My Artist Statement

Relating to my pieces from my slide presentation, my artist statement is as follows:

As an artist, it is my goal to represent the world as I see it, so others may see it that way too. My hope is that my perspective is interesting enough to hold the attention of my viewers. Furthermore, I wish to get people thinking. I want those who are rigid minded to open up and imagine different possibilities, I want those who are without humor to find laughter, and I want those who have limited themselves to understand that the limitations that they endure are put in place only by themselves, and almost always can be overcome.

My work displays my struggle between realism and illustrative design. Realism being the exact replication of an object viewed from life, and design being a representation of a thing that does not exist. My desire is to connect the two, rather than battle with both of them. The day that I juxtapose those two ways of creating, will be the day that I have achieved the success I am looking for.

Final Projects For The Semester

My final studio projects for the semester are as follows:

Oils: An 18x24 inch still life containing various cooking supplies, a coat hanger, and a pregnancy test. What am I trying to say with this piece? Your guess is as good as mine. It was rather humorous calling my mother and telling her I was buying a pregnancy test though. :D

Watercolor: A children's book about one of my cats and his daily mischief. My girlfriend knows how to make home-made books, so she helped me put one together. I used red mat-board for the front and back covers and the binding, and held those pieces together with black duct-tape. Then I got off-white sheets of paper to string together for the pages, and I am adhering watercolor paper with my illustrations and narrations to those pages.

Drawing: After working on a jumbo comic book page for three weeks, I decided I hated it and started over. My new and improved idea is a series of self-portraits done in a graphical and illustrative manner, surrounded by an academic traditional still life. I hope Ben likes it. Who knows.

Tim Burton Art Show at the MOMA

I went to see Tim Burton's Art show in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. My girlfriend and I had some trouble getting there... We ended up in the wrong lane of a toll booth and couldn't pay it properly (my solution was to throw quarters out of the window) and upon finally getting to the museum it took us 40 minutes to find parking, after frantically calling Julee and asking for assistance. We literally RAN to the museum, and finally got into the show.

The show itself was really awesome. It included many sketches and drawings that he had done, some of which were really rough ideas that eventually became other projects like his movies. Some were done in his spare time while he was working for Disney. There were letters hung up that he had written to publishers, asking for his comics to get published, and welcoming any suggestions or criticisms they might have had regarding the work. They were all really interesting. There were tv's set up with animations he had done, and an entire room dedicated to costumes and models from his movies. The costume from Edward Scissor-Hands was there, along with helmets from Planet of the Apes. There were also manikins from his animated films, like Nightmare Before Christmas, and The Corpse Bride. The show was absolutely fantastic.

Sherlock Holmes Dance Performance

The dance performance we attended in the Johnson Theater was partially based on Sherlock Holmes. There was a beginning section that seemed unrelated, though Julee and I both assumed there was some hidden narrative we were supposed to be seeing. The other parts, after a brief intermission, were much more entertaining.

My favorite part was the lady that was acting as if she were a body on stage, only to pop up later with a flask, revealing that she had simply been passed out drunk. Another part of the performance I enjoyed was the climbing sections. Several dancers scaled these giant red ribbons that were strung from the rafters of the stage. I found it very impressive, it must have taken a lot of body strength and practice to accomplish. Hats of to all of them for a good performance.

But Is It Art - Chapter 3

This chapter discusses art and the meaning of art within different cultures. I particularly like John Dewey's idea that art is a universal language within which anyone, regardless of native language or geographical location could connect. I really like Asian art, for instance, even though I don't always know what its underlying meaning is. Because of modern technology I am able to loosely translate text in languages that are foreign to me, which helps to close the gap of misunderstanding.

This chapter also discusses certain art influencing other art in different countries. It also talks about how art can travel in a similar way to people because they take it with them. (not really physically take it with them, they bring with them their culture and native art ideas)

PS - I want a bonsai tree SO BAD. :D

In Class Blog Questions - Bloody & Beauty 2

1. What did Horace Walpole list as the "Three Sisters of Graces"?

Gardening, poetry, and painting.

2. What did Kant mean when he said, "Purposiveness without a purpose"?

Kant was referring to objects within art, or more generally, art itself, as not having a specific functional purpose, but being purposeful in the way that they are beautiful and elicit a pleasant reaction in viewers.

