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Blog Post 11

The most important things that I have learned in this class is to have an open mind. Not everything you learn or look at (art) is going to come right away. You need to have patience with it and work hard to try to understand and that is what I think will stick with me the longest. 

My ideas since my first blog post has changed drastically. I feel like at first I didn’t understand the true meaning of art at all and I kind of skimmed over the thought if that makes sense. Now, I can at least say I understand it more.

The most difficult thing for me was looking at art. On the projector there would be a dot, and it would be considered “art”. I learned that anything could really be considered art. 

I would tell new students to stay focused and keep paying attention. The more you learn, the more you start to understand, and the more the class becomes fun. 

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Blog Post 12

For my final response project, I decided that I would be responding to societies addictions. Not just the typical drugs ad alcohol, but the addiction that people feel to fit in and conform to societies standards. Whether you want to believe it or not, almost everyone at one point has felt the need to do, wear, or act like something just to “fit in.” It could be talking a certain way, constantly checking social media, wearing certain clothes, experimenting with drugs, or using drugs and alcohol because that is what they feel like makes them happy. No matter what it is, everyone has had an addiction with something.

Before I started my project, I researched what caused people to become so addicted to these different things, and it was all quite simple; because they want to be accepted. Many people fear not being accepted, being alone, and ultimately rejection. This is what causes these addictions.

For my project, I used an old prescription bottle, filled with paper and pills. I folded the paper in a “zig-zag” way to represent what different things people might be trying to fit in or be “accepted” to. The other pieces of paper were eyes or people of different races and religions to represent the diverse amount of people who do this. I also put pills in the bottle, and the pills overall represent addiction.

Visually, I feel that the biggest risk I took was thinking out of the box. I used a pill container and different shapes of paper to try to be abstract. Another big risk I took visually is working with a smaller scale than I normally would feel comfortable doing.

My strongest part of the project I would say is working with different materials that represented each and everything I wanted the project to say. It was abstract, and all of the colors from the bright orange to the black and white contrasted each other. This project of mine didn’t have a weakness because it was my last and best one. 

When I first started the semester art was so confusing to me. My first project looking back on it was trash. This art class has taught me to look at things differently; to take more than 10 seconds to look at an art piece, to be way more creative. I am much more capable of thinking outside of the box than I was months ago. 

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Extra Credit Blog: Art Institute

For extra credit, I went to the Art Institute in Chicago.

My overall feelings while visiting the Art Institute was overwhelming at first, but as hours went on, I found myself being more comfortable and able to really analyze art work. I have only been to the Art Institute one other time in my life, and that isn’t comparable in my eyes to this time I went because this time, I actually took my time and spent more than 30 seconds looking at art work. I realized that the longer I stared into a piece of art, the more that was revealed to me. One of the Exhibitions I enjoyed the most was “Fischli/Weiss: Snowman.” It was a snowman inside of a refrigerator with sun like beams behind it.

A photo that I analyzed in the museum was  Untitled and is was by Robert Earl Wilson. Pictured, was an action-like shot of an African American man crossing the street on what it appears to be a gloomy, rainy day with a car passing by in front of him. I have noticed that I like pictured where if you look at them long enough, you feel as if you are living in that exact moment of when the photo was taken. Before this class, I never though of photography as an art, but when you see how some people can do it, you soon realize that it actually is.

On my next visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, I will most likely devote more of my time to the Thorne rooms.

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Blog Post 10: Historical Connections

For my presentation, the topic I chose to do it on was race and used the Harlem Renaissance and American Social Realism as my two time periods. I picked these time periods to go along with my topic because I felt that they both were huge historical times that were revolved mostly around race. 

The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century. From all of this, an artistic explosion was created that lasted from 1910 through the mid 1930’s which was considered the “Golden Age” in African American Culture. Aaron Douglas was a key artist during the Harlem Renaissance which is why he’s one of the two artists I chose for this time period. In fact, he is considered the “signature artist” of this time period. He is from Kansas, but moved to New York. After moving to New York he stopped doing traditional landscape paintings and began creating his own style of geometrical figurative representation in dealing with “negro subject matter.” In my presentation I talked about his famous art piece “Song of the Towers.” My second artist for the Harlem Renaissance period was Romare Bearden. He was an African American who looked white which probably gave him a different insight on life and had an effect on his art during this time. He is famously known for his collage work, and I used his “Southern Recall” art piece. 

