NICC ART

o Your reflections on the readings

o This last week’s readings were very interesting.  The both consisted of lists that everyone should take the time to read, especially aspiring artists.  The reading of the ten rules for students and teachers, gave really good advice about how school and life should be addressed.  The other reading an artist’s life manifesto, gave some deeper thought into life compared to a more school centered list from the other reading.  Throughout this second reading you could replace the word artist with other professions, and it still could make sense.  The portrait at the beginning of this with Marina Abramovic with a scorpion on her face, brings a darker theme to the list.  The manifesto talks about depression and suicide but clearly states that they are bad for an artist.  It also talks about suffering, which at first glance should be a bad thing, but is represented as a good thing in this manifesto.  From suffering comes an artist best work. 

o Your overall experience in the course—please get more specific than “I liked it,” or “it changed how I look at art,"—tell me why.

o Overall I thought my experience with the course was okay.  I started with no background in art, so in the beginning the class was not my favorite.   Later through the semester, I began to enjoy it more, and started looking at art differently.  Every week sitting down and typing my reflection on the art works that I viewed that week was relaxing at times.  I can now better distinguish different art styles and techniques, and adds something to everyday life.   

o How art has been a part of your life prior to this class, and how you anticipate it will play a part in the future. (I’m not just looking for feel-good responses here; I’d love to know, honestly, how much or how little this course will impact your future engagement with the art world).

o Art was not a huge part of my life prior to this course, and probably will not be after.  Before this class and currently I sketch things all the time, be it shapes or random objects I am thinking about that day.  Throughout grade school I remember that art class was one of my favorite times of the day.  This lead me early on to think that I might want to go into architecture.  I have since changed my interests to engineering, but I still have plenty of time to change what I want to major in.  I also had the idea for the summer to maybe learn how to paint, due to the amount of time I will have on my hands.  A major reason that I thought about doing this was watching the artist Bob Ross and his son paint nature scenes on YouTube.  This class could have pushed for the decision to paint, but it is beyond me.  I am not sure if this will push me to look into the art world, but I will enjoy art more and more often.  

There are two items that shocked me while reading our chapter on Digital Art.  First item is that artist can make choices from a palette of over sixteen million colors and the second is that the human hand is disappearing from much of today’s art.  With that being said artists also now have endless ways/opportunities to create their pieces of art through this new and exciting medium.

I really so like the work of Alberto Seveso with vector graphics.   I Googled his work and spent a long time scrolling through the images. Along with the image we can find in our textbook on page 276 (7.12), I opted to post “Sperm Shaping Feather of Me” in my blog post for you all to look at, as this picture really caught my eye.  Alberto does one heck of a job with his talents.

So did anyone else’s mind explode when you reading about the movie “Dinosaur” on page 319 and it was stated that “the last two scenes in the film, running one-and-a-half minutes, took six months of work in the studio”?  Really six months!  No wonder movies take so long to come out!

Yung Jake’s “Get Embedded”, was an interesting video to watch.  He had my eyes jumping from screen to screen with all the “pop ups” he had.  Not really sure I had the chance to really see them all the first time, so I had to watch it a second time, and then I felt a little dizzy.  He did a great job with the video and the graphics were fun to look at plus the lyrics rocked.    

The whole time I was reading this chapter my son Tyler and his video games kept popping into my mind. Some of the graphics on the games that he plays are just unreal!  I like to sit and watch him play and maneuver around the screen while he plays Call of Duty and Minecraft.  He has even built me my own home next to his, with my specifications of course.  A little mother-son bonding never hurt anyone!

I really liked Tabaimo’s statement, that her art is fifty percent her responsibility and the other fifty percent comes from the viewer.  There is a lot of truth beyond that statement.  I did find the “kitchen” video installation of interest, but her work turned me off as soon I saw that baby being flushed down a toilet in the “bathroom” video.  To me that is disturbing and appalling to even want to watch that!

My relevant artist for this week is Joan Jonas.  According to http://joanjonasvenice2015.com, Ms. Jonas “is a pioneer of video and performance art, and an acclaimed multimedia artist whose work typically encompasses video, performance, installation, sound, text, and drawing” and “has been a tenured visual arts professor at MIT for the past 15 years”.   She has some really interesting ideas and creations. I am posting a picture from her “They Come to Us without a Word” exhibit. This is part of a “four room  - two video projections—one presenting the main motif of the room and the other the ghost narrative” exhibit.  

