Susanna Lynn Johnson

Judith G. Klausner: Artist Interview

2011-11-17T16:12:00.000-05:00

The first moment that I stumbled upon the work of Judith G. Klausner, I was taken and inspired. Her current series, From Scratch, transcends the revival of embroidery in contemporary art to employ the medium in a way that truly engages the conceptual power of the traditional technique. There are other contemporary artists who use embroidery to create their images: Maurizio Anzeri, Stacey Page, Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene, and Daniel Kornrumpf, to name a few. But I find Klausner's work to be the most humorous, and was excited to find an artist who works with materials that are non-archival, and yet invests in them an extraordinary amount of labor and thought.

I had the opportunity to interview Klausner for a class this quarter, and it was the greatest pleasure to hear her contemplative responses to my questions. She had many cool things to say about her work, from their conception to physical creation, as well as her own influences and advice for blossoming artists. I have included some images of her work included in the series From Scratch (courtesy of her artist website). She has many more beautiful and delicately-constructed pieces available to view on her site, so be sure to check it out!

What is the reasoning behind yourmaterials? Enjoyment, conceptual, or a combination of the two?

JGK Iwoulddefinitely say its a combination. I've long explored unusual media, and I liketo reinterpret the everyday. Food and craft are both so inextricably bound withissues of gender, which are deeply important to me, so these materials seemedlike a natural choice. My earlier work with insects definitely came from a deepaesthetic appreciation that was confusingly unusual, and that I felt a strongdesire to share.

Howdo your concepts develop? Do you keep a regular sketchbook, write out yourideas, or record them some other way?

JGK I'vealways felt like I should keep a sketchbook, but to be honest my drawing skillshave never been strong enough for it to be helpful to me (people often assumethat all artists can draw, but I'm living proof that it isn't the case!) I dokeep a journal of ideas, mostly just jotted down as thoughts, half-sentencesand lists.

What kind of source material doyou use to create your work?

JGK FortheOreo Cameos, I like to look at a variety of images of antique cameos while Iwork. I've done a lot of figurative work since I began sculpting many yearsago, and I find I am most comfortable letting each person take shape as Isculpt them. While a couple of the cameos were based loosely on the iconographyof mythological figures, the faces and personalities were notpredetermined.
For the egg and butter toast embroideries, I started out with photographs andbroke them down into blocks of color to translate them into thread.
I tend tolike looking at a wide range of related imagery as I work on a piece, so Googleimage search is my friend!

Doyoutend to use and explore a variety of media at once, or stick to one at a time?Do you work on several projects at once?

JGK Iusuallystick to one media-theme at a time; I think my brain gets into a creativegroove within the parameters of those materials. That said, "medium"for me is often a broad category; There are quite a number of types of insects,and nearly as many packaged foods!
In recent years, I've tried to stick withonly one or two projects at once, so that I end up with fewer unfinishedprojects.
Sometimes, though, I'll be in the middle of one piece wheninspiration will strikes for something new, and I can't argue withinspiration!

"Food and craft are both so inextricably bound withissues of gender, which are deeply important to me, so these materials seemedlike a natural choice."

What artists have influencedyou?

JGK That'sadeceptively hard question to answer. I grew up going to art museums, andunfortunately it wasn't until I was fairly old that I started paying attentionto the names of the artists (which is strange, since even as a child I wantedto be an artist). I think that everything I saw influenced me in some way.
Ican say that some artists whos'works have recently impacted me (and give me things to aspire to) are TaraDonavan (there was a beautiful exhibit of her work at the ICA Boston a coupleof years ago that was one of the best shows I've ever seen) who has trulyelevated the mundane to breathtaking heights; Pat Keck, who I deeply respectfor making every part of each work by hand; Charles LeDrayfor the incredible level of craftsmanship evident in every facet of his work;and Dr. Seuss, who taught me from very early on that art could be clever andpolitical.

What advice would you give to astudent/emerging artist?

JGK Iwouldcertainly still consider myself an "emerging artist," and I think oneof the things that has been the most helpful for me has been availing myself ofthe opportunities presented by the internet. Its a brave new world of socialmedia, and it allows for sharing work internationally in a way that wasinconceivable for emerging artists even 15 years ago. Many popular blogs have easily available protocol for submissions - submit toanything and everything! The worst that happens is nothing.

Interview by Susanna Lynn Johnson

Toast Embroidery #1: Egg on Toast

Toast,thread, paper (structural)

2010

Toast Embroidery #2: Butter (To Go)

Toast,thread, paper (structural), plastic knife, paper napkin

1"x8"x6.25”

2010

Toast Embroidery #3: Mold 1

Toast,thread, paper (structural)

2010

Father and Mother

2011-11-17T03:26:00.001-05:00

Honor Your Father and Mother
Parents' clothes, gauze; with sound and light components
Alternative Media Exploration (Subversive Fashion project)

I created this installation with the notion of the nature of identity found in parents. It addresses the duality of fear and desire in growing up. The sound component of the piece was a recording of my parents' voices.

Goodbye, Fall!

2011-11-16T21:59:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is the last day of my last fall quarter at SCAD! What kind of madness is this? It has been a beautiful quarter, full of wonderful things: music, art, good friends, and unhindered life! God has put his hand on my years here, and given me more than I could have asked. I have been trying to fall prey to the classic senior undergrad anxiety---stressing about getting by until school ends, getting by after school ends, getting by right now. I know that I'm taken care of, and I am doing what I can to keep my head in the present, soaking in all the goodness that surrounds me, right now. I am a resigned victim of nostalgia and romanticism---I frequently look back on times past, even the most impoverished moments of my life, and wish for them deeply again. I forget about the preciousness of this time that I am living now, with its' rush and worry, is still mine. To just be, in it.

But I digress, to the reason for this blog post. I corrected and updated my artist resume (thanks to my professor). I also found a few more one-hour portraits that I made for Portrait Painting this past winter quarter. The portraits are in oil on toned canvas panel, 9" x 12", all from life.

Making Up

2011-11-14T18:25:00.001-05:00

The past few weekends have been very exciting, indeed! Earlier in the quarter I made three pilgrimages with various friends to Atlanta to see live music (always an artistically inspiring event), and in the past few weeks I have been included in two shows, one at The Butcher entitled Horror Show, and the other in the quarterly Painting Open Studio at Alexander Hall. It's been a great way to start off my senior year, and I look forward to updating you on the rest of my adventures.

I've been faithful with updating my blog in the last few months (by my standards), but unfortunately I haven't been faithful with updating my work! I've posted hardly any work at all from my painting classes the past three quarters, including but not limited to Portrait Painting, Large-Format Painting, and Alternative Media Exploration. I'd like to make up for this, and what better time to start than finals week? I have decided to post only tidbits of work from these classes at a time so as not to feel overwhelmed with a blue whale of an update. This is the debut!

These two pieces were part of an assignment in Portrait Painting with Greg Eltringham, where we were assigned fifty, one-hour session portraits to complete over the span of a quarter (ten weeks). These self-portrait studies were created using Gamblin's Torrit Grey and Titanium White, on 9 x 12 inches canvas panel (canvas panel was my bosom friend for this assignment, for all of its portability and compactness).

Until next time!

What do you have to say for yourself?

2011-09-19T23:37:00.001-04:00

It is most decidedly fall now! The skies are beginning to change, and so are my stress levels. This quarter I am taking a class called Professional Practices in Fine Arts, which is essentially a business class for us fine gentlemen and ladies who wish to practice fine arts. Professionally.

