3rd Major Project: Inspiring Artworks

"This is what the world is for, making electricity"

The song I chose, "Electric Feel" brings the words psychedelic and synthesizer pop to my mind. The first work is Untitled by Deloss Mcgraw. I chose this work because it encompasses my initial idea of what my soft sculpture would depict, hands holding a sort of electrified/psychedelic/electric/colorful world. The second work is Bartek Walicki's Prints: Etching and the third is Sandra Castillo's Unfurnished Soul. I chose these two because they both capture this free, chaotic, psychedelic feel that I want to convey in my soft sculpture.

Deloss McGraw, Untitled

Gouache on Paper

Bartek Waliki, Prints: Etching

Sandra Castillo, Unfurnished Soul

Digital Work, inkjet on canvas

3rd Major Project (Soft Sculpture Inspired by Music)

The song I chose for the soft sculpture project is a song called “Electric feel” by MGMT. The title is appropriate to its meaning and content because the song is the powerful feelings you can have for something, almost like an “electric feel.” You can only find out the meaning by listening to the lyrics, “She got the power in her hand/ To shock you like you won't believe,” “Shock me like an electric eel/ Baby girl/ Turn me on with your electric feel” or “This is what the world is for/ Making electricity.” Because this was one of the bands released singles I think that over time it has gained more value to me and to others. The song was written by the band, but I’m not sure for what reason because there are few interviews of the band, however the album the song comes from, Oracular Spectacular, was inspired by Mayan prophecies and conspiracy websites (the band is interested in this). I personally like the psychedelic and synthesizer sound along with the vocals, and how it’s just upbeat and has a feel to it like you can just be free and do whatever you want. David Marches from Spin Magazine wrote that MGMT’s songs are like a “brand of shape-shifting psychedelic pop.”

Wednesday's Assignment

The song I chose for the in-class assignment Wednesday is the song "Yellow" by Coldplay. When I first listened to it I thought of relaxing at a beach or looking at the stars as the lyrics go, "Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do, yeah they were all yellow." So I found three works of art by contemporary that I feel portray what I think of this song.

Untitled, by Steve Slimm

Night Seascape Beach With Sailboat, by Toni Grote

Beach, by Carolyn Nicoll

Most Effective Minor Project

I enjoyed all of the performances and presentations, but I in my opinion, I think the most effective performance was Caitlin's. It was funny at first and a little strange, but then when she described the artist’s work and the continual use of people in black sweatshirts in her drawings and her inspiration behind it (seeing joggers in black sweatshirts through her window while she sat in her house hermit-like), her performance soon made sense. I thought she did a good job of bridging her performance with Robyn O'Neil's body of work that consisted of these people in black sweatshirts (hanging from a rope from the sky or floating in water).

Minor Project on Subodh Gupta

I have to say I presented my project pretty much how I wanted to with the exception of music. I had picked a song from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack to go along with the visual and the poem, but even without the song, I think the message was still effective. I guess if I had to change anything I would change that and play the music because I thought it fit nicely with the images. Something I just thought of that I might change if I had to do the project over again would be the visual. Because Subodh Gupta was greatly influenced by cooking culture in India and uses cooking utensils in manyof his works, maybe a video of Indian cooking with audio of the clangs of utensils would have been effective also (maybe in addition to the other visual, or in place of it).

One of Gupta's works, Line of Control made from steel utensils

Chapter Summary

The chapter I was given from The Accidental Masterpiece by Michael Kimmelman was entitled, “The Art of Finding Yourself When You’re Lost”. Kimmelman explored the way in which difficult life experiences can inspire someone. He focused on two artists (one photographer and one embroidery artist) and how a difficult point in their lives inspired their artistic selves. The photographer, Frank Hurley, took part in an expedition to Antarctica in the early 20th century to record the very harsh environment and surroundings through film. As Kimmelman describes, “art wasn’t Hurley’s original intention: he was supposed to record the expedition for scientific purposes. But it was the unmistakable outcome” (133). These photographs were some of Hurley’s most memorable art, which I think were because of the ordeal and difficulties he had to go through to get his shots. The second artist Kimmelman focuses on was Ray Materson, an inmate in a Connecticut prison that started embroidering in this prison (using unraveling sock and shoelace threads, scraps of boxer shorts for backing, and the rim of a plastic plate for an embroidery hoop). His embroideries were usually portraits or baseball related, but what was amazing was that they are each about three inches by two inches. Kimmelman describes Materson as “a lost soul, [who] became an artist not despite his difficult circumstances but because of them” (135). I believe these two artists had struggle in their lives and were ‘lost’ but found themselves through their art, giving Kimmelman the title of this chapter.

