art project

Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen, March 17, 1969 – February 11, 2010 was a British fashion designer and courtier best known for his in-depth knowledge of British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose female strength and sensuality with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows.

McQueen has been credited with bringing drama and extravagance to the catwalk. He used new technology and innovation to add a different twist to his shows and often shocked and surprised audiences. The silhouettes that he created have been credited for adding a sense of fantasy and rebellion to fashion. McQueen became one of the first designers to use Indian models in London.

Burning Man

Burning Man is much more than just a temporary community. It's a city in the desert, dedicated to radical self reliance, radical self-expression and art. Innovative sculpture, installations, performance, theme camps, art cars and costumes all stem from The Playa and spread to the communities.

Art is an unavoidable part of this experience, and in fact, is such a part of the experience that Larry Harvey, founder of the Burning Man project, gives a theme to each year. The reason that he does this is to encourage a common bond to help tie each individual's contribution together in a meaningful way. Participants are encouraged to find a way to help make the theme come alive.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England. He is a land artists. Goldsworthy always knew he was going to be and artist. He had lived on a farm since the age of 13. Living on the farm is what opened him up to land art. He produces site-specific land art which is art work created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork.

The materials used in Andy Goldsworthy's art often include brightly-colored flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, clay, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. (basically anything he can find).  He is also considered to be the founder of modern rock balancing.

"I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature." 

Roof

This is one of his permanent pieces, its called "Roof." A team of workers including four dry-stone wallers, installed the sculpture entitled Roof on the ground level of the East Building over the course of nine weeks in the winter of 2004/2005. The concept for the sculpture came from the artist's interest in the origin of Washington building stones, and evokes the natural sources of this urban center. The sculpture is comprised of nine, stacked-slate, hollow domes, each measuring approximately five and a half feet high and twenty-seven feet in diameter 

Stone River

"Stone River" is a 320 ft long sandstone sculpture located at Stanford University. He worked with  eight professional English and Scottish dry-stone wallers, who worked for 11 hours a day, six days a week for three-and-a-half weeks on the project. Though Goldsworthy's palms and fingers are callused and his fingernails are discolored from years of working outside, he didn't lay any stones himself!  The Sculpture is called stone river but Goldsworthy says its not a river but more of a flow and movement. A flow of energy from the rocks.

  

 

  Photography plays a huge role in Andy Goldworthy's art because most of his art isn't something that can be put into a gallery. Most of the art he creates out in nature is not seen by very many people. That's because his art is transient or very temporary. Some of his works my only last up to 20 seconds. It all depends on the environment its in. With his camera he is able to capture these moments and bring them to us so we can have a little taste of how he views the earth and nature. 

Video Art

Beall Center

So the Beall Center was pretty easy to find. We just followed the directions and sure enough we ran into the red building. When I walked in my first reaction was "why is it so dark?" Yeah I'm scared of the dark! Then the tall bubble human came to life! and i thought "yeah that was cool, but I want to see something else." So I walked all the way inside and realized how tiny the gallery was. And there was no one there. okay then i saw the birds moving and i thought it was so beautiful! I have mentioned it before I really like birds. When I was looking at the performance I could just imagine real birds following each other. The Inner Space performance was cool too. I really did enjoy that sounds that it made along with the movements. I wish I could have taken video!

Artist 10 - Bruce Nauman

 

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary artist from Indiana. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, and video. His art is characterized by his play on words.  Many of his pieces are neon and bright.

In the picture above it says: The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths. Well he hasn't helped me by revealing any mystic truths personally, but i still consider him a "true artist." I think his works are very beautiful and bright. I will do some further researching on Nauman because i think his works are interesting. I'm really interested to find out how he got into playing with words!

Artist 9 - Vaneeesa Blaylock

Vaneeesa is a performance artist in SL. She is famous for her piece "Veinticinco Mujeres" which is translated to "Twenty Five Women." In this piece she has 25 avatars in a gazebo type place and they are all naked and wearing the same shoes. This is supposed to represent individuality and identity. This performance was approximately two hours long!

