Monday, December 13, 2010

Artist Responses

I attended Karley Klopfenstein's talk at the Boyden Art Gallery, with the yarn tank as the main exhibit. Immediately I saw that Karley is not afraid to combine sensitive subjects like war with a little bit of humour. The carpet bombs are punny, but the idea of dressing up something that killed millions is a bit unnerving. There's also the macrame M16, which I thought was a broom at first. I think that was the intention; to show how weapons are used to "sweep up" a problem. Finally there was the carpet tank, which is still unfinished. Karley wanted to show us how the process is important, and she explained how she did certain pieces of the tank. It was an interesting talk overall, and a bit educational too.

I also attended Anja Marais' talk the same day, and the pieces were a bit strange. Many of Marais' works give the feeling of something that doesn't originate from our world, and several involve water. This theme of unfamiliarity and the ocean is quite important to immigrants, who must face the initial hardships of even getting to another place before being seen as a complete outsider. While some of her pieces don't reflect this quite as much (I'm not sure what a vomiting kraken is supposed to represent), the piece with patterns drawn into a man's back seems to fit much better. Turned away with unusual, visible marks, the man does not seem familiar. Hanged Man also fits somewhat as immigrants might feel as if they're trapped in their old culture and can't get out to learn a new one. I can't make any statements from experience though.

Artist response

I attended the SMP-in-progress critiques at the Boyden Art Gallery. I attended the SMP critiques. I listened to several artists talk about their artwork a little, as well as listened to the critiques of their peers and teachers. I particularly enjoyed Courtney Teed's artwork and discussion of her artwork. She explained that she really was focusing on space, time, and the power felt in the ability to manipulate photographs to create a convincing sense of disorientation. She said that she was focusing on "seeing photographically" - looking at something and changing from binocular vision to monocular vision. I feel that she especially accomplished this with the picture of the bolts. The bolts were extremely enlarged in the photograph, giving them a "larger than life" feeling and appearance. The focus of the picture was on the bolts, while the rest of the photograph was kind of out of focus. The "larger than life" aspect of the bolts really gave the space and place in the picture a kind of new meaning, and definitely created a convincing sense of disorientation.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Artist Response

When walking through the art exhibit, one piece stood out from the rest. Tara Hutton's piece appeared to be very relevant to the topics discussed in class. In her piece, the character is represented in her school identity (costume), and then in contrast to her private personal identity. In her school/ public persona, the character portrays herself as a woman. However, when in her room, she "puts on her man suit". Instantly this made me think of the movie "Silence of the lambs". Although this may not have been the artist's desire, the piece took on a dark persona, which was heavily in contrast to the light colors used to depict the character.

The parallels to the class lie in the interaction that place has on the person. In this particular situation a person projects meaning for the place, and the place reflects the identy of the person.