anna's ISPC visit writeup

Our visit to ISPC in Brooklyn gave us ideas about different ways to work as an artist and alternative methods for generating income. All of the artists we saw dealt with various themes of awareness and collaboration.

Chaw Ei thein was from Burma, left behind an oppressive government, but didn't forget it, instead used it to inform her work. One of her pieces was a collaborative effort of making a replica of a temple from sugar. As the exhibition went on, the temple began to disintegrate. It reflects on the fragility and destruction of the oppressed. her father is a painter and she learned from him. It was inspiriing to listen to her talk. She didn't have a fromal art education, yet manages to be an artist in New York, despite coming from an oppressive situation and having an initial language barrier. For additional income, she teaches art to children.

Lilibeth Cuenca was born in the Philippines and raised in Denmark. Originally, she used video, writing her own words set to music and dressing in costume. Her pieces raise questions about gender roles and stereotypes. Collaboration is an important part to her process, both for the music and video editing. Now she is also doing direct performances. In one video, the musicians doubled as backup dancers, to comic effect.

Michael Hopfner's photographs are of and inspired by his travels to places such as Tibet. He see himself as a tourist. What was interesting was that he doesn't try to direct his experiences, but rather lets his natural curiosity just take him. He keeps journals and later prints and sells small books containing his photography and writings. Also he arranges for group excursions to different areas.

Lotte Linder and Till Steinbrenner are from Germany. They are a married couple who have also joined forces as art collaborators. The husband, Till, was there for us and was really engaging (and tall!). He showed us their proposal video for coming to ISPC. The first work was a set of bleachers they had built facing a pristine bench in a park. It was meant to bring attention to the absurdity of these perfect little viewing areas. They invited people to sit on these bleachers and essentially watch the bench. The added treat was an elderly couple already sitting on the bench, unaware of what was taking place. At one point someone told them to do something, so the man began reading his newspaper aloud for the crowd of onlookers. Since their work is performance based and they don't sell videos of the performance, they are able to generate income from selling furniture they build.

We tend to think of what type of job or training we need to have, forgetting there are alternatives to how we can think of a profession.

GALLIMAUFRY!

raaaaaargh monster

Schedule for Faculty Critique

Wednesday April 1st, Drawing Studio

noon - 4:30pm

12:10 - 12:30 Kerrin
12:35 - 12:55 James
1:00 - 1:20 Lauren
1:25 - 1:45 Nadia
1:50 - 2:10 Ryan
20 minute BREAK
2:30 - 2:50 Cody
2:55 - 3:15 Anna
3:20 - 3:40 Kate
3:45 - 4:05 Michelle
4:10 - 4:30 Megan

PREP WORK FOR FACULTY CRIT

Here are a few things to consider to have the most professional presentation for critique:

1. Most professional possible presentation for faculty critique - we can ask Sarah for pedestals to use during critique. Cody and Kate both of your works may benefit from a pedestal presentation rather than putting the work on one of those dirty tables in the drawing studio. If you use pedestals, they may need to be touched up, this could be done Tuesday afternoon.

2. Kate, it might be good to do a dry run on the wall display of your weapons during critique. This would mean buying L nails or pins or some form of hanging device to install the weapons on to a wall of the drawing studio and see what they look like on display. You may want pedestal for any bombs or grenades...

3. Anna, are your paintings ready for hanging? If not please prepare them for wall hanging with wire. It's best to not just use a couple nails and put them up, but rather to prepare them as they would be professionally hung in a gallery. They need to be viewed on the wall, not on the easels.

4. Lauren, I have the same request for you, will you prepare the prints that you present for wall hanging. Perhaps you can leave a margin along the top and the bottom to use large paper lips as hanging devices or if you already know how they will be hung in the gallery can you do the same for the crit.

5. Same for Nadia, please prepare prints for best way to display.

6. Lastly, I didn't inspect how clean the walls in the studio are, it may be necessary to touch them up, if so we should do so during our regular meeting time. I'll see if paint is available, I'm not back on campus until Tuesday, can someone please take a look at the walls, particularly the central areas that will be used for display.

