Siena VI

In Photo we're working on a double exposure project. After hearing horror stories about multiple enlarger monsters, I went into the darkroom absolutely dreading the time-consuming hell that lay ahead. Originally, I thought I would try to imitate photoshop by using methods that inspired photoshop, but that just would have taken too long. However, fear not, because once I regrouped and decided to tackle the assignment differently I ended up with some unexpected and abstract results that I ended up liking a lot. Jana had recommended trying to incorporate double exposure with some of the stuff I've been working on in theme sequence, which sounded like a terrible idea at first. But now that I actually like double exposure I'm working in the direction. I think it might work interestingly to overlap the erratic line quality that I'm drawn to. Today I took pictures with Leah "embodying the gesture" of the woman with fruit in SMN. We'll see what happens...

I think in general I am a pretty stubborn, capricious, and frugal person. A lot of times I end up working with materials because I didn't want to buy expensive ones. It certainly isn't always easier (last Wednesday I carried an old bicycle w/o wheels to studio from the other side of the Arno), but it is usually more of an adventure. I can bounce ideas off of the inanimate refuse that I accumulate instead of starting with a blank canvas. I'm drawn to the push and pull of working with something that already has connotations (sort of like being drawn to people with a lot of baggage, I suppose). I think it definitely makes me more alert and observant since I'm pretty much constantly on the prowl (referring to discarded objects, not people).

I'm really only interested in the handles and spider leg parts of umbrellas. This weekend I've been playing with posing the handles in different gestures. The curved ones really look like hands to me (partly because of growing up with monkeys in a barrel, I daresay), so I'm keeping  interpersonal relationships in mind as I tinker. Two days ago I hammered the screen from Sylva's tv head and then posed a handle to look like it punched the screen, but today I looked at it again and replaced the wooden handle with a bent metal umbrella fret (staff?? I guess I should know the terms that apply to my materials) that sort of looks like its growing out of the broken screen. The latter seems much more hopeful.

Leah's week six

On Thursday I talked to Regan, and she was suggesting a variety of directions I could go for Theme Sequence. I loved her suggestions, particularly honoring saints by doing simple actions and photographing me doing those things. For example, honoring St. Francis by feeding pigeons near Santa Croce. Such a simple thing, but really beautiful. I researched saints for hours this past weekend-- Anna and I, I think, were the only people who didn't go somewhere for Carnival. I love learning about the saints, and retelling their stories too. They are so weird and wonderful and inspirational. However, many saints we don't know very much about, we only have records that they were martyrs, and maybe how they died. Because it's not so simple to, cut off my breasts, lets say, to honor St. Agatha, I was kind of having trouble thinking of ways that I could still do this project. I definitely haven't given up on it, but I just need more time to think about it.

I also have been trying to capture the beauty in everyday things that people might not notice. I love the action of taking a photo of something that isn't grand, because it makes people look at whatever I am photographing in a different way. Sometimes they will pause and look, even whip out their own camera and take the picture.

Several of the photos in my folder this week are of simple things like that. Particularly different lights.

I'm still collecting bits of silver, gold and champagne colored foil I find on the ground, but I now have become a connoisseur of this, and almost exclusively pick up the foil from cigarette packages.

I have noticed that I'm a collector. I suppose I knew this to some extent before, but I make collections without even being conscious of it. I've started collecting the teabags that I use, and hanging them up. I also save the little packages they come in, and I'm writing love notes to my mother and putting them in each one, each time I use a teabag.

I've also notice that I love repetition. I always have butter and plum jam on my bread in the morning. I will listen to the same music artist for days in a row (currently Kina Grannis--songza.com helps support this addiction). Maybe this love of repetition helps make me a good Catholic. :)

I think I'll end with that, because I have so many photos this week. Sorry. You can flip through them really fast, I don't mind.

ps. I'm still obsessed with oranges.

Chapter 6: In which the universe condenses slightly.

Things are finally coming together, and coming to a head. As the middle of semester narrows to it's bottle neck, it seems only right that the blog posts come more frequently. Mostly, I wanted to finalize some ideas on here and compile some images of work related to mine. With the dreams, my final piece for theme sequence will be six photographs and a video piece.

First Mary Kelly. You might remember her work called "Post-Partum Document" (1973-9) in which she essentially exhibited her son’s dirty diapers. (It was "intended as a sociological study of the mother-child relationship" according to Kelly.) More recently, she exhibited at Documenta XII, an installation which included a house called Love Songs. She did a lot of work with feminism and activism. She studied in Florence, but moved to London when she realized she was more interested in contemporary art. B.T. Dubs, Mary Kelly was also the name of one of the prostitutes brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper, so be careful if you want to do an image search for more of her stuff. Try adding documenta to see her installation there.
Second, Danika Dakic, also at Documenta 12. This video of El Dorado takes the concept of guided tour to a new level. She made films in a wallpaper museum in Kassel. Talk about a sweet dreamscape. Anyway, she's actually working with ideas about immigration, El Dorado being that utopian dream or unreachable paradise, a destination. She films teenagers, "unaccompanied minor immigrants," telling their stories, running, dancing, etc. in front of the massive wallpaper backdrops. Pretty cool.

The next guy, Romuald Hazoumé, has this piece called "Dream," which is a boat made of black oil cans in front of a beach backdrop. Documenta says "His material collage works are based on disposed of items and everyday objects, which he often uses for criticising the European cross-culture awareness and the consequences of modernity."

