Title: Student Senior Art Exhibition, “Simulations”, by Angela Meckley
Date/Time: March 4th, 5pm
Location: Holmes 103 First Floor Gallery
Event Type: Artist Reception
Title: Student Senior Art Exhibition, “Simulations”, by Angela Meckley
Date/Time: March 4th, 5pm
Location: Holmes 103 First Floor Gallery
Event Type: Artist Reception
Title: Student Art Gala
Time/Date: 7pm, April 14th 2022
Location: Samek Campus Gallery in the ELC
Event Type: gala/reception
I looked at 3 different artists: Marela Zacarías, Aki Sasamoto, and Doreen Garner. These three female artists have a very different and very broad range of expression in their work. Zacarías’s work was associated in the artist’s mind with her own personal pregnancy and the work I watched a video about is dedicated to the expression of history of a place as well as the development of a place. Sasamoto’s work I thought was very surreal and experimental, and it appeared that she would create pieces that she could use to test herself and her capabilities.
Doreen Garner’s work had the strongest impact on me, because it was so visceral, and grounded in the dangers, history, and violence of the past. Her work surrounding the violence done on black women by a white doctor is quite difficult to look at, particularly the performance where she mimics an operation. She also integrates ideas about colonization, and the deadly effects of disease and slavery, in her work.
Links:
Zacarías:
Sasamoto:
Garner:
https://art21.org/watch/new-york-close-up/doreen-garners-invisible-man-tattoo/ https://art21.org/watch/new-york-close-up/doreen-garner-sculpts-our-trauma/
Part 3: Strategy
Beth Cavener, “Obariyon”, 2013, https://followtheblackrabbit.com/gallery/obariyon-2/#toggle-id-1
Beth Cavener is an artist I really like, and for this project I’d like to emulate the way she has incorporated a different material as part of the animal, which gives the work (which is based in Japanese myth and other aspects of culture) a magical and surreal feeling to it.
Part 4: Sketches
I’m picking the question of how certain magical stories/beings originated in human cultures.
I’m fascinated by the idea that despite differences in landscape, culture, surroundings, and native species, many people from many areas of the world have some sort of spirit, magical beast, or higher power/entity that has magical capabilities. There are a few reasons why I want to look at this question. The first, primarily, is that I have always loved the idea of magic and sorcery and creatures like dragons. There’s so much potential within these things that even today it’s possible to come up with new perspectives or ideas on these various subjects, despite them originating hundreds of years ago. I also enjoy creating fantasy scenarios in my head and writing magical fantasy stories. It’s been a part of my life for longer than I can remember, and I still love it.
There are a lot of different ways that magic appears in cultures, and what I specifically want to focus on are magical creatures. Many magical beings are gods, but there are always monsters or other creatures as well. I think I want to consider creatures like pegasi, dragons, the animal-headed gods of Egypt, Greek monsters, and perhaps some other cultures that I’m not yet familiar with, such as native American stories or those from Hinduism. I want to explore the question as if there is one specific, tangible origin point for this human tendency to create creatures to explain seemingly magical events. Were dragons in China and Europe established by the same ideas/experiences? Or were they different? Why do people even believe in magical creatures when it’s not likely that they ever have or ever will see them? There are a lot of different ways to approach this question, but I’d prefer to tackle it from a “general origin” standpoint.
Chinese Dragon, Temples, Storybooks, Greek Monster, Worshipers, magic animals, bard
Pegasus, Anubis, Horus (Falcon)
I watched videos for two different artists, Diana Al-Hadid and Katharina Grosse. When watching Al-Hadid’s videos, I was impressed by the way she made delicate structures, which seem almost too fragile to stay together, hang off the ground. The liquid-like forms in her work are really fascinating to me. She also mentioned that she isn’t attempting to explain something to the viewer with her work, rather that she is creating something she later finds interesting that began as an idea that didn’t interest her.
Grosse’s work is very abstract sculptural forms with bright colors. In the videos I watched, she indicates that she doesn’t specifically identify as a sculptor or a painter, because she feels the fusion of the two elements is the only way her work can actually exist in the world. I think this is a great, open-minded approach to art, in that it keeps you from restricting yourself in one way or another by giving yourself a specific title.
Part 1
For this project, I want to do a shrine for water. Water, both fresh and salt, has shaped my life. I love rain and snow, and watching streams. My family, due to our original home in Rhode Island, as well as our life on my family’s boat, were influential to the places I’ve been, the games and things I did as a child,and in general part of my relationship to animals–many of my favorite animals live in or near water.
I want to capture the dual identities of water–the fresh and salt–and their abilities of creation and destruction. My current idea would be a divided basin, each half representing the different forms of water, and how they are shared and differ. I’d love to integrate actual water in the work somehow, both fresh and salt. One image that keeps coming to me is of rain, and also of waves.
I think this work is a mix of my own desires, and desire to keep and honor my memories involving water. However, I think the shrine will also help remind me, and perhaps others, that water has immense power that is neither fully gentle nor fully aggressive, and not completely destructive as it is fundamental to life.
Part 2: images (from:https://creativecommons.org/)
Part 3: Borrowed Strategy
For my work, I want to pull from the extremely aquatic feel of Yellin’s work, as well as the high level of complexity.