Sunday, April 1, 2007

Installation Project Proposal


































For the installation project I would like to create a miniature zoo where the animals have escaped along the paths on campus. As a student attending college can be similar to the animals and how they feel being at the zoo, at least for me. College students are in a sense put on display because of the work and feedback they must exchange with their professors. I think that our visible appearance is also judged by professors and everyone else. College students also spend large amounts of time on campus because they feel that they have a responsibility to be there and that their parents and professors seem to want them to be there. At least some of the time that I have spent in college I have felt like a caged animal in the zoo, but the difference between myself and the animals in the zoo is that I will leave the college, but most of them will not leave the zoo so I am sort of playing around with the idea of the animals leaving their cages but then they are still on the college campus where the students must also be.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Robert Arneson's Egghead instalations


Robert Arneson was a master at ceramics and was a professor at UCD. For the University Arneson created a series of five large heads called eggheads meaning intellectuals. each head has its own name: Bookhead, Yin and Yang, Eye on Mrak ("Fatal Laff") which is shown in the image, and Star Gazer. They still remain on the UCD campus. The heads talk about the dualities between students and how we need the differences because they can sometimes bring us closer together, but also Arneson mostly wanted the work to be comical.


Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Artist Talk # 5

I attended Fereshteh Toosi's talk about her art work. Toosi is a new media artist all though she says that new media is not the best label because later on it may no longer be new. She discussed how you cannot be a new media artist just by doing some work on the computer. There has to be a process to this type of art work and a real purpose and real thought involved for it to be successful and others should be involved in some way. Her work seems to involve some portion of society and politics. She created a video taped work called Saddam's Birthday which was related to the Iranian new year, the fifth year that we are going into the war and her personal background. it was also in relation to how there was being a movie done and someone was supposed to be cast as Saddam also if the real Saddam wanted to be seen in public it would not be him, it would be a look alike. The work was where a man and a woman dressed in bright almost clown like clothing and wore comical masks that resembled Saddam's face. They walked around outside talking to people and having them take their photo. Unfortunately she did not talk about what happened and how people reacted to it. She talked about other works show created but Saddam's Birthday was what most interested me. One thing that was impressive that she did and many other artists that have given a talk do not do is that she talked about her thought and research of the projects she worked on.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Artist Talk #4

I attended a talk by artist Chris Coleman who uses technology and art to discuss issues and problems in the world that relate to society. My favorite of his worked was titled Collusion. The work was of a building emitting and taking back in the smoke it emitted into the air. The movement of the smoke was very similar to the way that a human being breaths but smoke from a building unlike what we breath pollutes the air causing some of use to have trouble breathing. Also the movement of the smoke was almost calming in the work and I was tempted to breath at the same tempo as the building,

Installation Art


Fountain by Duchamp is an installation in the sense that is was an ordinary object put into a space that it would not ordinarily be seen. it changes the idea of art from what is pleasing to what the artist says is art and to what is out of the ordinary. We have all seen a urinal, at least men have but what is so interesting about the work is that Duchamp saw a urinal and thought of a fountain changing the entire beaning and purpose of what a urinal is and went a step further by taking it out of the public rest room and moving it into a gallery which is a different sort of public space.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Cheese hand









To explore personal space and wearable objects I decided upon creating a cheese hand. To make the hand I first created a complicated two part plaster mold of my right hand. I used Monterey Jack cheese to pour into the mold but unfortunately even after the cheese was cold and solid I had to add more cheese to my creation and even then it did not look the way that I wanted it to. When the hand was done I added acrylic finger nails to the tips of the hands fingers.
I took the hand to the Mexican restaurant Cerro Grande and I left the hand on a plate. I hid my own hand and pulled my sleeve over the cheese hand so that it would appear to be apart of my body. My Fiancée and two married couples came with me for the dinner however it seemed like the men at the table were more disgusted with the sight of the cheese hand than the women which was interesting. The women were the only people who ended up participating.
I wanted the cheese hand to look as though it was my hand. The fact that it looked gross just made it more interesting. By my friends eating my hand they were taking in apart of me that could then come alive within them so part of my message has to do with cannibalism. Another important message I was trying to convey was giving an important part of me over to those I care about. Artist’s hands are very important to them and to be missing one of them would mean that they could no longer create. My friends and I discussed the project and the hand and we sort of linked it to the body of Christ. The hand was not blessed but the important of an artists hand seemed to be convincing enough. It is a blessing to be able to work creatively with your hands. Jesus gave himself up for others to help them, and although this was a foe hand and only a part of myself the meaning was giving up to those I care about a very valued part of me so that they may use it to be better people or more creative people.