Hurley:
http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/natural_world/antarctica/hurley/shackleton/image_gallery.html
Materson:
http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/features/2001/010128.materson.html

Project 2 Proposal

Unlike my idea for our first project, my thought for this project took much more thought. My favorite technique is drawing, so I thought of using this technique to convey range. Something that comes to mind when I think of range is taking an object and allowing the object to change, naturally. And something I thought would be interesting to see this change in and to capture it is flowers. The idea of drawing flowers stems from the given example of doing a still-life, but I want to capture the natural wilting of the flowers. Along with drawing, I wanted to use some color (watercolor) to emphasize life, and as the flowers wilt and their life diminishes, as does the color. I think this could look really nice and be a nice exploration/representation of something pretty becoming wilted, ugly and dead, an interesting juxtaposition.

Ist Secondary Assignment

For our first secondary assignment we had to take unconvential materials from the dollar store (like diaper bags, rubberbands, plastic gloves, balloons, etc.) and create a collaborated art installation. I enjoyed working on this group project because of the end result. Once we had the theme, everyone started working with the materials handed to them, so when each piece came together as a whole, the result was very interesting. I really liked the theme (under the sea) and how every material we had worked so well with this theme. It seemed like every material was made to work as a sea creature or something in the ocean (like the diaper bags were made to be jellyfish or the coffee filters were made to be clams). I had never done a project like this before, so it was a good experience (although I have learned that I think I like working alone better than collaborating). I really liked working with the materials we worked with because I think it helped strengthen our creativity. I am now inspired to work with similar materials!

Writing assignment Blog Entry

Bourgeois Reading
1. Emotions are a big part of what inspires an artist, so I think Bourgeois used confrontation as a creative approach because it can be very emotional and in the end beneficial. Hate, anger, and sadness (just to name a few) have all inspired great works of art.

2. In the Bourgeois reading, Allan Schwartzman is "stupefied" with Bourgeois' work. He justifies his opinion by stating that she is "one of the defining artists of our time, she is one of the great artists of the twentieth century" because her pieces have an emotional exposure at the core, they hold psychological insight and there is a strong emotional presence in every piece of work she does.

3. I think if art can exert intense emotion than it is good art. I think viewers want to look at a work of art and feel something, not just look at it and move on to the next one, not thinking of anything. A contemporary artist that I feel creates an intensity of emotion in his artwork is Salvador Dali. His art is very intense and definitely evokes strong emotions in me (from shock to empathy).

4. Because Bourgeois sometimes finds herself not being able to express the content of her subconscious in modern art, she often takes risks for the sake of her art. She had to reflect on herself intensely puts this strong emotion and personal experiences/thoughts into her works; she was quoted saying, "I carry my psychoanalysis within the work" (85). I don’t know if I would be able to make artwork that was so personal, but I think for her the risks she took were worth it.

Leris Reading
1. When Leris writes that the meetings in the bathroom with his siblings were most sacred because of its secrecy, he means that perhaps the meeting wasn't the most important part of his memory. Having a secret (especially when you are little) gives a certain amount of power and can be exhilarating (in this case of not being caught), which becomes sacred.

2. The ill-defined space that Leris and his family would walk by was a space between two fortifications that didn't seem to have a purpose to him but he seems to remember them very well. A landmark that I remember traveling by when I was younger was the playground at my elementary school. I think it had more meaning than the ill-defined space that Leris remembers walking by, but it is also a memory of mine because not only would I play in the playground, but I would have to walk by it to get to some of my classes. I guess then it represented childhood and a care-free time. It is different now because my elementary school was completely renovated and the playground isn't there anymore, so now it’s sort of a sad memory.

3. One of the words Leris talks about as having the ability to immediately evocative a memory from his childhood is a word his older brother made up: "Baoukta." He describes it as war cry for when they were playing Indians when he was a kid. He explained that that word had an exotic feel, and seemed like his brother held the secret of its meaning.

4. I think Leris and Bourgeois would both agree that self-reflection and confrontation is worth it because of the emotion it brings to the surface, because to me both Leris and Bourgeois seem to be very emotional, personal people. I think it is worth it because the results could impact other people's lives greatly and create an intense reaction.

First Blog

An image that I saw recently that I can’t stop thinking about is a piece I saw at Jessica Luttrull’s art show “Self-Portrait at 22.” It was a dresser with shirts piled on top of it, but what was really interesting was every shirt had a realistic heart cut out of it and were actually left in the top drawer.
Three artists that have common elements with my art project are Andy Warhol, Taro Chiezo, and Sarah King (writes words on fruits). Andy Warhol was the first artist I thought of just because he used a banana in some of his pop art, but when you see one of his artworks with a banana in it, you know it’s his. The second artist, Chiezo created a sculpture called the superlambanana which is what it sounds like; a huge sculpture of a half-banana, half-lamb. Chiezo’s sculpture and mine share that fact that something simple is taken (a banana) and it is transformed into something complex. The third artist, Sarah King, did a series of fruit with words on them. The common element here is using words to get a point across (in my project I am using the dissolution of marriage form under the peel to represent my parents’ divorce).