Final Images

Amy Hauft: Counter Re-Formation

On December 2, 2009, artist Amy Hauft presented her sculptural piece at the Anderson Gallery. The work expanded to fill almost the entire room, with a spiral staircase in the corner so that one could view the piece aerially, or as Hauft put it, "as a spacial experience of abstraction." She also described the staircase as a different experience depending on the body type of the viewer and that she liked the idea of "wearing the staircase."

Hauft explained that she always works in large architectural structures, always creating a landscape. She describes herself as an "eccentric magnet": certain things stick and other things fall off. For this piece, she looked at 16th and 17th century cook books and considered the use of sugar to imitate porcelain. The sculpture references an etching of a dessert table from the time of Louis XV, with small snow-drift like arrangements that structurally correspond with the edges. Hauft mentioned that she wanted their appearance to be versatile and could also be icebergs or sand dunes. They appear to be made of sugar, though the only element actually consisting of sugar is the spiral staircase at the center.

The piece gave me a somewhat nostalgic feeling of winter and snow, which was interesting because Hauft relayed that some of the basis of it was a memory of her father shoveling snow and walking through the "snow walls." Her work always strives to remake a physical experience she had outside, which she said is "completely futile, but there's something sweet about trying."

I very much enjoyed listening to Amy Hauft speak; she made her concept very clear (as well as interesting), yet still allowed room for the curiosity and imagination of the viewer, exuding the idea that the experience of viewing it would be unique to the individual.

Graduate School Application

Marymount University: English Department - Literature & Languages

Artist Lecture - Diego Sanchez

Diego Sanchez, a close colleague of Mary Scurlock, also presented his work at the Page Bond Gallery on Novemer 17. He explained how his work used to be political, but 10-12 years ago his eyes were opened to architecture, especially the Coliseum. He's been painting the Coliseum for a decade and plans to work with it until he "gets sick of it".

Some of the subject matter was of an every day item, such as a chair or a canoe. He relayed a story in which his friend was throwing out some chairs and asked Sanchez, "I wonder if you could paint these and give them the importance of the Coliseum?" He liked the idea and now has quite a few paintings of chairs with a variety of color palettes and textures.

Of the series at the gallery, I was most drawn to the last which he said he almost didn't include. It included "floaters", which he recently started adding to the final layer of his paintings, such as in the image below:
Sanchez described his work as a "representation of elements"; some of the pieces had a grid form and he mentioned that he uses a lot of sevens in his work. I found that especially interesting, since it is the biblical number of fulfillment and I often find myself doing things in sevens as well. He also said that he will paint over and over on one canvas, sanding away layers and coming back, and that he sees that as "recording history while making artwork", which I found to be an appropriate and succinct description.

His color palettes are very striking and immediately command the viewer's attention, regardless of subject matter. Though I wasn't as interested in the non-architectural paintings, I did appreciate his view of "taking something mundane and looking at it differently."

Artist Lecture - Mary Scurlock

Mary Scurlock presented her work at the Page Bond Gallery on November 17. Her series consisted of mixed media (including gesso, oil and wax) renderings of trees on wood panel. She explained that she had worked on paper for about 25 years and recently started working on panel. While she was dealing with a hip surgery, she began debating on whether to work on paper or panel; during one visit, her doctor mentioned that one leg felt like glass and the other like wood. She felt that was an apt metaphor and concreted her decision to work with panel.

She wanted the trees in this series to be intuitive like her past work, which is more abstract:

(Loll, mixed media on paper, 2007)

The trees were primarily leafless; she mentioned that she worried leaves would be too hokey and how those who visited her in her studio while she was creating these found it depressing. When there are leaves present, they are very subtle, which I think was a good decision. The coloring in each piece varies. She said there is no sequence to the series, though it was towards the end of working on them that she started using a darker palette. I was more drawn to those pieces and felt they held the most emotion. What I liked most in the imagery was her subtle use of text. Whenever I do mixed media work, I am hopelessly compelled to layer in print I've copied from various texts or blend my own writing somewhere into the piece. I have often been told not to do this, so it was refreshing to see it done well by Scurlock. It was included in every piece and I didn't even notice it until I spent more time looking at one in particular.

She says that in the future she would like to experiment with the medium more and possibly start working bigger. I would be interested to see how this work progresses and how it would look at a larger scale.

Monday Entry - Roni River

Roni is a photography who exclusively shoots self-portraits. She says on her website that she has suffered from social anxiety her whole life and that contributes to the fact that she only shoots self-portraits. She recently had an exhibition at Saatchi gallery in London and is currently in the midst of another 365 project (shooting a picture a day for a year) which she shares publicly on Flickr.

Website

Gallery

Artist Lecture - Joan Biddle

Friday, November 13 2009 was the opening of several students' art work at the Petersburg Area Art League. The display consisted primarily of glass work. It was interesting to see a variety of work created in a medium that is completely foreign to me. Joan Biddle discussed her piece, two glass baby dolls with muslin bodies together in a glass jar. She did not explicitly speak of it conceptually, but rather described the process of creating it, involving the plaster casting of an actual baby doll and the construction of the body, which is soft but attaches the glass head and limbs, and the use of twine around the babies' necks.

However, it seemed to me that the description of the process still, in a way, spoke of the piece conceptually. Creating it was an extremely delicate procedure, with seemingly tiny factors threatening to completely destroy all the hard work. This reminded me of pregnancy: a process which takes time and careful attention and can be easily harmed by outside factors. The glass jar then becomes a womb, glass in glass rather than flesh in flesh.

Camera Obscura Inaugural Photography Competition

Website

Thursday Entry - Asceticism

1.	the manner of life, practices, or principles of an ascetic.