3. In Danto's opinion, what was baptized as a piece of "art"?

Warhol's "Brillo Boxes" piece. He classifies art as anything that is accepted by a gallery or museum and would be purchased by art collectors.

But Is It Art - Chapters 1 and 2

The first chapter of this book covers a lot of art with a particular shock value to it. Pieces, for instance, that contain bodily fluid, excrement, or other generally disgusting "medium. Serrano's "Piss Christ", for example, supposedly contains urine. Hirst's shark piece uses formaldehyde to preserve the body of a dead shark in a tank. Ofili used elephant dung in creating a piece called "Virgin Mary". I can only imagine the reactions that these works generated, and must still generate, given their content and expression.

There is also discussion about what classifies as artwork, and how that distinction is made. Warhol's "Brillo Boxes", for example. somebody thinks it's art...I'd have to say though...I don't really understand what deep thoughts he's trying to convey with that one.

Langdon Quin's Art Lecture

I went to Langdon Quin's artist lecture today. I wasn't really sure if I was going to enjoy it or not, I found that his paintings were very pastel in color and seemed "candy" to me. Professor Hood asked him about not having rich darks in his paintings; whether it was a conscious decision or simply a bi-product of his process. Quin replied that he wanted his darks to have visual weight, which he attributed to using whites in his darks. That makes no sense to me...and I still don't like that he doesn't use real heavy darks in his work.

Everything that was hanging in the show was more recent work I think, so i'm sure he has had darks in his earlier stuff. I did really enjoy his explanation of his triptych of the art studios. I thought that there was a lot I hadn't seen in the work until he spoke about it. I also thought that his other descriptions of his paintings made them more interesting.

Criticizing Art - Chapter 6 - Writing and Talking About Art

This final chapter was broken into three main parts. The first breaks down how to decide what to write when writing art criticism. It covers things like how to pick a topic to write about, how to describe it properly, how to interpret and judge it, etc. The second talks about more technical things like how to use a word processor...haha. (and also how to avoid plagiarism and how to edit a piece of writing.) The third section is examples of such writings.

Kate Gartrell's Artist Lecture

I attended Kate Gartrell's artist lecture about her experiences in the art world. She had really interesting things to say about her inspirations for her work. I really enjoyed her explain the relationships between bull fighters and dancing, and how that influenced several of her paintings. I also liked her experimentation with distorting the sexual nature of her figures- like having a males arm on a female torso. She explained that it was a study inspired by Michelangelo, who used male models for all of his figures in the Sistine Chapel paintings.

I found her paintings to be different from what I normally consider a painting to be. She did a lot of strategic figure cropping that I found interesting. She had several paintings where the figures head was missing in part or in total, and many that were just from the waist down. I thought it was a different take on the average, run of the mill self portrait. It was an enjoyable and enlightening lecture.

Criticizing Art - Chapter 5 - Judging Art

This chapter deals with the judgment of art, and breaks it down into four categories: realism, expressionism, formalism, and instrumentalism.

Realism is strictly representational work; something that describes exactly what the artist has seen, without any deviations. I've often debated whether or not I want my work to be representational. For a long time it seemed very important to me to create pieces that were as realistic as possible, but I was constantly disappointed with said work because I could never get things as "perfect" as I saw them. Over the past several years I have come to the conclusion that while some of my work is representational, other pieces of my work might not be. And I'm ok with that.

Expressionism is realism with artistic license. An artist can be working in a representational way, but can change things as they wish. Such as moving objects in a still life so that the composition is better, or changing the color of an object or space in a painting. Expressionism incorporates the artists interpretation with realism. I'd have to say I work mostly in an expressionistic way. I think it's often more interesting than realism.

Formalism is the idea that art is unrelated to morality, religions, politics, or "any other area of human activity". I disagree with the idea that art is only created for the sake of art. I think that art can sometimes be that way, but for the most part, I like to think that any art piece is the product of a statement or narrative that the artist is making. Any piece that I do on my own time (excluding classroom exercises and homework assignments) has some sort of meaning behind it.

