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1. Crits. So I have gotten some AWESOME feedback from the grads and from our wonderful visitor on Thursday. SO HAPPY THAT HAPPENED! I will be starting my own blog. I am also, for the first time, being pushed to understand why I make my paintings. I have an idea behind my print work but my painting/drawings have a very slim idea behind them. So that is awesome.

2. PRESSDRAW. I have been getting an awesome feeling from these shows I'm finally forcing myself to be a part of. IF YOU DON'T SHOW, NO ONE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE! You get contacted with people! I spent a half an hour talking to Linda (the owner) last night. What a great contact I have now! So that's exciting!

3. MARTYNA matusiak. http://www.martynamatusiak.com/drawings--prints.html
so... martynas work has inspired me since I first saw it when she was in grad school. I can remember Nayda taking us down to her studio and I was amazed at the detail (possibly stalking) that she had committed herself to in her work. That is still very important to me. Also, I remember seeing her photograph transfers in her print work that are now on the iup fine arts website http://www.iup.edu/art/default.aspx

1.Sketches Of Frank Gehry Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9orvtStdY

I like the way Frank Gehry's drawings become buildings. His drawings are so free and loose, and they they turn into buildings that are sculpture it is like some kind of magic. I want my paintings to somehow progress like this.


2.Mystery of Picasso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHlTvE-AI3Q

The scenes in this movie surprise me a lot, how intensehe looks while drawing, yet the figures and animals havea strong sense of humor. I think the music also goes with the images very well.


3.Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qrE_rBrJQ

This scenes in this film made me think about what art is in a different way. How the entire world can be made into art by anyone who has the imagination to do that.

I got nothing,just checking in.

New York City, 44 caliber rifles, and watches

1. NEW YORK CITY

Obviously, I went to New York City over break. Myself and three others hopped in my car (Rhonda the Honda) and hit the road. I haven't been since I was 12 so it was all pretty new and pretty awesome. There's no way in hell I'd live there but it sure is a nifty place to visit. I saw more art in one day than I have seen in two years. In some ways it was discouraging, but in other ways it was a boost. Some of the stuff I saw was terrific. Other pieces were totally lame. In one gallery we couldn't figure out what the piece actually was.... it was the ceiling tiles. Price: $15,000 for ONE tile. Yeah right. So anyway, there was other stuff. There was some inspiration. I saw a cat climb up a twenty foot ladder. Crazy city cats.

2. Guns!

I went to see my dad at camp over Thanksgiving. We drank some beers and shot some guns. Pretty much a super fun time. My dad has this one gun, a 44 caliber rifle. Oh my, it is so pretty. Nickel plated with a nice medium stain on the stock. What a beaut! It fired so nice, aimed just right and did I mention how freaking beautiful it was. Delicious! So yeah. Guns can be beautiful machines. Society often places a stigma on their dangerous capabilities. If you are using them safely and not like a tool bag, it can be a lot of fun. Safety first kids!

3. Watches

I love a good watch. During the summer I take off the watch. During the school year I need to know what time it is. But I love a watch with a face you can just barely read. I want a face with no numbers, a face that's distorted, one that tricks you every time you want to see the time. I will never wear a digital watch on my wrist. The digital watch.... I'll spare you the rant. Just learn to tell time like a grown-up okay? Frankly, I find a watch with hands much easier to navigate. If I have to be some where in forty minutes, it's easier to look at the watch face like pieces of a pie (visual visual visual) than to do some stupid subtraction problem in my head. If I liked math I wouldn't have had to D/F repeat it. So watches. I'm taking wood in the Spring. I think I'd like to dabble with time pieces.

Steve Jobs, Sesame Street, Assasins Creed and the Nazis

So, some of you may be aware that I gave a lecture in Dr. Ciganko's art appreciation class for freshman non majors before we left for break. It was about art and pop culture. I talked about Steve Jobs, Assasin's Creed, Sesame Street and the Nazis.

