Robert & Elaine Stein Galleries-Wright State University Creative Arts Center

On November 29th, 2017 we visited the Wright State Creative Arts Center where we traveled through the permanent gallery that they had.  They had many art pieces that contained a narrative, and by using space and motion, the artists were able to construct a story for the viewers to follow.

This first art piece is called The Sea, made in 1959 by Hans Hoffman.  I really enjoyed this piece because of the amazing color and the feeling that comes to the viewer.  It is a combination of chaotic and calming.  The blue, white, and green elements are calming, especially with the combination of that beautiful curved swoosh in the middle.  This swoosh shape brings you back to the chaotic parts with colors such as orange, purple, and yellow.  The origin of this chaotic combination seems to come from the bottom right corner, where all of the colors are present in a calm strip.  The narrative in this painting seems to be the feelings that you get when you hear and experience a wave.  The paint strokes also resemble a large wave that is crashing down.  Hans Hoffman does a wonderful job of building space with having a darker background filled with several colors and then placing the brighter and more active colors on top of that, resembling the wave.

This piece of art is Untitled and was created in 1985 by Deborah Kahn.  The main focal point seems to be the top portion of the piece and Deborah makes this clear because of the amount of interest in this area.   She uses numerous colors, fragmenting, and small little circular portions of interest in this area.  There seems to be a small town that Deborah has created in the top right corner with all of the lines and fragmenting, it makes the viewer see this area as different levels and roads, similar to the line starting in the bottom of the piece and leading all the way to the main focal point, creating compositional flow.  It is clear that there is a narrative in this piece because of all the little sections of interest that look like memories or pieces of information, possibly about the people that she has painted or maybe about the story she is telling.  With scale shift she brings the viewer into the composition because the largest person on the left is what your eye is drawn to and then you move to the next largest person, and then you are drawn to the area with many story bubbles and lines.  I really enjoy this piece because of how interesting all the areas are and the little bubbles that seem as though they contain a story or piece of information.

Both of these pieces were created by Miriam Rudolph in 2015.  The first piece is called Enclosure II and the second piece is called Enclosure I.  The color difference between the two pieces is interesting because it seems as if Enclosure II grew and developed more.  There are more trees in Enclosure II and more people.  It seems like a growing community that is expanding and growing new plants with the green section in the bottom left corner.  The space that all of the people are enclosed in has a fence, so they are physically enclosed in that space.  This piece might have significance relating to the development of a community and all of the pieces that come with this growth.  Her use of negative shapes is interesting because a conventional way of representing people is with positive shapes, yet Miriam chooses to represent all of the people who are mainly in the foreground, with negative shapes.  It is interesting that she represents some of the people in the background with positive shapes, possibly to make them seem as if they are far away and blurred with no detail.  The order of these compositions can be interpreted in two different ways, one it can be that the society is evolving from the composition on the left to right, or the society is devolving with the composition on the right to left.  The narrative quality of this piece is very interesting because of how the artist takes you into this world of these people and with scale shift makes it seem as if you are walking in this community.

Io Palmer

On November 11, 2017 I was able to see the VASE lecture by Io Palmer, which was very interesting because I was able to experience her perspective on the world and how she communicates that with her art.  Io Palmer was born in Hydra, Greece, which is a touristy paradise as she described it.  She often felt ostracized growing up because she and her father were the only African American people where they lived.  Her mother and father were very involved in art.  She knew that she would go into art because she grew up surrounded by it.  When she went to graduate school, she wanted to address the issue of identity, specifically her own identity, and she used clay to express what she was feeling.  She began with her family members and created books that were of the personalities of her family.  She then became interested in performance art and how she could incorporate it into her art.  She created one piece called Kitchen Anxiety, 2000, that was two photographs of someone with many aprons and it was a blur motion photograph.  She was in the kitchen and it was a way for her to express her feelings and the anxiety that she felt in the different parts of her house.

