Walk This Way

Wooden Textiles by Elisa Strozyk

Yes, wooden textiles.

I'm not sure why you'd make these, but they're fantastically appealing. She's interested in addressing the immateriality of our online culture and the lack of tactile stimulation. She likes these wooden fibers as manipulatable by touch, recycled, and unexpected. In this, she is successful. 

Brown Sugar

Melanie Bilenker

picture taken from The Jealous Curator 

She uses her hair to capture and create moments in jewelry, Victorian style.

(Roughly) in her own words:

The Victorians used ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love. "In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants"

I love these. They're intimate, precious, careful, well-crafted, and beautiful.

And the Cradle Will Rock

Boris Vallejo: one of the most committed artists of our time.

Boris Vallejo: an artist who knows exactly what he wants to paint and what he wants to do and commits to it fully.

Dungeons and Dragons is to Boris what Greek Mythology is to Renaissance artists.

He glorifies the human, the humanoid, the extinct, and mid-90s sedan.

I couldn't not share him with you.

all I want are four walls

Things I'm influenced by:

honesty.

You Mouth the Words by Heather Willems

the mundane.

from Target

the quiet.

Central Park by Scott Schultheis

the invisible.

me by me

and those things that happen when nothing is happening.

from Wormbook Ch 13

maybe it's because my life is radically changing in the next few months
maybe I'm just buying into "the knot, the nest, the bump" consumer culture
maybe I'm growing up
or maybe they're just a part of me.

I'm just not sure yet... but I'm fixated and obsessed and I'm working on it and through it.

that'll be the day you get back home

Although it'll be at least a decade before we'll have enough spending money to afford a six hundred dollar art book, Janfamily: Plans for Other Days looks amazing!

A how-to book on creating art in everyday situations, especially focusing on connections between people. Although I don't necessarily agree with it as a how to book, I love the photos. Honestly, I think this is funny.

a mind that knows itself is a mind that knows much more

I've been looking at these glitter (yes, glitter) paintings by Jamie Vasta for a few weeks and I still don't know how I feel about them.

Judith

Stepsister

Made of glitter on wood boards she recreates Caravaggio and Caravaggio-like paintings with herself as the female figure. If she were not in these paintings, they wouldn't be anything more to me than a modernization of Caravaggio's work: interesting in its novelty and execution but without depth. Similarly, if she had only recreated these works with herself as the subject, the implications would be interesting but the paintings would be too narrative for my taste. However, the combination of glitter and self-portraiture forces me to think past each element and view the works as something more. I still don't know if I like them or if they mean anything to me, but they're interesting. Very interesting.

Tattoo Tears

I need to make temporary tattoos. 

 

lawn mower man found here

Need to. 

I've been thinking about it for months and with the turn my work is going (and with the print exchange coming up quick) it's time!

I'd like to consider myself a printmaker that still loves the idea of an original.

I love the idea of alternative printmaking and using printmaking elements in original pieces to bring them together. The idea of the body as a walking print is especially interesting to me and as someone who dislikes the idea of giclee prints as reproductions, this seems to be a way I can make originals AND let people take home (hopefully after paying a small fee) a piece of my work without making giclees.

I am very excited.

We can be heroes

Evan Lindquist etching

His works are so repetitive. They're beautiful in that overly tedious way but the repetition of themes makes them feel like overly elaborate sketches rather than fine art drawings... Why do these ideas need to be expressed en masse? What does each piece gain by being in a series with the others? Work like this challenges me to push to make my works distinct, to make them build on one another, and to not fall into the comfort of an already developed visual language (like I so often am tempted to do).

But they'd make great tattoos.

Run, run, run

I'm making very personal work right now. At least, I'm making work from a very personal place that I want to remain relevant to others. I love this quote from Emily Barletta about her art making practices:


"I have a spinal disease that has always been a present and physically painful force in my life. The majority of my art stems from this fact, but to say that I make artwork as therapy would be untrue. I make artwork and it is therapeutic. This is the same to say that I make art and I am in pain; instead of saying I make art because I am in pain. I cannot separate these ideas. The objects that result from this are the invented anatomical structures of my imagination and my biology. These structures relate to cells, veins, organs, skin, blood, and bones. But they tend to express themselves as flowers, plants, tubes, topography, diseases, bacteria, growths, mold, and organisms. They spread, spill, leak, and grow their way into existence through yarn and a crochet hook.”