This week in Professional Practices in Fine Arts, I had to gather my strength and churn out a biography, resume, and artist statement. It sounds easy, but it's hard to sum your own person entirely in a few paragraphs, without grossly misrepresenting your entire life and life's work. So, if you would like to check out what I have to say about myself, take a look at these!

5pm in the Studio

2011-09-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

I think it's about time that I reveal my studio/atelier/fun cave. This part of the apartment is the hotbed and homeland of my creativity, uncreativity, snuggle reading time, killing time time, cat-petting time, 3am mania time, and my creative frustration time, among other times. I spend quite a bit of my life at the fold-out table in my wooden captain's chair, and also in my magnificent pea-green sofa. It's always in a chaotic tidiness, and I like it that way. I've photographed it just as it is. Over the summer I organized it as best I could, and arranged it so that I would feel comfortable spending time in this space. I love to sit in the corner and read when I feel tired. I also love to sit at my table and experiment with the unused materials that I pull out of my drawers and fabric boxes (that I bought from a Working Class Studio sale!).

It's so important to feel at home in your studio. It affects the way you work, how much you enjoy working, and the efficiency of work time and output of your art, too! For me, a studio should never bee too pristine or too cluttered. The first is intimidating, and the second is overwhelming. Both are disorienting. Here are some wise, lovely, and humorous perspectives from artists about their studios:

The first time bears invaded my studio I knew I was in for a challenge.

Charles Muench

I like the idea of having a calm, quiet room to work on my music while knowing that outside there's noise and a lot happening. It's reassuring to know the "everyday" continues even though inside the studio you feel so disconnected from it.

Keren Ann

All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area.

Alexander Liberman

My studio has a personality of its own. It can be a monstrous clutter from one end to the other or, at times, the very model of simplicity.

Harley Brown

Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.

Philip Guston

Keep your shop and your shop will keep you.

Benjamin Franklin

And now I present my studio to you...

August in the Print Shop

2011-08-31T03:37:00.000-04:00

Bon jour!

Today I am going to show-and-tell about printmaking! I had the opportunity to use the resources at the Alexander Hall print shop in the slow summer months, and I used my time to explore monoprinting. I have not felt so creatively free in years as I did while in the shop, putting together spontaneous compositions, free of pressure. The shop was literally dead in the times that I worked there, which was such a strange but wonderful thing for my head and body to have so much space. I love spreading out, and I had the valuable space in the shop all to myself.

This is not my first time printmaking! Luckily I have used the shop before, so I could handle all of the clean-up, and I was aware of the possibilities open to me in the studio. I took Intro to Etching the winter quarter of my sophomore year, so I knew my way around. With a little help from the shop tech I was off and running with Mary Ann, the press that I used to pull all of my monoprints on.

I am so happy to have used my time to start my experimentation/solo project in printmaking. I don't think that I can do without it, now.

Let the show begin!

meet Mary Ann, and the SCAD-Savannah print shop!

a little guy that's just been pulled

My junk spanned three tables! told you that I like to spread out.

This ink pigment is called Trophies Brown. I think I'm in love.

the prints laid out off the press

Made this with a hand-cut stencil. I pulled the print through on newsprint, reapplied ink,
scratched the plexiglass with a brush handle and paper towel, and pulled again.

monoprint with Cicada wings and hemp string

monoprint with Cicada wings, gauze, and gauze string

the prints are hanging in my studio to dry!

Five by Five Project

2011-08-11T21:02:00.002-04:00

Hey you! Go check out this side-project that I started today, and heck, check later on too because it's going to be updated with new miniature artwork on the daily.

http://fivebyfiveproject.blogspot.com/

New Layout

2011-08-09T18:30:00.007-04:00

old layout circa fall 2010

new layout circa summer 2011

{Print}spiration!

2011-08-09T18:17:00.008-04:00

This summer is my last summer of college, and it is bursting at the buttons with life and friendship and creativity so far. That is, if creativity is simply being inspired to be creative, but not the actual labor of it.

I took an excursion to the Albany area with my friend Marissa Pirog, to visit her home for the month of June. It was far too short to admire the beauty of the state, but it filled my soul all the same. Whilst there, I got to spend time with her family, and with my new friend Rachel Preville. One of the most inspiring events of the trip was visiting the MoMA in New York City.

There were so many paintings and prints to fill my eyes! From an art historical/nerdy Susanna perspective, I was most struck with my opportunity to see Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Street, Dresden just centimeters away from the tip of my nose. I had studied the painting in 20th Century Art History just a few months before the trip, and got to experience the disorientation and anxiety that the painting evokes firsthand.

Street, Dresden

The exhibition also included delicate and fragmented watercolors by Egon Schiele, which I giddily poured over.

Nude with Violet Stockings and Black Hair

(Akt mit violetten Strümpfen und schwarzem Haar)

However, the most precious discoveries that I made were in printmaking. The number of times that I was stunned by the beauty of the Expressionist prints while wandering the exhibit are too many to count with my fingers and toes. The exhibition included many printmaking techniques, including intaglio and etching, drypoint, lithography, linocut, and woodcut. Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, Rudi Feld, Conrad Felixmüller, Heinz Fuchs, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Vasily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner, Emil Nolde, Max Oppenheimer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Egon Schiele, and Käthe Kollwitz all made appearances in the collection.

Käthe Kollwitz made the biggest impression on me. I have never seen such beautiful woodcut prints in my life, and the images themselves compress emotion so thickly because of Kollwitz's technical talent and personal history. Here are examples of the seven prints of her portfolio that were on display, followed by the statement on the series, entitled Krieg (War), as appears on the MoMa website.

Widow I (Die Witwe I)

The Sacrifice (Das Opfer)

The Volunteers (Die Freiwilligen)

The Parents (Die Eltern)

The Widow II (Die Witwe II)

The Mothers (Die Mütter)

The People (Das Volk)

In 1919, Käthe Kollwitz began work on Krieg (War), her response to the tragedies endured during what she called those "unspeakably difficult years" of World War I and its aftermath. The portfolio's seven woodcuts focus on the sorrows of those left behind—mothers, widows, and children. Kollwitz had struggled to find the appropriate means of expression until she saw an exhibition of Ernst Barlach's woodcuts in 1920. Revising each print through as many as nine preparatory drawings and states, Kollwitz radically simplified the compositions. The large-format, stark black-and-white woodcuts feature women left to face their grief and fears alone, with their partners, or with each other.

Only one print, Die Freiwilligen (The volunteers), shows the combatants. In it, Kollwitz's younger son, Peter, takes his place next to Death, who leads the troops in an ecstatic procession to war. Peter was killed in action just two months later. Kollwitz wanted these works to be widely viewed. By eliminating references to a specific time or place, she created universally legible indictments of the real sacrifices demanded in exchange for abstract concepts of honor and glory. The prints were exhibited in 1924 at the newly founded International Anti-War Museum in Berlin.