American Social Realism became an artistic movement during the Great Depression in the United States. Social Realists envisioned themselves to be workers and laborers, similar to those who worked in the fields and factories and based their art around that. Jacob Lawrence who was a widely acclaimed painter of the 20th century is an artist important to this time period. Lawrence developed his own style of modernism, and began creating narrative series, painting 30 or more paintings on one subject. This became known as his Migration Series (I will insert some photos of the series). Last but not least, Dorothea Lange was also a significant artist of this time period. She was not a typical artist though because she used the use of photography as her art. Her images of the depression-era of American made her one of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the 20th century  and she greatly influenced later documentary photography.

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Blog Response: Event

For the required event, I decided to watch the play “Unveiled: A One Woman Play by Rohina Malik. The play took place at the playhouse theater on October 15th at 3pm. I selected this play out of the other options of live performances because it intrigued me. Rohina Malik plays five different characters in this play and tells different stories for each different one. It is an amazing, and not to be cheesy, but heartwarming play that is a huge eye opener about racism, and hate crimes in America. Not only that, but it is a story that represents love, culture, and life. Rohina Malik is a Muslim American actress.

The lighting that was used during each story of the play, gave the audience insight on what the mood was in that exact moment and gave it more feelings. When one of the stories was about her husband being stabbed to death for being Muslim, the lighting was low which casted a feeling of deep sorrow against the audience. When one was explaining how much her religion had helped her feel accepted and loved for who she was, the studio lights shinned bright on the character which allowed you to feel happiness right along with the character. The lighting really guided the mood within the people watching the play. Aside from the lighting, the music was also a major part in this performance. Just like in movies, the music being played gave a feeling of suspense when it was needed, and the feeling of love and joy when that’s how the author wanted us to feel. Both the lighting and the music were essential to the play to give it the feeling as if we were living those exact moments in the play.

The meaning of this play was to bring awareness. Not only bring awareness to the ignorance, racism and hate crimes in the United States; but to be able to put yourself in a Muslim Americans shoes and take a walk in them to see what they go through and how they’re being treated in this country. Although this is supposedly “The Land of the Free” it doesn’t feel like that for them. It also shows how not standing up for someone you see being treated wrong, could ultimately ruin a life.

This live performance was a four out of four stars for me. From the perfecting lighting, to the music; it really made you feel as if you were a part of the play living through these scenarios. The story that the play told held a lot of meaning and you could feel how deep it was. All characters (even the males) were all played by a single woman. I believe this show is even for people who aren’t fond of plays or any live performances, just because it is an educational story that should be heard. I would recommend this to everyone and anyone because it is a must see. It is highly informative, and although as an American I am aware that our country is filled with “what’s next” because you want to be able to help and stop situations like these. With that being said, the way the story was composed, acted out, and received this live performance was four out of four stars.

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Blog Post 9: Group Response Projects

For my group project, my group decided to focus on music and what effect it has on individuals. Everyone interprets things differently which means music means something different to everyone. 

Before we began to work on our project, we did some research about how people say music makes them feel. We looked up different albums and linked the certain type of people who liked certain type of music. We also looked up other music related pieces of artwork for inspiration. 

We decided to each print out musical albums that spoke to us, and that we liked. I printed out album covers from Kanye West. J. Cole, Beyonce, Jay Z, PnB, The Weeknd, Rihanna, and more. I used these Artists as my album covers becayse this is the kind of music that speaks and relates to me. We each brought our different music taste’s together in our printed out albums. Along with the album covers, I decided to take cigarette cartons and cut music notes out of them. This represented how the right kind of music can be addicting and soothing for one to listen to.

As for visual risks, I think the “platinum album” placed over our album cover was one. I say this because it covered a large part of the art work at it was what drew the most attention. 

Overtime our ideas on our project started to change. Originally we started off with the Idea of using different materials such as head phones, or a box but in the end we put all of the ideas we individually came up with together and combined them to what we have now. 

To be honest, I did not enjoy working with my group. I had other ideas that I wanted to contribute but one person in particular felt that their ideas were better than mine. 