The theory of instrumentalism indicates that art should only be created to create a positive behavioral response, and any work that creates a negative one should be "excluded". The only thing I can think to say about that is well...I'm a fan of freedom of speech...

Out Of Class "Field Trip"

This weekend I attended a "cutting" with my girlfriend. The process is similar to that of getting a tattoo, but a scalpel is used rather than a tattoo gun. My girlfriend got a crop circle design that she had drawn herself etched into her leg. Part of this process involved some skin removal, in addition to the "etching" portion.

Here is an example of what the end products of scarification look like:



Once the incisions have been made, and any undesired skin has been removed, the healing process takes about 6-8 weeks. The work is at high risk for infection, so it must be washed twice daily with a gentle soap for the first couple of weeks. Once the piece starts to scab, it needs to be scrubbed with sea-salt to irritate it. This will make the scar raise and get a dark red, as opposed to a light white. It was quite the thing to watch!

Tom Paiement's "Evolutions" Art Lecture

Paiement described his entrance into the artwork as a self-inspired journey that led him to his first two drawing classes. From there he continued to painting and printmaking. Previous to his art-making, Paiement was an engineer. This is important to know because it shows in some of his later multi-media work with sheet metal. He uses a lot of geometric figures that I believe are stimulated from his engineering background.

He seemed very knowledgeable about physics. He made several references to the states of matter and energy, and continued to talk about the "Big Bang" theory and black holes.

I found his fret series to be very interesting. I suppose that's mainly because I play the guitar. I thought his use of led's in the piece to show guitar scales was fascinating and creative.

I also liked his triptych, two pieces of which are currently located in the UNH art gallery. I had gone to see them and hadn't really given much thought to what they meant. I had just admired the metal work and thought they were interesting. It was really neat to hear what Paiement had to say about them.

Criticizing Art - Chapter 4 - Interpreting Art

This chapter of the book shows examples of how to interpret artwork, and describes the interpreting process.

The book states that interpretations are persuasive arguments, which I suppose I agree with. My thoughts were that not every writer is going to be necessarily persuasive, but I would assume that they would argue their perspective on any given piece. The book continued to say that feelings are the guide lines for interpretations. Which I also think to be true. Different people will have different feelings towards a piece of artwork and consequently develop a different interpretation of it from others.

Finally the chapter ends with good interpretations encouraging a viewer to be further engaged and develop their own thoughts. That idea I like because again, I think every piece is going to evoke a different thought in every viewer. Art wouldn't be nearly as interesting if there was no room for such interpretation. If artists spelled everything out in black and white there would be no mystery left. I have a theory that the same idea goes for music. I think good music leaves enough mystery for the listener to fill in their own blanks so that the songs are meaningful to them. Otherwise they would simply be stories...the same stories that never change.

My Valentine's Day Trip To The MFA in Boston

For Hallmark day (haha) I took my girlfriend to the MFA in Boston. We were both very excited to see some of the new pieces, and of course our older favorites.

Getting there was rather humorous, haha. I'm unfamiliar with Boston and was using my gps to find the museum. The gps indicated that there was more than one MFA in Boston. So I chose the first location that popped up thinking it was "the one". Once we hit the tunnels we lost satellite reception, because well...we were encased in concrete... A couple wrong exits and turns later, the gps brought us to an alley in Faneuil Hall, and told us that we had "arrived at our destination"... The museum looked a little different than I had remembered ;)

I called tech support (my dad) and he looked up the correct address and we plugged that in. When we arrived we parked, and walked up to the back entrance with the giant baby-head sculptures. We were walking on the grass...until we realized it was covered in some sort of animal feces. God only knows... Upon jumping off the grass, we saw a sign that said please use the walkways. Go figure.

My girlfriend was particularly looking forward to seeing Paul Gauguin's painting, "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?", which I had never seen. We walked around the museum all day and ended up in front of Gauguin's piece. It had evidently been moved from the room where all the impressionistic stuff is, into a darker room that wasn't lit well. The glare on the painting made it hard to see all at once.

The painting is HUGE. Here is an image...


(Note that this is only a partial of the image...you have to click on it to see the rest.)

The subject of the piece is the cycle of life, and is meant to be read from right to left. It begins with a child and ends at a dying old woman. The blue figure represents a higher power.

