Untitled (aka Baby) in location

Artist's Statements

Art’s Statement "Untitled #1-3" Project1:
I feel very connected to nature. I think a lot of people ignore their relationships to the earth, and animals. This is happening more and more in this present age. We live in a time in which people don’t feel safe letting their children play outside without parental supervision. Also with technology children and adults alike are sitting home playing video games, watching hours of Tivoed programming, texting, Facebooking, and other removed forms of social communication that don’t including going into the environment. This piece is about connection with nature. The form could be human but has some animal characteristics. This is to play with the relationships, the connectedness of humans with nature and animals. The location will be under a cherry tree that has been damaged in a storm but is regenerating, on a bed of bird seed which will be replenished. This will echo the little being’s connectedness to nature. The tree will flower and produce fruit and goes threw it’s natural cycle, like the life cycle of humans. The form is ambiguous in that it could be a little man or a baby because we are all human, even the biggest big shot was an infant. It reminds us that we are small and being made of ceramic that we are all delicate. Nature can wipe us out at any minute. We have to respect and should think about our relationships to the earth.


Art’s Statement "Masculine Fragility" Project2:
I created footballs to play with the idea of masculinity being fragile. You are supposed to throw them they are tough and durable until made of ceramic. Now they are rendered fragile and delicate. To be a man in our society is to deny emotions, to be a big strong macho man. An American man has to be confident, to never let them see you sweat, to have swagger. Football is a very popular macho man activity filled with violence, and manly pain to endure. Few women play football at a collegiate level and none make the pros. Even Holley Mangold can not break the barrier winning the Best Offensive Lineman Award several times from Ohio State football camps since eighth grade and set girls records for squat lifting at 525 pounds. It’s a sacred man sport, that’s why I chose a football. I took a masculine symbol, a tough object and made it fragile a metaphor for the nature of masculinity.




Art’s Statement "Ceremonial Cupdolls" Project3:
These tribal dolls or ceremonial cups are from a fictional culture. I was inspired by African tribal dolls from Chad, the double headed figure, South American ancient art, Haniwa deer head sculptures and my imagination. I started sketching the plans for these and making them before reading the “Altermodern” by Bourraid. When I look back on what I was doing I can’t decide if it is more docu-fiction, or archive. It’s definitely archive; chaining or clustering together signs from contemporary and historical periods. It is docu-fiction in that it is a melding of historical, journalistic and/or personal enquiry with fictionalized accounts. I want the viewer to come to their own conclusions about these pieces. To do their own speculative sociology as to these mysterious vessel dolls, their meaning, and what their purpose was in this mysterious ancient society.

Week reflection

Another week has past and the ceramic Gods have smiled upon me early this week with the drying and successful working of my new mold. I wanted to make extra then the five but the ceramic Gods said not so fast! I think the mixer of a not totally dry mold at the time and end of the bucket slip produced some cruddy results for my sixth. I also began thinking of time and glaze kiln space. I would rather not kill my mold and make more the right way someday then take up valuable kiln space and drive myself up the wall glazing more in a short time frame. I am not stress free yet, I'm worried about these kilns and getting everything in and out and in a glaze kiln on time AGGH! I hate to rush at anything, I wake up an hr early every morning so that I don't have to rush.

Anyway, I was thinking about our discussion today and I don't feel so connected to the traditional mastering a realm of art. It's great to have a lot of skills but in today's day and age I think it's not as necessary. If you get into a project and want something to be more masterful you can learn it then. It just perhaps is a little harder to be a jack of all trades then a jack of one trade. It's more conceptual now and I think that's exciting for teaching because students are intimidated by the masters, but can have a great concept. Then you can show them the skills they need to reach their concept. I, like the other Karen agree I'm skeptical of Bouriard. He just is a genius for categorizing and selling this idea to everyone, and he's smooth. He's got this fancy way of putting things but I noticed in the clip during class he read from his notes so completely. This was less convincing then if he just could recite his beliefs about this movement from the heart. It's like he writes so fancy even he has to read it out or he gets confused!

Attention!! Final Bisque Firing Thursday!

Heads up! I am doing an additional firing Thursday! It will be the final bisque firing! I believe myself, possibly Amanda R. and Judi will be helping. I don't know about you but I will feel a lot better after this firing is underway. I hope this work cools nice and early this weekend to glaze!!