From what I gathered on the internet Sound art really become more known around 1983, which would have been my junior year of high school and this really is the first time I am hearing about this medium.  In a nutshell, to me sound art is like a combination of music with art to some degree.  As I am typing this part of my blog post I can hear my wind chimes in the distance so I am wondering if wind chimes would be consider art or music/sound?  I am also wondering about the tour of the 9/11 Museum in New York City, as you have the option of taking the tour with audio (which I highly recommend) or without.  So when I took the tour with audio, is that consider Sound Art as it gave the tour an “auditory experience with a visual component”.

After reading “An Introduction to Sound Art”, by Robert Worby, I was on an informational melt down. There was so much to learn about Sound Art, from the very beginning with the Futurists, to American composer John Cage, to today’s term of soundscape.  I have discovered that fall into the, “People tend not to listen very much, they hear sound but they rarely listen”, category.   I decided that I needed to do more listening, so I grabbed that old fashioned tape recorder and went outside for an hour to just sit and listen for my own research.  Some of the sounds that I heard were, my wind chimes, a lawn mower, birds, vehicles driving by, children’s laughter, a door closing, dogs barking and low chatter from my neighbors.

Tim Hawkins is certainly an artist who thinks outside the box.  I would love to crawl into his mind to see what he is thinking!  His piece Überorgan, is one massive piece! The sound(s) that he has created were giving me the chills.  I, for one, could close my eyes and picture myself in a haunted place with those sounds coming out of the walls.  Perhaps it didn’t help that I was watching scary movies before doing this portion of our homework.  The “tip of the finger” piece really didn’t do anything for me as it was kinda creepy looking.  Not quite sure what he is trying to convey to me with that particular piece.

For this week’s relevant artists I picked Scottish artist Susan Philipsz.    According to www.tate.org.uk, “Philipsz uses her own voice to create uniquely evocative sound installations that play upon and extend the poetics of specific, often out-of-the-way spaces”.  Susan Philipsz has never had vocal training, nor can she read or write music.  She takes songs that have all ready been recorded from various traditional folk music and sixteenth century ballads to songs by Nirvana and David Bowie, .and sings them in her own way.  One of her best installations of sound art is a 16th-century Scottish ballad called “Lowlands” that she sang in three parts, and each one of those parts were installed under three bridges in Glasgow. 

This week’s topic of social practice, the article, “An Introduction to Relational Aesthetics and Social Practice”, I understood that relational aesthetics had to do with a connection with the audience. Like if the artists get the audience involved that this is a type of relational aesthetics. I thought that this chapter was really interesting yet really confusing. I did need time to take apart of what I was reading in order to comprehend what was the information offered out to me.

This week’s video of Tania Bruguera, her work is amazing. I am so proud of what she has done and the work she has put into the immigrant movement. The way she said that as soon as someone becomes an immigrant, they also lose the ability to talk about politics or be involved in them. The involvement with the Hispanic people is a great way to make her work stand out because it catches a lot of other people’s attention.

Vanessa Beecroft is Italian and does performances and “living paintings” which are by women that are half clothed or nude. She also directed a video for Kanye West, and since then she has worked with him on choreography. Vanessa also had a problem with food when she was younger, anything that would pass her lips, she would write it down in a food log that she had. In this way, I feel that is why she has these girls pose nude, so they can show of their body and not be ashamed of it.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/vanessa-beecroft/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/mar/13/art

Week 12

                This week’s reading is over Performance and the many ways performance can be used to convey as art.  As I sit down to do this Blog and read the articles assigned, I can’t help but to think of how I feel about performance art now and how I may feel when this assignment is over.  Not knowing a lot about art let alone performance art. I would have to say performance art is expressing art though the use of your body.  After reading the story of Bree Newsome’s story of climbing the flag pole to remove the confederate flag I can now see how some of these, what I will call stunts are linked back to performance art.

                After watching the art21 video of Janine Antoni in “Loss & Desire” I was kind of taken back again.  Her first project was the rope made of items from family and friends.  At this point I do not see any relationship with performance art.  I think it falls more under 3D or sculpture art.  Then she has this thing for cows.  I get that we drink milk and all but to lay naked in a water tank to take a picture of a cow that looks like it is nursing from her?!?!?!  I think people could almost go to jail for this and is not only the last thing from art but is sick and wrong.  I mean if I hang out naked with animals I’m sure people would call the cops.  Her next piece is with the human on all fours and covered in cow hide to me is almost as strange.  By know I’m sure you can tell I’m pretty conservative and don’t care for much of the out of norm types of things. 