She then began exploring juxtaposition and creating pieces that placed different images and objects next to each other in order to compare and contrast them.  She began her journey of juxtaposition in South Africa where she took two pictures, one of the Nelly during high tea and another in Talon with someone who had just grilled a cow head on a garbage can.  She showed the class structure and how they can be extremely different in the same place.  Through this juxtaposition she wanted to explore not only other people’s role in society but her own as well, finding where she fit and exploring what she wanted to say with her work.

She explored class structure and labor with her work.  She began this journey with taking pieces of hair and scraps that might not be too beautiful and weaving them together to make beautiful braids and wigs and placing them on the end of mops.

This piece, called Janitorial Supplies, she created mops using synthetic hair and many different bobby pins and clips.  She explained that she wanted to show that people gussy themselves up everyday and the relation, or lack of relation, to the working side of society.  She was very interested in nick nacks and when she would travel around the world she would buy many little nick nacks for her art work.  She traveled to India and she found so many colorful small items that she bought.

She explained that she wanted her art work to hurt your eyes just a little, yet you should still be interested in what she has made.  She related this statement to oil spills, which are quite beautiful yet ugly at the same time.  She juxtaposed this experience in many of her art pieces where she used oil spills as inspiration.

This piece, called Deep Water Horizon, was inspired by the oil spills and their beauty yet also their ugliness.  She made this piece very large in order for people to be able to walk around in it and see the different layers.  Many of her art works are inspired by oil spills that can be shiny and beautiful, yet terrible for the Earth.

This is another piece she created that explored social structure because her ideas came from chimney sweeps, which is the metal object in the center.  This piece, called Leisure Labor (Cloud), is made of thousands of bobby pins that were pinned to a wooden board.  This art piece juxtaposes social classes as well as the lightness of a cloud and how heavy this piece actually was.  She was also inspired by couture designer Charles Fredrick Worth’s 1920 beaded dress and juxtaposed classes with the chimney sweep in the center.

Io Palmer really enjoyed juxtaposing classes and developing her own identity through her art work.  Her art pieces, especially the garments, are like maps.  She explored class structure, labor, the ugliness and beauty of objects and events, and creating art pieces that hurt the eyes of the viewer, yet also intrigued them.  I am very glad that I was able to hear Io Palmer’s lecture because I was able to hear her point of view and how she has been creating art depending on what is occurring in society.  Learning how to communicate what is happening in our world around us and transforming that into art is a wonderful skill that I believe all artists strive towards.

Project 3 Reflection-Action

Project 3 was focused on action and how it has been representing in famous works of art from the past and present.  For the first part of project 3 we were tasked with identifying different elements of space and action in famous works of art and use the tools in Graphic to represent them.

I looked at four different works of art including Italian Hill Town by Arthur B. Davies, The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Entranced by Douglas Safranek, and The Capture of Carthrage by Giovanni Battista.  I was able to represent illusions of space and motion using lines, the pen tool, and the shape tools.  Some of the very common illusions of space were overlapping/figure ground relationship, atmospheric perspective, and scale shift.  Some of the common illusions of motion were direction, repetition, and conveying anticipation.  Through this project I was able to understand that these artists used many illusions of space and motion to create a new world in their art work.  They were able to create a more realistic piece of art that impacted the viewer through these illusions.  Their pieces of art were more successful because of the illusions of space and motion.  Through this project I was also able to understand how to use these illusions because I now have a visual representation of some of them to follow.

For the next part of learning about space and motion we had to create a new piece that was a collage of all of the illusions that we used for one of our famous art works we analyzed.  I chose The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh and I used the illusions of  overlapping, represented by the red-colored shape covering the tall plant; scale shift, represented by the red rectangles; fragmenting, represented by the red lines on the paint strokes that are the wind; and repetition with the red overlapping the yellow stars.  I used many different materials to represent these illusions such as tracing paper, printed out parts of the original art piece, construction paper, highlighter, and red and blue pen.  This composition that only uses four illusions of space and motion creates an image that is very similar to the original art piece.  This shares that these illusions of space and motion are so important to compositions.