(source)

I also researched more about Kollwitz, who lived from 1867 to 1945, and found some publications which have brought her life closer to the heart. Here is an excerpt about her:

Kathe Kollwitz is considered by many to be one of the greatest draughtsmen and printmakers of all time. Often mentioned in discussions of German Expressionism, Kollwitz actually belonged to an earlier generation of artists…

Her father encouraged his daughter's talent for drawing and arranged for private instruction before sending her to art school for women in Berlin. This was quite progressive during the 1880s. She was influenced by Realists Max Klinger and Wilhelm Leibl and the works of Edvard Munch moved her to explore and confront emotionally charged subjects. Hunger and Death were daily visitors to her home because of her husband's medical practice in an impoverished section of Berlin. Kollwitz was a Socialist who wanted her art to have an effect on the way ordinary people viewed their world and hoped it would move people to action. Her son Peter died in WWI (her grandson Peter died in WWII) and as a result, Kollwitz suffered from extreme bouts of depression the rest of her life. Nonetheless, she stuck to her art during these times but became obsessed with the theme of Death…

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, she was forced to resign from the Berlin Akademie der Kunste but was never forbidden to work or officially classified as "Degenerate". In 1936, she was forbidden to exhibit and some of her works were removed from museums and galleries. In 1943, she evacuated Berlin for Mortizburg and died days before the end of the war hidden in a castle belonging to Prince Heinrich. She never saw the war end.
(source)

In addition, I found a book entitled Käthe Kollwitz's Sacrifice by Regina Schulte (go read it for yourself!) that begins with the story of her sons, Hans and Peter, leaving for war, and is frequently supported with entries from her own diary. Her son Peter died on October 22, 1914. Here are some of the diary entries that I found shed light on her life and art:

During the early days I often forgot about the war or had the feeling: well, that's enough pressure, it's time to start living again. It was as if one had awakened from an unpleasant dream. But at that time I also felt a new beginning inside me. As if none of the old values held true anymore, and everything had to be reassessed. I experienced the possibility of free sacrifice.

Oh, when I think how Hans was in those days! Quite simply, he gave himself modestly, without a word. Cheerfully. Calmly and lovingly. He offered his young innocent breast.

...Uniformed. His child's face.

6 August 1914

It must have been on this day that Peter, during a walk through the city, saw the Franzer marching off to the crowd's rousing rendition of the 'Watch on the Rhine'. He is having his hair cut. Karl says, 'These splendid youths - we must work to be worthy of them'. It must also have been on the evening of that day that Peter asked Karl to let him go before the raising of the reserves. Karl tries his best to dissuade him. I feel grateful that he is fighting to keep him, but I know it cannot change anything anymore. Karl: 'The fatherland does not need you yet, otherwise you would have been called up already'. Peter, more quietly, but firmly: 'The fatherland does not need my year yet, but it needs me.' He keeps turning to me with silent pleading looks, begging me to intercede for him. Finally he says, 'Mother, when you embraced me, you said "Don't think me a coward, we are ready." I stand up, Peter follows me, we stand at the door and embrace and kiss and I ask Karl on Peter's behalf. - This singular hour. This sacrifice he forced out of me and which we forced out of Karl.

10 August 1914

...Hiking songs. To think that all of this - perhaps life itself - is over for our boys. For them, all of life is squeezed together into this space of time; they are anticipating everything in order to flame once and burn. And Peter has not yet known love, he was only just beginning to approach art.

27 August 1914

Farewell letter to Peter. It is as if the umbilical cord were being cut all over again. The first time into life, the second into death.

5 October 1914

Last night I dreamt of Peter again. I dreamt that he was standing before me and he was half Hans and half Peter. I reached around his body, which was quite slender like that of a child. I encompassed him with both arms and he bent his upper body slightly backwards. I wept and 202 History Workshop Journal asked him about his days in Flanders and how it was when he died. He was so gentle and smiled.

10 May 1916

I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of people, the sufferings that never end and are as big as mountains.

1 April 1920

Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed...

21 February 1944

Until next time.

Käthe Kollwitz

"My work is not, of course, pure art... but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help."

-K.K.

Whatchya been up to?

2011-04-18T09:25:00.000-04:00

Well, it's spring in Savannah again and the closing quarter of my Junior year here at SCAD. Here's some photojournalism fer ya.

This was an in-class project for my Large-Format painting class. Professor Eltringham had us complete it in two class sessions (about 4.5 hours). I chose to work from a photo of my friend Michael, using conte crayon and charcoal on unprimed canvas, approximately 8 feet by 6 feet. Here's two shots of the mid-way and final points of the piece:

Here's the second in-class, one session this time (2.5 hours). Latex on canvas, approx 7 feet by seven feet. Chord organ.

And I just stretched two canvases that are six feet square, and they're ready for some work at home! Oh boy.

Since I really didn't post a lot last quarter, here are two pictures! The first is me working in my little studio space at home (on a portrait of my mom as a child for Portrait Painting, midterm project), and the second is my wallspace in Alexander that I occupied for the latter part of the quarter.

This quarter is cray cray and it's not even half over! Big paintings, wood working/welding, and studying the universe. And on top of that playing so much music with my friends! It's been the best time I've had in Savannah yet.

Intermediate Series

2011-03-15T12:41:00.001-04:00

Corpus I

Latex on panel

96 x 48 in.

Corpus II

Latex on panel

96 x 48 in.

Follicle I

Latex on panel

96 x 48 in.

Follicle II

Latex on panel

95 x 47 in.

Artist Statement:

A fine line exists between pleasure and disgust. Hair is prized as an object of luxury, beauty, and pride on a human head. When removed from the body it becomes an alien form that gives the beholder no pleasure to touch or view. The Follicle Corpus series is an exploration in two parts of human hair on a large scale. The two diptychs are unified by color and all four pieces by scale and self-reference. The scale is meant to confront the viewer by distorting the scale of human hair and draw attention to the discomfort of dehumanized hair.

The Corpus diptych is a discourse on the perception of hair attached and unattached. Corpus Idepicts a graphic silhouette does not differentiate between body and hair, while Corpus II removes the body to silhouette the body of hair itself in its attached shape. The Follicle diptych analyzes hair on a microscopic scale without reference to the human body. The first, Follicle I, analyzes groups of hair strands, while Follicle II analyzes individual strands.

This series is a personal confrontation of vanity and self-value. It deconstructs an object off of which my ego feeds and presents it as a sterilized and alienated form. By referencing my own hair I have disowned my physical possession in order to state the visual reality of an object which all humans possess.

Recent Work: Portrait Painting

2011-01-27T14:53:00.000-05:00

Three-session Pose, Subtractive Technique

Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Panel

24"x30"

Exhibition Review: Twilight Visions

2010-10-02T14:54:00.000-04:00

-The following is my own exhibition review written for 20th Century Art-

Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris, currently on view as the Jepson Center’s main exhibit, is a visual narrative on the gradual transformation of Parisian society into ambiguity between the old and new, male and female, truth and fantasy, and the erotic and the grotesque. The exhibit displays striking and profound examples of these dualities primarily through a body of achromatic photographs. The exhibit begins with grand photographic compositions of Paris in various arrondisements and a collection of photographs that interpret the Eiffel Tower as both significant and negligible. Beyond the first portion of the exhibit, the grandeur of the subject slowly melts, moving to the erotic grotesque of the surrealist feminine form, and lastly to the nightlife inside the bals musettes of Paris. Although the exhibit is presented in this order, the meaning of the exhibit is far richer if viewed from the end to the beginning. In this way, the exhibit may be discovered and understood initially on a personal level, and be slowly opened to the scope of the monumental city that the photographs reveal. To understand Paris in the early twentieth century, it is essential to conceive the mentally torn state of the people before beholding the façade of grandeur and modernity that they lived behind.