 I liked the idea of this performance like the whole individuality thing. I was surprised to see that a lot of the avatars looked sort of similar. Most of them were pretty thin with big boobs. So I think that maybe in RL people are struggling to be so different from one another that they end up the same in SL. I don't know if that makes sense.

Artist 8 - Jennifer Ringley

The website JenniCam all started when 19 year old Jennifer Ringley decided to install a web cam in her dorm room. Images would be posted onto the website and the website would automatically refresh after three minutes. So you could see everything she was doing all the time. This was basically a video diary or a documentary of her life; which was boring for the most part, except for the times when she would engage in sexual activity.

I think that back when JenniCam first started in 1996 people were shocked that they would expose their lives in such a way. After all, the internet was pretty new back then.. not as advanced as it is today. So i think Jennifer Ringley was kind of a dare devil! I found it fascinating to learn that on average she would have 2-3 million viewers a day. Its crazy to think how many hours people spent watching Jennifer right from their own computer just waiting for something interesting to happen!

Artist 7 - Stelarc

Stelarc is a performance artist. His performances often involve robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body somehow. He allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet. He has also performed with a robotic third arm, and a spider-like six-legged walking machine. He has gained a lot of attention from his suspension performances as well.

I thought Stelarc's work was interesting and some of his works look pretty painful. I like how he is able to view the body as as something that can be shaped and molded, just like clay. I've always thought your body is your body and you can't really do much to change that. I don't mean like loosing weight or plastic surgery either, because even the "best looking" people are going to find something wrong about them. But Stelarc sees the body like an object that could be redesigned.

Artist 6 - Scott Blake

 Scott Blake has taken advantage of the boring barcode image that we know and love and created art based upon the patterned code. Blake has truly turned the barcode into an art form, using it to create portraits of iconic pop culture figures like OJ Simpson, Charles Manson, Oprah and Jesus. He also creates barcode stencils that he calls ‘word paintings’, and barcode graffiti, like an image that simply says “Scott Blake was here."

 

His form of art is very inventive and interesting. My favorite part from the video above is the part when they scan the different barcodes that make up Elvis Presley's face. Its amazing how Blake was able to do that. I think that its very simple but unique idea that he had.

Artist 5 - Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler is a multimedia and installation artist. Tony Oursler has created some amazing video installations for his exhibit at the Lisson Gallery in London and all around the world. Throughout the 1990’s it was popular to work with video projected over forms. This exhibit focuses on the obsessive need and irrational desires of the human condition.

“Liquid” is a video of a woman attempting to take in an impossible amount of fluid. The video is played in reverse objectifying the action into the form of a fountain. Watching the video "liquid" made me think about gluttony and how people just take and take from anything and everything with out really caring about other people or even themselves. 

Artist 4- Bill Viola

Viola uses video as a form of contemporary art to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness. Most of his videos are silent and play in slow motion. i think this so that we can see and appreciate natural phenomena such as a drop of water falling.

The Crossing (1996)

 When i first saw Bill Viola's work I just kept thinking... I want the big exciting thing to happen already. But as i kept watching more videos i started to pay closer attention and i really got to feel  the big exciting thing when it happened.  I like Viola's work because i feel like it captures true emotion and i think the slow motion effect builds a lot of suspense. The Crossing was my favorite video because i liked the scene when the water starts to fall on the man's head. It stirred the most emotion in me. I don't know how to explain how i felt except that it made me feel new. like my mind went blank and the water was the only thing i was thinking about.

artist 3 - Gracie Kendal

Gracie Kendal/ Kris is an artist on second life. She did the famous "1000 Avatars Project" which was pretty amazing. She explains how the project was supposed to be about diversity, individuality, anonymity, and equality. But to her it was more than that. She said that with this project she learned more about herself.

I think the "1000 Avatars Project" is really neat, but i find the person behind the flawless Gracie remarkable. I think there is so much to say about her. I know that a lot of people believe she's being "fake" and hiding behind a computer but i think she's using Gracie as a type of therapy. She has a lot of weight issues and she thinks she's ugly. In her blog she says that she is trying to look more like Gracie which means that she is using Gracie as her motivation to loose weight. I think that with Gracie's help Kris will eventually become the person she wants to be not only on SL but in RL too.

artist 2- Four Yip

Four Yip is an artist on second life. She's been on second life since 1997 and she has become very famous for her art on second life. She looks for different avatars and takes screenshots of them then she puts them in a program like photoshop and alters them to make them into"imaginative portraits."

