I finished my last two videos and this week was spent primarily doing the boring background work. I've been finding all of my materials and getting everything ready for the show. While slightly boring, it's extremely important. I've also gotten my show wheel from the pod and cleaned her off nice and shiny. Next week I need to try my hardest to get a video shot on Monday so that I can quickly export it over to a usb to play on the tv. After that I think I'll finally be done and ready for my live performance at the gallery!
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With social media dominating everything, I've recently noticed a lot of videos of animals who can seemingly paint, for example I saw a dog who could paint his name. So I'm going to delve in a little deeper and see what this is all about . Sammy the Dog This dog, who goes by the name Sammy, paints abstractedly with many colors. He supposedly loves to paint and has even had work in galleries. One of his artworks even sold for $1700. The reason he can hold his paintbrush this way is because his owner attached it to one of his toy bones. Mishindi the Rhino Lea the Sea Lion Similar to the example above, this Sea Lion sells her artwork to profit the zoo. However, rather than use a paintbrush, she creates flipper art and it's some of the cutest things I've ever seen. (Definitely my favorite so far). There are many many more animals who can paint, ranging from turtles and raccoons to orangutans and chimpanzees. There are some interesting questions surrounding this subject though. Firstly, is it art? I would say yes, I think it is definitely separate from other visual art that we humans are used to but I think that animals can be creative as well, the issues of course being that some animals are color blind and others aren't really creating art but just sort of walking around on a piece of paper. That being said, I still think that a lot of these animals had to put some time into training and therefore I think that they deserve recognition. Some people may look at the abstract work of the dog, for example, and thing "Oh I could do that, my child could do that." And well yes, this could be true, but not all dogs could do that and that's precisely what makes these works of art special. I know that if my dog was able to paint I would cherish that painting as an incredibly unique piece of art. Also interestingly, is it cruel or forced? I don't know the answer to this one. From what I've read, it seems like the animals were shown how to paint and then a lot of these well known ones grew to love it and would get really excited when they knew they were about to start painting. In this circumstance, I don't think it's cruel at all.
Then there's the topic of selling their art, the animals can't really get the money, so is that cruel? I also think not, I think in terms of zoo areas, it's a great idea for these fundraising events to raise money for the animals and the zoo as a whole. I also assume that when family pets make art and it sells that they get some sort of treat too. Overall, I think this is a super unique and cute idea and should definitely continue, as I think it will totally gain popularity in the future. Last week I went back to the VMFA to see this exhibition, I fell in love immediately. This artist is an artist-jeweler, and so she's able to make her work extremely beautiful while still shiny and glassy. This artwork reminded me a lot of Faberge (AKA my favorite art ever). I love the ability to take seemingly commonplace objects and just making them absolutely stunning and beautiful. My favorite thing in this collection is the sunflower (pictured below). The actually exhibition was really interesting as well. Rather than just stick a bunch of beautiful jewelry everywhere, the museum had large glass tables filled with really smooth rocks. On top of these rocks is where all of the artwork was laying. I had never seen an incorporation of a raw natural object (stones), with these beautiful gemstone and gold figures on top. The contrast amplified the natural beauty in both things. I can't take much direct inspiration from this exhibition to use in my own artwork with pottery, but I can use it in other ways. I really hope to be able to take the idea of embezzling everything with beauty and putting handwork into everything that needs to be done so that it all shines with brilliance and apply it to my everyday life. I also really wish I knew how to work with these gems and metals because they give off such a beautiful quality. I'm also now interested into looking more into jewelry art because I never really thought of it as an expressive art form but more of a commissioned art form. I've been seeing sculpture book art for a little while now, I've never not been extremely impressed. I don't know how hard it is to create these works of art, but I imagine extremely hard. Especially when you take into account their detail, it's impossible to see how they could do that. The scariest part is that if you make a small mistake, it's not like you can try again, if you cut too much it;s over and that book is partially ruined. I see this as a derivative from nature art. Guy Laramee and Brian Dettmer both work in this medium, but their work is still very different in style:
First of all, how cool is that? Secondly, I love how similar and different their style are. While Laramee focuses more on topography and natural scenes, Dettmer focuses a lot more on a seeming graphic novel-esque theme. I think Dettmer's use of the words in the work is incredibly creative and super cool. I'm very polarized about my feelings on the two artists. On one hand, I think that Laramee's work looks prettier and is more aesthetically please, but I think that Dettmer's is much more creative. The only other thing that bother me about Dettmer's work is that you lose a lot of the sense of the book in his sculptures, in Laramee's you can still see the book and I think that adds another layer of awesome to it. So in conclusion, while Dettmer's is more creative, I think Laramee uses the space better to provide aesthetically pleasing scenes with some background to them. I really really like the subtractive processes to art rather than additive. I think it's super cool and not used all too often, I would really like to get better at it. (But I don't have too many hardcover books I can destroy ).