The sub-exhibit of photographs depicting the nightlife of Paris is entitled “Portraits After Hours,” and reveals the conflicts of expression and power. The featured artist, Brassaï, was himself conflicted about the nightlife in Montmartre and Montparnasse, having been crowded out along with his peers by flocks of tourists. Brassaï withdrew to the more reclusive, underground night scenes of Paris when his cafés and clubs became public attractions. What he found was a world of working-class men and women who were overthrowing conventional social expectations of contemporary Parisian society in the early twentieth century. Brassaï exposes this discovery subtly and decisively through his collection of silver gelatin prints. Many of his photographs play with reflections, often with underclass Parisians in the foreground whose countenance and expression contradict the expressions of the figures reflected in the mirror behind them. In using visual contradition, Brassaï exposes the sexual and emotional dualities of common people, which were gradually becoming vague in decreasing adherence to stereotype.
In Girl Playing Snooker[1], a young, attractively bold woman, possibly a prostitute, stands before a game table gripping her billiard stick and stares powerfully at the camera with dominant force. Her demeanor indisputably reflects the feminist empowerment that she possesses as she plays at a gentleman’s game. Her power is masculine, and perplexing. Behind her are two mirrors, one of which reflects a man seated in profile, seemingly alone. His repressed demeanor expresses a despondency and lethargy that contrasts with the prowess of the woman in the foreground. While she is acting like a man, he is expressing a repressed attitude commonly expected from a woman.

Another striking example of expressive duality is a photograph entitled Bal Musette[2], which masterfully captures a decisive moment in the faces of a group of young Parisians seated around a table. In the foreground a young man slouches despondently, flanked by two pretty women. All three faces stare glumly at the animated, wide-mouthed young man who is reflected just behind them. They personify the duality in the attitude of their class, both wary of modernity and excited by progress. The pretension and boredom also illustrates Brassaï’s dissatisfaction with the social scene in the bals musettes and cafès, which was quickly slipping into tourism in his time. The city was transforming, and displaced its own people. Brassaï soon looked deeper for inspiration, only to further uncover the ambiguity of his time.

Brassaï’s discovery of backstage life materialized in his work to expose the cold reality of modernization. Two photographs reveal this, presented in the exhibit as a diptych. The first, Backstage at the Folies-Bergère, Paris[3] is an obliquely-angled view of exhausted female performers, laying nude on a stage floor, slumped against the set of a show of which they are obviously a part. The viewer is looking from far above in the scaffolding, seeing in perspective the monstrosity of the curtain mechanisms, lights, and set pieces that dwarf the women. The second photograph, Sleeping Machinist at the Folies-Bergère, Paris[4] is a more immediate commentary on the dichotomy of human failing and machine power. The camera looks straight on to a machinist, head in hand, sleeping beneath a grimy, monstrous machine that leaves only a cramped area for the man to rest in. Brassaï uses these compositions to show the machine in terms of the human figure, in both cases dominating them in scale. These two photographs manifest the monstrosity of machinery, and the primary role that it had taken in Brassaï’s time in the wake of the mobilization of industry.

A film shown in the same room, L’Atalante[5], is a Poetic Realist piece directed by Jean Vigo in 1934. It is an observation of the trifles of affection in low-class life. The film is a story of the affliction in store for a young couple when a flirtatious street entertainer comes between them. The torn woman is left stranded after her conflicted feelings lead her to abandon her lover. In this moment, the director uses the opportunity to convey the cold monstrosity of the machine that Brassaï addressed. Looking for him along the banks of the Seine, she desperately wanders the cold landscape of bricks and metal structures rising hauntingly in the distance like the skeletons of industry. It is a strong contrast of human frailty and industrial strength. Vigo filmed L’Atalante at the same time that Brassaï photographed the photos mentioned above, and it is obvious that they felt ripples from the same wake. The rise of industry has a strong presence in the social context of these works, and is made obvious through the reflection of a despondent and confused underclass of people lost within the world of the machine.

The next exhibit swiftly shifts to examine the duality of the sexes as it moves into the surrealist movement in Paris. Following the exhibit still from end to beginning, the surrealist exhibit immediately presents a film directed collaboratively by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou[6]. It influenced Jean Vigo to insert hallucinatory shots into L’Atalante. It is a perpetually confusing and frequently disturbing surrealist film that involves a man dressed as a nun, and his death and resurrection as a possessed man with ants crawling out of his hand. He both harasses and attempts to abuse his lover, in whose irrational nightmare it seems the film is set. Such elite surrealist symbolism lends itself to confusion of a broader audience, and may be more understood, if not also more frustrated, by Luis Buñuel’s statement about their aim in Un Chien Andalou: “Our only one rule was very simple: no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.”[7] Though this may have been the object of the directors in creating the film, the feelings left in the viewer are clear enough: the aggressive sexual attitude of the male lead forces a reconsideration of what is erotic, and what is nauseatingly grotesque.

Mutable Mirrors is the photographic portion of the surrealist exhibit that focuses on the dualities of the erotic and the grotesque and of the sexes. André Kertész’ Distortion[8] triptych of 1933 is a hallucinatory, perverse, funhouse distortion of the female form.Photographed as though reflected in distorted mirrors, the women are all either embracing themselves or each other, and appear distant. They are almost anti-erotic to the point of asexuality. These works provoke reflection on society’s long-lived perception of the female body as an object. Accepted truth begins to lose form. By viewing the body so distorted, one can truly “see” the body without any perversity or distortion of preconceptions in the viewer’s mind, as though viewing an alien form. What was once erotic is so easily made grotesque.

Another unsettling series is one by Hans Bellmer, who photographed mannequins that he dismantled and reassembled, placing them in suggestive situations. He addresses abuse and rape, with an assembled form of two lower bodies, joined at the hip as a constructed full figure, standing nude in the forest with its dress strewn on the ground. Another photograph shows a mannequin of legs tied in rope to a staircase. Yet another shows a torso on a bed surrounded by black gauze, its head lying on its stomach, worn and apparently dead, with hollowed eyes. Objects that could formerly have been considered erotic are now disassembled to create new, disturbing forms. Surrealist imagery frequently used body part-substitution to convey meaning, and Bellmer multiplied parts of the human body to show how women are frequently abused.

Mutable Mirrors brings more surrealist interpretations of the female form by Man Ray and sexually ambiguous self-portraits by Lee Miller and Claude Cohun that reveal the public and private nature of the body. After this, the exhibit resurfaces to the streets of old Paris. The photographs begin with a compositionally rich, inspired collection by Eugene Atget. Atget was not alive to enjoy his recognition. He was a flâneur, and submitted his work anonymously when he was hired to photograph Paris former to its renovation. He was a great discovery for phototograhers previously mentioned who captured Paris in the spirit of the dichotomy of the old and new. The streets he photographed are haunting and deserted, with a peace that arises from a quieted revolutionary past.

André Kertész was one such artist who drew inspiration from Atget, photographing the rise of modern Paris. On the Quais, Paris[9] shows a bourgeois gentleman looking on two working class men. In the background a landscape of old Parisian architecture is intruded on by constructive equipment. In Rue Vavin, Paris[10], he photographed windowsills from a high angle, looking down at the façade of an old building that was not removed in modernization. Kertész was interested in contrasting old Paris with the signs of modernity that were rising in the city. Josef Breitenbach was inspired by the same notion to create Veiled Statue, Paris,[11] in which an anonymous statue stands shrouded in a street filled with cars of the early century. The statue represents the covered memory of the Paris of the past, contrasted against progress that was quickly becoming universal in the ancient city. There was a rising ambiguity in the state of the old city mingling with the new.

Finally, Paris is revealed fully. At the end, or rather the beginning, of the exhibit the Eiffel tower is presented as both monumental and inconsequential. The old city is contrasted with the new. The compositions widen to include more space, and consequently grander visions. The almost exclusive concern of these photographs is the contrast of simplicity with the complexities imposed by modernity. The exhibits of the Eiffel tower and old Paris reflect the Parisians’ perpetual accommodation to the rising architecture around them that pushed them into a new age. Their lives are rearranged through these accommodations, and have been shifted to a place of displacement in their own world. Though they are still Parisian, they are not at home.

