amazing before, and to be honest, I didn’t even know we had technology to such an extent. After seeing it, I’m not that surprised though. Digital Art has been taken to whole new levels in the past few years, and I am excited to see where it goes from here.

When I watched David Byrn’s video “Playing the Building”, I couldn’t fully understand how his structure involving the piano is in the Digital Arts category, other than the fact that it uses sound, but it was an amazing creation. I really liked when the woman spoke and said that she can’t imagine how the little kids must feel when they play the piano and they “make the room come alive”, because that is what this piece of artwork is there to do. I know that if I played it as a small child, I would have been put into a completely different world. There is this huge space filled with noise, and they get excited because they know that they are the ones making those noises. This is also the point of Digital Arts in my mind. In lecture, Ty said she asks herself everyday if her media is actually art, and in my opinion, there is no question about that. For me, art is something that gets your imagination moving, and makes you question what you see, and Digital Arts does just that.

            In the Art:21 video dealing with Paul Pfeiffer, he talks about his inspirations from the 1970s version of The Amityville Horror, which is exactly what we talked about in lecture as well. He really found a connection with the staircase in the movie on a deeper level because that was the contact point between the human and non-human beings. For me, I personally had a connection with this because I have seen the older and newer versions of the film, read the book, and did a presentation in high school based on the true story. I new exactly what he was seeing with this piece and I really enjoyed it. One thing I did not agree with that Paul said was during his observations of the basketball game. He said, “if you’re served literally 500 channels on TV, like, why go out?” I really do love Digital Arts, but I have trouble with people who substitute television with reality. If I were given the choice between watching an extremely action-packed episode of Jersey Shore, or going outside and experiencing life away from a screen, I would go outside. Don’t get me wrong, everyone loves Jersey Shore, but it makes me sick how much we are obsessed with TV and other technology these days. This connects me to the talk Ty had with the class in lecture on Thursday. Those cell phones in our pockets are just so addicting, and we can’t resist checking them every two minutes, but I really don’t get why? To me, this is just sad.

To get a feeling of what Janet Cardiff’s work was about, I took Ty’s advice and watched “Virtual Haircut”. I’m not sure if I watched the right “Virtual Haircut” video because it wasn’t inappropriate like Ty said it would be, but either way, it was crazy how realistic it sounded to me. I don’t know how many people have this same reaction, and I might be totally crazy, but when the man was using the electric shaver around my head, I actually felt a tingling sensation along my scalp. I do have great headphones that might create strong enough sound waves to create some movement, but I was still baffled and amazed by the video all at the same time. It also helped me understand her work more after hearing a girl in class compare the experience people have in Janet’s work to her own experience taking the audio-tour at Alcatraz Island. I have done the same exact tour twice, and just by closing your eyes, you feel like you are there, watching every move in history. I believe this out-of-body experience is what Janet was aiming for with her viewers.

Sorry my video for the week isn't in English, but it's still very similar to what we saw this week. It is shadow-sensitive interactive music. It makes me think a lot of the Reactable that John showed us on Tuesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVItBGGdFI&feature=related

 

Photography with Craig Hickman

For week 5, our guest presenter was Craig Hickman, a professional photographer. I don’t know if it was the fact that Ty was gone, or that everyone truly had somewhere else to be, but I was extremely distracted and lost in this whole lecture because half of the class got up and left throughout the presentation. Craig was obviously a great guy who knew so much about this subject matter, but his presentation was fairly quiet and sped through dozens of pictures without much of an explanation. In a way I can understand why students were getting a little bored, but I was completely distracted by everyone leaving. Having said that, I will try my best to discuss what I heard and understood of his lecture.

When one student asked why Craig chose photography in the first place, his answer really stood out to me. He replied, “The reason I enjoy it is because photography is believable, and has real world connection.” This connection was also used in the online material, especially with Errol Morris’ article that dealt with the photos released showing four missiles being launched in Iran. We look at an image, and if it’s not entirely skewed, we believe it to be real, just liked America did when the false images were released to the public. Another link between the lecture and the online material comes from the conversation between Errol Morris and Hany Farid. I wish I could copy and paste their whole conversation because I think it’s so great, but instead I’m just going to use this little bit:

Errol Morris:“It occurred to me, just with respect to the missile photograph, that if the people who Photoshopped this photograph wanted to call additional attention to it, they could do no better than what they did.”

Hany Farid: “That’s exactly right. Look at how much attention is being brought to it. At the end of the day, even though they doctored the photograph, it shows that these guys still fired three missiles, and they sure brought a lot of attention to it.”