My favorite pieces from the museum were mostly prints by Albrecht Durer. I had seen his works in slides before, but never up close. I was truly amazed at the level of etching detail. Having taken printmaking intaglio, I had a healthy appreciation for the work.

It was a wonderful trip :D

Rebecca Litt's Artist Lecture

I went to see Rebecca Litt's artist lecture on her residency experience in France. I was instantly struck by her liveliness and subtle joy when she spoke about her work.

Her work, previous to going to France, was rather melancholy in nature. Her oil paintings were mostly of dreamed characters in fictional city-scapes. They were mostly in the perspective of the third-person, and the viewpoints were generally elevated so that the viewer was looking down at the subject matter. She mentioned that she had envisioned taking her characters, which she sees as possible representations of personal characteristics, to France with her.

When she did go to France however, she found herself in a very different setting in which to paint, and she developed an entire different cast of characters of which to paint. They changed from naked women to europeans in speedos, and people in scuba equipment. Then when she came back to the states, she incorporated her new characters into her city-scapes, which have become increasingly more colorful than in her older work. I very much liked her piece with the divers in scuba masks dancing on a city rooftop.

Litt explained some useful information about her residency; such as the fact that the meals were provided by a chef, that everyone was assigned their own studio space, and how much time was devoted to painting as opposed to leisure or other activities.

Criticizing Art - Chapter 3 - Describing Art

This chapter of describing art covered the basics in well...describing art. There are three simple topics to consider when describing a piece of artwork.

The first is "subject matter", which is made up of the people, objects, places, and events depicted in the piece. The subject matter is what people usually notice first about a piece in my opinion, but that is up for interpretation.

The next topic is "medium", which refers to the materials that the artist used to create the piece. I'd say that noticing what the artist used is the second most important thing about a piece. Some mediums are more difficult to use than others, and there are so many different mediums to work in that there are endless possibilities and combinations for an artist to choose from.

Finally, the last is "form". Form relates to the arts realistic or abstract nature, its representational or nonrepresentational approach, how the matter is presented, its composition, arrangement, and visual construction. It is the way in which the artist wanted to render the piece.

When used in conjunction with one another, these topics enable a critic to adequately describe a piece of art.

In class piece reviews

The first piece we're looking at is a painting of a blond woman. It's a classical looking portrait, with a not-so-classical touch. Her eyes are covered with a dark blue smear that travels from one side of the piece through the figure's face, and partially past the other side. Along her neckline there is also another blue thick line that stretches from the other side of the painting. It seems to present the predicament of a woman from a time period where women were not allowed the same freedoms they have now. The line covering her eyes might indicate a statement of not knowing there could be freedom that has yet to be obtained, and the other around her neck perhaps a threat if she were to do something that would be considered out of line.

The second image is a sculpture of a pregnant woman. It's a vertical cross section with very interesting color choices. The right side is mostly black, the only different colors are red on the nipple and blue in the eye. The other side is far more busy looking. It shows muscle structure and a fetus growing inside the stomach. The muscles are shown in red and the fetus and skull in gold. The piece is very detailed, showing both exterior and interior figure. The artist shows visible knowledge of the human form in a captivating way. I found the split between the two sections to be the most interesting; the way the fingers are cut off across the stomach to the muscular half and the way in which the lips are further together than the teeth of the more structural half.

This piece is in four parts. It is made to look like a cluster of four integrated photographs. The first shows the profile of a woman from upper-waist to head, and there is text towards the middle of the frame that says "You became a scientific profile". The second image is a front shot of a man who is facing the camera, with the text "An anthropological debate". The third is of a decrepit looking old black man, who is also facing the camera. The text says "A negroid type". The fourth and final frame is a frontal shot of a black woman, perhaps the same one from the first frame, and the text reads "& a photographic subject". The meaning of the piece alludes me.

The piece is most likely a photograph also. It shows a blond woman with her head turned away from the camera so that the back of her head is the most prominent part of her head. The background is grid-like, with faint dark lines that makes me think of a screen from a confession booth. The figure is dressed brightly, with a red and white floral-patterened top. The way in which she is turned makes me wonder what is behind the screen. Her arms are positioned in a stretched way, as if she is uncomfortable or in some kind of danger.