2.	the doctrine that a person can attain a high spiritual and moral state by practicing self-denial, self-mortification, and the like.

3.	rigorous self-denial; extreme abstinence; austerity.

"The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell." - Jeremy Bentham

Wimbush, Vincent L. Asceticism. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1998.
From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticism--a subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions.


I am exploring both self-denial and indulgence within my imagery.

Monday Entry - Scott Caan

Scott Caan (1976 - ) is an American actor and director. Four years ago, while directing his first feature film, he was inspired by Phil Parmet to begin learning more about photography and 35mm cameras and has been consistently taking photographs ever since. Though some of his photography contains celebrities as the subject, they do not have the general "celebrity photography" aesthetic; they are not even given a specific section, but rather scattered amongst his other series which are categorized by location (L.A./N.Y.) and type (polaroid, nude).

Website

Interview

Book of Photography

Thursday Entry - Anxiety

"Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?" - Tryon Edwards

Bourne, Edmund J. The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook: Fourth Edition. New Harbinger Publications, 2005. Director of the Anxiety Treatment Center in Santa Rosa (California), Bourne emphasizes the cognitive-behavioral model of treatment but includes information on biopsychiatry, intense psychotherapy, and spirituality as additional treatment modalities.

My work both involves anxiety conceptually and is a cause of anxiety.

Artist Lecture: Helen Lee

I've almost always had this odd compulsion to include text in my art, though I rarely do. It's a weird tic, almost like biting my nails: I've always been told not to and I try to avoid it, but I just really want to. As such, though I'd never heard of artist Helen Lee before, I immediately felt kindred to her when she revealed her work during her lecture.

Lee's work combines typography and glass blowing, a fusion I had never seen before. I really enjoyed the way she described text and speech, how periods and commas represent breath. Though I personally tend to shy towards the subtle when it comes to text in art, I liked its prominence in her glass piece declaring "BAY AREA ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS, I'D LIKE TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU." I was most drawn to that, I think because sometimes it's strangely refreshing to see art that's loud in its concept and message. I expect that's why I can't help but enjoy looking at, for example, Banksy now and again; sure, maybe I should have completely lost interest in that kind of work in high school, but you can't help what resonates with you.

Which isn't to say Helen Lee is like Banksy - she's not, and her other work is much different than the Bay Area announcement, such as the piece with glass balls on a clear tray, suspended in the air and swaying. The movement, as well as the use of a clear, delicate material, spoke conceptually to the way she described textual symbols as breaths of air.

More recently, she has begun exploring the use of light and reflection to create images in public spaces. She mentioned her desire to start working at a larger scale, which would be very interesting to see.

Monday Entry - Fernando Vicente

Fernando Vicente (1954 - ) is a Spanish artist, working in Madrid. I discovered his website awhile back and bookmarked it, but had difficulty finding much more about him since most information I came across (including his website) is in Spanish. I very much enjoy his work, especially the series combining pin-up girls and machinery.

Interview

Website and Artist's Blog

Gallery

Thursday Entry - Catholic Guilt

Catholic guilt is the term used to identify the supposed excess guilt felt by Catholics and lapsed Catholics.

"Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, year out. Waking up with sin in the morning, seeing the curtains drawn on sin, bathing it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feeding it, showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night with a tablet of Dial if it's fretful. Always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. 'Poor Julia,' they say, 'she can't go out. She's got to take care of her little sin. A pity it ever lived,' they say, 'but it's so strong. Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little, mad sin.’" (from Brideshead Revisisted by Evelyn Waugh)

Johnson, Kevin Orlin. Why Do Catholics Do That? Ballantine Books, 1995.
Johnson defines and expatiates upon hundreds of topics, including the Mass, the rosary, the cross, the eucharist, and the pope.

My work would not exist without Catholic guilt.

Monday Entry - Antonella Arismendi

From the Info section of her website:
Passionate about film and story telling, this little lady from the mid eighties grew up with barbies, twin peaks and the ghosts of Raota, which adorn the hallways of her home to this very day.
Her influences converge in a magical fusion of technique, sensuality and mystique which have defined her artistic persona.
Captivating by nature, Antonella plans to blow up everything, at least that's what her natal chart says.


Website

Magazine featuring her work

Review

Thursday Entry - Eschatology

Eschatology is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Eschatology presents a balanced perspective of the doctrine at the center of Christian belief--the Church's faith in eternal life. Recognizing the task of contemporary eschatology as "to marry perspectives, so that person and community, present and future, are seen in their unity," Joseph Ratzinger brings together recent emphasis on the theology of hope for the future with the more traditional elements of the doctrine. His book has proven to be as timeless as it is timely.

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Monday Entry - Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson (1965 - ) is an American fashion photographer. He has done editorial photo shoots for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, GQ, and Sports Illustrated, among others and has published several photography books. He most often employs the snapshot aesthetic in his photography.

Website

Interview

Thursday Entry - Sacrament of Confirmation

"A sacrament in which the Holy Ghost is given to those already baptized in order to make them strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ." (from Catholic Encyclopedia)

Amodei, Michael. "Send Out Your Spirit: A Confirmation Candidate's Handbook for Faith". Ave Maria Press, 2003. A guide for Catholic teens to study and reflect on their faith.

"Send forth upon them thy sevenfold Spirit of Holy Paraclete. I sign thee with the sign of the cross and confim thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (from the ceremony of the Sacrament of Confirmation)

It was during the process of preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation that I really began to question my feelings on Catholicism and became especially fearful of the religion in general, so it is probably the most important ritual for me to research and draw from.

Monday Entry - Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans (1968 - ) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin and London. He received the Turner Prize in 2000, among other awards, and runs Between Bridges, an exhibition space in London. He has created several artist's books throughout his career.

Website

Reviews

Galleries