Week 4

            I found this week’s topic one of the harder ones for me to engage in. I don’t have much knowledge or experience with Fibers but I did find a lot of the works we looked at very interesting. Sarah showed a wide range of work and some of the pieces I found to be very beautiful. I especially loved the works of Doho Suh in which he constructed rooms and houses out of silk. His work was so elaborate and well crafted. The way the silk looked when it overlapped in some areas was really beautiful. I also loved what Sarah pointed out about the seams and how they almost gave a sense of a line drawing. One of the overarching themes I noticed in a lot of the work Sarah showed was the idea of the exploration of the everyday and everyday things. Suh used silk to make an apartment. Liza Lou took a 100 square foot kitchen and covered the entire thing with beads. In “Knitta, please” random objects around cities all over the world were graffiti-ed in knitting. I found it very interesting that by taking an everyday object and covering it in something else it can make it beautiful and interesting and less mundane. It can call attention to something that would otherwise be overlooked.

            One of the videos I liked the most of this weeks multimedia was the “Myein” installation. I thought that not only was the whole concept and idea extremely powerful but the way that it was constructed was powerful as well. The visuals of the piece were very beautiful and it made me want to go see the piece in person. At first it was hard for me to see this as fibers but when I looked at it more it made more sense to me. The whole installation is very tactile, being written in Braille. The materials as well could also be tactile. Another piece from this weeks multimedia that struck me was Cai Guo-Qiang’s wolf piece. I think visually it is very beautiful and immaculate but as I looked at it more I struggled with the question of “Why? What does this mean?” What could a group of wolves soaring through the air and then landing in a heap on the ground possibly mean? Maybe there is no inherent meaning but then again what would strike Guo-Qiang to create such a piece? Either way I liked the piece because of the fact that it made me think and wonder.

            The strongest connection I can make between this week’s materials is the concept of the exploration of the everyday. From Liza Lou’s kitchen to Doho Suh’s silk rooms to Cai Guo-Quiang’s wolves there is the repetition of the everyday. Ann Hamilton also created a piece in which she has a wooden desk in the center of a silk organza room.  I am not sure why this is such a re-occurring theme in the Fibers pieces I’ve seen so far but it fascinates me. I think it partly has to do with the fact that Fibers is very culturally driven and very rooted in culture. I especially loved the beaded kitchen that Liza Lou created. To take something so mundane and make it so special and beautiful was incredible to me. This week’s materials were really a struggle for me to make connections however something Cai Guo-Qiang said really stuck me. He talks about how with time you get to know the materials you are working with very well and I can really understand how that is a big part of fibers. In fibers it’s all about materiality and how materiality can change in different conditions and over time. It seems like a very important aspect of Fibers and something that is very special to the media.

        The piece of work I chose to share this week goes along with the theme of exploring the everyday. It is a house that a group of artists changed to make like it got sucked into a wormhole. 

Week 3

            I found this week’s guest lecturer to be really interesting. Michael Salter, being a digital artist himself, spoke about the digital arts. Not only did he speak about what is going on in the digital art world today, but Salter also gave us a really great, brief history of what he had experienced in the digital art world himself. He called himself an “obsessive observer” and showed examples of why he felt that way. He showed us ads, signs, posters, logos, ect. and walked us through the dialogue that went on in his head as he observed each one. I found this really interesting, and also hilarious, because after each one I thought to myself “yeah he has a good point” or “he’s right., that picture of two boys sharing an ice cream cone in their underwear is kind of weird”. I really got the sense of his over-analytic mind and that he really did not take anything at face value. Another thing I found interesting was when Salter was showing multiple iterations of the same thing. He showed us Star Wars remakes, Planet of the Apes remakes and a whole breadth of others. The question he raised was “Do multiple iterations of something get more diluted or can they get better?”. I feel that the answer to this is dependent on the specific case but the question that he brought up really struck me.  In terms of his own work, he also said some interesting thoughts. He kept telling us that when creating his pieces he would ask himself “How brief, concise and confusing can I make it? How can I create unclear logic in a fast way?” and that really showed through in the work he showed us.

            I also really enjoyed the reading from this week. It brought up some really great and valid points and also asked some really interesting questions. The overall message of the reading, I thought, was the exploration of the cartoon as something simplified, quick, relatable, and universal. One of the first points brought up that really made me think was when the author said that one of the reasons that cartoons are made simple is so that we can imagine ourselves in the character. It makes us more engaged as readers and makes the story relatable. By creating faces that don’t have very distinct or real characteristics, we then can see ourselves in them whether it be on a conscious level or not. Another point that really struck me and stayed with me throughout the reading was when the narrative cartoon asked halfway through the article “If I looked like this (a realistic, more detailed version of himself) would you still have listened to me?” (pg 36). And I actually thought to myself “No, probably not”. It was such a valid point and yet something that I had never thought about before.  The multi-media for this week was a little hard for me to understand. I am not really sure how to interpret it but I thought the “Points of Volatility” piece looked really cool. The way the lights interacted with the mountains that passed by was visually stimulating and kept my attention for quite a while. It is also pretty cool that they are actually the Colorado Mountains.

