5 Ideas for Grad School

Ok, so starting off...I'd be interested in:

1. RISD: Painting program. I wanted to go to RISD for my undergrad but couldn't afford it. I love Providence and I think its a great area for artist. Plus I've seen show's of student work, and its some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. I think this would be a great place to thrive and meet people. The school has so many areas to choose from, I think there'd be a lot of freedom in trying new mediums of work and connecting with a lot of different minds.
2. University of the Arts in Philadelphia: They have a painting program that seems to be grouped with ceramics and sculpture. Again, location is a factor as I want to live in Philly and really enjoy the art scene there. I think being in this area and being in a program with a variety of mediums could be a great place for growth. The programs are in the summer which is a bit of concern because it would take 2.5 year to complete, but there is a lot of time for independent work with the benefit of critiques.
3. School of Visual Arts in New York: This program sounds attractive because of the way they describe what the program is aimed towards. They want students in the fine arts program to gain a strong sense of who they are and what their philosophies are. I feel this is so important, even more important than technical school. I think I'd like this goal.
4. Bard in New York: Bard seems interesting because even though I'd be going into the painting program, all programs from writing to music would be meeting together to share ideas and create conversation. I think thats a pretty good idea and could be very enriching. The program is over the summers and winters, 2 years and 2 months, and the students need to be independent and self-motivated.
5. University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts: This I'm basing mainly off of location and rank. There is a fine arts program which takes three years and seems to be geared more towards personal growth than credits. Its in New Mexico which is a place I've never experience and would be eager to try out. It seems like a laid back place with a lot of room and time to figure out who you are and what you do.

MoMA Visit! Oh Boy! also colorful squigglies.

This weekend I visited the MoMA to see what I could see. And I saw some interesting things. I was able to hand around the Sculpture Garden for a change, which I am not usually interested in but decided to give it a chance due to the new Sculpture in Color exhibition going on. I'm not usually a huge fan of sculpture but I AM a huge fan of color. My favorite thing about the sculpture garden is the fact that some of the work in interactive. I love being able to interact with a sculpture or have it part of an environment. Due to space, there weren't a ton of sculptures on display for the exhibit and some permanent ones were still in place. The exhibit was made up of five sculptures by three artists, so it was limited but involved use of one color per sculpture. Each sculpture was a bright color and a non-objective shape. The pieces were very representational and most were very squiggley.
The first sculpture I saw was Midday (1960) by Anthony Caro. This one looked like a lopsided bench with metal planks jutting out of the top. I didn't care much for the shape and I honestly didn't get much out of it. On the positive side, it was a nice school-bus yellow, I must say. It was very poppy and industrial looking, which is not a very pleasing combination in my opinion.

Next I came across Elsworth Kelly's GreenBlue (1968). Again, I love color, but I am not a huge fan of Kelly's aesthetic. This sculpture was basically a huge lopsided square piece of metal diagonally split into green and blue halves. There is a little nook formed behind it in which you can kind of hide behind formed by the base and side of the piece. This was the only part of it I really liked. It is very obviously a Kelly piece, I feel, as his work is full of brightly colored, solid triangles.

The only pieces I really enjoyed in this exhibition were the Franz West sculptures...and luckily for me he had the most work in the show. West's pieces were a combination of my three favorite things: Bright colors, interactive sculptures, and squiggles. I just love squiggley things. The three sculptures were entitled Lotus, Maya's Dream, and Untitled (Orange). Each doubled as a bench, and quite a few visitors were getting a kick out of it and posing for pictures, including myslef.

I took a picture of Chris...a Squiggle in his natural habitat.

I feel like these sculptures are meant to be fun and encourage others to play along. They are playful colors (a sunshine yellow, bubblegum pink, and a citrussy orange) and the shape are humorously wiggley, like a shaky doodle in a student's notebook. The others artist's works just didn't have the same playfulness to them. They felt too serious to be masked in what would normally be fun, bright colors.

So! Overall, Franz West saved the show for me and more than made up for the lack of excitement I felt from the other work. Then again, like I said, I am not a huge fan of sculpture so I tend to be hard to please in this realm of art. Still, I found the show pretty interesting.

