#artstatement1

The outdoors has always felt like home when “home” could not be confined to one single place. Because I have spent the last several years relocating from place to place, I have learned that it is difficult for me to settle. However, it is within these years that I have found solace by going outside and simply enjoying the quiet moments found in nature. In my experience, nature has also been reminiscent of my childhood, a certain naivety that is filled with awe and wonder. It is a reminder of times that seemed much simpler. When I could slow down and enjoy the small moments of a given landscape. Now, I cherish these moments more like gifts, as they embrace the child-like wonder I wish that I still had.

I find that working with both photographic and sculptural forms work best for me, as I feel like they encompass my memory and experience of these places. Both methods elicit specific moments in my memory.  Texture and materiality are important in my work, as they are conducive to my memory of home.

Art Statement #1

For better or worse, writing is an essential component of being a contemporary artist and becoming an articulate and effective writer can only strengthen your art making practice. Regular reflection and writing about your work will aid in your ability to invite others into conversations about your work, engage art historical and theoretical discourse, and comment on trends in contemporary art.

The main objective in writing an art statement is to provide your reader with information about your ideas, inspiration, and the context by which you want your work to be viewed and experienced. The statement also gives you a valuable opportunity to define for yourself the critical conversation you want to engage through your art.

Be honest with yourself and take stock of what you know about your work, process, and ideas. Consider the following questions:

What am I doing? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it? What influences me most? How does my art relate to the work of my contemporaries? What do I want others to understand about my work?

For the first draft of your art statement, please address each of the above questions in a document that is roughly 3-4 paragraphs long, no longer than 1 page if it was printed.

Post your art statement #1 to your blogs by the beginning of class on Tuesday, February 20th. 

Images from top:

Installation view of “Secret Sister” a two person show of artists Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Rebecca Morris currently on view at The Pit in Los Angeles. 

From the press release:

Secret Sister is the first exhibition to pair the work of two lifelong friends and colleagues who share similar aesthetics, world views, and unwavering commitments to their artistic practices. Jessica Jackson Hutchins’s work in sculpture pairs ceramic vessels with found furniture to create provocative tableaux that challenge received ideas of craft, domesticity, and conventional beauty. Her recent work in glass extends her exploration of materials more readily associated with artisanal fields than the arena of fine art and moves deeper into abstraction, using color and light as well as scale to create assertive yet graceful and uncanny forms. Rebecca Morris’s paintings offer up constellations of gestures that are at once familiar and strange.  Her paintings are a deep investement and reflection in the medium’s elemental concerns regarding shape, color, and gesture.  Morris’ compositions play with spatial hierarchies – margins, borders, the center in contrast to the edges, and so forth.  Contrast itself is a foregrounding concept within her paintings and in this context creates a field for contemplation or reflection when viewed with Hutchins’ sculptures.  Secret Sister is a pause amid a long and esteem-filled association between two artists who tell their story in a few anecdotes here and, most importantly, through their work.

Check out the show before it comes down on February 18th! 

Art Statement #1

For better or worse, writing is an essential component of being a contemporary artist and becoming an articulate and effective writer can only strengthen your art making practice. Regular reflection and writing about your work will aid in your ability to invite others into conversations about your work, engage art historical and theoretical discourse, and comment on trends in contemporary art.

The main objective in writing an art statement is to provide your reader with information about your ideas, inspiration, and the context by which you want your work to be viewed and experienced. The statement also gives you a valuable opportunity to define for yourself the critical conversation you want to engage through your art.

Be honest with yourself and take stock of what you know about your work, process, and ideas. Consider the following questions:

What am I doing? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it? What influences me most? How does my art relate to the work of my contemporaries? What do I want others to understand about my work?

For the first draft of your art statement, please address each of the above questions in a document that is roughly 3-4 paragraphs long, no longer than 1 page.  

Any art statements that are longer than 1 page WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

Please have your typed Artist Statement printed out and ready to turn in at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 3rd.

Images from top:

I discovered Paul Gagner’s work over the past weeks and am really excited about it. Check out this interview with the artist if you are curious about the work and want to learn more....

Professional Practices: Art Statements

“If we pause to reflect for a moment, it becomes clear that it is impossible to disentangle thought from action, language from art, mind from body. We can only ever know our relationship to art through language, as in the very act of thinking and articulating our response we have already succumbed to its structuring effects. The challenge then is to engage with this contradiction, to enquire time-and-time-again: what is the best language to use, how can this feeling or thought be most clearly expressed? All the while knowing that it is a task doomed to failure, as art and language, thinking and writing are not separate but inexorably entwined. Yet sometimes we must provisionally think of them as such in order to challenge our accepted practices, to think about the politics behind why we choose the words that we do, and why language works the way that it does.”  - Victoria Horne, quoted from here.

For better or worse, writing is an essential component of being a contemporary artist and becoming an articulate and effective writer can only strengthen your art making practice. Regular reflection and writing about your work will aid in your ability to invite others into conversations about your work, engage art historical and theoretical discourse, and comment on trends in contemporary art.

The main objective in writing an art statement is to provide your reader with information about your ideas, inspiration, and the context by which you want your work to be viewed and experienced. The statement also gives you a valuable opportunity to define for yourself the critical conversation you want to engage through your art.

________________________________________________

Art Statement #1

Be honest with yourself and take stock of what you know about your work, process and ideas. Consider the following questions:

What am I doing? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it?  What influences me most? How does my art relate to the work of my contemporaries? What do I want others to understand about my work?

For the first draft of your art statement, please address the above questions in a document that is roughly 3-4 paragraphs long, no longer than 1 page. 

Have a printed copy of your statement ready to turn in at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 7th.

Images above: