Questions To Be Answered
G-3
WHy do I like red?
According to This site
Red is a versatile color that can symbolize everything from passionate love to violent warfare and conflict. Red displays both psychological and physical influences. Studies have shown that seeing the color red can speed up breathing and heart rate because it can be a tense and aggressive color.
I had a dance teacher thst didn't allow us to wear red at any time in her class.
The other colors I tend toward are grey and black.
Gray gets its basis from Mother Nature. In the outdoors, everything gray is permanent such as gravel, rocks, and stone.
Traditionally, black has a bad reputation. It’s the required color for movie villains and comic book criminals. It’s also deals with mourning, death, darkness, and fear.
The colors I will typically stay away from are pink and yellow (THough yellow shows up in some of my art, I don't think pink ever does)
Yellow has shown to improves concentration which explains the Post-It notes. It’s also the color of friendship.
Pink is soft and delicate, however it lacks passion. It may also have a calming, soothing effect.
All of these color "meaning" are based on social guidelines tht tell us these colors mean these things. WOuld pink be feminine if it hadn't been chosen as the color for little girls? The color can't be feminine, it has no sex!
I think I like red because red is the color of life, of blood, of sex… It's around us and inside of us, it's powerful and when I lose my eyes in the sun I see red. Red is life.
How do I capture the thoughts I have, like life not being real, being stuck in a coma, the interconnectedness of life, and turn them into art?
G-2
Why do we have to read so much into paintings? I am just as bad, or good, depending on your opinion, but why do we analyze every little part of a painting. Matisse's "Painter with Model"
Has been analyzed to death. The mirror is a vagina, his arms a phallus, the woman if nature, he has tamed her by having her in the painting, nature outside the window has been tamed as well, put into the confines of the English garden, etc, etc. Did he paint these things on purpose? We have no way of knowing, but I know I do not consciously paint some of the images that are seen in my paintings. Does that mean it is as important if you find a "vaginal shape" in your painting if you did not intend on it looking like one than if you do it on purpose? Are we looking for the subliminal? Maybe the unconscious? Or do we assume artists purposefully put the images there? Is it a matter of growth, the more you grow as an artist the more you are willing to accept that your images are being manipulated by your subconscious? This is one aspect of art I have never really understood. Reading into images when we aren't even sure what the artist was trying to do.
1-What do literary forms like fairy-tales and tactile, experiential (child-appealing) forms like doll-making (both of which suggest a certain nostalgia and innocence even if forged out of considerable suffering and darkness) have to do with your current interests in the odalisque, prostitution and Japanese pop-cultural practices like anime?
This was somewhat answered in the odalisque reflection, but to elaborate on that: My childhood, though sheltered in someways, was very sexual and violent. My older brother, 11 years older, was accused of fathering several children before he had even graduated, my neighbor across the street was raped and beaten and came to our house for help afterwards, porn was prominent, it seems like I was always finding it somewhere, and the small town I cam from was famous for two things, knife fights and prostitution. In the 2005, Mccoll SC had the highest prostitution rate per capita, and in Mccolls Hay day, no less than 20 soldiers were sent back to base with a new wound from "Messin' with" a Mccoll girl. My childhood was full of sex and violence, the town even had it's own mob, which I later found out my father was a member of. SO the ideas of dolls as prostitutes, stuffed animals being violently killed, seem rather normal considering my childhood.
2-To what extent is your reading, annotating, journaling, helping you to create a context for the linkages between innocence, on the one hand and brutality, on the other. Much of that reading was done last semester with Edward Gorey and Gris Grimsley. The, not-so-new-now trend of illustrating and writing children's books with a macabre twist on them is really significant in the work I've done. Stories like A Series of Unfortunate Events or Coraline Where the world is still fantasy but dark and more similar to the real world have awoken children and parents from their Disney-sugar coma. Innocence and brutality go hand in hand. Give a small child a dying bug and watch him. Children are far more cruel and brutal than we give them credit for. It is true that the overtly sinister acts are meant for adults; war, rape, murder…. But a child is a master of torture without trying, and a child can be sexual without having been molested.
3-Since you’ve mentioned photography and video to me several times, both at the residency and in this packet, how do you see these fitting into your work at the moment? Is the doll-making moving toward video (in the same manner as, say, clay moves toward claymation? Does the fiction, similarly lend itself toward video representation? I believe that some of this will be answered with this packets work.
4- You mention, very much in passing, in your cover letter, that you are comfortable moving between media, but to what extent are you advancing a consistent and coherent thread of thought through these multiple disciplines? This will be answered in my reflections.
G-1
What is an art practice?
Adviser-
[[collapsible]]
My idea of an art practice (EXCELLENT question, by the way): I’m also not one who’s very good at schedules, actually, though I do keep a very detailed schedule now. For most of my life, though, I really resisted it. I think a healthy art practice is the long-term commitment to a regular (not necessarily daily, but pretty close) practice of making or doing something that releases one’s creativity. I think everyone and anyone can make art and can be an artist. But what it means to actually be an artist is the long-term commitment. For me personally, my practice is multi-disciplinary, but I feel that it really helps to have a foundational practice. For me filmmaking was my first foray into art, then video art. So even though it’s not always the thing I do most often anymore, it’s foundational. It’s grounding. I know almost intuitively how to create what I intend in video; I feel very confident in that medium, and I know the intellectual terrain very well, which is important to me because my particular practice is always a balance of craft, theory and conceptual framework, and research. I’m not the kind of artist that is focused on highly, highly developed craft. I can respect that kind of artmaking, but it’s not what I do. I keep up with the dialogue, the conversations about not only video, but visual representation in general, about the ethics of representation and questions about who has the power to tell stories and make images about whom). So when I branch out into new territory, such as storytelling (which I’ve been doing for a few years, but it still feels new) my lack of confidence or tentativeness in storytelling doesn’t affect my sense of myself as an artist so much because I have that connection with video art.
Portrait artist and colleague-
First of all - I am very honored that you put me into this category! I guess getting old and influencing people isn't all bad!
A practice of mine: Researching art, contemporary artists to keep up with what is the latest - through art magazines and news on blogs, sites like portraitartist.com is very important to my being a good artist. I feel like looking at great artists work somehow rubs off on me and keeps me sharp and reaching for higher goals. I am never satisfied with my work or resting on my laurels. I always feel the need to read up on all the latest happenings in the art world - most importantly - my field of portraitism.
mentor-
i can only answer this form a personal point of view or i'd be coming
from an art critical or art historical point of view.
so, it seems to me that art practice is about living one's art.
art practice is about the path and not the supposed end result: art works.
art works are footsteps along that art practice … it is a practice
and not a place because there is no end … only process.
further, art practice is not so much about making art as it is
evolving one's artistic self. art objects result from new and
different steps down the path of trying to understand where it is we
are going and what it is we are doing in terms of developing an
aesthetic and a deep, personal relationship with a technique, subject,
or area … or maybe all three … or some other things — who knows?
also … art practice is about searching and telling others what one
finds … through art — whatever it may be.
but maybe not.
How can my artmaking help me solve the problems in my life?
I have struggled through this question for so long, but I realize now that I am approaching it from the wrong perspective. I was trying to find some major way in which art could fix my life rather than answering the simpler question of solving a problem. I'm not certain if I truly understand this question yet. But some ways that art helps me through my day.
I can not sit still for too long without anything to do (meetings, classes, etc) or I will drift off and zone out. Not only do I feel completely fuddled afterwards but evidently it contributes to my "brain" issues as well. So I use art to keep me focused and alert. I stay more present if I am drawing rather than staring blankly at the person talking and pretending to listen. It's not that the person isn't saying anything interesting, hell Henry Rollins could be leading the meeting in his usual verbose way and I would zone out… granted it would be more because I was thinking about him, that's beside the point. Also, my art keeps me busy. if I am stranded, car trouble, airport, wrong turn in the woods, My art keeps me busy so my anxiety ridden head does not fill with "worst case scenarios." When I need to meditate and am unable to get to a quiet place (Which is quite often) I find that I can create a meditation in my drawings. Brian and I both use it for this, working though issues, calming down, clearing out the cobwebs. I have alsways used my art as a way to release or work through misery, so much so that it feels like my art is all about misery.