Seven Days in the Art World: The Studio Visit

So, I read The Studio Visit and, again, it was pretty interesting. I am already a bit familiar with Murukami's work, so it was interesting to here how his studio works. One thing that I knew was that he had others make his work for him, but what I was interested to here was that he actually gives credit to all of his workers. I've never heard of any other artist that would actually put their worker's names up with the work. I was really happy to learn that. I remember learning about how Judy Chicago didn't give anyone else recognition for The Dinner Party and was very upset that the "Art World" worked that way. I also found it really interesting and refreshing to here that he helps to promote the careers of his workers as artists. Its nice to here that these people are being treated like people and artists themselves. I found this quote interesting: "Unlike Warhol's Factory, where, in the words of the art historian Caroline A. Jones, women were 'expected to work hard for no pay, suffer beautifully, and tell all,' six of the seven artists whose independent careers are promoted by Kaikai Kiki are female." I didn't know there was such inequality in the studio in the past, and I wonder why women especially weren't treated as artists, but I am glad these prejudices aren't present in Kaikai Kiki. I thought it was funny how Murukami directs his work. "I don't know how to operate Illustrator, but I will say 'yes, yes, yes, no, no, no" when I check the work." I imagine him standing over his workers' shoulders and critisizing what they do. I think someone not physically creating their own work is strange, but at least he as connected to it as he can be given his set of skills. I also found it interesting and a little sad at the same time...how his work is commercial and art...at the same time. When they said about his Oval Buddha, "We're gonna make an edition of ten on a domestic scale...People should be able to live with Oval, I felt like..is this supposed to be for the artists entertainment or income? I don't know, and maybe its both. But I guess thats ok...

Zimmerli Art Museum: Blocks of Color Show

For this class's gallery visit I chose good ol' Zimmerli Art Museum conveniently located in the lovely city of New Brunswick. Did I mention it was also free? Happiness. There was a show going on (still is...until January 3rd) of contemporary (early 1900s and on) American wood block prints. I found it to be a lovely show, really diverse, and very interesting to explore. I feel the show really gave a great overview of how differently woodblocks can be used and the Japanese traditional style is by no means the only way it can be done.
Though there were numerous different ways the artists used the wood block, some of my favorites were in the traditional Japanese style. Helen Hyde had a great deal of prints in the show and, as I found out from a women giving a tour, Hyde truly does the prints in the traditional Japanese style. She designs the print, it is carved by a master carver and then printed by a master printer. She even went to Japan in order to learn this style. Some of my favorites by her were, Complaints (1914) and The Family Umbrella (1915).



Bertha Lum also followed the traditional style, though her prints caught my eye even more because they reminded me of anime. I love the grapic style and her use of such a fluid line. A good line makes me go crazy. Tanabata (1912) stuck out to me.



I was excited to see they had on display a print and then the block it was actually printed from. Blanche Lazzell's West Virginia Hills (1919) was shown with the hand painted two-sided woodblock next to it. It was interesting to see how it looks carved and then transfered. I like the block itslef; it looked like a wooden painting. This print of course looked nothing like the Japanese style, but was still very astetically pleasing. There were bright, solid colors and thick, printerly lines and spaces.
As the show progressed, things got more interesting and prints looked less and less conventional. Donald Judd's Untitled (1994) was hanging there and I thought it was funny because it was so obviously his.



Finally, one of my favorites was Dan Walsh's OVG Orange, OVG Green, and OVG Violet (2007). They were very simple but beautiful in the way the thick lines of color were layered and created a myriad of lovely, lovely colors. They were a combination of my two favorite things in art pieces: colors and lines. I looked at them for a while.





So, thank you Zimmerli Art Musuem for having a great show so local and free! It was a good good good experience!

Seven Days in the Art World: The Crit

Soooo..I read The Crit chapter and it was pretty funny to read about the dynamic between the teacher and students in the class. I have to say though, if I had a crit that lasted that long I would die. From what I read, the crit the author observed sounded pretty similar to crits I've attened in the past...just way waaaay longer. I thought it was funny how I felt like I knew some of the same people in the class. There's always people that don't care or don't talk, and ALWAYS that one student who just sounds like a pretentious asshole. I take it the author's purpose for this book is to report to al outside of the "art world"...what exactly goes on in this mysterious place. The crit is a good example of how artists, or at least art students, interact and behave in an environment that is supposed to benefit them, but also takes a lot out of them. It is an interesting community. I felt like I was reading about a crit day in one of my painting classes.