Using the rubbings, tracings, and pictures that we took, we were tasked with creating compositions based on these identified pieces of action from the rubbings and tracings.

For my first composition, the three shapes in the middle are of splatters I found on the ground, and I traced the splatter I found and then put it into graphic and drew it with the pen tool.  I then printed it out and wanted to go with the theme of aliens or dementors from Harry Potter and how they are heading to the black splatter in the corner.  To show this motion and urgency with heading to the top right corner I drew many lines coming off of the white paper surrounding the dementors.  I also included many red splatters in the lines to show that these pieces were coming off of the figures as they were moving.  I used the illusion of overlapping many times with the splatters and paper that I found underneath the figures and the lines and splatters that I drew.  This creates a sense of space and then direction is created through the angle of the figures and the lines that are coming from the figures.  For my second composition I created a scene of juice coming from a pear and lemon that is made entirely of splatters.  I wanted to create a sense of motion with the juice coming from the lemon and pears with the splatters both above and below.  there is overlapping occurring with the splatters above the fruit, creating a figure/ground relationship.  There is also the direction that is going downward created by the drips and splatters.  These drips also convey anticipation because it looks as if they are dripping from the paper and moving down from the fruits.  Repetition is also a large part of this piece that shows motion because I repeated many of the splatters and drips, showing that they continue and are moving.  I also cropped some of the splatters and drips to show continuity because there is more to the composition then the viewer can see.

For my last composition I had a splatter that looked very similar to a sound wave, so I traced and repeated it on Graphic to create the background for the composition.  I also took some of the “sound wave” patters and increased their stroke, made them smaller or bigger than the background, and I created a value scale of light blue to very dark blue.  I wanted to create a feeling of space with scale shift as well as the color of the sound waves getting darker as they recede into the background.  I then took construction paper and cut out pieces to resemble an ear with two splatters for earrings.  The blue sound waves in the background look as if they are going into the ear, just like a sound wave that enters the ear and then travels to our brain.  I used vertical location, scale shift, and overlapping to create a sense of space in this composition.  I also used direction, repetition, and cropping to convey a sense of movement.  The ear should look as if it is in the foreground, then the blue-colored sound waves, and then the black sound waves in the background.

Through this project I was able to learn more about the illusions space and motion and how it can be used in art pieces to create a sense of space and motion.  It was very interesting combining pieces of action that we found around The University of Dayton to create an art piece, I enjoyed the process of coming up with a theme or what I thought that a splatter resembled and then combining Graphic, paper, pens, and other materials to create compositions that use the illusions of space and motion.  I was able to learn about the illusions of space and motion from famous works of art and I was also able to experiment and create my own compositions that utilize these illusions.

 

Carrie Moyer

Carrie Moyer was born in 1960 in Michigan and is a famous writer and artist and her work has appeared in many places in the United States and Europe.  She graduated from the Pratt Institute with a BFA and she later graduated from Bard College for her MFA  She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York and she has received many awards from places such as the Guggenheim and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.  She is very involved in activism and was one of the founding members of the first lesbian public art projects, which was active in New York City for 17 years.  Carrie Moyer is also a professor in the Art and Art History Department at Hunter College where she is also the Director of the Graduate Program.  Currently she combines Graphic Design with painting to create her most recent works.

This painting that Carrie Moyer created in 2012 with Acrylic, glitter, and graphite on a canvas really embodies movement.  Layering and overlapping seem to be the most prominent parts of the art piece that shows movement because she has layered different paints and used different transparencies, showing that there are elements to the piece that recede into the background.   The repetition of these wavy shapes implies movement because the viewer’s eye moves with the waves created by the different colors that are solid in some areas and transparent in others.

The texture that Carrie Moyer achieves is very interesting and helps the viewer’s eye move through the circles and shapes they are on.  The fragmenting that she uses with the watered down paint in the circular image gives a sense of motion because the viewer recognizes that those brush strokes were made and they look a if they are going in a certain direction around the circle to loop the viewer’s eyes around to another part of the piece.

