Monday, November 28, 2011

inspiration for ze final project

fear and art

preguntas!


1. when is a person educated enough to have a valuable opinion about art?
2. can art be unintentional?
3. meh, who's afraid? that's dumb. what's there to be afraid of?

i mean, really. be self-conscious if you like, but that's as silly as egotistical.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

a long-awaited status update

Thank you, ladies [presumably?] for peeking at my progress. i understand that there are a few things you need to know. Firstly, my studio classes are print, sculpture, and photography.
For my project, I had chosen to practice object-space tension using skills and resources I have gained from sculpture. I have, so far, made a female pelvis out of clay and plaster. The inside is hollow. This exemplifies object-space tension in so far as from an outside perspective, the torse is a solid sculpture while the inside is a vessel wherin I'm creating a scene. I tried taking a picture of it, but it doesn't come out very well because it's entirely white. It just looks flat and blank, so you'll have to see more closely during my presentation. Anyway, the scene inside is a foamy beach. I'm working on fluffy plastic clouds that hang near the top, and there is already surf, sand, and cliff. At first, I thought to make the inside more springly and furtile, like a meadow or something, it seemed less and less appropriate the more I thought about it.

Also, the title of the piece is CLAMOFLAGE!
i've made little clams that i'me going to use to build up the sides of the torso. I had to make them out of paper when my new work schedule didn't leave time in my weekend to go out and collect authentic clam shells. But, you know, they are pretty cute. So now it's double camoflage: the paper is clam, and the clam is clam. 

I haven't decided if I'm going to smooth out the plaster or not. I sort of like it the way it is. It goes well with the inside of the pelvis, which isn't apparent until you look inside. On the other hand, maybe a skin-smooth appearance will create more tension between them, and that'd be better in terms of the assignment.

Well. It seems I have until Wednesday to decide.

THE END!

Monday, October 24, 2011

tension in photography examples

Daniel Gordon:
 Jamie Permuth:
Also, I found this picture but was unable to find the photographer. It's been reposted dozens of times, probably, but the original blog doesn't have the artist's information.

three tension in sculpture examples

Beth Cavener Stichter is a wonderful artist! This is her artist's statement:

“There are primitive animal instincts lurking in our own depths, waiting for the chance to slide past a conscious moment. The sculptures I create focus on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal and human forms. On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface they embody the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, and pack mentality.”





Next, I found Christopher Lee Donovan. 
And finally, Nicole Dextras:

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

tension drawings, part one


about how tom completely approves of my talent and technique

during our peer critique, tom had only positive things to say about my tiny refridgerator. i'm not sure whether this was due to a lack of experience, a desire to preserve my self-esteem, or both. probably it was because my project is legitimately great and tom, like so many others, excitedly told me so.

some of my congratulations included:
1. "i liked the humor in it. it goes with the drawing style."
when i asked him to clarify, he said that he liked the cartoony quality about it.

and then he mentioned some areas where our creative differences made themselves evident. but, anyway, i did not get even a little butthurt. i had a couple reasons for making the choices i did, and they were simple enough to explain. for example:

tom: i think the chain looks pretty, but if i made it, i would have made it dirtier and more forboding looking. because a chain is something that discourages people from going someplace or looking at something and this is just kind of nice.

me: i agree with you. but when i made this little fridge, i filled it with tasty snacks and a little doodle of myself. this isn't a terrible place. it's a little paradise that i live in.

tom: in light of this new information i feel it is absolutely necessary that i retract my former criticism.



it was pointed out that the craftmanship of my fridge could have been better. there was a visible seam where the two pieces of paper joined. and the box probably could have looked more like a fridge if it had fridgely landmarks, like door handles. i guess that's right or whatever.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

response to 10/5/11 lecture [ray johnson]

ray johnson seemed legitimately insane, and not in the taboo, homicidal way. his habits betray a man with a type of introversion that, in my opinion, is rare among artists. he seemed to keep the majority of his work to himself, neatly piled away. the work that he did exhibit, sell, or circulate was tempered with a bizarre sort of perfectionism. he made icons. he distributed them to people who were in no position to reject him, critique him, or converse with him. he alienated audiences in his "nothings," where his goal seemed less to build a relationship with patrons than to confuse them.