[1] Brassaï, Girl Playing Snooker, 1933.
[2] Brassaï, Bal Musette, 1932.
[3] Brassaï, Backstage at the Folies-Bergère, Paris, 1932.
[4] Brassaï, Sleeping Machinist at the Folies-Bergère, Paris, 1932.
[5] Jean Vigo, Director, L’Atalante, 1934.
[6] Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Directors, Un Chien Andalou, 1929.
[7] Lichtenstein, Therese, Ph.D., Curator Notes, Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris.
[8] André Kertész, Distortion No.4, Distortion #40, and Distortion #5, 1933.
[9] André Kertész, On the Quais, Paris, 1928.
[10] André Kertész, Rue Vavin, Paris, 1925.
[11] Josef Breitenbach, Veiled Statue, Paris, 1933-39.

les visages de Lacoste

2010-08-23T14:08:00.001-04:00

Lacoste seems a little closer today than usual. I visited my dear friend Marissa yesterday who has moved into town. I haven't seen her since we were overseas. I also stumbled upon a project created by a photographer who was a fellow student in Lacoste, Aaron Smith. He created a series of expressionless head portraits of all the students and faculty that were in Lacoste during the spring quarter. All of the faces are so dear and familiar to me. Take a look.

Bookbinding Endeavors

2010-08-12T17:17:00.000-04:00

It's been difficult to make art lately. My creative powers seem to have found another outlet: bookbinding. While I dawdle the hot summer hours away, twiddling with arbitrary concepts in my mind for paintings in the future, I find my thoughts ever winding back to books.
I attended my first, and one of my only bookbinding club meetings at SCAD when I was a fall-quarter freshman. Like many of the clubs that I intended on being a part of, it unfortunately fell through. However, the excitement of the bookbinders was irresistible, and I caught the book fever. Ever since, the thought of binding has lingered in the back of my mind, and I never gave up the hope that someday I would bind my own sketchbooks and journals. While I was in Lacoste this past spring quarter, I luckily befriended the lovely Rachel Self, who binds elaborate books herself. She instructed me on how to bind a book using the coptic stitch technique, and it started me rolling. Under her guidance, I bound a small book comprised of three short stories that I had written that quarter, collected entitled "Contes De Provence":

I was so ecstatic about this book, I carried it on my person on all of the flights from all the way Marseilles to Savannah, most likely with the hope in the back of my mind that someone might ask me about the book, and I could enthusiastically brag about such a small achievement.

When I returned home, I fully expected to forget how to stitch a coptic binding. But it came back to me naturally once I threaded my needle, and I succeeded in binding two small journals in similar styles.

When I had completed those, I then proceeded to make two pamphlet journals. The first, bound in a safety brochure from the Lufthansa airplane that I took from Frankfurt to D.C.:

The second, from a delightfully organic paper that I found in Primary Art Supply:

I'm so very lucky to live in Savannah during the summer, where I can go to the Jen Library every day if I like and look at the countless books that they have on art. I've checked out a couple of really cool books on bookbinding, and one has been very inspiring to me. It is a book that was obviously created by people who love to make books, since it is a fabulous looking book in itself. I recommend it to everyone who is interested in bookbinding, and I leave you on that note!

How to Make Books, by Esther K. Smith

mon art de la France

2010-04-19T16:29:00.000-04:00

France is beautiful, I am saddened that there are only five weeks left to enjoy the beauty of this country. But I am SO BLESSED to be here. Every moment is a banquet for my eyes.
These are a few drawings that I have done independently, in model sessions, and on field trips for my illustration/drawing class Travel Portfolio with Professor Krepel, a very sweet and inspiring Illustration professor. Voila!

Model Sessions:

Menerbes:

Lacoste:

Gordes:

Fontaine-de-Vaucluse:

Bonnieux:

Avignon:

2010 Winter Portfolio

2010-03-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

The past ten weeks were fractionally inspired, transitional, paced, and trying, among a hundred other adjectives I could toss out in retrospect.
But the deal is that SCAD, but more specifically art, has become part of my fiber as a creature of mortal experience, and I've spent my time settling, however comfortably or not, into this state of being. I have known a fear and a lack of confidence in my artistic abilities I have never known before. But I have also seen what I produce under this self-oppression, and how these lows are also a beautiful part of the crazy ride that brings with it ecstasy and artistic epiphany of the most wondrous kind. The heart's isolation can draw out as honest a self-expression as bliss. But it is not a matter of art being wild, or being quiet. It is a matter of being truth. And beauty awakes in the truth of uninhibited expression.

Intro to Etching
Prof. Debora Oden

This class made me so hungry for inspiration and for raw art. The relationship of paper and copper and ink in the etching process is so beautiful. I would highly recommend this class, professor, and printmaking medium to everyone who wants a real kick of fabulous art.

12/6C→13/7N→13/6C→14/7N→15/8O→15/7N→12/6C

etching and aquatint

[detail below]

he who has ears to hear
multiple-plate etching and aquatint

untitled

etching and aquatint

[detail below]

and thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on

etching
[detail below]

a tidy little set of four editions of and thus...

Life Painting

Prof. Roger Walton

In-Class II: Female Nude
oil on canvas

In-Class III: Male Nude

oil on canvas

Self-Portrait
oil on canvas on panel

48 inches by 24 inches
[details below]

untitled

independent study

oil on panel

9 inches by 11 inches

Life is insane, but it goes on!

2010-01-03T00:18:00.000-05:00

Finally, my fall quarter sophomore portfolio! This last quarter was rather freeing: a break from strictly two-dimensional work, with chances plenteous to break away from my traditional thought processes, and lose my tense hand in rendering the figure. I grew. I collaborated. I sold my first piece to the SCAD collection. I developed my style. I was enlightened. And I can hardly believe that all of this can occur in ten weeks.

I have left out a lot of figure studies that I did independently, but hopefully some of that work is manifested in my classwork. Classes start in about 36 hours, and I can't wait to get back! Kind of. Well here it goes. And apologies for the inconsistency in the photography, which would bring any respectable art student to tears.

3-D Design with Professor George Bauer

This class really really really took a lot of strength to stretch myself into the third dimension. Oh yes, it's scary. But I kind of learned that it isn't. I left the class with a new love for installation art, particularly performance or participatory. I feel like that's a direction I would love to take in part of my life's work. Below is "The Book Never Read", a sculpey project which I'm not terribly proud of, a stone carving (fun!) project which was bought by SCAD (aerated cement, approx. 2' in height), and an installation project that I created in collaboration with classmates Lauren Flotte and David Goddard. I loved everything about this project, from our exhilirated start with plans under the bridge underpass to the collection of newspaper in garbage bags after critique. The point of the installation was to have our classmates enter into the space we created with newspaper and plastic wrap inside a pavillion, and shift through the trash to find a red ball. It was an overload for the senses, with crazy sound mixes coming from two sides of the installation.

Water-Based Media Exploration with Professor Natalija Mijatovic

A lot of really, really loose pieces are in the head series, in both ink on bristol paper and watercolor on watercolor paper. Mixed media "The City is Coming" with children's book pages, acrylic, and acrylic medium (30 by 20). Still lifes separately with acrylic on canvas (24 by 36), and winsor & newton watercolor on hot-pressed watercolor paper (24 by 36 approx.).

