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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Doug Bucci: Personal Art

Doug Bucci is "one of my favorite kinds of artist" on several levels.

For one, he specializes in metals, which I love. I myself have next to no experience working in metals, but I can always admire the work of someone who has that experience and talent. He also makes art on a very personal level. His work is very self-reflective, which I can respect. (It's similar to a lot of my work, in that sense, although our end topics are completely different.)

Bucci has Type 1 diabetes, and that aspect of his life has shaped the content of his art. Some of his most notable pieces are his red blood cell sculpture and his abstracted red blood cell necklace and his (fake) emergency insulin kit.

In my opinion, Bucci has the right idea. Or at least partially. Yes, I do strongly believe that the artist is basically Emerson's Poet -- seeing the world and basically putting it to words and articulating it for the rest of the human race who are not quite so articulate. However, I do feel that art should be personal too. I've always had a soft spot for esoteric art. I think I just feel that an artist should feel connected to his work.


P.S. For some reason Blogger won't let me post pictures...

Scott McCloud on Comics

http://www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html

I watched Scott McCloud's TED Talks video on comics. More specifically, his talk was on the topic of all the subtle dichotomies of comics.

He talks about the fine balance between the absolute transparency of comics (graphic novels often tend to be cheesy or predictable -- also it is possible for one to simply flip ahead and actually see, in a second, what will happen next, also, text is used to make messages absolutely clear) and their extreme abstraction (things as subtle as style can be used to convey a message in a comic. Also, text is one of mankind's most abstract forms of expression. To us as literate people, text is extremely plain, or transparent, but visually text does not relate in the slightest to what it is communicating.)

He talks about the simultaneous blunt presentation of action in panels, and the abstract space left for our imaginations to fill in the spaces between the panels.

He covers the strange mixing of senses brought about by reading comics. It makes sound visual through the dialogues in speech bubbles and the narrative boxes and through the written sound effects. He even reflects on the fact that comics even make time visual. The layouts of comic pages create the illusion of pacing, and therefore the passage of time. All with the use of line. (And perhaps screentone or color.) Comics also create motion with their panel layouts.


This was an incredibly interesting talk for me, because comics are a facet of the art world in which I am particularly interested. It was strangely gratifying to watch this video, because McCloud addressed some of my own reasons for loving comics. I've always loved reading and creating comics because of the idea that it is possible to, in a way, create time. I have a feeling that most people forget that comics are, in a way, a kind of 4D art, along with music and film.

WARNING!



WARNING!!!! I AM OBSESSIVE!!!

GAHHFACE




We had to do a vector rendering of our scanned faces for class! I had a lot of fun with this because I finally got to use color. Oh I've missed it sooo.

Friday, October 8, 2010

MARIANNE DAGES

Marianne Dages is the owner of Huldra Press, a bookbinding and letterpress studio.

Although her aesthetic was similar to mine, and although I loved seeing her work, the most interesting thing that she talked about, in my opinion, was residencies. Her lecture was about how to start your own studio. She talked about partners and community studios, but really the residencies were, by far, the most interesting topic. She told us about a two-year residency she did where all there was to do was to work on art. All day. Every day. Maybe it's because I'm a full-time art student with a full-time life on top of that, but that idea resonated with me so strongly.

I have so much art to do , but life just will not leave me be and let me do it. I have so much to accomplish, both for school and for myself, but I don't have the space to do it. A week later I'm still tingling with the idea of being able to isolate myself in a studio for two years and just create.

Candy Depew

I think the most interesting thing that Candy DePew (our freshman lecture guest two weeks ago) said was that she thinks of herself as a designer, not as an artist. This has blurred the line between artist and designer for me. I have always felt that to be a designer was a bit more mundane than to be an artist. It be an artist is to have a vision and to be able to physically manifest that creation in a way that evokes an emotion of some kind. I feel that to be a designer is to conceptualize ways to communicate.

Whatever DePew's profession, her medium is certainly an interesting one. She claims that she works in ambiance. (Or, rather, that is one of her specialties, as we have seen her work in basically any medium one could think of.) That, in my opinion, is more art than pure design. (At least according to my definition.) She executes her spaces using specific elements to evoke a certain physical reaction/emotion from the audience/inhabitants. It's more than just designing something to look a certain way. It's manipulating the mind of the viewer. That, in my opinion, is art.