I recently went to the Godwin High School's AP art show to see some of my friend's work. It was a fairly small and basic setup in the commons, and it was a nice and friendly gathering to have some fun. The work itself was very interesting to look at. My friend mainly works in digital and makes some very tight paintings. Her work especially toyed a lot with lighting and had deep cast shadows in some instances. Her classmates worked in a variety of other mediums such as graphite, pen and ink, and acrylic. Another noticeable body of work was a series of acrylic paintings done of movies and video game media such as Star Wars and Overwatch. They were well done paintings and took advantage of the control that acrylic paint allows. I wish I had taken pictures; it's always good to take note of what directions peers are going in. None of the work really coincided with the type of art I'm making, but it was good to see work from students in another art program. I especially liked how everyone felt like they had a cohesive body of work. That's something that I'm trying to move towards in the future.
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The issue of funding for the arts is one that is largely ignored in the public eye. In many instances, other issues take center stage. Vine notes this phenomenon in the intro to his article about funding under Nixon's administration. During our seminar, we also noted that in general the amount of funding for the arts is generally misunderstood by the public. Even though the funding takes less than 5% of the GDP in the country, oftentimes the general misunderstanding is that it's much greater. Are art institutions in danger of being dissolved like they were in Portugal (Siegal)?
Personally I think the likelihood is low but still possible. With the current administration, nothing is quite completely off limits. However, what I do know is that even without government funding, art communities and museums won't completely disappear. There's always been a demand for art, and that will keep art from completely dying out. What will be affected though, is the amount of new and contemporary artists willing to explore new subject matters or aesthetics. Without funding, the most practical path for most artists is to generate work that sells. In the scenario of a severe or even complete cut to art funding, any new innovations or movements will either slow down or stop completely. The main importance of government art funding is to support contemporary cultural exploration. Although Churchill's response to cutting art funding, "Then what are we fighting for" is bogus, he did express similar sentiment in the year before, “The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due.” For developed countries, the government support for the arts truly is a responsibility and requirement for cultural and national development. The two paintings on the left are by Andres Kal (http://www.andreskal.com/), and the two paintings on the right are by C. Michael Dudash (http://www.cmdudash.com/). I particularly like the marks made by both of these painters, even though they have noticeably different subject matter and feel. Kal makes use of a very textured mark which allows him to transition from loose to tight areas with ease. His facial expressions and body language also feel very accurate and emotional. Dudash's work seems a bit more mundane and pastoral, but his painterly style is something that I enjoy and want to utilize in my work. I also especially like the composition of the painting with 3 girls walking in the grass. It's a bit distinct from the other paintings selected because the figures don't act as an overpowering focus in the work. It's this balance between representing the figure and the landscape that it occupies that I'm trying to replicate in my own work.
Oil Painting- the street and buildings started to build up but honestly I either need to give up on making a realistic face at that size or just go with the weird aesthetic.
Pen and ink- going well, using the larger calligraphy stylus a lot rather than the fine one. Might need to darken it up. Home drawing- going well, will probably use a patterned/ more loose background We are all Trayvon Martin
Rudy Shepherd 1708 Gallery At what point does messiness push art into an area that is too 'crude' or 'unrefined'? Well, I don't think there is such a thing as too crude or unrefined in art, but it certainly limits the audience of the art and who is attracted to the art. Although Shepherd certainly has extremely relevant and important social commentary in his pieces, I don't like how they are aesthetically constructed. His watercolor paintings provoked a sense of unease in me rather than conveying his message because his aesthetic just doesn't sit with me well. However, I can still find elements of his work such as texture and line that may be applicable to mine. The blocks of color and sharp transitions in color seemed good for defining shapes and forms. For his sculpture, I liked the idea behind them of spontaneity and creativity, and because they were, for the most part, not figurative, I enjoyed them more than the drawings actually. http://www.jacobdhein.com Jacob Dhein is a contemporary painter who mainly works with oil. Most of his pieces have a messy and almost digitized feel to them because of his blocky mark that always appears at right angles. At the same time he manages to use this mark effectively while still achieving a sense of depth in his scenes or energy in his more figure oriented work. His pieces are some of my favorite from contemporary artists, and I definitely want to incorporate some of the flow and energy that his work has into my own. I'll probably try to work just slightly larger in future paintings to get more room to paint like this. http://www.josefkotefineart.com
Joseph Kote works with acrylic, and his paintings are much brighter and vibrant than Dhein's. However, both of them have a similar abstract mark at times, and both often have dripping paints in their pieces. Kote works more as an impressionist painter where he consistently tries to emphasize the light in a scene. This gets to a point where all of his paintings look as if they were in the hottest, brightest days possible. The light in his work makes everything extremely vibrant and saturated. I like the mark he makes, but only some of his works have real sense of depth to them due to the way he plays with the light. Even so, I think his pieces give good examples of how to approach lighting and how to really make something feel like it's under a strong source of light. Public Art is a very broad genre of art because it's just art that's somewhere out in public. It's almost always funded by the local government, and it generally is either permanent or an installation. There's technically no limits on aesthetics, form, function, and many other attributes. The only things that limits any form of public art are the resources and the community.
This brings up several debatable topics because anything community driven will have no singular direction. More daring and perhaps offensive pieces of art may draw the ire of several conservative branches of a community, and even more historical monuments and sculptures oftentimes can draw attention due to the history they represent. We know the issues surrounding Monument Ave and its depiction of historical figures in our community. These issues further extend to many other instances of public art. Another example can be found just a few miles away in the Columbus statue at Byrd Park. The first issue of daring and more provocative pieces of work are more nuanced. They are usually more disliked due to aesthetic reasons. One of the articles mentioned many park-goers disliking the orange tarps hanging over the paths. Here is one of the biggest challenges facing more public art driven by artistic intent rather than memorial based public works. Public art which is driven by an artist's aesthetic choices usually does not accommodate everyone in the community. For this issue, the solution is to strike a balance between differences within a community on public works. Memorials and statues don't face nearly the same controversy over aesthetics. Public art is one of the most difficult forms of art due to its end goal of catering to an entire community. Carefully built frame, although not completely perfect
White acrylic ground, several layers, no sanding Oil applied without medium, attempting to keep color intensity Very rough brush strokes, not much attention to small details, just overall feeling of the scene Find stopping point at the moment though the article explores many aspects of social practice art and its affect on communities, I think not enough attention was placed on how to evaluate and critique it. My first impressions from when we saw works by Mel Chin and Rick Lowe was that this is really wading in the grey area of art. Although there is certainly intent in the pieces that Chin has produced, there's something off about it. It's hard to distinguish the difference, for example, between his piece on pollution and a social activist or environmental scientist also raising awareness about pollution.
The same issue occurs with Lowe's project that reinvigorated a community. His work was essentially based around community management and development. Obviously, these words aren't the first things people think about when they think about art. While social practice art could be categorized as an off shoot of performance art, it still doesn't really fit. The thing is, a lot of traditional art seems to instigate development of ideas or thoughts. Social practice art moves the intent of art into concrete impact within communities. At that point, the perceived line that defines art becomes incredibly muddled and unclear. Whatever the case, whether social practice art is properly categorized or even a form of art at all, the best thing about this movement is its physical and noticeable impact on communities and culture. If art is about sending a message or promoting thoughts or ideas, these projects can be very effective at just that. Personally, I hope that this movement further develops in order to broaden the perspective on what art is and to benefit more communities. |