Vanessa Beecroft- 4/21/15

Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian contemporary artist who works with photography, performance, drawing, and painting and sculpture. Beecrofts work generally works with conceptual and aesthetic concerns, which draws a lot of people into what she does. Her performance art is usually large scale and with nude females. Because of this her performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist and empowering. These events are recorded live, by photographs and videos. Generally she picks models that have the same face structure or body structure. Her point with these is to make them more close to paintings, she makes contemporary versions of the complex figurative compositions that have challenged painters from the Renaissance onwards. These pieces of hers are shown all over the world, opening in big cities like Paris and NYC. I don't really know how I feel about her work, its very strange but cool?

Anish Kapoor- 4/21/15

Anish Kapoor is a British Indian sculptor, best known for his famous sculpture in downtown Chicago; the Bean. In the 80s he became known for his geometric and (eventually later on his strange use of materials in his pieces). He started working with materials such as marble, granite, limestone and plaster. He then started making pieces that were free-standing and larger than normal. "Many of his sculptures seem to recede into the background, or disappear into the ground".  His first public commission was set in Japan, and after that was Cloud Gate, the 110 ton mirrored bean shape sculpture. Kapoor says his bodies of work are neither intended to be sculptural or architectural. A lot of museums over seas pay big bucks for his work, with the highest sculpture being sold for 2.8 million dollars. I hope I am a successful sculptor like Kapoor. I really enjoy his use of mirrors and making the pieces in a huge manner.

Sally Mann- 4/21/15

Sally Mann is a American photographer. She is based out of Lexington, Virginia and has been called one of the most influential photographers in the world. In my film class yesterday we watched a documentary on her, What Remains, and I was completely in awe of her. While a lot of her photos are very well known, people have attacked them, claiming most of her work is child pornography. The series of images Immediate Family, is a book full of her children at the families' summer cabin. They show quite a bit of nudity but she conquers topics such as skinny dipping, reading, napping and board games. As well as loneliness, insecurity and sex. Personally, I don't find the images disturbing at all, I find them beautiful as she has captured her children in photos that they feel very comfortable with. I myself liked to run around naked, and these photos embody being a child. After actually getting to see what Sally does, and watching her documentary, I have come to the conclusion that she is likely my favorite photographer. Here are some of her wonderful images.

BLU 4/9/15

Blu is an Italian mural artist. His identity remains unknown. In the early 2000s he was a very active artist, but has recently been quite since 2012. We watched some of his long wonderful animations in class last week. And I was automatically overwhelmed with how great of an artist he is. The skill and thought that goes into his art, and the videos he creates with the sounds are unbelievable. I have a goal to see one of his pieces on my Europe trip this summer. His murals are mainly England, Spain, Germany and Italy. His personal website shows a bunch of images of initial sketches for future murals. Most of his murals, and the ones that I enjoy most he uses his trademark of warping or contorting the body in strange and dysfunctional ways. He also deals with everyday controversial problems and gets down to the point. While I truly don't understand murals and how they are made I strongly respect them. The idea of putting art in a landscape that can be rural or urban and have thousands of people to stumble upon it in a lifetime is wonderful. I have a lot of respect for the artists that do this type of work, breaking the rules and going against the grain, which is what art is to me after all.

Kate Bingaman Burt- 4/18/15

Kate Bingaman Burt is an artist that focuses mainly on illustrations and the day to day life of most people. In her first book, Obsessive Consumption: What did you buy today? She took a picture of every single thing she bought for two years. While I personally think this is insane, and extremely yes, obsessive I understood her motives behind this. " I make piles of work about the things we BUY and (want) and the emotions attached to our (STUFF)". One thing that is very likable about Burt is that she is an everyday normal person. She hates sketching like myself, but made herself sketch every day for a year and now she loves it. This is also a goal I am setting for myself this summer. She comes across very awkward and strange but is a extremely successful and ever changing artist. I really like the way she sketches and interprets everyday items. The way she draws is something to what mine looks like, very simple lines and pretty accurate. I really like how simple and wonderful a whole page of these mashed together looks.

Jacqueline Rush Lee- 4/18/15

Jacqueline Rush Lee is a Hawaiian book artist. We went over her in class, and I found a lot of her pieces beautifully disastrous. When we first started going over book idea projects I was initially very nervous and apprehensive. I love books and the idea of tearing them up and stripping them naked made me very upset. However, after the process of my own project started I realized there were many things you could make out of books. Lee has very many different takes on book projects, and is considered a book pioneer in this day in age. As she has worked with demolishing and beautifying books for 17 years she has the art down. My favorite sculptures of her remain the warped, wet looking books. They take on a look as if the book has gone through a literal hurricane, but its still a book and maybe even readable. I really enjoyed the book project, and this summer want to immolate a couple of her works and see if it is doable.