On a personal note, this quarter was monumental. I started on a rowing team, and I went skydiving for the first time. My parents also moved down to Savannah. Life is good. Winter quarter, here I come.

questioning the past, present, future

2009-09-30T13:26:00.000-04:00

So, I've been scared out of my fuzzy slippers for this upcoming quarter in my 3-D Class with George Bauer. But contrary to my fear, the first critique actually went half-well, and I'm pleased to say that my sculpture was put on the shelf of glory. The piece is called The Book Never Read, and was created in about seven minutes and took about five dollars total because it was gloriously spontaneous in the process of making my "developed" piece. The developed piece, which cost almost a hundred dollars, was turned into the maquette, or preliminary sculpture, for the spontaneous one. The bright side is that I have two developed pieces for the price of one! :]
The Book Never Read is a piece which questions my own unreachable/lost past, indecipherable present, and the shadowed future. It also questions the history and future of others, and the inability to read the seemingly infinite events of each others lives. On a more personal level, The Book Never Read declaration of my constant desire to read and understand the lives of those around me.

'The Book Never Read':

Materials: pages from an old book, suede string, stained wood base

Maquette:

Materials: old book, antique jewelry, antique pendants, coins, metal chains, beads, suede string, stained wood base
[the maquette was originally based conceptually on the title of Keat's poem "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever"]

gallery-hopping and the joy of pinching pennies

2009-09-22T19:01:00.000-04:00

It's so good to be back at school! I have had a wonderful first week-and-a-half of my second year at SCAD. This year I am experiencing Savannah inside of a car, as opposed to on a bike and by foot last year, which has changed my perspective on the town considerably. There are pros and cons that I've been collecting in my mental file for the past week, but I only have to say that the air is still sweet and the town just as southern in a horseless carriage. I've been enjoying cruising around Savannah, and I am adamant about getting out for a daily walk and lunch in Forsyth Park. Next year I will most definitely be returning to a bike; there is nothing quite as wonderful as biking in Savannah. And of course, coming back to SCAD means that I have a SCAD student-size budget again, but there is a joy and freedom in pinching pennies.

Before heading out to do my art history homework, I wanted to write a short review on an exhibit here in Savannah. On Friday I attended the reception for the exhibit of Low Country Babylon at the Pei Ling Chan Gallery. The reception was held on the last day of the exhibit, and had a very laid-back atmosphere. I enjoyed seeing the final structure very much, because I had seen the installation mid-construction on the upper floor of Alexander Hall. When the students who created the installation had completed the it at Alexander Hall, they disassembled the entire form and installed it into the gallery where I viewed it Friday. The installation was inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 16th-century "The Tower of Babel", and was led by visiting artist/professor Adam Cvijanovic as a part of a quarterly visiting faculty course.
The installation is covered in an extraordinary collection of pieces created specifically for the course, all pointing in their story to the city of Savannah, and each student's unique experience here. The paintings range from mixed media to oil or acrylic, as well as exquisite mini-installations created out of canvas attached to the larger structure. The canvas installations were positioned at the bottom of the tower, which I interpreted to be symbolic of the foundation of fine art as simply the support of wood and canvas. There are different ways to interpret the Tower of Babel in this installation, but I applied the symbolism of linguistic differences and the aim of reaching the heavens in a city (there were literally functional stairs leading up to the top of the tower, though the stairs were not accessible during the exhibit).
It was a joy to see a collaboration of painting students, and to see the product of student artists of school who possess such variation of perspective, style, and technique.

andrew bird at a house party

2009-09-18T12:34:00.001-04:00

http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Soiree_de_poche___Andrew_Bird_et_St__Vincent/

In Review: Summertime

2009-08-03T04:30:00.000-04:00

So, it's August, the prettiest month in my Rothko calendar. I can feel the summer coming to a close, and there are only sixteen days until I move to the Olympic Peninsula in Washinton state! I can't believe that there is so little time until I have to have all of my room packed up and ready to go. But, I am definitely itching to get up there to Sunny Sequim, and bike the Discovery Trail from Sequim Bay to the end of the Ediz Hook in Port Angeles, and take my first kayaking lesson before school starts. God worked out everything for the next school year, He is so good to me when I can't see any hope in the future.

So, I just wanted to review a little of what's happened this summer! It's been fantastic. On Friday, I recorded a demo that my mom and I wrote together. It's called "Love is Our Song", and I sang the vocals while the fantastic man responsible for recording the demo played the acoustic for us. It was great to record something again, and I can't wait until my mom and I write more together!

In July, I had the opportunity to hug some wall space in a local gallery of Nashville, Studio 83. I was given a gallery space by the generous Daniel Hawks, and had my first official group exhibition. The opening was definitely the highlight, I sold one of my wood pieces, and met a lot of really cool people. I also saw got to see a few old and new friends that came up for the show. I'm super happy that I get to keep He Who Has Ears to Hear, my favorite piece that I made for the show =].

Other than that, I've had some pretty cool stuff to do with my friends and family. I painted an allaprima of my friend Michael,

went to the zoo with my mom to look at the animals and draw them,

saw The Tallest Man On Earth in concert (amazing performer!), and witnessed an amazing acoustic performance by John Vanderslice.

Then I painted an allaprima with my mom at Radnor Lake.

Derailing and Demi-Pliés rhyme with susannalynnfineart.com

2009-07-21T01:48:00.000-04:00

"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."
G. O'Keefe

"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.”
V. Van Gogh

The very first thing that I must say is that I have finally created my own portfolio site, and you can find it at http://susannalynnfineart.com!

Well, it's been a while. I must say that my summer is fantastically restful, I'm enjoying every single ounce of rest I can get before my parents and I lift up the nest and relocate to the Evergreen State. Speaking of nests, I found an abandoned nest and a former robin's egg all in the same week, and I now have a pair that any respectable drawer with a love for natural subjects would kill for. I can't wait to immortalize them.

And now that I've managed to derail a train of thought in one paragraph, I'll move on to the real story. I found some semi-old assignments saved on my computer that were from my spring-semester oil painting class, and I thought they were good enough to share. They are responses to excerpts by artists and authors in The Grove Book of Art Writing. One of my favorite books since. There are two, scratch that, three responses that I want to share, and I'll get the original excerpts squeezed in before my responses as well.

Response No. 1

We were driving through a dazzling landscape. Sun. Meadows. Olive trees. Lakes and cypresses. Mountains.
Picasso said, 'The terrible thing is that there's not one of these colours that you can buy in tubes. They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.'
(Pablo Picasso, as reported by Helene Parmelin, 1966)

In this passage, Picasso describes the whirls of color he sees in the landscapes passing by, and how each of them are completely unique and cannot be replicated in paint tubes. I have often felt this when I look at nature, and see the multitude of colors bursting toward me. Along with the amazement of having such an eyeful of divine art, I feel exasperated at the thought of humans having so little power to duplicate the beauty of the color before our eyes. I also sometimes feel at the thought of this that my artwork, in a way, is pointless: surrounding me in the natural world is the greatest work of art that I will never achieve.

Response No. 2

Hofmann: To me a work is finished when all parts involved communicate themselves, so that they don't need me.

Among the humorous responses that the selected various artists have in this excerpt, among them Newman, Baziotes, Pollock, and Renoir, I find that Hans Hofmann's personal answer to the "...conundrum of how to finish a painting..." resonates with me the most. He says that "...all parts involved communicate themselves...", which I interpret as all aspects of a piece pointing to the beauty of itself, and being alive outside of the touch and breath of the artist. The pieces that I have created that I find the most beautiful, and pieces I find from other artists that captivate me, are those that have no footnote of having been created. They show themselves more human than the artist that created them.

