Latest Tweets:
MISSION
To me creative responsibility represents the unwritten rules that are found within artist communities. It’s the guideline that keeps good intentions behind our art and discourages us from stealing images or characters. But it can also coincide with artistic obligations. Sentimental requests or formal commission. For designers it can be the responsibility to follow customer instructions. To me it just feels like an ambiguous term that defines my responsibilities and laws as an artist.
We’re liberated as makers. We have liberated minds with an alternative perspective. This liberation allows us to create, cross boarders, and be more than over the line in offense.
Victoria Vesna’s mission is to fulfill her role as an intellectual and creative individual in society. It speaks to me that she sees a lack of these people in the world and calls us to spread knowledge and thought.
MISSION
To me creative responsibility represents the unwritten rules that are found within artist communities. It’s the guideline that keeps good intentions behind our art and discourages us from stealing images or characters. But it can also coincide with artistic obligations. Sentimental requests or formal commission. For designers it can be the responsibility to follow customer instructions. To me it just feels like an ambiguous term that defines my responsibilities and laws as an artist.
We’re liberated as makers. We have liberated minds with an alternative perspective. This liberation allows us to create, cross boarders, and be more than over the line in offense.
Victoria Vesna’s mission is to fulfill her role as an intellectual and creative individual in society. It speaks to me that she sees a lack of these people in the world and calls us to spread knowledge and thought.
MIAD DEFINE
I decided to use the DEFINE day to personally experience artworks within my school and participate in two presentations. While I was unable to meet with the seniors whose works best spoke with me, I gained a great experience and quite a bit of inspiration to put towards my own work. Seeing Senior thesis work really puts things into perspective as a MIAD foundations student. It allows us to peer into what could be our future, and experience what’s to be expected of a MIAD Senior.
While I was at DEFINE I overheard pieces of different critiques. I specifically recall one photography critique that was getting quite heated on the River level. It’s hard to envision myself in that position. I don’t know if I have the arguments to really “sell” a piece of mine and defend it. Foundations critiques are so passive and vaguely supportive. Upperclassmen critiques are much more aggressive, more of a challenge. The only real teammate you have in a critique is yourself or your artwork, and I guess that’s kind of scary to consider.
The first presentation I sat in on was Semester at Sea. Experiencing the world is one of my first priorities as an individual. What I find myself contemplating, is the value of experiencing a vast quantity of countries over a semester, or simply spending it in one place on your own. While Semester at Sea delivers you to an incredible amount of valuable experiences, an independent semester has the ability to send you off into the world on your own to create your own experiences without the staging. You’re more inclined to go off and have meaningful experiences as your own person, and you gain much more time to really experience the entirety of a culture. As it stands right now, my preference lies in independently going somewhere for a semester. I feel like the entirety of it would be much more impacting in solitude.
In all honesty, I hated my second presentation. It was the one about collaboration, but it was by no means what I thought it was. Essentially it ended up being a few people who have done collaborations making small talk about the pros and cons of collaboration, and what collaboration really means. What I was looking for, was a presentation that went in depth in starting a collaboration and how to successfully execute one. Let’s face it, if you’re going into a collaboration and you’re expecting it to go entirely smoothly you’re going to come out of it extremely disappointed, and that’s common sense. I’ve just found myself really wanting to experience a collaboration, with not much knowledge of how to start. It’s not that I have somebody particular in mind and I’m scared to ask them or anything, it’s just a newer concept to me that I’m trying to wrap my head around.
DEFINE really got me thinking more into the future. As a solely “in the moment” individual, it’s really nice to have events like these to expand my thinking. I guess I just wish I had looked more closely at the assignment sheet, or that the class didn’t put control on the experience at all.
MADISON (MIAD, SON!)
While I wasn’t particularly excited to visit the State Capital for what felt like the eight hundreth time in my short life, I still happily got on a bus eager for our adventure. I’ve lately been discovering that I really connect with space and atmosphere, and Madison was just another experience that provided more connections and insight. What made the state capital more bearable was not only the coherency and appeal of the architecture and art work, but also the connections I can make from my past selves that have visited the state capital and buildings. How I perceive and relate to the capital while touring it has definitely developed and grown from aging. It’s interesting to consider how my perspective and personality weren’t the same as how they are now, but they were seemingly sprouted facets of what they are today.
I really enjoyed State Street’s atmosphere. It had a really nice energy to it, and there was a sense of optimism that ran through its population. Everybody seemed friendly, whether we were indoors or outdoors. I was pretty disappointed in all of my friends that just ate at chain restaurants and didn’t indulge in madison food. My posse and I indulged in Parthenon gyros and they were absolutely wonderful. The only thing I wish I could’ve done in Madison that I couldn’t was stop into some music stores and look at instruments. You never know what you’ll find!
While I didn’t connect with much of what was at the Art Museum, I found myself really wrapped up in the essence of Houdini and the past behind the objects and work in the exhibit. There was just a really strong presence that coincides with Houdini and the things he used to use quite often. They were very mysterious and thought provoking to me, and I was encouraged to spend a lot of time drawing them.
The Madison trip provoked a lot of past reflection, in my own life as well as those connected with Houdini. While it was kind of a quieter, introspective day, it was very refreshing nonetheless.
