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.