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.

Week 1-2: Drawing & Painting with Lauren Vandenburgh

Lauren Vandenburgh was the guest speaker for this week, and I would have to say I loved almost every single picture she showed the whole lecture. I've been surrounded by art my whole life because my dad is an art teacher, and I do a fair share of artwork myself, but everything shown in class was unique and amazing, whether it was a large-scale painting or a simple doodle on notebook paper. The images that interested and sparked creativity in me the most were the pieces that were meant to be 3D pencil drawings done with wire or chords, because no matter where you go around the art, you never see the exact same picture. I also loved the image where the shadow cast by a pile of trash was actually a scene of a boy and girl sitting back-to-back. This is one of the most clever ways of incorporating garbage into artwork that I have ever seen. 

While reading Art Theory for Beginners, there was one thing that really stood out to me. On page 138, Susan Sontag "stressed the idea that art has always been to do with ritual and the irrational or magical, and that to search for meaning (as many critics do) is to miss the point." To me, this is the main point of the article, and I completely agree with her statement. Art is sometimes strange, and often can't be described, but I feel like that is kind of the point. Art is our way of going into another world that we couldn't normally experience, and there doesn't always need to be a reason for why artists do what they do.

On page 143, Pop Art is discussed, and because it is one of my favorite medias, I did less speed reading and thought about it a little more. Arthur C. Danto called Pop Art the end of art, which I can agree to disagree with. I don't agree because to me, it is definitely art, amazing art at that, but I also see what he means, because up to that point, the definition of art was fairly straight forward, and Pop Art was a new, weird, out-of-this-world kind of media, and it fit into a completely new category. That's why I love it. Many people don't like Andy Warhol's images like the Campbell's Soup Can because it is just a simple everyday object. But that's why it's so awesome! Anything can count as art in this world, and I love that!

For the Margaret Kilgallen video, I liked how it showed that art doesn't mean that it's a picture, it can be something 3D that you can walk through and look at from different angles, like the massive steel sculpture in the gallery that the group of children walked around in. It can be big enough that it takes construction workers to assemble it! I loved the comment by the photographer using the chemicals and the old camera outside when she says, "in your prayer, say please don't screw it up, but screw it up just a little bit to make it interesting!" I liked this so much because mistakes in art are often what make the piece special, or a little bit more exciting. My elementary school art teacher called these mistakes "Happy Accidents." Another one of my favorite forms of art is graffiti, and unlike many people, I don't see the "garbage and ugliness" on the walls on buildings and freeways. I drive through cities in awe instead, because many of these graffiti artists are some of the most talented people in the world, and 95% of the time they have no professional training. To me, that is what defines raw, pure talent. Just being born with the ability to take ideas and put them out there is inspiring to me, whether it is illegal to paint on public property or not. I also really like the train paintings because it takes the spreading of ideas to a new level, because the images and words travel all over the place. Pretty clever if you ask me.

What I have taken away from the material in lecture and the material online is that all of the information connects together to tell us that art doesn't really have a set definition, set rules, or obvious characteristics. You can make art whatever you want. I remember Tyrras' statement about how artists can look at a plain apple and be amazed by its beauty even though its just an apple. Art is everywhere, and it can be everything, but you just have to think of it that way. Another connection between the lecture and the online material that comes to mind was the fact that both showed how it is possible to use language as a form of art. The writings on the walls that Tyrras did were amazing to me because that was one of the first times I had seen writing used as art, and I would never copy that idea, but it inspired me to maybe do something like that on my own.

Here is the link to one of my favorite kinds of art. I can’t watch this clip without being amazed. It incorporates drawing, which was a main subject for this week. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4icC0VOGE2U&feature=related

January 12, 2011

Braden Beck

Art 101