The figure ground relationship is slightly apparent with the small shadow that appears in the bottom right corner and into the middle of the art piece, giving the sense that the items in the middle are settled in the middle, above the ground and creating a shadow.  The texture of the black, eye-looking shape is very interesting and leads the viewer into the center of the eye where it is picked up again by the colorful texture that is visible because of the complete transparency in what seems to be the iris of the eye.

There seems to be a clear direction in the art piece that moves from the left side to the right by following the organic, wave-like shapes towards the circular shapes.  The cropping that occurs with the left and right sides of the art piece convey that the items such as the lines, waves, and circles continue beyond the edge of the paper.

http://www.carriemoyer.com/biography/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/carrie-moyer

http://www.artnet.com/artists/carrie-moyer/biography

http://www.carriemoyer.com/carrie-moyer-herr-doktor-2012

Action Inventory

I traveled around The University of Dayton campus and took rubbings, pictures, and traced objects and splatters that embodied action.

Ordinary Time Exhibition by Kate Kern

I visited the beautiful and colorful exhibition of Kate Kern on October 26, 2017.  I was also fortunate enough to talk with her about some of her pieces and her inspiration for creating all of these pieces of art work.  I was very interested in the long line of skeleton hands that she had on the walls.  In one area of the room all of the hands were the same size and about the same shape, yet they were drawings of different types of mammals such as a lion, human, and spider monkey.  Kate Kern explained that all of these hands are equal, animals are equal to humans.  The hands are floating and therefore showing that they are all equal to each other, they are not attached to anything such as a wrist, they are all floating to show how they are all connected and similar to each other.

Kate Kern described that they are on a 2-D plane, and therefore fiction.  All of these art pieces with skeleton hands were named in a similar way, they all started with “Soul Go Forth: Nothing” and then they would finish the phrase in a new way every time.  This phrase that they all had in common is from a song that is played at funerals and it says “Soul go forth, nothing in the works as it is can keep us separated from God’s love.”  This relates back to her whole concept about Catholicism which is very close to her heart and it is how she was raised because it has shaped who she is today.  In some of the pieces where she draws the skeleton hands, she includes little images that she drew such as a house, which she said is her neighbor’s house.  The reason she included this house is because certain times in the Catholic calendar is not only when we experience God, we experience God when we go outside in the middle of the night and see the stars, God is always with us.

With her art work, Kate Kern also recognizes stereotypes, which relates to her work with the hands that she drew because animals are many times not seen as equal to humans.  Kate Kern wants to share with others that they are equal to each other, all of God’s creations are equal.

It was very wonderful to be able to experience Kate Kern’s art work in the Radial Gallery.  It is always very interesting to experience someone’s art work and see where they were coming from with their ideas and inspiration.  I really enjoyed her work, especially all of the colors that she included, I really enjoyed the colored and glittery ink that she used in some of her pieces.  I really enjoyed her style of art and enjoyed all of the pieces she was able to bring.  I also was able to connect with her work on a personal level because I am Catholic so it was really wonderful to be able to understand where she was coming from with some of the concepts of Ordinary time and her journey to understand God.  It was very wonderful to experience and I am very glad that she was able to come and have an exhibition in the Radial Gallery.

Project 2 Reflection-Variety

Project 2 has been focused on variety and using different shapes, gradients, and strokes to create different compositions.  Below are my two variety compositions focusing on using the shape, pen, pencil, and gradient tool.  The first image I made on Graphic and the second image I created using an ink wash on Stonehenge paper.  I wanted to use both organic and geometric shapes in my compositions and explore the tools while creating these compositions.  I created the left composition first, changing it many times until it felt right and the emphasis was on the bottom left area of the composition.  For the right composition, I wanted to explore the pencil and paintbrush tool while still keeping them shapes.  I thought that the different gradients that were created were very interesting and I enjoyed how they were almost like rays coming from the oval shape in the top left corner.