Pelt and detail

Center

Her work challenges me: she makes pieces inspired by biology and the body, specifically her body. I struggle with her work: I'm not sure if I think her pieces are referential or illustrative, art or craft. The reasons that I struggle with her work are the same reasons I return to it again and again. If nothing else, I so greatly appreciate her craftsmanship and the endless hours she pours into her work. I like her process, the way she uses a crochet hook as a mark-maker, and the elements of time evident in her pieces.

fever to tell

Olivia Jeffries 


I'm always interested in this aesthetic. I like beautiful things. I like thinking about why things like this are beautiful. I like time. I like delicate things. I like pieces of her artist statement about things that move her: "the complex and unknowable nature of reality, an intimate moment which exists for just a second and is then forgotten or the impossibility of feeling how someone else feels..."

and you still refuse to speak

empty vessels

my secret self: you can't always be friendly, there just isn't time

In short: I don't like all of her pieces but I like thinking about them.

hey-ay-ay-ay

Anthony Zinonos

what a great name.
found him during my 3.0 minutes of free time today... enjoy!

Figures 56 and 42

Pill Head

Triangle Exchange

Maybe it's just the weather, or the mood I'm in, or the stress that seems to permeate everything and everyone right now, but I love this. Right now, I really appreciate the lighthearted handling of the subjects. I like that it makes me laugh. Although I often tire of work like this-- i.e. Urban Outfitters-approved photocollage-- but this guy is honest in a way I don't often see... He doesn't hide anything: he's straightforward and he manages to bring to light some great ideas. His work is satirical in nature but not extreme past the point of utility.

a little bit more like Bukowski

I'm tired. The last few weeks have been tough: the next few are going to be tougher. I'm finding it hard to be creative and throw myself into my work when I only have an hour or two at a time and all I really want to do is take a nap. So, this post isn't about an artist. It's about what I've been looking at and thinking about. It's about things I need to see, remember, categorize, sort through, digest, and use.

 

(both from Martha Stewart)

(from buypetoskeystones.com)

(from yavaglass)

Lilac wine

My drawings have stagnated... I need distance and time and patience. In the mean time, I've been making the mental switch back to painting.

I think one of the hardest and most important questions I ask myself and agonize over is why anyone should invest their time into looking at one of my pieces. I look to the art world, to communication, to process, and to the internet. I've been really interested in the physicality of paintings: a frame with stretched canvas, a wooden board, a piece of paper, a wall... As I searched through the sculpture and paintings section of MOMA's website, I came across...

Hannah Wilke. I don't quite know how I missed her before this. I have seen several of her works (online, in classes, in real life) but never attached a name and persona to the works as a whole.

 thanks for the photo, MOMA

Ponder-r-rosa 4, White Plains, Yellow Rocks

1973

thanks, HannahWilke.com

from her SOS Starification Series 

1974

I don't always love feminist work but I like her. I like her boldness. I like that she was nearly always topless (including during installations). I like that she made things that were both beautiful and meaningful and she used this beauty as part of the piece. Mostly, I like how much thought is evident in her pieces: I feel like the artist thought through every detail of her pieces far more than we could ever know.

They ain't ready for this one nephew

Heike Weber is a German artist who makes amazing pieces like this:

Mardin Kilim 2007

silicone

680x340 cm

Dorotheum 300

2007

permanent marker on vinyl floor

Utopia

2009

permanent marker on acrylic paint

I like this statement about her work:

" The foundation of her work is the idea of a neutral space whose potential is first realized through the drawing and is what consciously positions Heike Weber within the critically reflected tradition of Minimal Art. Judd's cubes, Andre's metal plates or Morris' serial objects had focused for the first time on the referentiality of art to its neutral environs... The reality of the room is confirmed, classically, stroke for stroke, line by line, only the next minute to be thrown out of sync. The gestural input, the physical working on a picture support that expands in all directions, seems to veer towards a momentum that now on its part appropriates the viewer. It is not the object on view that finds its irreconcilable and multi-angled visibility made manifest, but the ‘specific object' that strikes back. "

why must I feel this way? (must be the money)

Prompt: your blog entry should be centered on the technical aspects of your personal production – what you do with the materials you’ve chosen and why you’ve chosen them. Some of you have already addressed this a bit in your first homework assignment, but it's worth further contemplation. Post this by Friday, September 17 by midnight.


As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that as an artist, I recognize that each person perceives the world in a different way and I desire to visually explain my particular breed of perception to others.


The way I view the world is different from the way anyone else views it. My paintings, nearly all of them focusing on a representational, recognizable image of a part of a person, depict my observations of and obsessions within my environment. The physicality and history of paint and paintings helps the viewer look at the image as a scene or piece of a scene and less like a symbol. 


