Sunday, September 4, 2011
Last Night Out in Minneapolis
This is a glimpse of a farewell to the people I will miss as well as a place that I have come to know and love. It will be there for all of us whenever we choose to return.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wegman's World
William Wegman originally planned on painting before he met his dog, Man Ray, who he began to collaborate with in photos. Although Wegman has experienced vast success, the content of his well-known photographs might not appeal to everyone. I have chosen to make an artist book based on the tactics applied in Wegman's photos. By dressing up a dog and placing that dog in an inappropriate scene for an animal, Wegman was able to raise questions with his audience about the existence of an animal. Wegman's work is unpredictable and humorous through the creation of bizarre scenes where a dog plays a human. Although I do not particularly appreciate the affect of those scenes, I am intrigued by Wegman's ideas and what he was trying to convey through his photos.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Tour de Walker
The piece I chose that I believe has strong formal qualities is Hippopotamus by Paul Thek. This piece is very interesting to me because of the media he used and the effect it has on the viewer. He used beeswax, plexiglass, metal and rubber in order to create a faux slab of hippopotamus flesh. If his intent was to rear the media into appearing like an actual hippopotamus he comes eerily close. Although you can see drips of wax, you still cannot help but be thinking that you are staring at raw flesh pierced by rods of metal. I highly doubt he was going for beauty in this piece but because of its strong formal qualities it will make just about anyone stop and look and wonder about the hippo in a glass box.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
A Supposed Favorite
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Midway's Secret Life of Objects: Commentary on "You Got What You Deserved" by Jack Pierson
At first glance, the piece by Jack Pierso, which is titled "You Got What You Deserved", seems like the last thing one might set there eyes upon in one of the rooms at Midway Contemporary Art's current gallery exhibition The Secret Life of Objects but in fact it was the one piece that intrigued me first and most. It hardly seems that it should have caught my attention upon entering the room. The frame is one the wall where you enter the room from but it is not the art immediately in front of you, nor the brightest, nor the biggest. It is a 14"x11" piece of paper that has the words "you got what you deserved"; a line then separates the page with a hard graphite line, and underneath the words "right off Hollywood Blvd." How could this not make you stop and think and then pause and then perhaps reconsider what you originally thought in the first place.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mining the M.I.A. and Creating Imaginary Installation
I selected three images that introduce the viewer to three very contrasting characters. These pieces are being shown at an installation designed to mirror that of a quiet, dimly lit, and almost claustrophobic coffee shop. Each of these pieces would be set in three different corners of the coffee shop so that none of them are particularly close to the other one. Each individual piece would be positioned against the wall at a table surface height so as to allude the viewer imagine themselves also as a patron hidden in a corner of a coffee shop. The purpose of presenting these pieces at a mimic coffee shop would question the viewer how three different personalities shown in these pieces is any different from when they venture out into the world themselves. People everywhere contrast in character just as much as these three pieces seem to do. But people do not always take the time to realize or even just wonder that perhaps, just across the coffee shop is an innocent and naive girl, or a telegraph operator with questionable motives, or even a woman who seems to have plucked nearly all the hairs from her head.
Friday, September 11, 2009
"Cherry's Jubilee"
The painting, “Cherry’s Jubilee,” is hard to pass by. I found it immediately striking the first time I saw it. The content shows a young, tattooed women. Her appearance is the first thing to introduced opposing themes. She is dressed in a dress that looks like it came from a theater costume closet. The black and white stripped dress is met by two matching bubble gum pink bows at her waist. She is wearing black and white fingerless gloves, which accentuates the way she is biting on her pinky finger. The gloves are offset by a shrunken black and white stripped top hat with a black bow and feather slouched to the right side of her head. She is an attractive girl. Her black bob frames her face perfectly contrasting her porcelain skin and her crimson colored lips. Her eyes draw you into a dark abyss of wonder and question. Her arms, both covered with tattoos of music notes, a palm tree, a harp, a flamingo, a band-aid, among others, are pulled into her chest.
If the viewer is not immediately intrigued by her appearance, one would want to question her surroundings. She seems to have made her way into a carnival. Her cropped body, from the waist up, is framed between a ferris wheel and a carousel painted in grey hues with a powdery blue sky.
This painting interests me, like I already said, for a number of reasons. Of course my eyes like the colors and the content of the piece but the longer I look at it the more I want to know her story. I begin to ask myself a lot of questions. Who is she? Where is she from? Why is she at an empty carnival? Why is she dressed like that? Of course these questions I can only speculate at? But the fact that I am not quite sure what to make of this women leads me to something. She doesn’t look out of place in the painting but when you ask why would she be there, you don’t know? Everyone has their own story and people always surprise you. You can never think that everyone fits into certain guidelines. It’s better when they don’t. Perhaps that’s why she is called “cherry’s Jubilee.”