Artsvis 54

so i’ve been working with imovie which actually has not been as bad as i thought! im glad i chose this route as opposed to photoshop. anyway, i chose music for my animation after much debate over whether dave matthews was too cliche or not. the song i chose ties in fairly well with my theme of the temporality of this life and what comes after. it’s called “dodo”… and here are some lyrics to think about.
Once upon a time
When the world was just a pancake
Fears would arise
That if you went too far you’d fall
But with the passage of time
It all became more of a ball.
We’re as sure of that
As we all once were when the world was flat

So I wonder this
As life billows smoke inside my head
This little game where nothing is sure, oh
Why would you play by the rules?
Who did, you did, you
Who did, you did, you

When was she killed
The very last dodo bird
And was she aware
She was the very last one

yes… i did lyrics.com that one, but either way i thought the concept of the last dodo bird tied in well with the quote i am writing some of in the sand during the stop motion film: the dodo’s life was but a series of details, and nothing significant, until she died and her species became extinct. this had far-reaching effects on the world surrounding the dodo, and also our world today (most of which we will never know). it also made me wonder about heaven and hell in relation to the dodo, since i am really looking for more abstract connections to this theme. i wonder what it would be like to be the last of a kind on the planet- heaven or hell? adam and eve were 2 of a kind and in heaven without the rest of mankind. i also wanted to imagine what heaven and hell are like (as we tend to do) if they exist, and i realized that something we all have in common as a race is that we will never be sure, which is another thing that dave’s song “dodo” talks about- the certainty of being unsure in this life. he speaks of life as “this little game where nothing is sure”, and i extend that to ascending or descending post game to heaven or hell.

this week i’ve been in the bahamas for thanksgiving with my family, and i had some time to draw and elaborate on my little bear story…. except i realized i was really falling out of like with it. i love to play golf, and i played every day while i was down there, and i thought it would be funny to document golf as an experience in heaven and hell. those of you that golf know exactly where i’m coming from- heaven when you make that 15ft put, or just drive a mile right down the center of the fairway, or hell when you shank right into a sand trap or hazard, or you lose your umpteenth ball. i liked this idea because it was still abstract, and i wanted to stick to the loose, abstract interpretation of heaven and hell that people can relate to.
sooooo i tried to document my journey on the gold course, but of course i was very frustrated and found it hard to concentrate on the game when i had to take a picture every other breath. dropped that idea.
my next inspiration came from an afternoon walk on the beach, where all of a sudden i realized the transitory nature of the sand on the beach, the seaweed distribution, the every changing shadows and sunlight so on and so forth… ultimately connecting all of this to the transitory nature of human life. what happens when it’s over? some think we go to heaven or hell. some think that our bodies just decay into the earth and become a part of natures ongoing cycle (could this be heaven or hell?- i wonder) which allows our bodies to become one with the earth and all of it’s components- mountains, beaches, oceans, lakes rivers, plains, deserts… blah blah you get it, we all learned the water cycle.
next step: i looked to find a quote that truly embodied the transitory-ness of life, and what comes after, if anything at all, the good and the bad being insignificant… i found this great quote and used it in an abbreviated way in my animation: “A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.” -Sivananda

i wanted to stray away from evil hell and purely good heaven, and evoke a more abstract thought process about what happens after and how insignificant it all is when its done and gone. so what? we do good things, we do bad things, we are not purely good, or purely bad. how can heaven be so black and white? the things we know are the earth, the ocean, the mountains, the water. this is our place to create heaven or hell, and the consequences of our actions here are minor, and yet we create heaven and hell on earth for ourselves. something to think about.

