numba 3

Nick Corona
Tyrras Warren
Art 101
28 January 2011
                Numba 3
    This week our presenters name was Sara Rabinowitz, she is a master of fibers. First we had to actually fathom fibers though. My first thought as to what fibers are was connected with the internet. I took a class on the physics of the internet and we learned a bit about fiber optics. What happens is physicists get rods of glass and super heat them, then they extract very thin rods from this original rod and transmit light through them which in turn makes signals that gets your information around super fast. So at first, I thought that she was going to bust out some crazy glass.
    But she didn’t. Instead she showed us some fibers of cloth that were used to form intricate patterns and designs. At first I was pretty bored, but then I saw something that was familiar to me. The way the fabric was used to cover figures and that bus she showed us was something that I was very used to. I used to go to Mexico at least 2-3 times a year because of my family there. We don’t go so much anymore because my dad pays for my sister and I to go to school, but I still remember a lot of it clearly. I love the bright colors that just embody Mexico to me.
    People always say that Mexico is corrupt, and poor, and all that garbage. Yet I have never seen a culture so bright and centered. Their family values are far superior to ours and I believe that this gives them an amazing edge in moral and ethical values that people think they lack. I can agree that people in Mexico are poor economically and thus they might be corrupt in their lines of work, but they only do it to help their families. The problem is this cycle gets continuous and thus harder to break, they dig themselves into deeper depressions of labor and corruption. Yet, despite all the calamity, they maintain their bright atmospheres and always try to teach their children better family values and try to support each other as much as possible.
    The readings were about Ann Hamilton. She works with textile design, fabric and sculptures. The biggest thing about these readings for me was that it was hard to distinguish the arts from the crafts. Although I don’t truly believe that there is a distinct difference, I am sure there has to be or else there wouldn’t be a difference in name. In one reading, “the malediction”, Ann shows the importance of making. In the streets of New York she sets down rags that were soaked in wine and then watered out, making a damp and pungent odor. This makes the person viewing think of a urban area, and the distinct smell that cities have. This made sense for me because one thing that I notice when I go back home from out of the country, or even from Eugene, I can instantly tell that I am home from the smell. It is actually quite comforting.
    Ann also makes use of “the making” by using hair and light to focus the attention of the piece towards a person at a small metal desk. She also had placed a “creepy” audio track that made the audience perplexed at the dull sense of depression that the studious environments sometimes entail. In the “tropos” (above piece with hair and light) the student at the desk is burning the words of a book after reading them, and the mixture in the smell of the hair combined with the burning words makes a similarly disgusting edge that provides the viewer with an environment to see the smoke combined with the hair. Supposedly the viewer is supposed to “traverses the space, while metaphorically wading through language” (Hamilton, tropos).
    The last essay, “Kaph” was about a work of hers that was a wall that wrapped around a perimeter that actually was two walls connected. The walls were soaked in bourbon and distilled water that made a weeping impression on the viewer. The smell, which comes up in a lot of her work, also makes the impression of a seemingly icy glacier. The curving walls impress upon the viewer an icon of human suffering and remembrance; walking, breathing and working. “Kaph” in Sanskrit  literally means hand, which just impresses more the ideal of the working image. All these pieces represent the making of which the author is the supreme owner. I believe that the making of a piece is very important for the artist to actually impress his or her ideas on the viewer.
    This piece of sand sculpture was made on a beach in Puerto Vallarta, a place that I have been many times. I have seen works like this before many times and I have seen people create them, its actually astonishing how fast they can created these massive structures and the intricacy that they can put into them. This sculpture was created entirely by the hands and I believe that it is a good piece of work.   