This conversation is so important because it is the main reason people love photographs so much. I wish that Craig would have shown more of his own work, but in the photos he did show, most of them had some sort of text added to them. The text looked like it was part of the photograph taken, when in fact he edited most of them in. If he hadn’t told us, I never would have known he had added the text after the picture was taken, and I think this is the case for a lot of media today. And, going back to the main point of Thursday’s lecture, because it’s a photograph, we generally believe it represents truth. I’m not going to try and say that I don’t believe everything I see in the media today, because I do consider a lot of it to be real. This reminds me of the debate today about whether or not people who grew up with the editing technology all around them are more influenced by photos in the media, or are more numb to it. My opinion is that for an individual like myself born in the early ‘90s, I am very aware that many images that I see today do not represent the whole truth, but it doesn’t mean that I look at them or believe in them any less. Imagery in our every day lives is means a whole lot more to us than we pay attention to.

The thing that I liked about Alfredo Jaar’s work was that there was meaning behind every image. They aren’t just a collection of random photos. They all deal with real world issues and causes, and I think that is the most important thing that I took from his work. When I went to his personal website, I clicked on recent projects and jumped around through all of the images. I loved that his photos had background information given on the side, so I actually knew what was going on, and what it meant to him. I found the story behind The Skoghall Konsthall to be extremely interesting, especially because it is to be built entirely with paper products from the local paper mill. After reading through his bibliography, I was astounded at the amount of work his has done internationally. He isn’t only taking pictures; he’s trying to make a difference in the world, and that to me is an amazing artist.

My favorite photographs shown in Lecture this week were by Caleb Charland, and they were all part of the bored couple series. For looking like very serious photographs, they were incredibly humorous, and they gave me that “real world connection” that Craig said he gets when looking at photos. I think of awkward couples out to dinner, or downtown, and I can’t help but laugh at these images. My visual response for the week connects with this humor, and the photographs from this website never disappoint. My image for the week is a photograph taken from www.AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. I honestly think this photo is true art, because the editing is done so interestingly, but it wasn't taken by a famous photographer.

 

Week 3: Fibers with Sara Rabinowitz

On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, our guest speaker was Sara Rabinowitz, who educated us on the media of fibers. This week was a brand new kind of art for me, because I had never looked at fibers as art before. Although my mind has been changed about what counts as art, I will honestly say that this may be my least favorite medium so far. No offense to Sara or all of the other artists who work with fibers, because I really do appreciate the fascinating work that they do, it just simply isn’t my style. And that’s okay. It all goes back to Sara’s conversation about the hierarchies in art, and what each person believes to be high art and low art. I see fibers as more of a craft, and I liked that someone asked that question in lecture, because I think it’s something that many of us were wondering. I believe the question of whether or not fibers is more art or craft will never be answered, because I think it is based on an individual’s opinion about what they are seeing and feeling when they look at a fibers piece. Sara’s lecture was great; the only thing that I wish is that she would have shown us some of her own work. She left me with a lot of questions in my mind at the end of class, like what is her own style? Why are fibers her passion over any other medium? To me, she was sort of a mystery quest speaker, and I don’t know what to think of it. The slide images she showed were great. My favorite was definitely the beaded kitchen. I can’t even fathom how long that must have taken, and the intricate beadwork absolutely blew my mind. An interesting topic brought up by Tyrras that I thought was interesting was the idea that we think of fibers as a female’s medium, and the irony of that is many women who work with fibers are feminists trying to fight that idea. Definitely something that ran through my mind as well.

While watching Ann Hamilton set up her fabric walls in the shutdown warehouse, I didn’t get it, and I thought it was stupid to be fully honest. I feel like there are always those people who try and force things to be art by making their work extra strange or really “deep”, and that is exactly what I thought of her at first. It wasn’t until the lights were turned off in the building and she cast the moving projections onto the drapes that I stepped out of that mindset and thought, “wow, now that is creative!” I think that’s what the basis of fibers is. It’s all about creativity and representation; Filling an empty space with something that we have to think harder about to figure out what “the point” or the “whole meaning” is. The bubble wall was amazing to me, and I liked that after Ann had seen it for a while, she realized that it was exactly what she had been working on her whole life. There was fluidity to it, it could be touched, and you could stick your hands through the membrane, and that is exactly what working with fibers is for her.

