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.