Back to lecturing about the artist's studio space...

(ACK!!! This saved instead of posting!!! T_T)

I don't know if I want to be lectured about studio space anymore, it's getting me stressed out. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my life before worrying about how I'm going to do it, because that will fall into place. Aaaaaaarrrgggghhhhh...but I digress. This dude ran his studio from the basement of his grandfather's bakery, which is absolutely badass.to say the very least. But rather than getting myself caught up in the nonsensical talk about how "his studio is almost like home and he collects chairs and locks himself away for a day or more to force himself to work, blablabla", I focused on his progression through the artistic field and finding something that he actually wanted to do. I admire how he found his area of interest - woodcraft/construction - and within that field he continues to shift his focus in a constant search of new ideas and processes - from constructing segmented room installations to whittling toy car engines out of wood. He looked so happy, sharing with us his artistic adventure through life, and although I know I'm not interested in being an entirely free-lance artist, I just want to find the same enthusiasm about my life as all these people who've presented their to us.

poirates

RUN JOHNNY RUN!!! There's a Swarovski crystal store back there (this is in the Gaylord Hotel in Washington DC) with a massive rotating cut cube of sparkling glittering awesomeness on sale for only $500,000! HAHA...!!! A pirate's worst nightmare. This place was rediculously expensive - they had just opened so our school got an unbelievable deal to help "stir business" or whatever. So anyways, following the assignment, I utilized such sensitive images as an artwork from the ArtWhino exhibit in DC (featuring young urban artists from notable cities across the country), the Jeff Hamilton trio (hahahaaa they said I couldn't take a photo but I did, I did...), one of Obama's secret service manly dudes, and captain Jack Sparrow.

Crackheaded politics

Stalin with a photoshopped crackpipe - I am eternally fascinated by the incessant positivism portrayed in the propagandist imagery of such notable dictators as Stalin and Hitler. They are SO fabricated, it's absolutely astounding, so that when we were asked to add something to a pre-existing image so that its message or meaning was changed, I decided that desacrating something as periodically sacred as a photograph of Stalin smoking a pipe would have the most profound impact.

FACE!!!

For this project, we scanned our face and traced over the image using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. As if I wasn't pissed at AI already...

((couldn't upload JPEG because my computer is challenged in all things computer-related; will upload tomorrow on a MAC))

Doug Bucci!

This was the BEST speaker to date: Doug provided us with a very detailed and inspiring recount of his achievements and struggles through art school and his eventual art career. It took him a little while to discover that which interested him most within the educational institution - a difficult task made even more difficult by having to simultaneously provide for a wife and child - and yet Doug persevered, finding it most beneficial to be in a constant state of discomfort while making art, because if you're comfortable with what you're doing, there is nothing being developed or learned. He encouraged us to continually take risks within our work, citing the frequent alterations in material and methods he used while sculpting jewelry. Through this process, Doug progressed from an abstract jeweler without any specific motive (per se) to an inventive mind using the highly unique process of printing jewelry designed with a strong influence and message of his lifelong struggle with diabetes. And the best part of all was his telling us that life's not getting any easier from here (hahahaa! haa...*cries in the corner*)

What I find to be most admirable about Doug's work is how personal he has made it: the motif of diabetes is very "unique" (relatively speaking, and especially when it comes to high-end jewelry) and it was easy for the audience to tell that he took great pride and joy in his work. What more could we ask for? The progression from abstract modernistic jewelry designs to highly specific models of biological misshaps and ulcers and all things diabetic to an intricate line of honeycombed blood cell-shaped bracelets and necklaces...! It's quite the journey, and who knows how he'll progress from there? Apart from the inspiring progression, I simply adore how personal he has made his art, and I find myself fascinated by his use of "horrifying" lesions and other breeches in the human body as a result of diabetes, and then to use these "grotesque" images to design decorative jewelry! It boggles the mind; who would wear a brooch depicting an ulcer in relief? (somebody awesome, I'd say) I too am fascinated with biology as an art, and look forward to finding my own ways of expressing myself within the artistic discoveries to be made in the years to come.

Animating a cell

The subject that appealed most to me while browsing through the lectures was one titled "Animating a Cell" with David Bolinsky: he's a medical illustrator with a knowledge of animation, and is currently working in accordance with Harvard University to digitally express the functions and inner workings of cells with complete atomic accuracy. This is positively groundbreaking: now digital art can help us visualize that which cameras have yet to capture (due to the teensiness of molecules...), and although the project is not yet complete, the examples David displayed were mindblowing. Never before has an illustration (that I've seen on the internet anyways) so accurately expressed the complex molecular shapes of the proteins constantly working within the cell apparati; I recognized ribosomes, a golgi apparatus, vacuoles, something I believe was a synapse firing (or building a charge perhaps?), or maybe the export of neurotransmitters through the vacuole (or whatever the sac encasing them is called, I'm too lazy to look it up right now) and its binding to the cell wall at the molecular level!!! This will SIGNIFICANTLY increase our understanding of the inner functions of a cell through their visualization, and will no doubt increase a student's ability to visualize and understand these notions that are explained with such complexity in our biology textbooks. And if these originally complicated ideas of the innerworkings of cells becomes common knowledge within a student body, then there will no doubt be further strides taken in the near future towards fully understanding this complicated system we hardly know anything about!! What I find even more astounding is the role visual art plays within these advances: the visualization of a process is the easiest way for the human brain to comprehend a subject, and until technology can provide video footage at the molecular level of these processes, artistic rendering and atomically correct animation is the best alternative!

mariane!

Last week, the soft-spoken bookbinder Mariane came to talk to us about developing our interests and studio spaces. I found it incredibly interesting that she left art school thinking that she would be a photographer, and then after an "internship" out West with an elderly master book-maker with only the desire to learn how to bind her own photography book, she fell in love with the craft and has been honing her skills ever since. Her story had a resounding impact on my outlook: that at any point, in even the most insignificant situation (for Mariane, her medium of preference was discovered on a whim), the most important thing could happen to us. We could discover the most profound thing about ourselves in a situation that happened under the slightest odds imaginable. Fate is positively mindblowing, and if Mariane enjoys bookbinding as much as she leads on, then I desperately hope the same circumstances will arrive for me! Until then I will continue to explore!

Returning to her second resounding point about studio space, I don't necessarily agree with the degree of importance she places upon it. Although it is most certainly a crucial part of the artistic process...I just don't see it as something that needs to be addressed so early in our journey through the art program. More pertinent issues I'd find to be time management and guidance through the curriculum; studio space is something I don't plan to be particularly concerned about until junior or senior year, or even thereafter depending on whether or not I know what my preferred medium will be! And although Mariane makes a valid point - that building up a collection of tools pertaining to your medium over a long period of time relieves a lot of fiscal stress that purchasing everything at the same time would cause - the issue remains that we have no conclusive idea what we want to do with our lives. This lecture was...a little TOO forward-thinking for my taste...

WARNING!!!

(note: this was completed on time, I didn't upload it until today because I normally upload after computer class. It was uploaded onto my Facebook account the night before it was due - if there are any issues regarding the time of upload for this piece, its date of completion can be proven)