bigger image : http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/jmrobledo/jmrobledo0806/jmrobledo080600044/3168753.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.123rf.com/photo_3168753.html&usg=__A7Si9s5s0k6xRT8FQkOxPIogML0=&h=1200&w=801&sz=142&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=5ddulAatuEU0qM:&tbnh=165&tbnw=109&ei=z3BCTZKlAoyosAOF-sWWCg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfigures%2Bcreated%2Bout%2Bof%2Bsand%2B%252B%2Bmexican%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DgH4%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D638%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=132&vpy=52&dur=1096&hovh=275&hovw=183&tx=108&ty=151&oei=z3BCTZKlAoyosAOF-sWWCg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

numba 2

Nick Corona
Tyrras Warren
Art 101
20 January 2011
                Blog 2
    On Tuesday, the guest speaker that came described to us an even different kind of art style than Laura. While Laura tried to broaden her scope of art to almost everything, Michael Salter was more specific, in my opinion, at least. He told us of how he grew up in a generation of over analyzers, everything that was brought to ones attention was instantly questioned and the logic behind a lot of things he observed was most definitely flawed. He began his art career at a very young age and was interested in surf/skate brand logos and things of that nature. He worked very hard for his internships and his first business was while he was in college, that he start going door to door handing out flyers. He was influenced highly by his youthful interests in science fiction. Star Wars, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes(when it was a cartoon) and Battlestar Gallactica where some of the many shows/movies that he watched as a kid that he loved.
    His surf/skate logo career was pretty successful, until he realized that he didn’t want to do graphic design for the money. He was much more interested in the things that he liked and didn’t really care what other people thought. “Graphic design in the corporate world is ruled by the buyer.” (Salter) He liked graphic design a lot because of its flexibility. He has made 20ft high robots out of trashed Styrofoam, full murals of one piece, or the same piece compressed to fit on the average shirt.
    Another thing he loved about the idea of graphic design is the freedom, it is totally up to the creator or the person getting the item created for. The limit is ones imagination. He showed us many slides of logos and things in China and Belgium and the United States that seemed to make no sense at all. Yet he said that was almost the beauty of it. The idea of the design not making perfect sense, yet catching the eye, almost reinforces it in the mind, because you think about it more than something obvious and boring. I thought a lot of his pieces were really cool, not just in the way the design was made, but the idea behind them that I might or might not have understood exactly how he meant. Either way, they were cool to me and I think it would be really interesting to see one of his galleries. I also asked him after class if he screen prints onto t shirts, and although he basically said no, he also hinted that he might some day. So perhaps I will eventually get one.
    The Vocabulary of Comics was pretty interesting and it pertained to the information that Salter gave us. He told us about how some logos didn’t make any sense to him as far as logic goes, and that almost gave is a more interesting factor. The vocabulary of comics was saying that we look for deeper meanings in things whether we try to or not, these images are focused to make us think a certain way, thus making us slaves to the institution. “We assign identities and emotions where none exist”(McCloud 10). McCloud wrote of other things as well, that people normally don’t really think about. He wrote about the realm of concept and the realm of the senses. What he says is that peoples’ identities belong to the realm of concept while the realm of the senses has to be reached by thinking beyond ourselves and experiencing them.
    This reminded me of a segment of the Chris Coleman video “The Magnitude of the Divide” most of the movie seemed quite outrageous to me and there weren’t many moments where I wasn’t wondering how many hallucinogens he was on when he made it. Yet one part in the middle with a hand in front of the screen going through a forest then a burning (suburb?) reminded me of the part of the vocabulary of comics that talked about the senses.
    All of these works and multimedia reminded me of a friend of mine that is really into graphic design and sort of abstract modern art. I really don’t know how to label it to be totally honest but pieces of the art show he went to that was labeled on facebook only as “Claassen art show” really came to my memory a lot, not only during the presentation but during the multimedia as well, and a little for the vocabulary of comics too. This piece, titled: Swine Flew, was just one of the many that I was reminded of. It plays on the words to give a meaning past the one that people would think of right when they read “Swine Flew”.

