Author: Katie Skinner

Katie Skinner – art21 Leonardo Drew

I did my art21 on Leonardo Drew and I watched “Leonardo Drew in ‘Investigation’”, “Traveling & Making”, “Finding Piet Mondrian”, and a bit of “Investigation.” I really liked how he kept his childhood sketches and how he started out with comics and cartoons which I really can relate to a lot, I also really appreciated that he utilized all of the materials he had access to. I also found it interesting that he stopped himself from drawing and painting to realize his full potential in sculpture. His process is fascinating, he works on about 7 pieces at the same time and they all influence and affect each other. The way that he also aged his material by ‘cooking’ it on the roof of his building was very cool and he was more into ‘the already made’ rather than ‘found object’ style although he didn’t necessarily call it that. His different processes for ‘aging’ the materials were also very cool because he bought them all new, so the process itself also becomes part of his art in a sense too. I also appreciated how when he felt he had explored a subject matter to his satisfaction, he no longer dwelled on it and instead moved on, almost like it was closure for him. 

Katie Skinner – Project 3 Writing

I wanted to explore the conundrum that is Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon. The album itself is a masterpiece and I have always loved Pink Floyd’s music (brought up listening to them by my dad) and have been listening to them for all 21 years of my life. Despite this, I still am uncovering new things in the album and other albums that I never thought of before. These things can be anything from new notes that I never noticed before or diving deeper into the meanings behind words and sounds on the album. I am still finding new things and I believe that I will continue to do so for a long while still. To make this easier to do in the timeframe that I have, I chose to stick with the first two (although it is really just one) songs off of the album: Speak to Me and Breathe. Speak to Me is a short song, about ~40 seconds, that opens the album with a single heartbeat fading into existence. It goes on to sets up the thematic score for the rest of the album including the Doppler effect/helicopter from On the Run, the ticking clocks of Time, Clare Torry’s wailing vocals from The Great Gig in the Sky, the cash register and change from Money, and the mad man’s laugh from Brain Damage. I wanted to include these motifs too if time permitted. I wanted to represent the heartbeat as it’s something that ties us all together when we are all thrust into this world. The album is a dedication to the stresses, struggles, sorrows, joys, and pleasures of life. The words make you think while the music takes you to another place entirely (I’m not talking about the psychedelic sense although that is often closely tied to Pink Floyd, I personally steer clear). I am always trying to figure out the meanings behind the words. I wanted to represent the heartbeat, lips to create the idea of ‘speak to me’, which is followed closely by breath both physically and in the album. The surfer on top of the curl of one of the breaths is a reference to the line “Long you live, and high you fly/But only if you ride the tide/Balanced on the biggest wave/You race towards an early grave” an allusion to how one can achieve the greatest things if you put yourself out there, but it comes with a warning because in those highest highs, there’s the chance that you will burn out, crash down and it can lead to your early death. I then wanted to follow up this imagery with the combination of the iconic album art (the prism scattering light) combined with a moon that actually has a shrouded ‘dark side’. The question I am focusing on is ‘what does the dark side of the moon mean/represent in these two songs.’

Katie Skinner – artXpose

Title of Event: Trevisani Student Advised Art Acquisition
Date & Time of Event: Saturday, April 5th all day
Location of Event: Baltimore Museum of Art, Resident Artists’ Studios at Creative Alliance, Goya Contemporary
Type of event: Samek event, art acquisition, artist visits, and gallery visit

Published
Categorized as artsXpose

Katie Skinner – Judy Pfaff Writing

The most shocking thing for me was that she was wearing no ppe, which was kind of amazing, but I was nervous for her because she was welding close to her hand (with no gloves) and no eye protection at all. I like how she has such a close relationship with tools, I think a lot of her work is focused on the process. I see a lot of her emotional state influenced her art and it was a way for her to cope and come to terms with her grief while also calming her mind. I absolutely loved the complexity and clutteredness of the roots, I think it was an extremely cool (almost?) centerpiece.

Katie Skinner – Tom Sachs Writing

I found it very interesting how he and Adam Savage both talked a little about how ‘blue collared’ jobs and skills are a dying craft and I completely agree. There is much more that I want to say about that but what I mainly connected that to is that I have found that people cannot wrap their heads around ancient people being able to build and create massive or intricate crafts/structures anymore and part of that is because foundational crafts such as stoneworking, smithy, etc are no longer as common or people have little interactions with other people who can do those things. They also brought up an interesting point in that vein that I hadn’t thought of which was that people really look down on those jobs now, in part because we live in such an individualistic world. I also liked that Tom Sachs talked about how he was inspired (in the beginning) by Duchamps and his work with the ready-made. I was also fascinated with what he said about ADD because I also have ADHD and completely agree, there’s something about doing physical work like this that just calms your mind and shuts off any thoughts going a mile a minute. 

Katie Skinner – Borrow a strategy

https://www.mkono.net/1_timberraccoonenlarged.html

Title: Raccoon in a hole on timber post

Artist: Mori (Moriyuki) Kono

Material: Western red cedar

Size: 8″ x 8″ (20cm x 20cm)

Location: Japan

Mori Kono uses full logs and carves out animals from them.

Katie Skinner – Project 2 Writing

Katie Skinner

My shrine is focused on a raccoon, whose name I have yet to come up with, who is up on a raised platform that is slowly being invaded/taken over by Kudzu and English Ivy. Raccoons, in general, are very important to me because I feel like I like them the most. They are clever, yet silly, and dumb at the same time. They are often associated with chaos, and I feel like I can relate to them (at least people who know me well enough can agree). They are also just special to me because they’re cute and I also have worked on representations of them since high school, so there are certain sentimental reasons behind it too. But the main reason is that I feel as though they are, in a way, a representation of myself and simply because I love raccoons. Additionally, the Kudzu and English Ivy are an actual representation of how many of the native North American wildlife is being taken over and forced out by invasive species. The metaphor that I am primarily going for is that the vines are a representation of all negative, harmful, and stressful things that are trying to get to me and take me over, whether that be outside forces or something I caused myself. But I also want to, and not necessarily from a white guilt perspective, just a blunt and factual way, that while at the same time I might see a raccoon as a representation of myself, I acknowledge that I am in a way an invasive species too but that is not my focal point of my piece. I want to represent the raccoon by its iconic imagery, i.e. ringed tail and masked face, which might mean I’ll need to either dye part of it or find some other way of conveying that. The vines are physically reaching for him (I know I said him but I just feel like those are his vibes, it’s not really a commentary on my gender) and the leaves mimic those of the actual plant.

Katie Skinner -Project 1 writing assignment 1

My object is an old faucet or bathtub handle. It is made of metal and porcelain. Has rust around the screws and they have seized up. It also looks like it had been sheered off its stand at a rather crazy angle. My object symbolizes the old-fashioned, long-past of older fads and designs. I associate it with my home, because I have similar handles on my bathroom sink, I also am reminded that I am surrounded by things that are so much older than I am. I wanted to combine the ‘old,’ which is important to me, and nature such as building a forest of these faucet handles.