I just figured out that I can write on this header

Project 5

Project 5

Is this Sugar Free????

Robert Montgomery is an artist that strings together beautifully written words that also gather a deep connection of the greater picture. Although a brief interview, Montgomery seems like a very simplistic and humble artist that is just taking life one day at a time. Although I think the most intricate part of himself is his art that ties loosely with religious contexts. I think that the most valuable contribution that fellow artists can take from him is his strong belief and desire to continue to produce art that is ‘outside’ in the street where it is impactful to the public. The part of the interview where Montgomery talks about his want to rent billboards is very powerful. He isn’t an artist that just makes stuff to make stuff, he’s an artist that wants to be heard and to spread his art to a big general population, not to the people who go to galleries all the time. Montgomery is definitely an artist that likes to live ‘outside the box’ and his continuous hunger for reaching for ideas inside him are truly inspiring.

The interview between artists, Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer was quite interesting and honestly empowering for me to read. I think certain parts of their conversation contribute a great deal towards artists of today. First off, it is nice to get a perspective of artists that have been in the ‘art world’ for quite some time and to indulge their views on how artists nowadays react and contribute to the art world. Holzer at one-point states, “I don’t see so many young people addressing social circumstance, or ecological circumstance, or economic circumstance through art today.” This line really stood out to me, because as an artist, I have been at times hesitant or have had the feeling of confusion as to what should I do as a human being to stand up for what I believe in. The hardest part is to interpret what is happening in today’s world and apply it (throw it back to society’s face) in a way that will be effective to the majority and everlasting to some degree. I feel as if I am still ‘sheltered’ in a way from all the news and movements of today, this part really inspires me to become more aware of the world in which I live in today.

           For this project, the artist is present, I had quite some difficulty in deciding what to do for my performative piece. My ideas ran wild, yet my ideas seemed either too cliché or too big for me to tackle in the time I was allotted. In the end, I decided to beat the shit out of one of my art pieces.

           Ironically enough, this project came while Metro had put a call out for pieces to be submitted to the Emmanuel Gallery called Metro Now. Thinking it would be a great idea to submit my piece from my prior 3D class, I decided to submit my ‘a-bit- smaller than life size’ cardboard mermaid piece that I had poured my heart and soul and at times a bit of blood into the show. Thinking that my piece could get in, I dragged my piece all the way from my house, having to borrow my mom’s big car to get this piece back to Metro, and then walking it over to the gallery for possible submission. I had also submitted one of my little cups from a ceramic class I was taking and cared little for. Funny enough, my cup was accepted into the show, but my over-the-top huge cardboard piece was denied. Receiving that email, I was pissed and devasted, only since I would have to ask my mom- again – for her SUV to haul this piece back home where it would yet again collect dog fur and dust.

           After a few days of keeping my piece in the kiln room of the ceramics classroom, I had initially decided to just leave my cardboard mermaid somewhere in downtown for at least some people to see my work. This fell through eventually due to time and me not having a car to lug it around town. Thankfully, this project came around just in time, and with that and my sanity basically gone, I had decided to destroy my cardboard mermaid.

           I feel that as an artist, sometimes we must destroy our art in order to ‘wash away’ or ‘let go’ of the past and its connections. I felt that stepping on and ripping apart this mermaid piece would finally rid me of the anxiety and worries I had over keeping it. I had already taken photos of it for my portfolio and no one wanted to buy or take my piece. So, it came down to either bringing it back home (where my mom would again complain about how it takes up too much space in the hallway) or destroying it completely. I had realized that my piece had done its job and that it was time to let it go. My piece served its purpose, and even though I would have loved to have kept it around, destroying the cardboard mermaid (in a way) relinquished me. Every stomp casted onto my piece was a step closer to myself finally ripping away from my treasured piece. It was bittersweet destroying a piece that I had spent hours upon hours working on, but I believe that for me to grow not only as an artist, but to grow as a human, I sometimes must destroy the things that I cherish and realize that nothing really does last forever.

The essay from Roselee Goldberg was intriguing and an eye opener to performance art. Performance does not belong to any category of art, giving it an edge to the rest of art practices such as drawing, sculpture, painting, etc. I adore the fact that performance art can’t be placed in a box on the shelf, it doodles and teases along the edges of vastly different disciplines and practices. Performance challenges not only just the entire art world itself, but it mashes up, purposely deforms and relinquishes any known ‘art’ that we many know of and takes a performance to an untouchable level.

     For this project, Vanishing and Becoming, I took the route of making a video that was merely a collage and mash up of life and videos that were residing on my phone. From the reading, my interpretation was that in the end, once any video, pictures, or any media reaches publishing... it is dead. Everything that we do, encounter, and develop, really don't matter in the platform of social media. I also drew inspiration from the Jafa video from the MCA, where his video took from all kinds of perspectives and videos from the internet. I wanted to make a ‘known-homemade’ piece that had no fancy video equipment (also because I don't have fancy video equipment), but I also feel that even if the video is ‘dead’ per se, having home footage that is raw provides some sort of blurry sense as to the vanishing and becoming in life. 

  Each clip chosen was for a reason. I included footage and occasional audio of my friends cussing and lighting cigarettes to overlay with the water stream that collected all different kinds of plastic drinking vessels. The clip showing myself, in a reclined position with my just staring at the camera, I had chosen that clip in particular because of my personal experience with my friend getting me too high where I was stuck in a parking garage for 5 hours. The clip from the beginning was an empty bucket of ice cream that was slowly melting into liquid.  Other smaller clips like my dogs, plants, and the bar, somehow all connect with almost any person on some level. It is what surrounds us and encases us to who we are today. The audio was mostly from older cartoons: the speech is from Charlotte’s Web when she herself is about to die, Chucky from the Rugrats finally realizing his mom is with him but in a sense that she is in the sky and the flowers, and I also pulled from Hey Arnold, (the line: “It’s people I don't understand) from the speech Pigeon Man gives to Arnold. These lines were from cartoons that I had once watched religiously as a child and really put no effort or thought into it. However, at this time, when I re-watched these scenes, my mind didn’t wander towards a fun and entertaining cartoon, bur rather the cynical yet very much real space that we all live in. 

    The Buddhist discovery of art didn’t seem to take a literal function but the human’s mind to interpret and engage in what the person actually views. When the young man is so overwhelmed with Buddha’s glow, both end up going down to the bank and Buddha suggests looking at him in the reflection. Thus, this focuses in on the idea of not ‘seeing’ directly the image of Buddha, but seeing what the water may interpret through the young man’s interpretation. Sort of like going through different ‘human filters’. It is as if what we are seeing is never just ‘seeing’ but seeing the see. We see on the daily, but what we might interpret is vastly based on personal taste and experience. 

             Projection is also heavily used throughout Sean Cubitt’s paper, since birth we as humans tend to naturally have an aura. This aura is something in which we can give to other people. Aura and projection is a custom mix that we all try to convert to others.