 Larger image on google : http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1090/5138433455_91b52e10ff.jpg&imgrefurl=http://jeffclaassen.com/blog/tag/pascals-peeps/&usg=__trfG3OIpu_NneM66WL01CO-mD80=&h=500&w=399&sz=153&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=WHcK2pr33L4V5M:&tbnh=131&tbnw=116&ei=6bc3TZ-JMZOasAOSvdmMAw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dclaassen%2B%2522swine%2Bflew%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D638%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=485&oei=6bc3TZ-JMZOasAOSvdmMAw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=82&ty=35

numba 1

Nick Corona
Tyrras Warren
Art 101
13 January 2011

    Today we had a guest speaker: Laura Vandenburgh, who teaches here, at the University of Oregon. She is known to be very liberal about art and its many forms and functions. The first thing she did when she started to talk to us was explain that art is everywhere and almost no matter what we do we cannot escape it. Although that sounds almost foreboding, its not a bad thing. Most everyone draws at some point in there life, and I have found that most students have doodles on their notes and whatnot. One could argue that almost everything in life could be a medium of art and that is what she explains to us. I found this very insightful, because although I’m no art aficionado, I have seen my fair share, and my dad has a couple nice pieces. Yet what I never understood was the exclusion of what people would call “fine” art vs. “regular” (is that the right word..?) art. For some reason I remember my dad telling me the difference is where they lived and how long they have been dead. Obviously he was joking but its kind of funny to think about.
    The reality of art is that it is everywhere, and everything that has some sort of connection to the artist or the viewer could be a medium to that art. It is of my opinion that art is meant to encapsulate emotions or thoughts from the viewer, whether that be the actual artist him/herself or some random that decides to glance down the hall. People say that art is as valued as it is explained, but in my opinion that is garbage. The artist might have painted it for a reason, and whatever reason that was, he/she found it in the art(hopefully). Yet, that art and reason were for one person alone and it doesn’t really matter if one thinks they can “see it” or not, it really just matters what each person feels or thinks when they see it. This just reinforces to me more that what she said in that everything can be a medium of art, for if everything can be a medium to art in different ways, then everything can also perceive the art in different ways.
    She basically wanted us to know that there is no scope that is too wide, we can shape art and expressions through everything. The act of bending the limits of what is considered “art” itself will only expand our imagination and creativity. This will then only expand the options one has to express him/herself, thus giving a more accurate and specific interpretation, based on from person to person. Considering how many mediums this world gives us, it only makes sense that there could be a near infinite amount of options. The whole piece itself could be but a mark, or signature of the artist him/herself. The limits, although there, are almost too far to be reached.
     So this multimedia is about a lady named Margret Kilgallen. She graduated from Colorado College with a degree in printmaking. This flowed through to her art which is focused on “a lot of typography from the 16th century, 15th century.”(Kilgallen 1) Her interest in the past is very influential in her work, which, like the older things she observes are well and hand made. However, she doesn’t think that it should be labeled as past because she still believes that people in this day and age do that as well, but she does concede that it is harder to find. She has most of her luck in metropolitan areas where there are many things that are overlooked, in her opinion that have more value that people tend to think.
    Margret was also very interested in female figures and ideals, she tries to incorporate many things that connect to female rights and abuses. “Kilgallen often paints her figures simply standing or smoking. While some images are tense with action, such as two women back-to-back at the start of a gunfight, others are remarkably prosaic in the way they capture a man or woman staring out from the painting or in profile.”(Kilgallen 1) She has a broad sense of what can encapsulate her style of art. This is similar to what Laura told us in that art can be expressed and created many different ways.
    Jackson Pollack is an artist that I think has a very different style of art. He likes to use canvases and things that could be left on the ground of some other sort of “real” surface. He then lets the paint drip on the canvas to express his ideas. When he is at work, he says that it is almost as if the art is creating itself, rather than he creating the art. This work, Blue Poles was “dripped” in 1952 and attracted much attention after a publication in the New York Magazine in 1973 that a man called Tony Smith, who was a friend of Pollack's, was the actual painter and that he and Pollack had met and in a state of drunkenness began to paint. This shows that even in a state of inebriation, the inspiration for great art can still exist. -Don’t try this at home-

For a bigger picture - http://leslieparke.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/g001b_pollock_blue-poles.jpg