[caption id="attachment_2667" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="divot on impact"][/caption][caption id="attachment_2670" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="\"reaching\" in the quote"][/caption][caption id="attachment_2672" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="\"ocean\" in the quote"][/caption]

originally i was leaning towards constructing a judd-esque wall piece, but i realized while talking to bill that judd would have valued the can as a whole piece rather than cut it apart, and i really wanted to destroy the cans’ original shape, so that was not an option. i began to think about sculpture with found objects, and who my favorite sculpture artists are. tara donovan popped into my head. i fell in love with her work this past summer while interning at pacewildenstein gallery in chelsea in new york. they represent tara donovan, and i was lucky enough to see some of her pieces and experience them in a wonderful space. she does work with silver mylar tape that’s stuck on walls in little swirls, and i though that the mylar resembled the aluminum can that we were working with.

so after looking at donovan’s pieces, i started to think about how i could take her techniques and make them my own. i began to play with cans in swirls, and see how i could assemble them on the walls like donovan.

that was a fail, but i realized i could make contained chaos with the simple shape of a square. i also did not want to waste any part of the cans that i had lovingly collected, so i decided to create a grid of six squares, separated by a few inches of space between them using different parts of the cans. i realized while i admire donovan for her ability to naturally costruct free forms, i naturally construct precise forms. in my life i like organization and cleanliness, so i gravitated towards a gridlike pattern for my final design.

i wanted to use this cheesy little story- which is actually about a giant stuffed bear that i have- to demonstrate abstract ideas of heaven and hell. i wanted to avoid devils and angels and “in your face” plots that take the theme literally. my goal was to take something cute and fuzzy, formulate a story, and still be able to convey the same emotions of utter despair and total bliss. i think everyone can relate to baking and eating the perfect cookie, so the emotions that my animation will hopefully evoke will be more tangible and real than if i were to literally draw a story about someone going to hell or going to heaven.

i am somewhat lackluster when it comes to drawing, so i’m a little worried about the way the animation is going to come out. i want to go for a low-res old time cartoony feel for a few reasons, one of which is that i’m intimidated by all the programs used to make intense animation, and the other is that i think it fits the vibe of the story. stay tuned to see how much i struggle!

i have been struggling with maya throughout this project, and finally decided after losing my work five times that i would stick to something simple and low in can volume. i gave myself a number of cans that i was allowed to use: 75. my challenge was to create something using exactly 75 cans without making it seem like i had extra cans or not enough. it was a fun endeavor, but rather frustrating at times. why 75? no idea. it seemed like a large enough number to make something of substance, but not so many that i would have to find things to do with the extras.
my final product is a key, which is inspired by a found object in my room (a necklace). i also thought it could be seen as a parody of my experience with maya- keys to me symbolize the unlocking of doors and allowing people to pass through barriers…. which has not at all been what my experience with maya has been like. i feel as though i have been repeatedly walking straight into a locked door when i use maya. i thought if i made a key out of cans, i may finally unlock maya’s secrets. alas, this is not the case. here ends my self pitying sob story!

I wanted my journal pages to evoke the same visceral emotions as my physical piece. This was difficult considering the shards of glass on the wall mounted work really bring out the raw emotion of the shattering of the Berlin wall, or even the lives that the erection of the Berlin wall shattered. I kept the black, grey, and white presence the same as the wall-mounted piece, but I wanted to include Berlin’s crest with the bear and the crown. In order to do that and not overwhelm the piece, I removed the sign repetition, and only repeated the “YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR”. I think that this makes the message clearer, and allows for stronger ties to the city of Berlin. I also like the aesthetics of Berlin’s crest and was glad the opportunity arose to incorporate it into my image.
I think the final product of the two pages coming together is a powerful one. The message remains the same as in the wall-mounted piece, as does the emotion. There is a fresh color perspective and a new sense of space that is defined by the contrast of the first page to the second. The fact that they are directly in opposition to one another yet carry the same words and visuals is meant to symbolize the coming together of different groups for a single purpose, much like what happened surrounding the fall of the Berlin wall.

is there a limit as to how many objects you can reproduce in maya? every time i open maya and attempt to do anything (duplicate cans, translate or rotate the cans, etc.), the swirling pinwheel appears and maya shuts down completely. i have tried restarting the computer several times, but nothing has improved. what to do? if maya is not capable of holding all the information that i need for my sculpture, what should i do?