Week Progress or lack there of........ :(

Well it's Shark Week in my life (and I'm deathly afraid of Sharks). To review my ideas... for the slip casting project I am making (trying to) footballs to play with the idea of masculinity being fragile. You are supposed to throw them they are tough and durable until made of ceramic. Now they are rendered fragile and delicate. My thrown project is tribal dolls or ceremonial cups from a fictional culture. I was inspired by African tribal dolls from Chad, the double headed figure, South American ancient art, ex.
Ok so here is where my life really got like shark week... I went to Bailey's yesterday to get straps because I thought it's make my life easier and I really needed them. I get them out of the package, they were both missing the bar thing that they need to ratchet them. I start freaking out, I just can't get ahead, nothing is working out. I try to clamp with whatever sad few clamps are around. I try to plug any loose areas with clay, I pour, and it leaks like a siv. I was devastated. I was there till 11 at night and had nothing to show for it but bruises from maneuvering this clamped nightmare. Also I think we're running out of slip so even though I made an entire bucket myself and made double what others did, and have no time I will have to make that. I think I have to make a new mold. I ant to try to make a two part like I was doing originally. I will just fill in the seams so they are not undercuts anymore. I am beyond freaked out this won't have time to dry and won't work. I have nightmares about this mold. My mom said to me last night, well you can't have any tears left, I just said they just leak of me like my mold, and keep leaking.

Radicant

The idea of experimentation being the most modern doesn't seem completely true to me. You can experiment with old ideas, in old ways, experimenting does not always yeld a new thing or concept. This brings us to the point made by Nietzsche "there are no facts, only interpretations", this philosophy is really amazing. If this is true though, I propose that can't all thinks be modern? It is in the eye of the beholder, it is all relative. If you can look at something with a different interpretation, and I think most people do this about everything they encounter on a day to day basis, then in the differing interpretation isn't it new, fresh, modern again? This relativism is due to capitalist globalization. This western approach endlessly reenacts the rift of colonizer and colonized which he calls conceptual fetters. If this is true can other fetters of power be dismissed like this? and should it be? Many artists and activists would disagree.I also think that this globalization, although it is at at new high, is not all that entirely new from the past. Ideas and cultural sharing was more limited in the past but some people were really well traveled or somone like a King would send explorers out to fetch whatever was seen as the best of a given land or culture. Whatever could be used or adopted in the homeland to better, or that was of interest. So I Believe you could agrue that not really globalization but colonization, exploration, and exploitation by monarchs and now present cultures have led to the radicant artist. History is repeating itself, just in a faster, less aggressive and outwardly down right wrong way.

Reflection 7/22/10

This has been another intense week(they weren't kidding with the title summer intensive!). I have been working out ideas to re vamp my first project. I will need to visit the site on Friday to cement my ideas but I want to make the connection between the figure and mother nature more reflected in my work. I'm hoping to figure out a way to physically tie them together in a not so obvious physical tying. I want to make it look like it fits in a spot just right. Made I should make smaller versions that lay into the tree in a certain way. I will have to revisit the space to really make a decision how. I have decided my idea for the second project and have started attempting to mold it. I don't feel like I have all that much control with this new method so I don't know how this is going to work but I'm trying to cast a football. I really really really hope I can accomplish this. I am very attached to the idea. I took the route of social commentary and think having a football,a masculine object to be tossed around that's rough and tumble be made out of a fragile substance you do not want to throw or be rough with. The fragility of masculinity.

The Articles:

The articles this week were intense also. I understand the debate of art vs craft to the outside world but does it still exist in the art academic world? I think less then in the art world, or amongst the rest of the world. We have the margins because as humans we need to rationalize and categorize to try and understand a world that we truly do not. It's human nature and in ingrained from survival. Can these hierarchy's be altered in our minds? Of course. It just takes the entire world, and even the art world for that matter a while to catch up. Or maybe it's a generational thing. Personally I would rather be called an artist than a fashion designer, ceramicist, or any other skill associated term. Is it necessary to communicate how we work? Sometimes perhaps but I wish it didn't.