Week 2 - Class/In-class Field Trips

I attended the UNH art show for "War and Remembrance and Acts of Memory" show at UNH's art gallery. The downstairs was filled with Langdon Quin's pastel colored landscape paintings. I found his color choices to be somewhat abrasive. Everything was candy colored and pale. He did however, do a triptych of the art studios in the pcac that was very interesting. I think the colors in the triptych were a little darker in comparison to the landscapes he had done; so it wasn't as pastel-like as the others.

Upstairs, the show had paintings having to do with war, and some Picasso reproductions. There was a piece that I really liked that looked like a print. It showed helicopters flying over hunched figures. I noticed something bizarre while looking at the piece... A person wouldn't actually see individual helicopter blades on a flying helicopter, they would see a blur of spinning blades. The helicopters in the piece had only two blades each, and they were visibly still.

I also went to the "Sacred and Profane" show in Portsmouth, NH. It was a really neat experience, I had never been to an art opening before. I walked through and tried to look at everything at least once. The pieces that I really liked I tried to go back to look at a second or third time. There were two really large paintings that I particularly liked.

One was a long painting called "Titans" (I think...) It showed four muscular men huddled in a circle in what looked like a cavern. The piece was monochromatic, in a really interesting pale teal color. I thought the figure studies were amazing, and also found the way in which they were bent disproportionately was awesome.

Another piece I came back to look at again was by Katherine Doyle. It showed a mother crouched over a child. The canvas was not entirely covered in paint, so there was interesting negative space around the bottom. Certain areas of the piece had been splashed with turpentine so that the paint would run. The faces of the figures were completely hidden which made the piece seem mysterious.

I very much enjoyed going.

Ways of Seeing (1, 2) & Criticizing Art (1)

The first chapter of Criticizing Art thoroughly explains the way in which art is criticized, and how that is justified. Something that I really agreed with was the idea that criticism is created out of love rather than hate. Someone wouldn't bother writing about something and how it could be made better or made differently if they hated it entirely. As an artist, I think it is important to know how to accept and react to criticism so that your work can benefit from the perspective of an outsider with fresh eyes. Sometimes I find myself so absorbed in my own work that I can't see mistakes or irregularities that would otherwise be obvious.

Robert Rosenblum had a quote within the chapter about what the process of creating art was. I share the same viewpoint...

"What you're really trying to do is educate yourself, and educate the audience that's going to read about how you're going to educate yourself."

I really like the idea that creating art is a constant education. Whenever I pick up some kind of medium and prepare to create something, I tend to think about it differently than I think about anything else. I think artists generally look at the world a little differently than the general public anyway, but I think you learn something from every piece you work on. It's sort of a cute little secret with yourself. I think making art is less about the final product and more about the individual process.

There was also a quote from Hickey talking about how art accumulates value which was interesting. It was something I really hadn't thought of. He was talking about buying art being an investment, and the longer you wait to buy a piece, the more expensive it gets, because it gets reviewed by critics and galleries. As that happens the value goes about because of the good publicity. He talks about how waiting for that to happen increases your chances of obtaining a high-valued product. But really, a piece being valuable is completely objective. Everything is only worth what someone will pay for it. If gold were an abundant resource, than people would pick it up off the ground rather than pay tons of money for it.

Ways of Seeing talked more about interpreting artwork, and the differences created in pieces that are replicated. I liked the section about how art seduces the viewer by pulling he or she into the work. When I went to the MFA to see the Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese exhibit, I remember taking hours to get through all 51 pieces. Some of them I didn't even like, but I couldn't help but to stare at them. That exhibit was absolutely incredible, and is something I probably won't forget. (And that's saying something, because I forget EVERYTHING)

Studio Practice

My studio practice is different on any given day. Usually I find something to distract myself from getting actual work done. I guess I could say I work best under pressure.

I begin by laying out my materials; whatever those happen to be. I work primarily in oils and various drawing "stuff". Then I shut my cats away in the other room, because well...they're destructive and happen to ruin everything they touch. Then I stare at everything for a while- usually a long time. Sometimes that results in work, and other times just ideas.

That's about it.

Test

Testing 1 2 3...