Whenever I focus on projects related to time, I draw. These pieces are  records and as such should look tedious, laborious, and time-consuming. Drawing with ink is a process of building and adding (assumedly) without the ability to remove information or change it later.


Prints are where I create something new. Although some of my pieces are abstractions of my observations, which I usually reserve for paintings, and nearly all are extremely time-consuming and intricate, they differ from my other work by being my own. Although all of my work is somewhat referential, whatever my work is referring to from the "real" world is toughest to discern in my prints.

I feel it all, I feel it all

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

Sometimes I do everything backwards. Some people have these great artists who they always admire and look up to and their work contributes to some sort of visual conversation with these great artists. That sounds awful to me. Instead, I make things and when I get down or confused or curious or excited I look around to find other people like me. Other people who use the same visual language, or the same medium, or the same scale, or with the same general concept (i.e. time, memory, classification, etc.).

As I was meandering around the internet, I found Katie Sehr.

I can see it. I can see her thinking about time, translation, and intimacy.
I like it. I like that they took forever to make. I like how purposeful they seem. I like the language she uses which is very similar to my own.

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

30" x 29"

Turn yourself around

Back to blogging!

Although I can't say I love everything he makes,  Brenden Monroe's pieces are something I consistently use as a measuring stick for my own work. Our imagery is similar but (I assume) our motivations are distinct. I like his work specifically because it challenges me to recognize when (in my opinion) imagery similar to my own fails and when it succeeds and why... I think it's much easier to do with someone else's work first and then look for those things in your own rather than being able to be completely honest with yourself about your own work.

Pieces I like:
they feel organic and natural but of his own creation. These pieces bring me in and encourage me to think about what this is, what's going on, and why.

Pieces I don't:

have some sort of figure in them. Some of them, like "Morgan and Kat" below just seem too fantastical without any reference to anything outside of the painting. It's cute, not moving. His pieces that use the human figure fail to connect the abstracted imagery with the figure in a concrete way. I also find the figures themselves disquieting. He may be changing the figure to try to make it visually look like it belongs in this world he's created but I fail to recognize how, other than sharing the page, these two things interact.

Morgan and Kat

Awakening

telling strangers personal things

Prompt: Begin by writing an essay the equivalent of 2-types pages on your blog. This essay should be centered on how art production functions for you personally. What motivates you to make work? Why is it important? What role does it play in your life, academic experience, career plans, etc? How do you view art?


Thoughts:


I am an artist and a scientist. As a scientist, I have a natural desire to define and categorize: I think the thing that distinguishes "artist" from "non-artist" is a recognition that each person sees the world differently AND a concurrent desire to communicate their individual breed of perception to others. Building from this assumption, I hope that my art reflects a desire to communicate visually... whether it be a concept or an experience or something entirely different.  


When I'm thinking about a project, I often get caught up in an inner debate of some sort: is this for me or for others? how is this different and separate from my work in the lab? why should I ask the viewer to spend their time with this piece? Although these are important questions to ask, I often get caught up in the thinking and don't do enough making... In the end, I think (good) art is (and should be) challenging, inspiring, thoughtful and thought-provoking. The process of looking is important in itself and if my work gets people to stop seeing and LOOK, I'll be content. 

My interaction with the art world is fueled by hope and criticism. There is honestly nothing more exciting than seeing a phenomenal piece of work, a work that makes me jealous (check out The Jealous Curator blog!), a work that makes me think (about my work, my self, our world, our assumptions). Yet I feel that as much as I am a part of the art world and community by being an art maker, I'm also an outsider. I'm a scientist. This position pushes me, makes me feel like I need to challenge and discuss things that bother me, an outsider, about "the art world", if only to selfishly work through my own feelings about it. However, I do feel that there can be a lack of honesty or forthrightness that is troubling in our contemporary art society. It frustrates and alienates the "average viewer" (clarification: I'm only addressing the average INTERESTED viewer). Since I view art as a form of communication above nearly all else, I find it more than frustrating.

I like intimate, delicate, time consuming, beautiful work.

The academic side of my art experience is harder to address. The most valuable things to me have often been outside of class and usually involve discussions with others in the studio, at 2am, with a project due the next day. In the future, I think the community I've built will be the most important piece of my art-related side of life. Although I intend on attending graduate school to study biology, art will always be a part of who I am. Ideally, I'd love to have an Etsy business, selling my wares around the world wide web. One of my dreams is to have a print studio that Tim and I run and travel around to craft shows and exhibitions... selling things on Etsy and enjoying it.


 We'll see.