            One connection I made between all three of the materials is the idea of taking a complex concept and translating that in a very simple, quick and universal way. Michael Salter explained to us that his works are all about taking some sort of unclear and confusing logic and portraying it in a brief, concise and fast way. Similarly, the idea of the cartoon addresses this as well. A cartoon takes a detailed, realistic and complicated concept or idea and turns it into the most simplified and relatable form of that idea, that in turn is also very brief and concise. In one of Chris Coleman’s works titled “Taking Sides” he has a piece of cloth and on either side of the cloth are fans that change speed depending on the volume and intensity of someone’s voice. These voices are talking about very heavy and loaded political issues. This piece of art is taking complex words and ideas and creating a very simple and understandable output: the flowing of the cloth from fans. Regardless of if you can understand the speaker, you can understand their passion or lack thereof by just watching this cloth move. I think one the overall themes between these materials is the idea of portraying a strong complex idea in a very simple and accessible manner.

            The piece of artwork I chose to include in this weeks blog is something I feel goes along with the idea of communicating an idea in a short, concise and visual way.

(By: Boris, "The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity")

Week 2

This week’s guest presentation was by Laura Vandenburgh who spoke specifically about drawing. She talked about many interesting ideas and one of the first things she said was that there is nothing that quite compares to drawing because of how immediate and direct it is. She showed examples of doodles, maps, diagrams and a range of other quick illustrations that communicate information in a quick and visual way. I found this very interesting because when I think about an artist who uses drawing as a media, images of detailed portraits and dramatically shadowed still life pop into my head. Her comment however, made me realize that drawing is a tool that everyone uses in their everyday lives and that it is a very effective way of showing others things that cannot always be described in words. She went on further to say that in drawing, things can be visually worked out at the speed of thinking, which cannot be said for all forms of media. Just the other day I was videochatting with my brother and in trying to describe to him my apartment in relation to the UO campus, I took out a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a quick little map. This example illustrates part of what Laura was talking about in her idea of drawing being quick and direct. Another thing Laura said that I found to be very interesting was when she talked about the artist’s “mark”. In my opinion drawing is the form of media that has the most opportunity for/easiest to see the artist’s mark because the final product is a direct outcome of what the hand is doing and how it is moving.

            The reading had a lot of content and jumped around a lot without getting that in depth with any one topic so I found it a little hard to get into. I did however really like the small portion on Duchamp’s “readymade” art. I thought the point he was making was very interesting. To Duchamp choosing and presenting rather than making is the prime act of the artist (pg 109). I found the way he went about making this statement was very interesting. By taking objects that are already made and mass produced and composing them in his own was is fascinating to me. Later on in the reading when it got into the Pop Art section there is a part about a man named Danto who thought that pop art was the end of art because Warhol was taking images that already existed and having assistants make them and then calling it art. This to me, relates back to what Duchamp’s point was, that the artist should compose, not necessarily make. Warhol was not responsible for the hand labor but he was for the composition and ideas. Margaret Kilgallen’s work has a very distinct style to it. Her people are very flat and 2 dimensional and yet in my opinion they have distinct emotions. I found her interviews to actually be more interesting than the images of her art. I especially like when she talks about graffiti. She says, “I compared it to the barrage of images we see every day, especially advertising, and how on billboards or corner stores or anywhere—it's absolutely everywhere—and yet it doesn't bother anybody” (Margaret Kilgallen). It reminds me of a Banksy quote in which he talks about how people consider graffiti as trespassing but that advertisements trespass our brains everyday and in worse ways than graffiti. I completely agree with these ideas because personally I would rather be bombarded by interesting, diverse, original, accessible art than by bland, distasteful, commercial advertisements.

            One major connection I made from these different sources was the idea of the artist’s mark. Both Laura Vandenburgh talked about it, as I mentioned above, as well as Margaret Kilgallen. Kilgallen said in one of her interviews, “I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand…. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is” (Margaret Kilgallen). I think that this is a very beautiful sentiment. In the reading there was a random quote that talked about how the artist sees what he paints, not paints what he sees. I can relate to this because in one of my art classes we were told to paint a still life. There was a set up in the front of the class and everyone was to draw that exact still life. After the project was due we took a look at the finished products and everyone’s were completely different. As humans we each have our own perception and therefore our own style or “mark” and that is what makes art beautiful. Another connection I made is that people interpret art differently. A lot of the work Laura presented as drawings, I considered sculptures. In the reading they talked about a lot of different movements some of which seemed like they overlapped or blurred together without any concrete distinction. That is part of why I love art. It is almost purely subjective and there is no right or wrong.

            The image I chose to include is an image I feel has a very strong “mark” to it. You can really see the strokes of the hand and how the artist moved across the canvas. 

(By: JBSC, "The Most Precious Gift of All")