I talked about how Steve Jobs' interest in the Bauhaus influenced the design of Apple products. After he recently died, I started hearing all about him, and I'm reading is biography at the moment. His insistence on beauty even on the inside where people couldn't see makes me want to take better care when building my paintings. Also, did you know that on the inside of the Mac, the names of the people who worked on it are engraved on the inside of the system? I guess its not just visual artists that sign their names on something they worked on and are proud of.

I played a clip of Bert and Ernie talking about the ptg George Washington Crossing the Delaware River. (in 1988, there was a movie called "Don't Eat the Pictures", where the Sesame Street crew gets locked inside the Met after Big Bird goes missing. The title of this movie is a song the Cookie Monster sings when he's told that he can't eat Cezanne's fruit). Anyway, Bert tells Ernie that Washington "didn't stay in his warm, toasty bed, or stay home to open his Christmas presents. No, not the father of our country!" And Ernie goes on to ask why he didn't just do what everybody does, "and take the George Washington Bridge?" Another fun fact, this painting is the image on the NJ quarter.

I talked about Assasin's Creed because one day while Jonathan was playing it, I walked through the living room and saw that while Lorenzo deMedici is giving you contract kills, you can collect Renaissance ptgs. I got so excited, because I was studying these ptgs at the time, and they were in the game! When I was talking with Cory about this, he told me that you can actually walk up to the baptistry doors and see the bronze relief sculptures. Thats so cool! While I'm typing this up, the movie Angels and Demons is on the background, and I wish I had talked about that, too, because the last time Jon and I watched it, I kept interupting to point at all the art in the Vatican.

And I talked about the Nazi's, because I wanted to talk about the Great German Art Exhibit and the Degenerate Art exhibit. The Nazi's looted German art galleries and museums to hold a show about modern art, which they considered to be fundamentally anti-German, and held a concurrent show made by party loyal German artists who celebrated the superiority of the Aryan race. The point that I wanted to make was that many of the artists included in the Degenerate show are considered the most important artists of the 20th century, even if the Nazis tried to eradicate the work that they made. (Another fun fact, the Bauhaus was a school that voluntarily closed its doors before the Nazi's could force them to do so).

So these were the things that I'm thinking about.

Videos

On The Subject Of Depression from Scott Benson on Vimeo.

What can I say? I'm not a huge fan of the holidays...

For brighter stories.. check here. Think I posted this last week:

And rethinking the meaning of words. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who may never understand what it is like to be poor. I work in an upscale salon where I watch people walk their purebred dogs up and down the street and rear-end one another's cars without leaving a note. They get to tell me about all of their travels, their money, their money, and their money. I get to listen to naive and obviously uneducated students rant about how people on welfare are taking their tax money, as if they really understand what's coming out of their paychecks. Or as if they understand that they are paying just as much for the war we are in and the oppressiveness we participate in as a country as they are on healthcare for single parents. Or they criticize folks on welfare while they gladly accept grant money from the state.

As Americans, I doubt we will ever understand true poverty, but if I have to hear one more comment from someone applying their judgment to a person on welfare, I may scream. Guess what? Not all of "them" are scamming the system. Some of "them" may need serious help. All irritation aside, I think we would do well to get to know one another before passing massive amounts of judgment.

So rethink your words:

On an encouraging note, I ran across this quote from Thomas Merton and am applying it to memory: "Keep me from loving money which is hatred, from avarice and ambition that suffocate my life. Keep me from the dead works of vanity and the thankless labor in which artists destroy themselves for pride and money and reputation..."

Happy holidays. And please don't talk to me about welfare. Ever.

I'm making up for last week. I'm assuming we have a bi-week for the break. which is perfect. i need a break.

1. mary hoehl - this is my artist inspiration for the week. this is my mother. my mother is also an artist and i have grown up watching her create. my mom works in 3d and 2d. she has remodeled every house we have ever lived in. she has worked as an exhibit designer at the science center and children's museum. she has definitely inspired me to continue on with my love of art and i have been able to see that being an artist is a very bumpy road.

2. the tent- my parents have a tent in the back of the house... we keep things in it. it's strange and we are now having thanksgiving dinner with my moms side of the family coming  here. sooo we are moving everything out of the tent and painting the  things inside white... it's a process, a looooong process. but anyway, watching the tent  transform has been an inspiration for me. it's amazing.