Art event # 3

I went to a talk by our TA, Lacey Volk. Her talk was actually for the print making class and I just happened to get invited. Lacey uses CAD, photo shop, and many other programs including the three dimensional printer to create her art work. She seems to mainly work in black and white and grey scale but said she is beginning to move towards color again. I like that she uses different shapes and lines to create images and is not afraid to use her own image in her work.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Spouse Mix







Spouse mix makes a comment on a particular type of marriage. The type of marriage when one of the people involved just wants to get married to get married and rushes into the commitment without any real feelings for the other person involved. Not only that but it is about how many rush into marriage without considering that it is a lifetime commitment, and that marriage is a partnership in a sense and you have to give it your all. I tried to make this statement clear by creating larger box than normal and one that resembles a cake mix box. It is kind of awesome to thing that there might be a possibility that from a mix one could make a living human being but it is not realistic or likely to happen. On the inside of the box I put different type of metal objects to get a loud sound similar to a crash or something breaking because the type of marriage that I am discussing will fall apart, even at the beginning it would be sort of ruined. I decided to paint my box a light pink everywhere and to paint the front white. To move the white else where on the box I painted white dots on the sides, top, and bottom and left the back pink. The changes in color and the dots being in some places and not others is in relation to the transition ones makes into marriage and how after marriage the transition is complete because of entering into a new life with another person.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Box project

My ideas sort of make fun of sertain aspects and types of marriage. there is not a particular form of a box that I want to use. I thought about a jack in te box type of box, a coffin, and a box of mix for baking or a pill bottle. I thought about how fairy tale weddings are false and are never what they seem and about how many people just want to marry to be married for all of the benefits, and then I thought about how people want to get married for the companionship and to grow old together.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Art event # 2

I attended an artist talk by Lance Winn. To me he seems like a colorist and he uses strong and kind of strange ideas in his work. He showed a slide of an explosion. when thinking of a large explosion people think of destruction and sadness. Instead of making the explosion look like a horrible event Winn made it appear playful and beautiful. To create the piece of art he used an array of different colors and shades of those colors nut also the colors used were vibrant, and happy. I really like the deer ornament that Winn created. It is of a dead deer's ghost leaving its body. It was interesting that he gave the dead deer the normal coloring of a dear and left the ghost deer white. I also liked how the work had some movement upward of the ghost deer leaving the dead deers body. It is an interesting thought that after we die that we leave the body we are used to and go somewhere else or into the body of someone or something else. It was also a good idea because deers are killed all the time by hunters or vehicles and I don't think that people see them as important, but maybe they are more important than people think. I would definitely put the ornament on my front lawn if I had the option because of the meaning behind it and because it is very different from other lawn ornaments and what they do.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Art event # 1

Melisa Dean is the new art instructor at St Mary's. Her art concerns consumerism and she seems to mainly focus on items in stores Target and Ikea. Dean sort of criticizes the way that people buy too much stuff or that they buy items that they really don't need like the example she gave of the big contraption that boiled eggs that people were buying when all they had to do was boil water in a pot. Dean also made it clear that in some way it is okay to buy a lot because people seemed to be proud of the large amount of things they purchased just as people who bought very little were proud. She showed in her work through layering the items that people were buying that the more busy the layering and drawing got the more the person bought and obviously if they bought very little the items in the picture would be clearer to the eye and the drawing would be less busy. the layering is repetitious and she also sets up some bought items or even pictures of people as they buy in patterns. Her work to me plays upon psychological disorders such as agoraphobia and kleptomania. Agoraphobia is fear of the market place and kleptomania is compulsive shopping and Dean does watch people and their actions when shopping and how much they buy to use as an expressive or a commentary type of art form.

sculpture in relation to the body

All of the works were interesting. they each brought extention, new use or meaning to the body or a body part. the problem was the information on the sculptures was so brief that I do not feel like I completely understood what some of the works were about. I was very interested in Louise Bourgeoise's, Costume for a Banquet. I understood her story and events in her life but the costume in my eyes did not represent breasts, or eggs, or any falic form as the paragraph said it should. to me at first I thought it was supposed to be a types of food, and then I thought it looked like a large amount of tumors bundled together. Also I would have never known it was for a banquet without reading its title and I wonder why did she choose that color for the costume? I also thought that the work about floating in space was interesting where the artist is hung from hooks that have pierced his skin. I like the idea the there are no boundaries and that the skin can be a new and exciting canvas. when one cuts themselves or peirces their skin on purpose endorphins kick in and I was wondering does this finding have any relation to the artist or his work?