how totally and completely neat. nobody knew what he was about. johnson lacked the air of pretentiousness that artists cultivate by explaining their process, inspiration, or method. he just made it, and he just liked it. i mean how many times have you broken up with an artist after reading a published interview, or something, and finding out that they're totally absorbed with "making a flesh of the canvas," for example? you want to know that an artist is considerate of their work, but not to the extent that they can wax metaphorical about it for 10 pages. maybe that's my personal beef.

 i liked that ray johnson was always "turned on." he could make associations with images by going through the alphabet. as a collage artist, he probably looked at everything with a creative eye. he pulled images from stickers and garbage and advertizements. i'm not anything like that. everything that i draw tends to come from an idea that i've had, not something i've seen. that's why, sometimes, it's so difficult for me to produce something: i just can't think of anything interesting. but johnson saw interesting things all the time.

actually, the only part of that film that really made me connect with a dead man was his hotdog stunt. really? he dropped hotdogs on people? from a helicopter? he hit a box wit a towel, or whatever, while concerned patrons watched, searching the act for meaning? that's pretty funny.

i can relate to that type of method, but more personally and less artistically. i make fun of myself at my expense, without suffering blows to my self-esteem, because i know that i'm not discrediting myself. i'm just contributing to the ridiculousness of a situation, or whatever. 

Sunday, October 2, 2011

the missing pictures, no longer

 



the lobster, remarkably, as become a recurrant character since this drawing.






see?


Sunday, September 18, 2011

Response to 9/13 Lecture

I was interested in Gabriel Orozco's work in particular. Although I'm pretty ignorant of sculpture, I thought that he used the medium really well to create visual icons, the way one might draw something in the center of a piece of paper--something that stands out starkly against a background. He used usual items to produce unusual outcomes, and he use the ordinary to create the whimsical. I thought the two-headed bike was pretty neat.

That technique is something I'd like to incorperate into my process as an artist.

Orozco collected ordinary images that he'd see every day. He's catalogue them, and then begin to distort the way people percieved these things by portraying them differently. He built a collection of work that is itself a collection of compounded images that he took care to remember. He described himself as a very attentive person, and something of a collector.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Game Theory Exhibit and A Relationship to Chance

Tim Knowles' Tree Drawing series utilized the element of chance throughout. The technique, here, was to tie a pen to a tree branch, and place a pad of paper in front of that branch. The wind would shake that branch and result in a sketch executed by the tree. The results were actually quite nice.

The wind that drove the branch which drove the pen was random and mostly uninfluenced by the artist. In this case, the artist is the tree. At first I wondered if these pieces, although pretty, could be called art. Art is an artifact. It's something that's created. This series to me seems more like a happening than a creation, but maybe that's a misguided and malformed opinion?

100 Interesting Things That i Have Generally Observed

9
gas giants
tweezers
that fleshy nub that supplements Barbie genitalia
cat paws
stairs
starting an iv
loose teeth
bruises
tomatoes
technical manuals
steer horns
my cuticles
wisdom teeth
x-ray photographs
amputees
pug dogs
slugs
morning breath
normalization
fear
penises (and the fact that penis wasn't in my top ten)
sensory deprivation
music
foreign accents
mixtapes
sewer drains
legend
handwriting
burning insects to death
immune systems
cookie baking
old photographs
webcomics
black pens
wells
"the grid"
paper airplanes
food courts
knives
knuckle hair
science fiction
pulp science fiction
fetishes
fatal accidents
triage
facial piercings
drag queen makeup
whales
christmas baubles
asymmetry
drawing
b-style horror movies
werewolves
ridiculously long acrylic nails
spectacles
Patrick Stewart
harry potter
feet
swamp mummies
tattoos
portmanteau
tiny condiment containers
miniature things in general
corgi dogs
tasty foods
the internet
sea snails
manacles
fire
rock-gut alcohol
other-wold/ off-world fiction
the Titanic ruins
deep sea fishes
ceilings
cartoons
outlandish and colorful desserts
emergency medicine
elaborate fantasies
electric toothbrushes
post-apocalyptic scenarios
talking to myself
seeing patterns and shapes in stucco walls
dreams/ nightmares
suicide
lyricism
creative writing
jokes
mazes
alter egos
fad diets
binge eating
prismacolor markers
fingerprints on glass windows
medieval torture equipment
dominatrices
other peoples' sketchbooks
hiding places