3. thanksgiving - i LOVE thanksgiving. i love being with my family. i love love. i love turkey. i love the feeling of warmth that you get inside of your body because of the love. it's so wonderful to be with people you love and share moments with them. mmmm. love.

1.Vere Lutter's photos make me view at the city spaces in a different way because
they are very big. They is a strange look and feel because of the intense contrast in
their black and white patterns. The images feel frozen to me and I am interested in her
compositions and points of view as well - sometimes they feel like frozen music in the
way the shapes float across the page of the photograph.

Vera Lutter photographer

http://poulwebb.blogspot.com/2011/02/vera-lutter-photographer.html

http://bombsite.com/issues/85/articles/2584

2.Mitra Ghaffari is an Iranian artist and I feel her black & white Collaboration paintings with other
artists are the best works. Their energy plus so many changes in the brush works, from wet and
soft surface, to deep blacks, to transparency, much variation. I want to put as much variation in
my own paintings and drawings.


http://www.mitraart.com/

3.Stephen Greene

http://www.jasonmccoyinc.com/greene/greene_works.html

Even though Stephen Greene's paintings are abstract, there is so much feeling within the combination of his colors, shapes, and brushwork. I think this is because of all the variation he puts into the works. Some areas are smooth like velvet, others look like liquid, while some shapes show the brushwork. I think his color is unusual with many kinds of different grays, off-whites, deep reds, violets, tans, greens, and orange too. I usually don't enjoy abstract painting, but Greene's surfaces really move and seem alive to me. They are emotional too.

random

I find that random information searches always result in interesting ideas. It usually starts with a movie, then an actor/actress, then a book, and continues on until I end up on something completely different from what I started with. I also like being exposed to other artists/art at least once a day. Even if the work is similar to your own,maybe they do something just slightly different that can improve your own work or send you in another direction.

Break, anyone?

Anyone else ready for Thanksgiving Break?! I am! Inspiration, hm? Honestly, my inspiration (and motivation) for working even more non-stop than usual has been the upcoming holiday. As part of Parking Day, a national collaborative art project, my Sculpture group created Thanksgiving in September.... in a parking spot. It was awesome, but I can't wait for the real Turkey Day too.

When I have breaks, I really enjoy spending time with my family. I may have mentioned this before, but having a close-knit family makes me want to continue making work that connects in some way to what I've felt/learned through being close to my dad, sister and brother. Lots of my work has an autobiographical back story, whether or not it it noticeable to the viewer. Frida Kahlo said that she painted herself because she knew that subject best, and I believe that's always a sure way to make work.

Finally, in keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, I plan to do lots of reading on the break. I feel like a bit of time away from physically making work gives my brain time to shift gears.

(I do tend to over-think things... )I'm currently reading Art as Experience by John Dewey. It's pretty dry, and you have to be in the right mood for it, but if you are, it's very interesting (right, Clara?)

SIDE NOTE---- I have to shout out to the Gaden Shartse monks who visited Washington & Jefferson College this past week. Learned about Tibetan Buddhism and had a great visit. :)

Story-telling

Ever listen to Radiolab or This American Life? Because I spend such excessive amounts of time in my studio, alone, I need to hear another human voice. So I listen through different episodes.

I'm feeling pretty drained, so I don't have much to say for this blog. But I will say that this has allowed me some room to grieve (more about this on Tuesday's crit). You will want to click on the link for "Tin Man." It's a great short story.

Two friends of mine were working at Handmade Arcade this weekend. I got to stop by and visit for a while, and chat it up with some folks I really respect as artists. I found being surrounded by so many unpretentious people who make strictly for the enjoyment of it rather inspiring. The boyfriend and I spent the rest of the evening talking about making more work together. You know what's wonderful about the artists I know? They make things, they get tired of looking at those things, they sell them and make more things. Their work is imaginative and well crafted. They do not waste time talking about how great they are, or how obscure their work is. They just create. In addition to that they live their lives and enjoy them. They enjoy their friends. I am surrounded by truly wonderful people who I very much admire.