PRINTING OF CATALOG

Great news from the faculty meeting today - there is money to have the catalog printed! I've looked around and prices are high, we need to keep the cost down, but the department wants 250 printed. This is the place that Sarah recommends based on price and speed:

http://www.48hourprint.com/booklet-printing.html

I was thinking 12 page small booklet would be appropriate, what do you all think? I'm posting this on the blog for discussion. We need to move fast... does anyone know inDesign or Quark?

Gallery Review II

The Vox Populi’s latest exhibitions feature members Anita Allyn, Josh Rickards, and Linda Yun. Among these three artists, painter, Josh Rickards, lets his imagination run wild in Do Unto Others Then Run Like a Mother. These recent paintings continue Rickards’ ongoing interest in people of popular culture and everyday life. Characters such as a young Bill and Hillary Clinton immediately jump out at viewers with their rosy bulbous noses, clothed in heinous 70s garb. Prominent snouts appear throughout most of Rickards’ portraits- some slightly phallic, others quite direct. Rickards explained his nose fetish at the Vox’s artist talk, as a reference to 17th century Dutch portraiture. These allusions to paintings such as Shrovetide Revellers or Pieter van der Brocke by Frans Hals, are not immediately grasped. Rickards’ paintings negate movement or tactile allure. His characters are flat and linear, embracing static stature and stillness-quite the opposite from popular Dutch bar scene subjects. In some paintings, the background becomes a separate entity- jarring colors within bold patterning or repeated geometric shapes- that compete with the characters’ presence. The characters seem to be chosen arbitrarily, though Rickards’ personal interest and technique make each painting comical, quirky, and a little disturbing. Renderings of his subjects- from the Yeti (a swamp monster legend from the Florida Everglades) to Sly Stone, from the creator of Esperanto to Bill and Hillary Clinton, are not flattering. Whether it in the characters’ bulging noses or other misshaped physical features, Rickards goal is not to create the ideal, but to highlight imperfection and the surreal- and how we as a society react to this representation.

Kate's Review #2

Melanie Smith is a multi-media artist whose work addresses, “the urban, cultural, and socio-economic realities of the sprawling megalopolis” of Mexico City. This particular exhibition, entitled Spiral Cty & Other Vicarious Pleasures is separated into two distinct groups: a number of sculptures that compose an installation that comments on the rampant commercialism of Mexico City, and a room of bleak black and white photographs and videos of the streets of the city.
Jam Side Up, Jam Side Down, a 1992 collaboration between Melanie Smith and Francis Alys, occupies the center of the MIT gallery. A plywood alley, filled with all manner of bright, bulbous vinyl objects hanging like clothing, supplies just enough room for a person to pass through, though she might still brush elbows with the objects. Latex gloves had been knotted together and clustered into giant spheres. White Styrofoam bananas hung in bunches. Inflatable rings were strung along the metal bar that so recalled a closet’s bar. This aisle, a direct critique of consumerism, is constructed to call attention to the unexamined ritual of shopping.
Smith’s piece, Orange Lush (1995), a collage of orange plastic objects on wood, echoes that critique. She adhered a garish orange wig beside floaties, a gaggle of deflating balloons, hula hoops, vinyl, bright cording coiled into a hank, and synthetic toys. Smith’s words hung beside the piece on a little plaque. It read, “Orange seemed to indicate a certain attitude I had about Mexico City at that specific time; orange was always in your face…Wherever something wanted to catch your attention it was orange—I could never separate the color from the object, and all these orange objects seemed to homogenize everything.” By using found objects to convey the feeling a color conjures up instead of, say, paint, Smith calls attention to the obsessive consumption and collection of bright and worthless objects.
Melanie Smith and Rafael Ortega’s 2002 piece, Spiral City, filled the next room with the grey network of Mexico City’s streets, viewed from a helicopter and shot in grainy black and white in a single take. This piece is a stark contrast to the popping color of the other room. Here, the viewer is sucked into an “energy drain” after being overwhelmed, and leaves the gallery as deflated as one of the balloons affixed to Orange Lush.