 This is a portrait of Kean Kelly. What Yip did is transform this flawless avatar and turn her into someone that "suggests a story and a character behind the avatar."
I think what Yip does is really interesting because in reality you can kinda tell a lot by how people dress or the accessories they wear. Whether you wear a really short skirt or a really long skirt, it says something about you. Yip takes those cues to capture the soul behind the avatar.

Artist 1 - Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who lived most of his life in the United States. In 1866, he started to  become successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects. But perhaps what he is known for the most is his zoopractiscope. This was a device meant to project motion pictures.

 It all started when he was hired to settle the question: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during a gallop. Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a zoopractiscope. The series of photos is one of the earliest forms of videography and is practically the start of cinematography.

Judy Chicago

Feminist, artist, educator, writer. Born Judy Cohen  on July 20, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois. Judy Chicago, is a leading figure in feminist art who rose to fame in the 1970s. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles in the early 1960s, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from this institution. Chicago worked as a painting instructor at several California universities before gaining recognition for her own creative work. And creative she was! Judy Chicago's most famous piece of art is The Dinner Party. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.

 

According to Chicago the purpose of this piece was to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."

 I think that The Dinner Party conveys a strong message and I definitely see what Judy Chicago was trying to do with it. It embodies the heritage of women. In my opinion there are too many vaginas.

Her marriage to photographer Donald Woodman and their joint realization that they were utterly ignorant about both their Jewish heritage and the subject of the Holocaust plunged the couple into an eight year attempt to understand the evil and cruelty that live so close under the surface of civilization. In the long and difficult process of creating the Holocaust Project, Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman produced a large body of ancillary work – both together and separately.

LACMA

 

My trip to lacma was not at all how I expected.First of all i thought it was cool because it was FREE! Yes, it was free because I have a bank of America debit card. ooh and we got free parking too!

So yeah, juan and i were looking at all the buildings and we seriously didn’t know where to start. We just decided to go into the building that was closest to the admissions booth. We went into a building that had this...   

Smoke by Tony Smith

and i was like WOAH! I thought that was really different. I liked how it was so shapely. At first i didn't think that it was an actual piece of art... I mean I know it's art but I didn't think it was very significant to the museum because there was people everywhere around it. Then I came home and looked it up online and it turns out that LACMA bought this for more than 3 million dollars. We did a little more exploring in this building and we found these...

I liked this piece of art because it was made out of wood like most of the other items in the room. I liked the drum because I like music and the drum is one of my favorite instruments. Even though this is a Polynesian drum it reminds me of some of my family because one of my aunts and three of my cousins do Aztec dancing and the only instrument they dance to is the drum. Their performances look and sound Amazing. 

So juan and i did a lot of skipping around the buildings. we skipped some floors of some buildings and I think we might have missed a whole building entirely... but i did manage to find some very interesting pieces that i liked.

mosaic art is one of my favorite types of art. i fell in love with mosaic when i was in 5th grade and i had to make a mosaic mask. To be able to create beautiful images with small pieces of colored glass is incredible. This lamp is used for decorative purposes, but mosaic art has a history spiritual significance like in cathedrals. Vases are some of my favorite decorations. I like to buy vases of all shapes and sizes this particular vase just stood out to me.

 

 

In conclusion, LACMA was a really big museum. I felt very overwhelmed with all of the art. I could have taken a whole day and i probably wouldn't be able look at everything.

venice

So Venice... It was interesting. I love car rides so getting there is already an adventure. Again, I went with my aunt Evelyn and Juan. We couldn’t really find parking so we just parked by some apartments and we walked to the beach. It was kinda crazy trying to get over there. There was lots of foot traffic and car traffic and the streets were so little! I had actually only been to Venice once before when I was younger and I don’t know why it seemed so different to me. Personally, I thought it was kind of dirty and crazy. Call me old fashioned but when I see a people dressed up as a marijuana plant and advertising it, it kind of makes me feel like WOAH!! Yeah it’s a really different culture in Venice.