Extra Credit- 4/13/15

 On Friday April, 10^th I attended the newest BFA Exhibition; Ball of Wax,. We first ventured into the Liberal Arts Building, where there were many interesting pieces on the walls. There was a set of very well done oil paintings on canvas. A very overwhelmingly huge portrait of a multi-colored and textured man was very interesting. However, my favorite piece was a piece called “self portrait” made of these gray glazed ceramic blobs with faux fur. In the other building however, I liked more of these, they were larger and a lot more visually fascinating. There was a bed made out of bricks that were soda fired, and a mirror that had a video installation of everyday activities cracked on it. One of the original pieces that I didn’t understand at first was another video installation. It had 4 cameras showing videos, and I figured they were somewhere in the building. It was later that my speculations were confirmed when my boyfriend was pulled aside by a man in a suit with a security badge and asked to step in a smaller room. I then knew that Devin was going to be on a live newsfeed, where he later told me they asked him questions like, How did you get here, who did you come with and why are you here? I thought that this project was quite interesting and came off kind of creepy but cool. Another project I was partial to was a set of silhouettes of people, made out of all different types of materials. A lot of people came out for this opening reception, and overall it was a great time.

Jenny Holzer 4/8/15

Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist who currently resides in New York. Originally an abstract painter, she started her schooling at Duke, University. Then painting, printmaking and drawing at the University of Chicago and then obtained her BFA at Ohio University. Holzer took summer classes at the Rhode Island School of Design. She belongs to a group of artists that are a part of a feminist branch. She is known for mostly her big mural projects, presented all of the US and the world. Billboard advertisement projections and other architectural structures. LED signs are her most visible medium. Holzer works often deal with the topics such as violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her most attacking works have been based off of when her first baby was born. Supposedly her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden. I really enjoy her work, and even though it is not like most art, I really enjoy the topics she tackles with her pieces.

Sam Larson 4/8/15

Sam Larson is a graphic designer out of Portland, Oregon. There isn't much information that I could find on him other than he travels all over the northwest. He is very talented, up and coming artist that a lot of people are starting to like and trying to mimic his style. One of his most notoriously well known types of sketches are landscapes smaller then a penny. After going on a break for 5 years without picking up any art utensils he decided randomly to start again, and post his artwork on instagram, Most of his pieces involve wild west themes, and hundreds of fans have gotten tattoos of his work. The reason why Larson is interesting to me is because I am not (and not offensively) too intrigued by graphic design. I am a hands on, messy, material obsessed person. However, if I could sketch like Larson I would probably love drawing a lot more. After all of these blog entries I have noticed that I don't put many drawers or graphic design people on here, and so props to Larson for being the one I have enjoyed immensely! My favorite of his are the penny sketches and the bear sketches.

MFAH Extra Credit 4/4/15

Born and raised in Houston, Texas I often went to museums downtown. I didn’t realize until I moved away how great the museum district really was. This spring break I decided to go back and check out and respect the art a little bit more than I when I would have been as a kid. My mom and I attended the museum on a Sunday, when a local Houstonian artist, Peter Hite, and long time friend got a couple of his pieces displayed on the local art wall there. He has his work in the Smithsonian, and only works with old vintage stamps. His pieces are becoming quite respected in Houston, and furthermore the United States. When I walked into this museum I remembered a lot of it, there are many different exhibitions, and the building itself is a bunch of architecturally fascinating buildings. The building is huge, with tons of people always there as well as many security guards. Arts of Africa, Arts of Asia, Arts of Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, Arts of Europe, Arts of North America, Arts of the South Pacific. While these are all exhibits they always have, they also have visiting exhibitions. A visiting exhibition was Monet and the Seine, Impressions of a River, and my mom is a huge fan of Monet. My favorite of his many, many pieces had to be the series of pieces painted in a huge freeze one winter quite a while ago. The colors on these oil paintings were very pale, and washed out. Overall, this museum and all the museums in Houston are very great, and this summer I plan on spending a lot of time (and money) on viewing the work of hundreds of very talented artists.

Body Extension Artists

Rebecca Horn is a great example of a body extension artist. We looked at multiple pieces of her work in class, and I was very fascinated with how she conducted these pieces. My favorite is the circle like structure shown below. I also really am interested on how it would feel to have your arms being as long as your body essentially.

Jessica Harrison, is an artist that makes projections of skin pieces. I don't know how to really describe them besides the fact that they are very strange. She has a series of pieces- furniture from a skin designed room that really are quite trippy. My favorite remains the chair, which has hair on the pillow. 

Marape is an artist most well known for his drum head, that when one person talks into one of end of it, it echoes in the wearers head. I would really like to know how this feels, the heaviness of the piece itself as well as the sounds. 

Bart Hess is cool artist. I find his work very interesting. He made a costume for Lady Gaga a couple years ago, that got a lot of attention and further more noticed by others. A lot of his works are in collaborations with other artists. My favorite of his projects are a series under the words of "slimeing". I just think they would be so strange and fun to touch. 

LucyandBart is a collaboration of artists between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess. They work a lot with fashion, body, and architecture. Both enjoy body manipulation and focusing on different materials. My favorite is the bubble body, the colors are absolutely astounding. 