The Altermodern article is such a huge article explaining a huge idea. At first I thought why doesn't everyone know about this? Maybe it hasn't been accepted yet but I have a sneaking suspicion the news or debate anyway isn't earth shattering because the general population is not concerned with what is perceived to only affect the art world. Meanwhile this idea about globalization, the wandering in time, space and mediums has everything to do with everyone. Bourraid's description of the arrow being disrupted and looping all over the place to me connects with the very thinking patterns present in our global society. This is why things are so confusing across the board. This makes me feel like I am old fashioned because I am under the margin, in ceramics anyway as more post modern. My concepts are more important to me than craft and I struggle with that. I love the primitive, the emotive, the touch of hand I suppose that could be Borders. In another sense though I can be taking from that time so it's Heterochronia. I just find this terminology tough to swallow because yes they are the directions people are going but so many of these categories can be used to describe work from before this said era. Many works of art are responses to travel, but I think what Bourriaud is trying to say is that it's in a different way. I also find it problematic to say the cause of this shift was the oil crisis and economic decline. These events definitely change people but I think there's more to it then that, I think it's more having to do with globalization. I definitely identify with his assertion of artists being nomads. I know I use knowledge from all over the place consciously and sub consciously and it can make generating ideas for work both exciting and adventurous although difficult sometimes because I have so many ideas and different directions. Sometimes I need a GPS ( usually bouncing ideas off other people, sometimes people who don't consider themselves artists can be really useful for this).

Demo pictures!!!

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

With location!!

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Week Reflection 7/15

This week has been a marathon for me, personally, professionally, academicaly, and artisticly! I am so proud of myself though for sticking to my guns and doing everything neccessary, and to the best of my abilities and imagination. The interesting thing about this intensive is that because it is that, intense, there is so much discussion and so many ideas floating around in my head. It's almost dizzing and noisy, but it does affect the work, and I think possitively. Too bad I can't turn it off and get a good night's sleep. This next project is a bit more confussing to me than the last. Since I used to be a footware designer I start to think back to my work, which was functional, and how can I gear my mind to flip that around. I understand that it can be functional but should change the way the user thinks or uses the object, but how can this be done in an authentic way to me? I'm reminded of seeing these funny glasses, you know the Gaucho Marx style with the mustache? Maybe a pair of ceramic glasses , either comical or not. The idea of not being able to see in these glasses, they could catch on with celebs I'm sure LOL. Technicaly I don't like even thinking about if that would work, it is probebly more work than I'm in love with the idea. I keeps thinking of that commercial with the Tyson vacume and the new fan without blades. What innovative invention would that white haired man create? hmmmm now I just thought about acrylic nails being made of ceramic and later be glued on nails. It could be effective with interesting aplicays or glazing kind of an interesting idea but I'm not completely sure I'm sold on it. I think that meets the project requirements but I'm not 100% possitive. Perhaps ceramic heels, that would be cool if they worked like barbie shoes and they pop on and off. That could be really humorus.

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

The Glenn Adamson article about Craft was very interesting to me, as it should be to any artist, especially in the ceramics world. (By the way has anyone seen the PBS movie Craft in America?It tackles this dance between art and craft). Being a former fashion designer and a modern intellectual about art I do see the value in the work of many skilled people who do not get the credit as just the way of the world. In such case it may not even be the idea of the name of the brand (yes that's you Ralph Lauren my former employer) or artist. It also is not made by that person or probebly anywhere near them. I would draw flat sketches and email them to China and have sample shoes in 2 days(Italy or Brazil took longer because they didn't live in the factories and did more hand sewing ex). These skilled workers actualy make the molds and fashion the shoe but are not considered arts because it's commercial? because it's not their idea? As a commercial fashion designer often given constraints and problems to solve I always thought of myself as an artist. The wishes of the company were like having work commisioned and meeting a patron's wishes.
I do agree that much of what is out there in the craft world are things that are suppose to be unique but when you produce a lot that takes away from the rareness or specialty. The problem is in todays economy how could anyone limit production?
The Miwon Kwon article was very enlightening about the work of Richard Serra I had allways thought his works were sight speciefic in the usual way. When he blocked vision I thought it was specific to the location so was therefore the conventional just extreme and in your face. It is a countermodel in fact of the usual site specific. It is interesting to think of all these different models, and the possibilities are enless!

My work is very tactile, I enjoy the process of working in clay and care not to disguise the physical processes. I am imterested in animals and the human connection wit them and relationships with animals to other animals and animals to humans. I work at a park which helps me enjoy and reflect on this even more. I enjoy movement and try to bring that across in my work although I think it shows more in my painting and drawing. I am a former fashion designer but my artwork is not as rigid and stiff as the designs and plans for shoes that I did. I enjoy a human touch to work versus the mechanical perfection of some works. I try new things and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but I like the oppurtunity to try not pressured over weather it's the expected outcome. I think some accidents are better than the given plan and don't usually fight the nature of clay or whatever given material. It is better to push the limits of the material and learn from the outcome in an accepting way than be frustrated it does not want to do what you want it to. That is the beauty of materials. They have limits but your ideas do not so the trick is getting each to match as close as possible, then I think it is a successful peice.