Monday, June 16, 2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

From "An Alchemist With One Eye on Fire" by Clayton Eshleman

So we have this reading for senior seminar that we were supposed to "translate in terms of visual art"...but I have a real problem with this, because I think it already applies;

What might a responsible avant-garde in poetry today include?

1. Radical, investigational writing that is raw, often wayward, in process; poetry as an intervention within culture against static forms of knowledge, schooled conception, cliched formulations.
(Now with this passage, if you just replace the words; investigational writing and poetry with words like art, this totally applies.)

2. Writing that envinces a thoughtful awareness of racism, imperialism, ecological issues, disasters and war. 
(and wants to do something about it...again switch writing with art)

3. Multiple levels of (visual) language- the arcane, the idiomatic, the erudite, the vulgar, the scientific; relentless probing; say anything; not just "free speech" but freed speech

4.  Transgression, openning up of the sealed sexual strong rooms; inspection of occult systems for psychic networks; the archaic and the tribal viewed as part of everyone's fate.

5.  Treating boundaries like stage scenery.

Notes from class: WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF ART IN THE 21st CENTURY?
-Art used to be made for the world, now art is made for the ART world, completely disconnected with the actual world.
-Gary Gaffney says "Art is the collision between man and universe."- 

Installation views from my thesis exhibition




Salty Cheeks Series (1-4)





On Criteria (Walter Darby Bannard)

What is good art? Bannard states that questions like this are "intrinsically unanswerable and that bearing down on them doggedly and fruitlessly merely compounds the misunderstanding which leads to their asking." Alright, fine, I agree, but that's just a really scholarly way of saying what I have learned in the past four years....In art, THERE ARE NO ANSWERS, ONLY QUESTIONS!

"Goodness, goodness in general is not identifiable. It is not substantive; is has no characteristics. It cannot be an entity in itself. Goodness is a consequence of particular judgement and exists only within the setting of that judgement. "

"Great art always presents itself for reevaluation. It is always brand-new. It comes to each of us with no assumptions, no criteria, no history, no pedigree, no "consensus." 

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

yes,

I cannot believe my senior show is up. I always knew it would eventually happen but the whole thing is really surreal and kind of anti-climatic. While setting up I realized I didn't have enough work, so I ended up cutting two entire pieces on Sunday, I had a mini-breakdown but got it done and I'm actually pleased, not nit-picking at the way the show is, I'm calm. I feel this big wave of relief, like I'm going to graduate and I did what I thought was impossible. The gallery talk was the worst part for me, I was just uncomfortable and completely rushed through it but the thesis review which I anticipated being horrible wasn't bad at all. Yay! I'm finally able to just BREATH.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Ho Hum



Why why why do I always seem to find the exact same thing that I am doing, but someone has already done it, and thought it through more? Meghann left a print out from this website in my studio and this jewelry is badass and it makes me 
angry...I hate that I want it. But this is a push for me to tweak my work into a different direction to 
stand out. 

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

This is an example of the work that I am making right now. I am working with cutting paper into lacelike, organic forms. These works are technically about cycles; in terms of life and death, cycles in nature, personal process...CYCLES.

The State of The Art...by Arthur C. Danto

There is absolutely no reason why Jackson Pollock is a household name, and his wife, and better artist, Lee Krasner is not....sexism is always present in the art field.

What is art for? by Tom Marioni

For beauty,
For history,
For decorating apartments,
For people to laugh at,
For imitating nature,
For therapy,
For seeing in a new way,
For an educated audience,
For enlightenment,
For political agendas,
For glorifying the church in the Renaissance,
For glorifying the state under Communism,
For glorifying the rich in capitalism,
For recording society in a poetic way,

Beer, Art, and Philosophy, Tom Marioni


I think MY art is for:
imitating nature
therapy
seeing in a new way
educated audience
enlightenment
and sadly, for decorating apartments.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

School is Out- rethinking art education today

" Should the art school be a reseach center that enlightens conceptual practices while de-emphasizing skills, or a course of study in entrepreneurship, presentation, strategic thinking, and other matters to prepare young artists for the ruthlessness of the market?"

When Form Has Become Attitude- And Beyond Thierry de Duve

TALENT VS. CREATIVITY

"Never, though was art equated with skill. What deserved admiration in the accomplished artist was talent, not craftsmanship. Skill could be acquired, talent could not, since talent was thought of as a gift of nature- a gift, however, which could niether develop nor express itself outside the rules, conventions, and codes provided by the tradition".

"His definition of painting would have been simply: what painters do. That an artist works in the medium of painting means that he questions painting for what it has to say about itself and hasn't said yet. His definition of painting might be: what no painter has done yet".

"....imitation reproduces, invention produces: whereas imitation generates sameness, invention generates otherness: wheres imitation seeks continuity, invention seeks novelty".

"Creativity being the source of invention, the medium, its target, the teacher - who is no longer a master- owes his authority to the very constraints of the medium while he invites the student to transgress the medium's limits in order to prove his creativity".

"Linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, structuralism, and post structuralism, in short, "theory" ( or so-called "French theory") entered art schools and succeeded in displacing- sometimes replacing-studio practice while renewing the critical vocabulary and intellectual tools with which to approach the making and the appreciating of art".