hey all! it was great seeing everyone’s work today, i was really impressed. there were a few pieces that really stuck out in my mind that i wanted to compliment: the piece with mao et al outlined and the wax paper grid- awesome! i worked at christie’s this summer, and they’ve sold a whole bunch of warhol maos and done great catalogues for them, so your image brought back everything i know bout the warhol pieces, which i appreciated. there was also a nude figure hunched over surrounded by a sea of white tissue paper that i loved. i understood the feeling of isolation that a wall can create and how a city in isolation can not thrive. those are just two of several pieces that i liked, but A+ job everybody.

as for my final product, i hope it doesn’t injure anyone if a piece of glass falls off. heads up when you open the door to the stairs- there may or may not be glass bits strewn about. i tried to double secure the glass onto my piece with rubber cement and a hot glue gun, but you never no, nor can you ever be too careful. i think i’ll go with the obvious title “checkpoint charlie”. i think titles can be quite important for certain pieces, but not in the case of mine. everything that i wanted to get across is directly on the surface, and there really isn’t anything else to add. my piece is really a memorial to checkpoint charlie, so i’ll just come right out and say that. i wish i had done a better job cutting it into the 22 x 17- i got a little wobbly with the exacto slicing. learned my lesson for the cans!

i’ve got some ideas brewing for project two which i’m excited to get started on. i wanted to think about donald judd and his work for my sculpture, especially because we have the chance to work with maya and 3d planning. judd’s work is so precise and made in a factory by his team (sometimes he doesn’t even see his work before it goes out), so i thought i could try the perfectionist approach. too bad i’ve never really made a sculpture before… so my can attempt at a judd wall sculpture is probably going to be pretty sad in comparison to the real thing.

so, i haven’t made any major changes, as i thought the graphic nature of my piece was overwhelming on its own and to add more would really deduct from the visceral quality of it. i love the multilingual aspect of the russian, english, and french text juxtaposed in an incredibly bare way, and i don’t want to take away from it, only to deliver the words to the viewer in a more direct way. i feel that i can only get in the way of the words by adding images or something by my own hand, but i feel like there’s something missing…

today i broke a vase and adhered the shattered glass to the piece, which doesn’t change the visual, but plays with the way the light reflects off of it and where the viewer’s eye will go. it will also add color i realized: the yellow lighting will be seen in the glass pieces. the shattered glass may be a slap in the face metaphor for the broken down wall and blah blah i don’t need to say it because i’m sure it’s pretty cheesy and obvious. but really i added the glass not only to create that metaphor, but to add to that visceral quality i talked about before. broken glass feels very raw and dangerous to me, and i felt that the events that took place at checkpoint charlie were probably of that nature. another obvious connection!

what do i do next? or am i overdoing it already? any advice?

Still Life with Chair Cane 1912

I chose this piece of papier colle by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso because I think it is a perfect example of a well rounded collage that uses a balance of found objects and hand drawn elements. I also love the round frame. It adds a fresh perspective to the usually polygonal pieces of the early 1900s. This collage is meant to be a bird’s eye view of a cafe table in Paris, which is indicated by a number of things in the collage: Le Journal was a french newspaper. There is a glass on the table, perhaps a glass of wine. The chair caning represents the actual chair beneath the table, and the rope is serving doubly as the edge of the table and the border of the piece.

Collage was a completely revolutionary way to look at art. Picasso and Braque were taking risks and breaking out of the mold by integrating cheap materials like wall paper and chair caning into their work. They ushered in Synthetic cubism, and were the pioneers of a new and exciting style.

This work is certainly paying homage to the pop and psychedelic art of the 1960’s- Lichtenstein and Abrams both seem to have a strong influence on this piece. Work similar to this was featured in the Whitney’s show “Summer of Love” in 2007. While I enjoy the aesthetics of Peter’s piece to a certain degree, I find that the several different windows create a hectic discord that make the message difficult to decipher. When seen in the context of the artists that influenced Peter, the work is more appealing in my opinion. Otherwise, I would consider this work rather average and might overlook it in another show.

Isaac Abrams, All Things Are One Thing, 1966