Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Propaganda etc.

For a color theory class, and you of course.


Weeping Woman 1937

The parameters of this assignment were to transform a cubist painting into a three dimensional sculpture made out of wood. The painting I chose was Picasso's Weeping Woman.


This photograph was taken after the piece was moved several times and is in a rather dilapidated state. You can see it here at its prime.
For scale.

Floating Through Space

Still working on the quality. Also the title is from a Flaming Lips song which contains some of the ideas I was working with.

Dirty Creepy Gross

Again sorry for the quality.

Porcelain

Corrupt Fear Terrorists Mainstream Media Expression

Again I apologize for the video quality.

Failure Saving

For a video class. I apologize for the extremely shitty video quality here, I have been meaning to fix it; the six people that did watch it didn't seem to mind though.

Mind Assault

This piece created in a sculpture class and was part of an assignment in which we were supposed to design a wire sculpture that was a hybrid between two objects. I was again disturbed during critique that none of my fellow students had invested any meaning in their work. Everyone simply fused two separate objects into one. For instance a girl in my class brought in a rosary and was using one of the beads for part of her piece. Now here is something I think you would have a lot invested in personally (she did mention how she carries it with her and prays before test.) and would have some significance in the work outside being a template for a spherical object. There was no wider significance, the bead was simply decoration on a boat that she had to lean against a wall because it wouldn't stand. I was considering putting pictures of it here so as to better mock and ridicule it but I recalled seeing her struggling to bend the thing in half so it would be easier to chuck into a dumpster; I am assuming she eventually got it in there.

Monday, January 25, 2010

God Does Not Exist/Free Your Mind




This was a project for a video class. We were learning DVD studio pro and we had to make an interactive DVD. I held a sign and had an old photography teacher of mine take pictures. Meanwhile I had my phone wrapped around my neck while it recorded the conversations I was sure to have; the audio turned out terrible and at this point I'm not sure where it is. I was planning on using that audio as people navigated the DVD. You would click an arrow on the screen (forward, left, right) and a POV shot of me walking to the next area where I was to be stationed would play while the audio of the conversation played. Since I had no audio I recorded my self reading atheist quotes between stops.



















I took these at the State Capitol after riding the bus. I was most shocked throughout this project by how apathetic people generally were. I had a handful of conversations and even fewer one liner taunts and jeers (which included "fag") but I was expecting a little more. I guess it makes sense given that religion destroys the mind.

Applying to be an Artist

My interest in Art may be a bit unique in particular but I reckon it is a rather familiar tale in whole. My interest in Art began in High School you when I came to the conclusion that the world was in a terrible condition, with all the war and death and the generally terrible events occurring daily coupled with the joy I felt; I knew there must be a better way. I remember as a young child watching the news with my father, trying to discover a day of news where no one died, it never happened. So I decided to do what I could to change the world. At this time however I concluded that the most effective way to alter the current state of affairs was politics. I began taking my grades seriously with the notion that I would go to an Ivy League school and major in political science and run for office with the goal of becoming president at which time I would dismantle the violent apparatus of war and the tools of propaganda that are crucial to any war machine. I was also very studious at this point and followed the rules. With great pride I moved into my ivy-less dorm and declared my major to be political science although my intentions were always concealed, they had all the guns after all. The beginning of my Art career would not come about for another three years but you could say it began one fateful night in a dorm room. As I walked the oval that night stoned out of mind, and for the first time, the cool autumn air reassured my apprehensions and cleared my thoughts. It was at that moment that it became clear. Suddenly all the lies of my entire education up to that point were crystallized and the hypocrisy of the nation I was born into and every nation were dastardly apparent. At the same moment my heart was broken, my mind uplifted and my views radically altered. The next day I changed my major to philosophy in the hopes of getting at some truer notion of reality. After about a year and half of careful study I again found myself dissatisfied, all the while my thoughts were being clarified and my consciousness raised, at this time Film Studies became a major and I quickly added another major. I soon came to terms with my love of film and decided to make movies; this is where I discovered Art as something real and tangible where before it was wrapped in mystery. I had realized my potential as an artist. Not that I was an artist or wanted to become one but that everyone is an artist just like everyone is a dictator; it is what you cultivate that creates who you are. In short my Art is about two vastly simple yet immensely complicated things that are inextricable tied together: Truth and Freedom.
I am applying to sculpture because I enjoy creating objects and I very much like working in space. I find sculpture to be the most confrontational and demanding of the viewer. I find more room for a play and a dialogue. I also believe I can incorporate other mediums within a sculptural work, more so than other mediums would allow. That is my ambition: to utilize what every medium has to offer in unified works of Art speaking to every discipline from philosophy to banking to North Korean water color painting that results in an uplifting of minds a softening of hearts and a step toward a better world.
My strength is content my challenge is form. It is not so much a strength and a challenge as it is a preference. I find that my message is far more important than how the work appears. In fact if the aesthetic is exceedingly pleasing I fear it may take away from the concept so it is in this way that the supremacy I place in my ideas takes over the form. My challenge is to use form to further the concept. I need not ignore form for content but to utilize form to further engage a viewer.
There is also one more crucial aspect to my Art and my outlook expressed in the length and format of this document which is why I have deliberately exceeded the 500 word limit. That is: to break unnecessary or illegitimate rules and push boundaries while expressing myself. I habitually do not follow the parameters of assignments to express this idea. That concept is the driving force of my work and much of the time my Art work is not the work itself but simply the challenging of hierarchical relationships which I find to be at the root of many of the ills of our world. I would gladly take a lower grade and decrease my sacred grade point average in the face of mediocrity.