How does your art improve your life? How is it integrated into your life?
How can your job nourish you and help you meet your larger goals?
Is conceptual art destructive in it's own right?
What is my eventual goal?
To be able to be the flaky artist/art teacher that I am without having to be a drill sergeant or member of the Nazi regime as I am now. Loosely translated, I think this means that I really do want to be a professor.
I also want as an artist, to be a faster artist. I can draw and paint and sculpt and pretty much anything else, and I can do it well, but it takes a long time for me to have a decent product. I see other artist who can sketch out a drawing that looks like the person in a matter of seconds. I want to have that skill, for my own use, not anything else. I think this, to me, is one of the things that defines a true technical artist, I want better technique.
What is my art practice?
An art practice is recognizing that there is no ending, only the journey and growth and creating within in that knowledge, living within that knowledge and living your art. Constantly learning more on your interests, growing with the process and, putting it out there for people to see. It’s like a relationship. You have to nuture and nourish your relationship withyour art in order for it to grow through education and experimentation and sometimes criticism, but if you stay together and work through it your art will be stronger in the end.
My art practice is spontaneous. I cannot force it. I have to write down Ideas when I have them, follow my instincts when I get them, and do what my heart tells me to do. I can study or research at any time, but the true art only comes when it wants to.
What is reading like for you? How do you experience the process between reading, thinking, writing…making art?
Reading is crossing the reality boundary for me. No matter the book, I can become completely immersed in it in such a way that I have a difficult time coming out of my own head. It takes a little time for the information to digest. I will be in a haze, I call it book lag, a weird state in which the information has to process so that my brain will recognize it as fantasy, fact, real or imagined. This is actually something that I had many problem with growing up. Being bi-polar most of my life I tend toward delusions at times and books have always been an escape. Sometimes I believed in them a bit too much.
Once the information has been processed my brain and I guess instincts decide what to do with it. I don't consciously decide to go write or paint or whatever after I read. It just depends on what awakens when I read. If I know I have to write I will force something out but I am usualy unhappy with the words that re forced rather than the ones that flow naturally.
There doesn't seem to be much rhyme and reason to it either. One would think that academic reading, history and such, would make a person want to write, but I created a series of images and a dance based on my studies of Roman armies. Fiction such as the Harry Potter series makes me want to write and draw, and art history usually makes me want to do whatever the person I'm reading about did, but even these guidelines do not always apply with me. I just let the instincts lead me and the inspiration hit me and I am simply a slave to their whims.
What does it mean to express oneself? what does it mean to “say” something with our art? What does it mean to “engage” an audience?
I really think that creating anything can engage and I think that making something is saying something and unless you are sitting still you are expressing yourself. Maybe this is a little idealistic, but no one said the message had to be good, no one said that you had to engage the audience in a particular way and as I tell my kids you are expressing yourself even when you sit there and complain about the assignment.
So my question is why do we have to express in ourselves through our art? What if we tried to create art that didn't express? Wouldn't that in itself be an expression? What if we expressed someone else? Is that even possible? By creating anything we are expressing ourselves in some way. If I paint my daughter in a traditional pose wearing a white virginal dress I am saying that I am a mother who wants to remember the daughter in an innocent pure state… or am I stating that I myself want to be that pure virginal girl again, free of worries and stress.
My art is speaking, all the art is speaking, you just have to know how to find the speech. My students art says I'm lazy, I want to be a gangster, Killing people is a good thing. And it is engaging, they get suspended for creating it it's so engaging, but I would be hard pressed to find anyone who would say that it is art.
But to answer in a more traditional way- I think expressing yourself means capturing your thoughts or emotions at any given moment and trying your best to project the same thing to others. TO say something is to make sure the projection of the expression is large enough for many to see that all hear the same thing and then as an artist engage them in some way, create a conversation about the work or create work that crates conversation and thought. I can think of a ton of other answers to these questions but I'm gonna stop with these.
What if you art is nothing but the conversation?
How do you develop a practice if you've never had one?
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