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