Everyday Object Artists

Javier Perez is an artist that turns everyday small objects into sketches or illustrations. I think something that makes him different than the other everyday artists is that with every object he uses, he makes the pieces interesting because he sketches on backgrounds of things that really make sense. These are just two images of the many of illustrations he has done.

Sakir Gokceberg is a Turkish artist that has turned fruit into everyday larger pieces of art. Other materials such as boots, toilet paper and other everyday objects have been used. His pieces are notorious for the intense angles and curves. 

Kevin Van Aeist is different from the two above artists because he takes objects that don't seem as wanted objects. He uses materials such as trash to make bigger installation pieces. I am very fond of the masking tape piece he has made, it is simple but really fascinating. 

Giuseppe Colarusso is an artist that uses everyday objects and makes them completely useless and un functional. I think what he does it quite funny, even though there are only a couple images below, I spent some time laughing at the screen looking at all of his other pieces. My favorite happen to be the two below. What is the point of a ping pong bat when the ball would simply go straight through? As well as the classic game everyone has played before, you can see right through the cups making it completely pointless. 

Gilbert Legrand is an artist that transfers little paintings onto everyday objects making them very quirky and different. Most of what he paints on I can't imagine doing that. I know quite a few people who would be pleased with owning a couple of his corkscrews. 

Jana Sterbak Article Response

In this article written by Jennifer McLerran about Disciplined Subjects and Docile Bodies in the work of Contemporary Artist Jana Sterbak, we look father into her work. Memento more definition reminds us of our own inevitable death and decay. A lot of Sterbaks pieces often require interaction by viewers, causing them to turn from passive reception to active production (537). Her most popular work remains the sculpture, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic. She explores this concept by using meat that literally is decaying and ever changing in the exhibit. She works with extreme notions of the feminine ideal by "the ways in which feminine subjectivity is constructed in and through the multiple discourses on the body that operate in contemporary culture" (537). She evokes fashion as one of the disciplinary forces that produce norms to which women constrain themselves to conform. Her meat dress is opposite of the usual uses of youth, slimness, and vibrant good health, Sterbak rather uses aging, death and decay, to go against the norm. Other examples that demonstrate how Sterbak has employed distinctive materials would be Remote Control I and Remote Control II. These pieces stand for the norm of feminine beauty in 1856, basically making the women very rigid and uncomfortable. She creates cages of sorts that make the women unable to physically move themselves, and are controlled by another person. The final example I will use is the Seduction Couch, a couch made of perforated metal, showing that the wielding power of seduction controls both the attraction and repulsion of the one being seduced.

Art Exhibit (3/3)- 3/1/15

On Friday the 27^th, I attended the art exhibition featuring my own teacher Eric Mullis, as well as Kelly Cox and Rachel Lambert in the Hemingway building.  This was their MFA Thesis Exhibition. Eric’s work was very interesting, huge wooden planes cut out and featured live standing people inside of them. Kelly made massive pelicans out of clay set on top of TVs and Rachel made very made different creatures out of peculiar materials. This exhibit happened to be my favorite out of the two others I have attended, maybe it is because Eric is my teacher, or because I have seen Rachel and Eric frantically working on this. A lot of people attended the opening, and were just as amazed at the gallery work as I was. After this, it made me want to explore all types of art, not just photography and ceramics, I want to do it all. And maybe one day I will get my masters.

Li Hongbo-2/24/15

Li Hongbo is an artist from China. He works primarily with thousands of white paper, glued together in a honeycomb like formation. His sculptures are made in statues of people, usually sitting on pedestals. His works are all of the world, the nearest museum holding his pieces being in New York City. I really enjoy how visually interesting his works are, almost like a slinky going down there stairs, it relates back to that. I don't understand how he makes what he makes, because it is so intense and so foreign that it doesn't comprehend. The museums that hold his pieces have workers constantly moving his sculptures, what I would do to be able to touch one of his sculptures! They seem almost like a plastic, when looking at a perfectly still sculpture they look as if they are a mold of some sort; not paper like at all. Overall, I want to see one of his pieces in the near future.

Janine Antoni- 2/22/15

Janine Antoni is an contemporary artist from the Bahamas. She attended the Sarah Lawerence College and then later on went to The Rhode Island School of Design. In class we recently came across her work. When I first saw her work, I was shocked and blown away. She uses her own body, such as her hair and eyelashes to make art. I can't even come to grips with the idea of applying mascara and brushing it up against a canvas, thousands of times to make her famous Butterfly Kisses piece is insane to me. This is one artist that I find super interesting, how she thinks of making art that way and how successful it is, its something that everyone could find interesting. While she hasn't made pieces for quite some time, most of them are quite well known. My favorite piece is Loving Care, where she dumped her hair into dye and painted with her hair. How this idea came to her I have no idea, but it is genius and wonderful. I really appreciate how unique of an artist she is, she pushes normal art, and makes it so fun to know the stories behind her work.