Most of the fibers world isn’t my absolute favorite, but the video about Cai Guo-Qiang really got me excited about it. His work is incredible, awe-inspiring, and as acknowledged in lecture, truly “epic.” My favorite part about his gunpowder pieces is the fact that no matter what, he will never know exactly how it will turn out. This connects me to the lecture because we talked about how some of the best art is accidental, and that is one of my favorite parts about my own art. Even if it doesn’t go the way you planned, often times it turns out better. Explosives are never perfect, and you can see that he loves having those obstacles to get around. It keeps him interested, and ready to test new things. I was laughing at his comparison with the gunpowder process and the act of sex, because everything he said was awkwardly true. You always question whether you are ready to be done, and at the end, you are either ecstatic about your performance, or you are disappointed with the end result. My favorite thing he has done is the huge hanging structure with the wolves. I only wish that I could see it in real life because it is one of those pieces that you have to see in real life to believe. It reminds me of the time I went to the Long Beach Aquarium, and there is a life-size blue whale and it’s calf hanging above the lobby. It gives you the feeling of how incredible these creatures are, and that we are so insignificant, and I imagine that is what it’s like to look up at the wolf structure. I understand that it has different cultural meaning to him, and because I’m from another culture I don’t yet understand that, but you have to appreciate it in your own way. I had this connection with the cultural and spiritual understandings we talked about in lecture. Each artist has their own connection with their work. Often, they have connections with other artist’s work, like Ann did with the flowing bubble wall.

To stick with the topic of fibers, the video I chose for this week is based on the festivals that take place in many parts of Asia, where they release paper or fabric lanterns into the sky, creating an amazing glow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcGP0hdq13w&feature=related 

Week 2: Digital Arts with Michael A. Salter

         Michael A. Salter was the guest speaker for this week, and just as Tyrras had predicted, he was my favorite guest speaker so far. His personality was off-the-wall, and his art was some of the most creative stuff I have ever seen. For some weird reason, I love when professors use profanity, because it really brings them down to Earth and makes them human, and that’s one of the things that helped me enjoy his presentation the most. He was just a plain old funny dude. After he said how he was so obsessed with pop culture, I could really tell in his art. His passion for Star Wars and robots and all science fiction was great, because I think a lot of us in that lecture hall could relate to it. The paintings of scenery and the realistic drawings of people that we have all studied in art classes before can get really boring, but Michael’s work is new and imaginative. I liked when he compared the film Planet of the Apes to the comic version, and then he asked us how these movie remakes change over time? This is a good question to consider because of how many remakes are being released today, many of which we don’t even know are remakes. The Planet of the Apes example was good because he pointed out that the film had a lot of references and hints towards racial issues, and the comic didn’t give any sign of that at all. Movies change with the times, and so does art.

         On page 30 in the “Vocabulary of Comics”, there was a line that stood out to me. “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.” I think these statements are the basis of the whole explanation of comics and the whole article, because it shows that images don’t need to look realistic for them to have any more impact on us than a cartoon. The cartoon form may be simpler, but it still gives us the information we need to understand what is being presented. I really liked the images on page 39 where it says, “our ability to extend our identities into inanimate objects can cause pieces of wood to become legs…,” referring to walking with crutches, “pieces of metal to become hands…,” to using utensils, “pieces of plastic to become ears…,” to talking on the phone, and “pieces of glass to become eyes…,” when using glasses to see. I’ve never looked at objects in everyday life like that, but it’s so true.

         One connection I can see between Michael Salter’s lecture and the online material is that there are similarities between his digital artwork and Chris Coleman’s. Both artists use a lot of flat colors that have defined lines, like in Coleman’s video series “My House is not My House.” I loved these pictures because they almost look like photographs turned into cartoons, but they got even better when I pressed play. The sound effects of the street and wind noises brought the pictures to life, giving you the feeling like you were already there. Some of the clips even had movement, which also took me back to Salter’s pieces that involved a screen with images that moved. My favorite of his is the one that showed the simple images of urine, feces, and so on. Gross, but funny.

The online article for this week also related to a lot of Salter’s lecture because so much of what he does is cartooning. Most of this comes from his small add work, and the hundreds of small prints that he makes. Cartoons, like the article states, are usually not realistic at all, and Salter uses this to his advantage. By not making things realistic, he can do whatever he wants with his images, like when he makes the neck coming out of a lot of his characters flow into their arm and hand. It’s not possible in real life, but in cartoon life, it catches people’s attention, whether it’s in his studio, or painted out on public property.

Salter’s work with Styrofoam was really amazing to me, especially with how big some of his projects were, so that combined with his passion for cars made me think of artwork using cardboard. In this case, it’s made into a car.