designbythai-blog

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I had a chance to go to Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY  and it was one of the most pleasant and amazing experiences that I ever had. The place was a giant field full of beautiful golden grass and was scattered with art installations across the field, and the scenery was beautiful.

I first encountered a piece of an installation called Five Swords by C.A. I was amazed by the structure of the installation was it was five different arcs looking like banana clashing against each other, making it look like there are five swords on top of each other. It was a very abstract piece of art and I really enjoyed looking at and examining it.

Another art installation that I came across was Three Legged Buddha and I was blown away by it. This installation was amazing to me because I grew up in a household of Buddism religion, and seeing a piece of art that involved Buddha was very interesting for me. The Buddha's head was submerged into the ground while one of the three legs stepped on top of the Buddha's head. The art piece is gigantic and very detailed, and I was looking at it and admiring it for a very long time.

Overall, the trip to King Storm Art Center was wonderful and full of amazing art installations, and after visiting the place, I wish to re-visit the art center in the future if I can.

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I had the chance to attend Kelsey Elder presentation on his journey of becoming a designer. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and he had always been into cars and motorcycles. He also ran a clothing company, Lowered Values, and he spends summers traveling the country to sponsor car shows with his brand’s pop-up shop and variety of custom cars/motorcycles that his brand has built.

Kelsey presented all of his typographic and images works and they were amazing. One of his projects is called Vacancy, which is a physical letterform exploration for his own typeface “Varnish Bold”. Vacancy is based on hand lettering found on abandoned auto repair shops along woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. The lettering is very clean and pop, and it got my attention at first.

Another of his project is called “Looking For Anything of Value” where he creates cut out of letters and words and turned it into a really cool racetrack. He printed the cutout letters into signs, concrete, and various things that you could find on the racetrack. 

Kelsey Elder was an inspiration to many of us young graphic designers. He told us about his adventures of attending college and doing internships like many of us. While studying Graphic Design, he completed 2 internships at Eurowerks where he was doing promotional flyers and such, and at Rhymesayers for 2 years as an in-house designer. When he was at Rhymesayers, he did almost everything as he was the only 1 out of 2 designers there. He taught us that we could incorporate our hobby into graphic design as he was learning how to combine car, rap music into typography. He was a true inspiration to me and I can’t wait to take his Word and Image 3 class in the future.

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I had the opportunity to attend Eric Gottesman artist talk about what he does and his past projects. Before he became a photographer, he was a lawyer that was practicing law in the Supreme Court at Washington D.C., then he went to Africa in 1999 to work as a photographer for the first time ever. 

Despite not having much knowledge about photography, Eric Gottesman was still able to put out an amazing project. His fourteen year-long artistic collaboration project was called “Sudden Flowers” which was a compilation of multiple projects together, and he described each of the projects is like a “lyric” in a larger poetic structure. 

The project “If I Could See Your Face” was the most amazing and impressive project that I have ever seen. In 1999, because of the stigma surrounding HIV in Ethiopia, people were willing to be photographed only if their faces were hidden., and if their face is in the photo then he has to destroy the negatives on the spot. In 2004, someone let him photograph with their face, saying that it’s time to end this hiding faces in photo type of thing. It was the last image in Eric Gottesman project. I think it was such an incredible project that he was able to photograph people beautifully without even having their faces in the photo, especially the ending of the project was on such a positive note. 

He also presented another project of his that was very emotional for me where he asked kids who have their parents died to write him a note. The kids were confused and told him why would they want to write about their dead parents, and he responded that he wants to know what they miss about their parents. I think that it was hard for the kids to write about their parents who are gone from their lives and still have to live on without them, which makes it very emotional.

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I had the pleasure to attend Rob Swainston’s presentation at SUNY Purchase and it was very memorable and interesting. Rob is a printmaker with many amazing projects under his belt, and one of his project named “Who Owns the Sky” really captured my attention when I first saw it on the big screen. 

The project takes the form of a large-scale semi-transparent billboard with images of clouds, and I think it was a very interesting concept to me. The billboard of semi-transparent clouds looks like they are moving even though they are still, giving a sense of direction to people looking at it which is quite amazing. It could also be symbolized as an authority with a heavenly figure such as God and angels who live above the clouds.

According to Rob Swainston, he reminds us “that humans are not just consumers of icons but observers and producers of images. All of our images are historically negotiated assemblages between humans, our machines, available materials, and social structures.” 

Overall, I really enjoyed the series “Who Owns the Sky” project that Rob did, and I can’t wait to learn more about printmaking in a future semester.

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