5_NEW EXCHANGES
The Fine Line Magazine exhibit is and was absolutely the first thing that draws my eye as I enter the gallery. It’s composed of many different pieces featuring different graphic and photographic elements combined with text. Many of the pieces are different images with graphic artwork juxtaposed into them in interesting ways. A lot of the work is quite different, almost giving a futuristic appeal to the different pieces - and I think that’s what’s so enduring about the exhibit. I’ve never seen anything like many of the pieces on the wall. Some of the photos have bright geometric patterns embedded over them, while some pieces seem to be watercolor landforms combined with architectural sketches.
I believe the exhibit works well because of it’s culmination of many different things that are still somewhat related. Each piece absolutely feels like work done for a magazine of some sort, particularly with the use of text. One might find it more successful with a more obvious and continuous theme between all of the works, but it’s not my personal opinion. The gallery seems to be presenting itself as heavily graphic/advertisement oriented. The works seem to incorporate a multitude of themes, but the most reoccurring seem to be the vitality of the natural world and it’s relationship with humans, and architectural structure / pattern.
Symposium (Alternative)
The most in depth and interesting conversation I had at Nut Factory was with somebody who’s apparently a teacher at miad. His name is Mike Davidson. I spent majority of my time listening to Mike as his words were very influencing to me. I’d like to write mostly about this experience in this post, as it had the most relevance and meaning to me. Mike Davidson’s enthusiasm alone really kept me interested in what he had to say, and his work was something I found myself very interested in understanding. Mike spoke a lot about how he finds inspiration in the greatest spectrum of things, from the smallest “quirky” moment to reflections of light on glass. The first thing Mike said before he delved into it, when inquired about his inspiration “Anything, and it can happen in a second.” His emphasis was spontaneity, and was a very interesting reflection of his personality. For example, Mike explained to us his excitement about the painting we were in front of. He was really fond of doing things that pushed boundaries, or were ridiculous decisions that he could make work. In the painting we looked at, he had cleverly worked a perfect square into the center of his painting. It was very effective too, because I had not noticed it until he said something and it really made me think. “I put a square in the center of that painting, and got away with it! Who does something like that, it’s ridiculous!” - My own paraphrasing of Mike’s boasting.
We also talked about his use of color and how he tends to dictate them on his painting. Mike said he always tried to have a “palette for the painting”, something that “makes sense within that world”. He talked about how his color strokes really have to be perfect and unique, describing them as sort of ‘characters within a theater’.
The only pre-written question I had that I ran out of time to ask was “What tends to dictate the composition of your paintings?” But I feel like he definitely answered this on his own throughout our conversation. My conversation with Mike left me inspired, excited, and a little confused - but I feel like he put to rest some conflicts I’ve been having with my work. It was very impacting, and just interesting that I would not have had this experience had I gone to the symposium. In a way, the situation is very reflective of Mike himself. It was just one of those spontaneous, quirky moments.
(Annushka/Alison - I know this is differently done/formatted than assigned, I’ll bring it up in class and will redo the assignment if needed. I just felt like this was something more personal and worthy of the wordspace.)
Unfortunately long assignment blog post extraordinaire!
LOVE
HATE
Alright well I don’t really tend to hate things.. at all. So here are some artists I found who’s work generally didn’t do it for me.
BUT I REALLY HATE ANDY KEHOE BECAUSE-
his work is over simplified eye candy. Andy Kehoe creates paintings featuring strange beings typically in a natural yet surreal setting. These elements are repeated throughout his portfolio, which renders his portfolio uninteresting. Andy Kehoe lacks the ability to adapt and change his style and subject matter over time, which is something artists need to be able to do. His works are almost all oil on wood panel, which is a tribute to his lack of knowledge in Media.
Kehoe’s fake biography and odd sense of humor are unmistakeably terrible qualities for an artist to have, and I was appalled when I read the tale he spun as his life story. “Artists” like Andy Kehoe who depict false worlds and apparently live in them are a mockery to art and artists everywhere. Art is obviously copying down what you see before you and making it look exactly the same.
SYMPOSIUM
Christopher Willey
What is the most bizarre material you’ve used?
Beth Bojarski
To what can you most attribute your found style?
Nick Waraksa
What are your suggestions for finding work at a place like Blend?
Budsberg/ McCaw
How difficult is it do collaborate work, or find a person to collaborate with in general? How does one begin doing collaboration work?
Sara Mulloy
How long does the over all process to complete a painting take?
Quotations and whatever.
“This is not a matter of someone being right and someone else being wrong. It’s a matter of the framework shifting around the act of judgment.”
“Since no past age has had quite the idea of quality that prevails today, it would follow either that we are wrong in our judgments or that all past ages were wrong in theirs.”
The idea of value and quality changing over time is something that I’ve found myself thinking more and more lately. Things are in a constant state of improvement and people tend to lack appreciation for what’s considered “outdated”, but in reality the context heavily impacts people’s reactions.
“The pleasure of exercising judgment is a pleasure of self-realization, self-recognition, and self-definition.”
For me this is particularly true in terms of self criticism. When we are highly self critical, we judge ourselves to the smallest detail in a sense we would not take the time to do for any other work.