Anyway, back to the drawing part. On the way over there I was trying to formulate a plan of what I was going to draw but it was useless since I’m not much of an artist. I can barely draw with a pencil, let alone with a spray can. We got assigned a little wall and I got the middle of it.  I wanted to get rid of the art that was there already so I just figured I’d start with that. I sprayed everything with yellow and after I was done I just sat there thinking what my next move was going to be. So I started to draw what I draw best… A TREE! I love trees and I’m always drawing trees on paper like in my notes and stuff so I decided I should try it with spray paint! this is what came out...

my tree

 So i liked my tree, i really did but i don't know it seemed a little too plain. I decided to leave it alone and I just watched Juan and Evelyn do their thing. There paintings where so colorful and amazing so I felt pretty lame with my lame tree. I wanted to add some color to it but i didn't know how to. I'm not very skilled with a spray can. I also didn't want to mess it up, but then i grabbed the pink spray can and this is what came out

I don't know if you can tell but my background has chicken pox!

Well, i was even more unsatisfied so....

this happened!

 

I didn't like it at first but when i looked at all of our drawings together it looked pretty good! So i was happy :)

So graffiti art is a lot of fun. There should definitely be more places like this where you can go and draw whatever you want, even a silly little tree. This experience was a great one and i'm pretty sure i'll come back and do it again. 

 

visiting the norton simon museum

Norton Simon Museum

I loved this museum! I thought it was going to be a lot smaller. I've never gone to a museum where they have actual paintings so I didn't really know what to expect. 

Okay so i went to the museum with my aunt Evelyn and my boyfriend Juan. We started out in the 14^th-16^th century gallery. It was amazing how many paintings there were. I was not surprised at all to see that this gallery was full of religious paintings. There were paintings of Christ, the Madonna and Child, and lots of different saints. I thought it was cool how in a lot of the paintings with saints in them you could see a hint of a halo. At first I didn’t even notice it until my aunt pointed it out. The galleries that i liked the most were the 19th century one and the modern/contemporary one. One of my favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh and I enjoyed looking at some of his art pieces in the 19th century gallery.

 

 

Mulberry Tree 1889 - Van Gogh

 As i was walking through the galleries i noticed that there were many flower type paintings. I like nature and i love flowers so i found these two beautiful flower paintings that i really liked.

Flowers in a Glass Beaker, c. 1620 - Binoit

This still life represents a popular format employed by Dutch artists early in the 17th century. The crisply defined, tight blossoms are arranged in a compact bouquet in a glass beaker decorated with drops of molten glass. Although each blossom is very precise and exactly copied from nature, the bouquet itself is a work of the imagination. It contains flowers that bloom during different seasons. The almost symmetrically arranged flowers, aligned across the picture plane so that each one may be seen.

Vase of Lilacs, Roses, and Tulips, 1863 - Courbet

Gustave Courbet painted this still life while staying at a wealthy land owners house. The estate housed many gardens with exotic flowers and local flowers that were unfamiliar to artist from the east. The environment engulfed him and essentially inspired him to paint flowers.The Purply-white lilacs, pale yellow roses, burnt orange tulips and small red poppies burst forth from the canvas. Their lightness of color and thick green in between makes them pop. The flowers also come forward because of the placement in a dark, non-descript background.

The first painting is painted on copper, the second is painted right onto a canvas. The second painting is very unorganized and its unclear what flowers lay in between all of the green. I think that's what makes the painting real as opposed to the first painting that is simply made up. To my surprise i find them both equally bright. i thought that since the first painting is older it might be more dull in comparison to the younger painting. i do think that overall the second painting stand out more because it filled up most of the canvas space. The second painting would have that ability to if it was bigger or had more flowers i feel like the background is taking the spotlight away.

So overall this little trip was fun but exhausting. There were so many paintings to look at and each painting had so much detail it was impossible to take a good look at each one.