Making the ink painting to represent the digital composition was difficult yet exciting because I was able to explore using ink and how it would react to water and what color it would produce depending on how much I diluted it.  It was frustrating in some areas when making the compositions because you cannot put the blue painters tape on ink, so I had to wait a while for the different shapes to dry.  This is my second attempt and I believe it is much more successful because I was able to know how to plan out the steps I needed to take in order to create the different shapes that I wanted.  The left composition looks much cleaner because I was able to plan the process of how I would place the tape.  The right composition also looks much better because I knew that I had to be very precise with how I drew the lines going up to the oval in order for the different shades to look correct.  This project was a test in patience, yet I am happy with the compositions I created.  I believe they are unique, they helped me explore the tools in Graphic, and they helped me explore how to use ink and free-hand some elements and not just use tape.

After creating a Graphic version and an ink version of compositions in variety, I created a digital version of a picture I took that uses the Gestalt principle of containment.  The small ovals are being contained by the drain and the surrounding cement is also containing the drain.  I enjoyed creating this piece in Graphic because I had to figure out the best tools to create what I saw in the image.  I was able to explore gradients when creating one for every square in the drain.  I explored using the paint tool when trying to achieve a certain color effect on the cement and the drain.  I was also able to use the opacity tool with the paint tool when I needed a color to be lighter and not be as evident.  I believe this image fits the Gestalt principle well and shows containment in two different ways.  It also looks as if the black ovals want to escape the drain, yet the drain and the circle outside of the drain will not let them escape.  Overall, I am happy with my final product and I was able to learn a lot about Graphic and how to use the different tools when creating my representation of containment.

Going more into the Gestalt principles, we were tasked with replicating one of our compositions that we created that embodied one of the principles using a human element and found objects.  I chose the Gestalt principle of containment and I chose this composition because when I saw it I immediately thought of what I could do to replicate it.  Introducing humans was interesting because there immediately became more of an emotion associated with the circles and their relationship to one another.  In the picture it looks as if the person in the middle feels like she is shrinking because the two people on the sides are closing in on her and containing her.  She is looking down which makes it look like she is sad and the other two people around her are looking straight and standing tall, which looks like they are asserting their authority.  Yet this composition can also be interpreted as the two people around her are about to comfort her by bringing their arms around her and containing her in a caring way.

Creating this composition was difficult in some ways such as getting the camera high enough so the people’s faces could not be seen and so there was a space between the person in the middle and the arms of the two people on the edges.  Clothing was another element that was important and difficult.  All of the people had to wear dark clothing and a darker hat in order to achieve the same look as in the digital compositions with the circles.

I wanted to create this composition because I felt that it was a good use of the principle of containment and I instantly thought of how it could be created.  I believe it was successfully executed and I was able to learn that every part of an image counts when trying to replicate the same emotion and mood as a digital composition.

After creating an individual composition, I had to help my teammates in creating their compositions.  They used the Gestalt principles of closure and containment and created their compositions by using hands.  I believe they are all very successful because they are unique and it is clear which principle each embody without having to look at the digital circles.  They used a range of dark and light backgrounds and were able to use the materials and humans in an effective way.

Overall, this project of variety was very helpful in understanding the impact of even the smallest details both in our digital compositions and our painting and picture compositions.  Exploring different medias has helped me know how to use them and have given me a better understanding of variety and how it is important in all compositions.

 

 

 

Joshua Paul Hebbert Discussion

On Thursday October 12, 2017 Joshua Paul Hebbert came to share his story about the art pieces that he has made all the way from his time in college at Creighton University and the University of Colorado until now.  Joshua made many pieces of art that were very simplistic when in art school and in his earlier years of creating.

He was inspired by minimalist artists as well as conceptual art, which is focused on the concept of the art and not focused on the material.  Some of the artists that he shared with the audience were John Baldessari and Sol Lewitt.  He was very interested in art that represented or embodied futile actions such as Sisyphus in Greek mythology and how those repeated actions are so sad yet also poetic.  Joshua explained that you can find happiness and joy in those repeated actions.  Joshua explored many simplistic shapes in the beginning of his art career.  He focused many times on lines and shapes, filled and unfilled. Below is one of his creations focusing on unfilled shapes that create shadows on the wall.