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Blog Post 8: Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson was born in the Bronx, NY and still currently resides in New York. He studied art at the University of New York and once he graduated in 1976, his art work began to change. He said that he did not have any desire to make things with his hands, but instead “gets everything that satisfies his soul from bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way he wants to see them.” Using his artwork, Wilson liked to challenge assumptions of history, culture, and race. Once he started getting his name out in the world, museums started recognizing and giving him space in their museum to work. He was offered free reign over the Maryland historical society collections and aimed to show “the power of objects to speak when the “laws” governing museum practices are expanded and the artificial boundaries museums build are removed.” Through the deconstruction of the museum as a space, Wilson aimed to create a place for continuing dialogue between cultures, moving away from the “eurocentric” attitudes so often found within long standing collections that allows objects to be established on the basis of hierarchies, often leaving out entire histories of minority cultures.

My favorite piece of art work by him: guarded view, which is the invisible role of ethnic minorities in museums. 

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Blog Post 7

My art work is responding to the education system; how most schools in America force believing certain things on you and leave some important parts of the history of  the United States of America out. A distortion of Black history is embedded in the minds of Americans. In preparation I researched things that I didn’t know prior to doing this response project. The “black ink” poured on the book and pages represents the information that is held out in history books. The ink is black because most of the information that isn’t taught, is African American history. Compared to my last response project, I feel like my strength is that the viewer won’t understand it right away and it has staying power. I think the viewers will question the overall concept. This is a risky topic to discuss because any conversation about African Americans in general tends to make people uncomfortable. 

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Blog Post 6

My art work responds to the police brutality against African Americans within the past two years. Before creating my project, I researched accurate statistics and people who have been murdered due to police brutality. I put my project on a mirror to symbolize that in order to fix this problem, people need to start with speaking out against it themselves and to think about if they personally have ever done anything to actually help the issue. MY strongest part of this work, is the material that I used and being able to have people look at my art work for a while in order to understand what it means. The message is pretty direct, but the longer you look at it, the more you understand it. 

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Art and Craft

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Art and Craft

Art and craft could easily be thought of as the same thing, however they are different. People don’t tend to see a difference between the two because they are both forms of creativity, but they do differ. 

Art is unstructured and open ended. For example, there are endless things you can creative with a painting. There are no limitations and the you can do what you want. Craft, is more structured, like a molding or carving.   

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Blog Post 4

For the collaborative non-western art project my group chose Western Africa, I specifically did my research on Nigeria for my part of the project. I chose Nigeria because this country’s art fascinates me; the things that they creates are so different than anywhere else. 

A major aspect of Nigerian art is that they draw their inspiration form the traditional folk heritage of the religion. Carving, masks, glass work are popular to be made for Nigerian art work.

To be specific, wood carvers create figures for temples and representations  of spiritual images of the earth, sky, fire, water and thunder. Wooden masks are apart of the animist faith of the Yoruba people which pre-dates Christianity in Nigeria. 

https://youtu.be/3G0mkb4zyO0

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Blog Post 1

Being a makeup artist, I feel as if I have a lot of experience when it comes to creating art. I consider a fresh face my canvas and most of the time I am free to do whatever I want with it. I am able to sculpt her nose how I want it to look, thinner, wider, and overall create whatever look I want.

In my opinion, art is. Everywhere you look, no matter you are there is some form of art around you. Many people that something has to look a certain way in order to be considered art, but in reality everything is art. In today’s society, I feel as though art is an outlet for creative people and satisfying for people who might not be as creative to look at.

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Charles Limb: Your brain on improv

During Charles Limbs lecture about the brain on imrpov, he makes it known that as someone who is a neurologist and someone who studies creativity in the brain, he has more questions rather than answers. To find as many answers as he can, he uses the help of an fMRI which not only takes pictures of the brain but takes pictures of active areas of the brain. Limb says when an area of the brain is active there is blood shunted to that area. Limb came up with an experiment to find out what happened in the brain during something that is memorized and over learned, and what happens in the brain during something that is improvised. He sent someone playing a key board into the fMRI machine. From this, he came up with a reasonable hypothesis that to be creative you need to have a disassociation in your frontal lobe. Similarly to jazz, Charles Limb says hip-hop (free-styling) also proves music is a type of creative language for the brain. Ultimately he says science needs to catch up to art and they may start to be getting there. From this lecture by Charles Limb I wonder if in the near future we will be able to scientifically figure more out about the brain’s creativity and where it stems from.