Response No. 3

"The painter chooses with great speed between his colours which he has placed in front of him in great quantity and variety of hues, in order to portray faithfully the naturalness of a scene, and he goes backwards and forwards with the eyes and with the hands between the waxes and the picture."

(Seneca the Younger)

This single-sentence passage by Seneca from c.4 BC-AD 65 describes the process and swift motion of an artist as he is painting with hot encaustic wax.
My first independent venture into painting outside of the academic realm was into the encaustic wax medium. I had been wandering the galleries in my hometown two years ago, and came upon a small landscape, no more than ten inches wide, with an atmosphere, depth, and deliciousness of surface that I had never seen before and could not decipher. It took me quite some time to discover other pieces with this same effect, and I to realize that the encaustic technique was the source of it. After limited research, I began to experiment with the medium.
Seneca the Younger speaks of how an artist working with the encaustic medium must have his palette set intentionally with the colors he intends to work with before his brush touches the surface. In my experience with encaustic, I would lay out cupcake tins on a hot plate and mix the hues that I would like to use, and worked them onto my painting from there quickly, and analyzing how the transparency of the wax would cause the colors to optically mix. It was a very energetic and spontaneous process, because I had to have both a grand scheme as to what I was trying to achieve but also have a very open mind for happy accidents that might turn into part of the painting, not to mention the quick pace at which to work with the actual hot wax.
After working with encaustic, I explored the history of encaustic and found how old a process it is. It is believed to have begun in Egypt two centuries ago, where Greek artists resided. The artists would use encaustic on wood panels to create the first sitting portraits ever created, and the art would become a part of a sarcophagi. There are over six hundred portraits remaining from the Faiyum district in Egypt alone because of the archival quality of encaustic. Encaustic art continued on from that period and spread through Europe, but was taken over by the popularity of egg tempera and oil painting techniques. However, encaustic is having a small revival today, and is still such a beautiful medium to work with.

2009 Spring Portfolio

2009-05-28T01:15:00.000-04:00

This quarter has been monumental. I've worked on larger supports than ever before in my life, I've learned the essential technique of oil painting, and I know how a beautifully drawn human figure is rendered. I am so excited about how much I've learned this quarter, and both relieved and saddened to let it go. But life must go on, and I have so much art planned for the summertime!

I've compiled my spring quarter portfolio as best as I could with the pictures I've taken; sorry for some pictures that are not cropped or are cropped badly-- I tried to make it a generally clean presentation. Happy perusing, and please comment if anything strikes you. =]

life drawing one
professor beth baronian

doyle
19.5 inches by 25 inches
Stabilo pencil on skin-tone paper

10-minute studies of model hands/arms
soft charcoal on medium-gray paper
18 inches by 24 inches

the search party
black/white charcoal pencil on brown (butcher) paper
36 inches by 60 inches

'cain and abel' master copy
white charcoal pencil on black paper
30 inches by 48 inches

patrick
black and white charcoal pencil on gray paper
18 inches by 24 inches

slow mornings
black and white charcoal on gray paper
30 inches by 40 inches

street performers
black charcoal pencil on gray paper
approx. 5 feet by 8 feet

oil-based media exploration
professor sandra reed

in the context of eternity
direct painting technique with a limited palette (viridian and quinacridone magenta)
oil on ampersand gessoboard
11 inches by 14 inches

old sport
alla prima technique
oil on toned canvas
24 inches by 30 inches

ernie
alla prima technique
oil on toned canvas

how the cynic says 'i do' (goodbye)
glazing technique
oil on handmade canvas
18 inches by 30 inches

the reverend robert walker skating on duddingston loch
oil on handmade canvas
30 inches by 40 inches

MAYMAYMAY

2009-05-16T18:05:00.000-04:00

School has definitely taken its toll on the blogging habit! However, I only have eight more days of class [not counting weekends]... so that means I'm procrastinating finals as much as possible, and one way to do it is by writing here [haha]. I honestly can't believe that I've spent an entire year in college, in art school. It's gone by far too fast. I know it's almost cliche to say such, but it's true. It has been the best year of my development towards becoming an artist, and I feel that even if in the worst case I couldn't come back to Savannah to study in the fall [which is not true], I've learned essentially what I need to continue as an artist. This last quarter especially, since I've taken Life Drawing and Oil-Based Media Exploration, which are the two areas of art that I felt the weakest in before this year. Now I feel that I have a firm grasp on the two subjects, and I'm far more confident to just create. It's the best feeling, and I know that everything I've learned will continue to pour out of me during the break over summer. Anyhow, enough mumbo-jumbo.

Today I was on my way to Alexander Hall....

to work on my glazed oil painting [a still life] which is due Wednesday [way too soon!!!], and I decided that I wanted to just bike, simply because it's a gorgeous Saturday, just like in that picture. So I wheeled around Oglethorpe Avenue, down to almost Broad street, then turned around and went the opposite direction closer to Broughton, on one of the small streets that skim the squares. It was so much fun, except for the part where I was passing through an intersection on my bike when the light was red [legal, I promise], and my gears decided to not work at all [they were cracking and jumping and such], and a car was coming my direction. Scary, but they saw me and slowed, and I'm alive. But it gave me the jitters. Anyways. I stopped at the Chroma gallery, which I heard was supposed to be great, but I wasn't terribly impressed. Then I went next door to a gallery of ceramics and wood art and fibers and handmade [beautiful] jewelry and such, and bought a flower pin that had been knit and is very very pretty. I think that's my favorite gallery so far in Savannah, but I haven't really been to that many. The girl in this gallery recommended that I go see an open gallery of Metals and Jewelry majors that had an opening today, and that was lovely as well. So that was my day.

Now I'm sitting in the lab in Alexander, about to go paint, but I just felt like cooling down after biking for so long.

I was browsing La Blogotheque because it's remarkable, and I came across this band, participating in a classic Take Away Show. They bring out the music in me. Watch, listen.

Satine Messsnow Concert à Emporter
by lablogotheque

Winter Quartefolio

2009-04-02T20:24:00.000-04:00

So here I am, two weeks into the spring quarter of 2009, the final quarter of my freshman year! I'm taking my first major class, Oil-Based Media Exploration, as well as Life Drawing I and English Composition. I've had an awesome start, but a busy one at that. My studio classes are inspiring, all of my professors are fantastic, and I look forward to every single class. This is a total relief, and a definite contrast from last quarter, when I would dread the classes I was taking, either because they were not demanding, too demanding, or they scared me out of my wits (speech class, haha). But that is over and done with, and now I'm enjoying myself.

Anyhow. I wanted to share my winter quarter portfolio, as it were. For the record, my studio classes were Color Theory and Drawing II.

study of a seashell
charcoal on arches paper
18 by 24 inches

self-created still-life
prismacolor pencil on paper
20 by 21 inches

still-life
charcoal on paper
18 by 24 inches
negative space study
charcoal on paper
18 by 24 inches

half-blind contour
pen on paper
18 by 24 inches

still-life
charcoal on paper
18 by 24 inches

bezold effect
acrylic on canvas paper
8 by 8 inches

translucency
acrylic over ink-jet print on canvas paper
8 by 11 inches

optical mixing
acrylic on canvas
11 by 14 inches

final project (to create a mood-based abstract piece, and disguise a physical object attached on the canvas surface)
acrylic on canvas
11 by 14 inches

"I Lived on the Moon"

2009-01-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

I am terribly in love with the style of this animation.... It sort of relates to what I'm trying to develop, this whimsical tone and very rounded forms. Every bit of it is just breathtaking to me. Even though I'm no animation major, I really appreciate this bit of brilliance. It's beautiful, so watch!