For one of his projects he recreated one of Sol Lewitt’s pieces; “Variations of Incomplete Open Squares” and had it on display. He shared with the audience that unlike Sol Lewitt, he showed the marks that his hands made on the clay and materials he made the incomplete squares from.  He also encountered difficulty with keeping one of the squares up, so he explored more of the materialism of it and made a stand for the square.  He described that action as one of the turning points in the creating of this piece.  The image below is of Joshua Paul Hebbert’s interpretation of Sol Lewitt’s piece.

Joshua then shared the much more personal side of his art as he delve into some relationships, especially with one man.  He caused him to feel so much emotion that he created art about it.  He would use different types of communication and encoding in attempts to make his feelings not as obvious and encourage the other man to decode them.  Joshua Paul Hebbert talked about his struggle with direct communication and how he had many non-successful conversations with the man he liked. This caused him to create more art that expressed how he felt.  I asked him if it was difficult for him to have all of his emotions and his life on display for the world to see and he explained that it was very difficult and causes him some stress yet he also feels some therapy after he creates this art and puts it on Instagram for others to see.  I believe this point he made is very important because artists create art for a purpose and sometimes it is to heal.

It was also very interesting to hear that he used many different types of communication to communicate in an indirect way with the man he loved and became obsessed with.  He used braille, Morse code, and binary code in several different materials.  This is an image of when he used his mouth to create a message in Morse code.

I was very inspired by Joshua Paul Hebbert’s  journey of creativity that he shared.  I especially appreciated all of the different types of communication that he explored because I have done that in my own art.  My concentration for AP Studio Art was communication and I was able to explore many different types and I related to him when he spoke of communicating and sharing a message in his art through different forms of communication, including art because art is a form of communication.

I am very grateful that Joshua Paul Hebbert could come to the University of Dayton and share his story and what art means to him.

Found Gestalt Walk

These are Gestalt Principles that I found while taking a walk!

Containment:

Closure:

Continuity:

Grouping:

Repetition:

Proximity:

Reflection: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – Bruce Mau

As an artist, I relate to many of the guidelines for growth that Bruce Mau talks about.  What he discusses are important ideas to remember when any designer, artist, or photographer is creating; we need to step outside of ourselves and realize that we cannot expect to grow by doing nothing.  Bruce Mau creates an inspiring platform for growth and the development of creativity by outlining the 43 instructions.  They help artists to realize that growth can happen anywhere and moving around and having different experiences is what allows us to grow and explore the world while creating more.

I specifically like the guideline that he provides about moving. Artists should keep moving because many times failure can cease our growth and work because it is defeating.  Bruce Mau says that we should allow it to be a part of the process and value failure as much as success is valued.

Another way anyone can grow is illustrated in 37; break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.  I believe this is so important because it is also very difficult.  As a designer and artist, I find it hard to go beyond the rules of art sometimes and so this is particularly important for me because I need to extend beyond the rules in order to grow and develop myself and my style.

If I had the ability to add three more principles to Bruce Mau’s “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” I would add these methods of growth below:

44. Lean on those you can count on. Rely on those who care about you and those you care about because they can have the ability to give you the confidence to create, yet also do not be afraid to grow individually.  No one can grow by solely relying on others around them to help them constantly.  Independence is critical for growth.

45. Use what you have around you to create.  Wonderful creations do not require expensive or hard-to-get materials.  Sometimes the most interesting inventions or creations come from everyday objects or old objects that can be recycled into new creations.

46. Don’t be afraid to look stupid.  Fear of failure is a consequence of being human, yet in order to grow as artists, as designers, or as everyday people, we need to move beyond our fear to look stupid doing something for the first time.  We learn more when we do more, don’t let your fear of looking stupid stop you from trying and experiencing new adventures.