Monday, March 17, 2008

Butterflies are free

We talked about this in seminar today, but the reality of the situation is pretty depressing. To be a "successful artist"(if monitary compensation and being the new hot thing is how you define success) is really about the networking game. A lot of mediocre artists make more money than ridiculously talented artists simply based on who they know and it sucks. Yeah, going to Yale for an MFA would be amazing and getting solo shows in Chelsea would be mindblowing, but I'm not sure how I want to define success. How do you become an art dealer?

dream

I had to blog about an insane dream I had the other night. In the dream, Jake and I were riding in his car and we saw something in the sky, but it wasn't a plane, so we followed it thinking it was a UFO. We ended up in a parking lot, and I got out of the car and looked up and it was falling right above me, I realized it was one of those Catholic statues of the Virgin Mary tumbling in slow motion. It shattered on the ground right in front of me, but when it broke blood splattered all over my face. I bent down to pick up a piece of it, but there was nothing there, just a puddle of blood. In the dream this happened several different times, but only Jake and I saw it happen so everyone thought we were crazy. 
Bottom line, I'm Jewish...and this is a strangely Catholic dream. No, I don't think it was some sort of sign to accept Christ or any of that, but I cannot stop thinking about this hypothetical blood filled Mary statue that falls from the sky.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Sidney Lee Gall

I'm dealing, but I am heartbroken. My beloved grandpa passed away a little more than a week ago and I haven't really manifested how I really feel about losing him. 
Growing up in Lexington with my mom and sister, I was really lucky to have my grandparents in the same city. Like clock work we always had dinner with my whole family on Sunday nights, at 6- because any earlier was the middle of the afternoon according to my grandma. Me and grandpa were partners in crime, he kind of taught me how to get into trouble because I was always a really precautious kid.
He and my grandma married when he was 26 and she was only 17! (he found out she was only 17 when they were signing the marriage certificate, he said "You're only 17?! Why didn't you tell me?" she coyly responded, "well, you never asked."Her excuse now when i remind her that when she was my age, she was a mother of 2 is "it was the war, times were different!")They met when grandpa was in military intelligence in WWII. They had known each other for like 4 weeks, but remained happily married until he passed away at 90. They still "necked" on the couch until the last year, when I was young it was gross, now, i know I want that when I'm older.
Memories:
  • going swimming at my grandparents with my friends and my grandpa always trying to embarrass me by hand polishing one of their life-size bronze female nude sculptures and singing "Tiny Bubbles".
  • My grandpa drawing random shapes and challenging me to "Turn it into something", which I think is one of the things that got me interested in art.
  • His stories from the war, which I always was bored by..but wish I could hear another.
  • watching M.A.S.H. with him.
  • Going on walks with him around their neighborhood even though I had to run to catch up with his long paces.
  • Eating chicken noodle soup, Grandpa used to eat everything first, and save all of the noodles for last, but he knew it was my favorite too, and always let me have them.
  • Spearmint gum
  • riding around and running errands with him in his camaro, which was secretly the coolest thing ever.
  • Kisses on the cheek and he would say "Ohh, that's the sweetest, dessert with no calories".
  • His dirty sense of humor and the ability to make any woman blush, any age, any time. I remember at restaurants when the waitress would come over and say "Can I get you anything else?" he would always say "Aw honey, just smile".
I catch myself thinking about him and laughing, and then getting really sad. I alway saw him as this vivacious dashing man, like james bond, and he really was. But when I moved to Cincinnati to go to school he started getting sick, with the usual stuff, but worse and worse every time I went home. I felt guilty, I felt somehow responsible. This year it got really bad, when I saw him for the last time he was in the hospital, unresponsive, not my grandpa at all, he was always the strong one, and he was so weak. I feel so heartbroken that I didn't get to see him more and savor the time with him. I feel guilty I was such a shit when I was in high school, when I should have been with my family, not with bullshit friends. I wish he would have gotten to know me as an adult or the person I am now, and I knew him better, as a person. He did open his eyes and look at me, I told him I loved him, and he nodded. I think he really knew i was there. 
I worry about my grandma so much, she has never done anything on her own. When he would go away on business he would only stay for a day so they never had to spend a night apart. I'm scared for her to be so vunerable.
Change is scary..and things will never be the same which is terrifying. I think about him easily a hundred times a day and the fact that my thesis has been about the cycle of life and dying makes the closure a little hard, I know too much about the scientific stuff, I don't want to think about him as a dead body, it's really hard. It's hard to feel all of this at once just typing this.

I am going to end this post with my grandpa's favorite toast, which he says won him my grandma.
"Here's to your eyes that shine, here's to your lips divine. The further I've met, the latter not yet; but here's hoping."

spring break blues

It is ridiculous that it is March already. Where did the time go? I cannot imagine not being in school and frankly I am terrified of having to be an adult. I know the rest of the semester is going to be quick and painful.
I really want to travel, but I don't know where yet. I've been looking at residencies internationally and really not ruling anything or anywhere out. I just want to find one that is at least free possibly with a stipend. I was really surprised at how many require the artist to pay fees. And I have news; I'm broke!

It is really obnoxious how many strings are untied right now; I don't know where I'm going to go or do after school. However this is the only thing people ever ask me.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

I'm finally getting to the point where I can see the similarities between the work I'm making and the thesis I'm writing. I had felt really suffocated by the box I created for myself in the thesis, but it's starting to make more sense. There's always a new problem though.

Monday, January 28, 2008