"I Lived On the Moon" by Kwoon

2009-01-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

In Drawing II, we're creating a superhuge drawing of a seashell... this was a practice gesture. I'm ridiculous. But really, with the way that I accidentally made the foreshortening not really foreshortened and all that, who wouldn't have seen a prim lady with a fancy hat?...crying. I have really learned something about my creative process from this drawing.

It's a secret. =]

On a similar note, here's a song that always brings imagery in my mind that spills over into something on paper or in musical vibrations in the air.

Kissing the Lipless

2008-12-27T03:01:00.000-05:00

I just wrote a whole paragraph on my use of Christmas, but I got tired of writing, so I shall paraphrase.

Christmas is a great time to make art for people!

There we go. The following was a gift to my good friend and fellow art sleuth Michael.... The piece is called "Kissing the Lipless", not because it matches the tone of the actual song by The Shins, but because I thought it was slightly appropriate in an obvious way, and because it shows how hopeless the situation is, even if different way than inferred by the title.

I tried to use lines with sharp angles and proportion to show that the creature on the right to represent a man and softer lines on the "woman". The striped bits are parts of their heads; I used them in order to create an interesting negative space between them, and to emphasize the whimsical nature of the creatures. Can you tell that's a hand with the thumb on her chin?

Many thanks to my dad, he helped me pick out a wood that is the same length, but is half the height, and therefore half the weight. It's also just a lot cleaner, because these types of pine boards are meant to be exposed when used, whereas the former planks were very thick and cumbersome, and meant to be hidden when used in construction. I'm very happy with them, and definitely bringing a box of them to school to experiment with. =]

I'm either moving away from this phase of abstract creatures, or more into it. I can't tell that for sure, but something's cooking up in my brain. =]

The Tallest Man On Earth: "Where Do My Bluebird Fly?"

2008-12-21T22:43:00.001-05:00

take two!

2008-12-07T17:01:00.001-05:00

Same as below, only different =].

2008-12-06T17:17:00.000-05:00

Last month, on the way back into Nashville from Savannah by car, I took a crack at drawing some more creatures that I had begun to develop for some of my projects in 2-D Design. When I got home, I used latex paint from the 'Oops!' counter at Home Depot to gesso a large masonite board in order to enlarge one of the sketches into a full-blown piece. That piece is still sitting on the eisel in my room, because it isn't coming along too peachy. However, this afternoon I decided to return to my old favorite, diluted acrylic on a plain wood block, in order to make another version of the piece. And here it is!

Inspirations for the piece included the untitled track 4 of the album '()' by Sigur Ros, cranberry juice, and the Holy Trinity, although they did not completely manifest themselves in this final product =]. I plan on making duplicates of this on other wood blocks, experimenting with different colors and so on, but this was my first try. I will also encausticize (paint wax on) this piece, as well as the others... these wood block pieces don't feel complete unless I use the encaustic technique.

Here are some other sketches of creatures that I may develop as well:

Below the left is written "in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis", and above the right is "reckoner" (a Radiohead song from the album 'In Rainbows').

I hope everyone is having a beautiful December, wherever you are! Send me some snow =].

2008-11-19T20:55:00.000-05:00

2-D Design is finished! Past!

Better quality pictures coming soon. This class had me produce seven projects in all... this collection starts from the earliest project and finishes with my latest, turned in only today. Enjoy!

symmetry

asymmetry

three-point perspective

movement with three-point perspective

absence of focal point

contrast and confusion

musical composition
[based on Les Jours Tristes instrumental by Yann Tiersen]

Pretty music, pretty art.

2008-11-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

Dustin O'Halloran's Opus 23, animated/directed by Marco Morandi.

atmospheric hues and tunes

2008-11-17T00:16:00.000-05:00

Sigur Rós is an inspiration. Just listen.

I went to the Telfair Museum in attempt to research for an extra credit paper for Dr. Wagner's history class. My favorite exhibit was that of Richard Mayhew, a self-proclaimed "improvosationalist." I was attracted to his use of color; it was the most vivid color I have ever seen in my life, that I have not seen in nature. His use of warm colors were unbelievable, but frequently his pieces that relied on green hues bothered me. Here is a quote by Mayhew, speaking of his art, followed by my favorite pieces from the exhibit:

"Many of my so-called landscapes are very abstract because they are very free-form; I am involved with the spiritual feeling of space. My art is based on a feeling - of music, mood, sensitivity and the audio responses of sound and space. I want the essence of the inner soul to be on the canvas."

http://www.masonmurer.com/artists/mayhew_richard.htm

drawing one is over!

2008-11-15T01:18:00.000-05:00

The professor for my Drawing I class, Dr. Bauer, left for France a week before the term ended, meaning that Thursday was my last class! I'm both relieved and sad. I connected with many people, now friends, in the class, but on the other hand it's wonderful to not have to worry about so many still lifes, over and over and over. On to better things, though this was my best class so far. But I hope that eventually Drawing II and Drawing III will be as amazing and as an improvement to my skills in drawing.
We finished the class with nine drawings, all of them 18"x24" [save just one or two that are a few inches bigger--but not significantly], using graphite pencil or conte crayon on Canson white or medium-gray paper. They're in chronological order, from the beginning of fall term to the last drawing which I completed Wednesday night. Enjoy, critique, look.

2008-11-10T22:16:00.000-05:00

Last night, I went to Dr. Sketchy's November session at Moon River Brewing Company with my friends Wyatt and Anna. We were late, but made it just in time for the 10- and 20-minute poses. Here are a few of the sketches that came out of those hours in the basement:

I definitely see an improvement from even just the October session that I went to. It's helping so much to go to the free figure drawing studios that happen at Anderson every Friday. Even though I'm still messy and can't get a lot done even in a 20-minute pose, it looks like I'm more comfortable with my style. Let me know what you think!

colorlust! first post! yay!

2008-11-08T22:42:00.001-05:00

Hello! This is my first post, and I even now feel the rush of the beginning of a fresh page. Starting a new journal, in any form, is a great renewal in itself. I plan on exhibiting my work that I create each quarter that I am a student. I attend Savannah College of Art and Design, and am finishing up my first quarter as a freshman. In fact, I've been working today on the next-to-last project for my class 2-D Design, taught by Professor Min-kuy Lee. I'm taking a small break to begin this and to stretch my fingers and and all other limbs that I tangled into a mess whilst painting. I'll be posting all of my work from the three of my classes when the quarter ends, which is in two weeks. For the record, here is a list of my classes from the fall quarter of 2008 at SCAD:

Drawing I [TR 2:00pm-4:30pm]
Dr. George Bauer
2-D Design [MW 5:00pm-7:30pm]
Minkyu Lee
Survey of Western Art I [TR 8:00am-10:30am]
Dr. Stephen Wagner

Lately everything has been inspiring me: paintings (which is not abnormal, I know, but they're EVERYWHERE here), gigantic orange barges out in the river, toes, one-legged birds at SCAD Cafe. I don't know if it's me or just this new world that I live in. But I think it would be lovely to put paintings, or anything, on this blog that I find in the slightest inspiring these days, and in days to come. This piece is by Egon Schiele, an artist I discovered while looking for a master drawing to critique for a Drawing I paper.
Schiele, an Austrian expressionist, was apparently supposed to be the successor to Gustav Klimt, but unfortunately died young and could not fulfill those hopes. Klimt influenced his work heavily, and it's obvious when you compare their works. He has some really great paintings, but this one painting you see on the right particularly struck me. Click on the image to see it fully. Isn't it beautiful?
And that's it for now!