Once again with her chocolate face and soap face, I think this is not art but something wrong with her.  Wanting to do this is not art to me and wanting to make your body chocolate to lick yourself is beyond me.  The good thing is that I know it is not just me because I made my wife watch this also.

On a positive note I did like her rope walking and what she did with the horizon in the background.  I feel that this is good art that everyone can relate to and enjoy.  When reading about the different styles and concepts including action, body art, happenings, endurance and ritual I can see where some of this actions come from and are testing the trueness of the art in my mind.  I can also understand that they are reaching out to different audiences and pushing the limits but some things I feel should not be done.

I knew more about architecture before this week more than I had known about other topics from past weeks. That is probably because my grandfather used to be a carpenter and teach carpentry, so I picked up some things over the years. I really think that architecture is one of the most useful types of art. It is definitely one of the most common as well.

Architecture is all around us. It is everywhere from buildings to parks to furniture. We definitely rely heavily on architecture every day. Because of this, it is also one of the most underappreciated and unrecognized types of art.

Is architecture really even an art? I guess it really depends on your own interpretation of art and what you believe the definition of art is. Personally, I do think that architecture is a type of art, simply based on my personal definition of art, which has been drastically changing throughout the course. My definition of art is simply something that is created to be enjoyed by an audience. I’m sure it will change by the end of the class, but that’s what it is right now. So architecture is definitely something that is created, but I’m not so sure about the enjoyed by an audience part. It doesn’t really have an audience usually, but it is usually used by people every day, so because of that, I think it is a type of art.

Maya Lin is a special artist because she is kind of a mix between an architect and a regular artist. She seemed to really enjoy architecture, though. I think she is definitely a better architect than she is an artist. She shows a lot of  potential and could probably be a full time architect. She uses very unique methods to figure out what she is going to do and how she is going to make something. Every artist uses different methods to get these things done, and I think that the way they think and do things us heavily based on their past experiences and their personalities.

Maya says in the video that she thinks that architecture and art are completely separate, but she is kind of blending them together. I don’t necessarily agree that art and architecture aren’t connected, but I do think it is neat when people blend other things together with art.

Rem Koolhaas’ buildings are very crazy looking. They also look very geometrically complicated. I can only imagine that it would take months and months to make sure that all of the numbers and math and everything else is all right.

Rem Koolhaas’s work is similar to one house that Maya Lin made that was shown in the video. The house looked like it was raised three feet off of the ground and was just sitting on a bunch ow stacked wood. That’s the kind of craziness and silliness that Rem Koolhaas also brings to his work. Both of them are very talented architects who think outside the box.

This week’s reading was somewhat a look into our past.  We analyzed crafts that were more prevalent in the earlier human history.  By the reading, and from basic knowledge, we know that today most things are constructed with machines.  This is compared to the times where everything was made by hands, and artisans were able to put their own touch into their work.  When looking at the examples given in the book, you see that older pieces tend to be more extravagant and required meticulous hand work.  The newer examples seem to be more simplistic and show how, we as humans, may not have the patience to complete something as detailed as the plate shown below.  

This week’s featured artist, Kimsooja, had a very intriguing approach to crafts.  As said by Kimsooja in the video, she doesn’t actually make the bottaris, but takes pictures and videos of them.  I found this very interesting that she can classify it as a craft, due to it straying from the usual clay, metal, wood, glass and fibers. I then later considered, that she is making art from capturing the crafts in specific orientations, lighting and etc. that she favors.  She continuously, in the video, compares how she presents the crafts and her standing on crowded walkways to working with fibers.  She also made the area in the building where it played a track of her breathing, and the floor was a large mirror.  I thought this was kind of weird, but in a sense made the room alive.  

I couldn’t necessarily compare much of what the artist to actual craft that the books presents, but I’ll try to compare it conceptually.  Kimsooja compares her work to the fiber section of craftwork.  In the book, it states “This broad category (fiber crafts) includes everything made of threadlike materials, usually woven or tied into larger wholes.”  Kimsooja said in the video that she can’t complete her work, and that she has to continually make the videos of her.  If you switched out threadlike materials with her videos, you could make it seem to be that she is trying to complete a larger whole with her art.   