Well, this is a hard topic. It's a fun topic because there's a lot of theorizing and since there's no real answer, anything could technically be correct. However, with the new president of the United States, this issue has become much more pressing than it already was.
The readings state that other countries give a lot more art funding than the United States does. This fact is depressing on so many levels. Art is one way to example a nation's creativity and creativity is what keeps the world spinning. Without funding for the arts, I fear that a dangerous cycle will begin; the only art to receive funding will be that art which is popular at the time. Therefore, the most creative artists and new works of art might become way more underappreciated than they already are. However, the United States underfunding art isn't anything new; the interesting fact that the readings talked about was that countries across the world are beginning to lesson their art funding, in some places completely. This depletion of art funding can lead to many bad happenings. One of which being de facto limitation of expression. If the government gains control of the money and has less of it to dish out, then less people will receive money. This becomes an issue because in order to get money from the government, the artist must first appeal to that government and gain their support. Therefore, to be an artist and maintain money, one would have to limit their own expression and adhere to the government's ideals. This would also decrease the ability of people who want to speak out AGAINST the government via art, because, well, yeah. Now that we've established that defunding arts is bad for many reason, not just the ones above, let's talk about the reasons why it happens. As mentioned in the articles, things are becoming more expensive. Countries are putting more money toward things like the military or infrastructure, and so when their budget falls short, there needs to be cuts from somewhere. While art is necessary in a country, when you look at many of the other things the government spends money on, art seems pretty insignificant in comparison, like medical insurance for example. One article made the connection between a family being able to have food or art I think. While this draws a good point, people are forgetting that there are other places in the budget that arguably receive way too much funding. One article also mentioned how one missile could pay for a lot of art funding, I don't remember the exact numbers but it was impressive. While I can understand that there needs to be budget cuts, I haven't been convinced yet that this is the best place to make those cuts. Another very interesting point I think, is that artists are not usually the same people that are in governmental positions. This leads me to wonder if maybe artists are losing their voice in the world and therefore getting the shorter end of the stick? Then there's the issue of trump trying to defund the NEA and whatever else he's doing that I'm trying to not think about. I think that this could and will be really detrimental. Maggie Walker is a school for extremely intelligent people, often students who have amazing art skills; I think of America the same way. Filled with innovative, hardworking, creative people. One there is no more art, I don't think there will be any more "America the Great." This week I shot my playing on the wheel video with the slip. It went really well and I started editing my videos and exporting them. (I'm learning a lot about imovie but it's still a little confusing).
Things are moving along really swell, I managed to go ahead and shoot one entire video of me throwing this week, next I'm going to try playing with the wheel and some slip!
This week is back on the up and up, I switched over to Coach's video camera so the files will transfer easily. Hopefully I can start editing first thing next class. Also I have made a good many pots to play the video on but I'm going to need a lot more to have the effect I'm looking for.
This entire week pretty much was centered around trying to get the videos uploaded onto the computer so that I could edit them. As of now, I have the videos on a flash-drive to put on to my laptop and convert to a usable file. However, I need to try to get the correct software to do that.
This week was generally successful. I got a video camera from my dad and took some videos, hopefully next class I can get them up and edited.
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May 2017
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