For this week’s relevant artists, I chose Piper Shepard.  Piper’s work caught my eye the most out of all of the artists to choose from.  The piece that a favored was presented on her website, Chambers.  There are a couple of things, that I can pinpoint, that I liked about the piece.  First, was probably how it looks as if it is free standing, and is made of something other than fibers.  Another one I can think of, is somewhat a continuation of the previous one.  The work to me resembles a castle, and I feel that the name given to it really fits.  Lastly, I thought how it was constructed was a large factor in my liking of the piece.  The way it is loosely woven, and you can see through it, but as stated earlier, it looks solid.  

Going into this week, I had absolutely no idea what installation art was. The readings really helped me understand what installation art is and what its purpose is. I learned that installation art is meant to bring purpose to an area that may not have much purpose. It is meant to make people stop and think about the art and how it is connected to the area, because most of the time, the art has a specific connection to the environment that it is placed in.  Another purpose that installation art has is to get people more mentally associated and connected to the world around them. I think this is especially beneficial in today’s world because of the major distractions in our world (politics, technology, personal issues). These issues can make the world seem like such an awful place to live in, and I think that installation art can serve as a sort of a reminder that the world is actually pretty beautiful.

I think that there are two main types of artists. There are artists that let their art control their lives, and there are ones who let their lives control their art. I think that Do Ho Suh is the kind of artist that lets his life control his art. I also think that he takes full advantage of that as well. He lets his childhood, his nationality and his personality shine through in his work. I think his work symbolizes the simple beauty of everyday things that we take for granted.

In the video, Do Ho Suh said “It’s up to the viewer,” which connects to some of the things that I have said in the past weeks. I believe that the artist can make something however they want and design it to be interpreted in a specific way, but in the end, it is down to the interpretation of the viewer. In other words, the artist creates the art, but the viewers give it meaning.

Karla Black is a very talented artist. She is very good at using vivid colors and space and using them together to create a very visually stimulating piece of art. These are also qualities that Do Ho Suh possesses. Their pieces may look different, but they have very similar qualities.

This week, I learned what installation art is, and what its purpose is. My view on art specifically hasn’t changed much, but my view on artists definitely did. Up until now, I thought all artists were pretty much the same, but not anymore. I have now realized that artists are just as unique as their work. I also learned that there are two main kinds of artists (the ones who let their life control their art and the ones who let their art control their lives). Also, my theory that the way art is interpreted is up to the viewer was proven to be true.

In conclusion, this week was very beneficial for me.

When reading this week’s chapter, I really got thinking about sculpture. It is one of the few 3 dimensional types of art, and that give it so much of an advantage over other arts. This is because making a 3 dimensional object brings it into our world and makes it seem real for the audience. I believe all art tells its own story, and sculptures tell the best stories.

Sculpture is also unique because it has no specific medium. Sculptures can be created out of almost any moldable or modifiable substance. This gives the piece more depth and more of a story based on the substance.

Every artist is obviously different and unique in their own way, but Kara Walker is very devoted to her art. I realized this when she was talking about the research she did on sugar. Anyone can use sugar in their art, but it takes a true artist to research how sugar works and how to use that to their advantage. I also think that she had good inspiration for the design of her piece. She obviously is willing to devote her whole life toward her art, which is very admirable.

Kara is very good at making her art tell a story. I think this is a result of her extensive research, her passion for her art, and her inspiration to create the art. She knows that her sculptures tell a story and it is her job to write it. I think she also knows that the medium she uses is an important part of the story, which is why she chose sugar.

Rachel Whiteread is also very good at telling a stories with her sculptures. Of course, I don’t know what the intended stories were, but I can create my own. In sculpture, and in art in general, the great thing is, everyone can interpret it differently and make up their own stories to go along with the art.

Both artists are very good story tellers. I think this is because they are simply completely devoted to their work, and the results show it. It just goes to prove that hard work pays off, and it also goes to show just how powerful art can be.

This week, I learned a lot about art. I learned that art is used to tell a story, but the amount of stories art can tell is limitless. I also learned that inspiration is important in art. If the artist isn’t inspired, then the art suffers.

Another important topic is mediums. I used to think that mediums were irrelevant to the outcome of art, but now I know that mediums are an important part of the story telling process. This is because there is always a reason for the artist to choose a specific medium, which comes back to the story that the art tells.