The last artist, Ellen Gallagher relates more to my drawing project, in which I'm drawing mostly with a knife, juxtaposing figures from masterworks with commercial publications, advertisements, product packaging. I'm going back in to work into the material in various ways, which Jana noticed was a lot like some of Gallagher's work in DeLuxe. (Which was a whole series.) She said, “I take archival material from original black photo magazines and reactivate it through a series of transformations using plasticine, coconut oil, etching, paint, ink, toy eyeballs, and crystals. These fugitive characters reoccur throughout the grid both as themselves and other worldy presences. Each repetition is an inauguration of the character into an altered state.” She works with a grid, which is something I'm considering, although most of my pieces are not uniform.

K. Va bene.

no regret but apprecaition-Soo

There are so many things that are inconvenient about living in Italy; cold room, no heater, no internet access at home, thieves(I have been pick-pocketed last night but thank god! someone found my wallet and now I have it..) and etc. But what I realized, all of a sudden, over this weekend in Venice, sitting in the dock near the ferry port, is that I do not regret a bit about coming here to Italy because these moments I have in Italy are shaping me to become a purer thinker and creator. To be honest, my life has never been so much engaged in art before. Of course, I always liked making art whenever I did and I was more emotionally attuned than other people around but was never been oriented around the world of art.
I was raised in Korea where the educational system confine you to only three parts of the world if you are a student: school, home, and an institution(where they preview and review the subjects that the students are supposedly learning at school already). I was a very artistically inclined kid until I went to middle school and had to quit all other activities except studying (having to study 12 subjects, a couple of which are not so necessarily, since during the Japanese colonization, they intentionally implanted an educational system that is not designed to utilize the time effectively and Korean government had never changed it ever since). I had to quit playing Violin which I played for 6 years and had to stop any sports activities since I had to use all my day time and enormous amount of money to go to institutions so that I'll get good enough grades to go to college. My sense of seeing and feeling things in forms of art had been dulled and neglected ever since.
It was only after the sophomore year in high school that I found my interest and connection to art back to my life. I was lucky enough to have a family, who could financially support me for a better education in the states. In 2003, I flew over to this country of liberal spirits, with a blessed education system, in which you can study, and participate in other after-school activities and still have time to go watch a movie over the weekend and make art...and ever since I came to the states to study, the art mode of looking at the world has had its rebirth inside me.
Art still was still a very juvenile and crude part of me, but coming to Italy and being exposed to the overflowing sense of living art has definitely overgrown my mind to think and learn more about it. Also, not having sufficient level of technology has led me to detach myself from internet which unknowingly became such big part of my life and appreciate abundant natural sources that we waste so easily in the states. I feel like this mode of thinking in a primal way to connect to things around me would definitely help me focus my sense in creating art than minding what ppl write on my facebook wall or who's dating who sort of business.
Carnival and seeing ppl in costumes were all great, but above all the most valuable I gained from this trip to Venice is my realization that I should appreciate that I was given an option to come to Italy whose mother nature offers me so much to feel, observe, and learn.

the last note to Venice- Ci vediamo, Venezia :)

Here is the look into my amazing trip to Venezia and others.
* ps. the previous photos are on the same page because I could not make more than three sets on Flickr

Leah's fotos week five

Hi, sorry these weren't posted before today. Technical difficulties.

Chapter 5: In which the channel is changed.

I feel a little as if I'm still floating, project wise. Other people are standing on their property with blueprints, and only the building left to do, and I'm still at sea. But it's a lovely view and at least I know what ocean I'm in. I'm still working in Theme Sequence with this dream world, using a TV head as symbol for my dream self, and also exploring the way that modern media influences my dreamscapes, sort of the cinematography of dreams. Last night I dreamed I was travelling to Spain again (this is the third dream about it) but most of the onscreen (on eyelid?) images were just me shaving my legs. Dreams are like that. But how does one capture that "knowing", the way that a face might look like your neighbor, but it's actually your English teacher, and you simply know? I'm mostly working with the blending, the crazy way that you're talking to your best friend and it turns out it's your mom, or perhaps becomes your mom, but you're not sure when. I'm working a bit in videography, but I think my more finished work will be in photgraphy, overlaying negatives and using multiple enlargers to make composite prints. I just have to go through all the playing of video and the action to have that motion for my images and keep them from becoming stagnant or real. I want them to retain the inclarity and morphability of dreams. I'd like to work in the same way with masterprints, but I'm also still drawn to the idea of recreating in some form an altarpiece, particularly one with St. Francis. I've been working in collage with the basic gesture of a St. Francis altarpiece by Stefano di Giovanni, known as Sassetta, recreating the silhoutte of a figure in a habit with outstretched arms, but with modern lighting. I've actually been working with images from a lighting company's catalogue. I have some images from skyscrapers that begin to look like stained glass which I like a lot. I'm going to work on some sketches of the collages and see where that takes me, but I may be doing more drawing in relation to setting up the photos as I mix them up. I'm doing the initial tast of taking the photographs now, composing them on the negative, but plan to start doing more work in the darkroom this week.

It's been interesting seeing the way people react to TV Head. A lot of people are really wild about it, they'll grin and grab their friends and point and ask me in Italian if they can change the channel. I'm going to have to develop some shtick where I do famous bits of Italian cinema then jerk my head and switch to something else as they point their invisible remotes at me, clicking furiously. (They really do this. All the time!) Right before we got on the train, we were walking through a festival in San Benedetto near a parade and I was wearing the TV and even though everyone else was costumed, I still stood out a great deal. Rather than freaking out about the monks and nuns, or the men in lace bodices and fishnets, the attention went to me.
We also went to festivals in Ascoli Piceno and Offida. Some were more family-friendly than others. (Don't believe them when they tell you Italians never get drunk.)

I really enjoyed meeting Siena's family. Tuo cugino Gionata mi ha detto che io parlo buono italiano. This was, of course, an enormous lie, but I think it was one of the most useful things anyone's said to me, because the idea of someone thinking I was good at Italian was so desirable that I have a renewed vigor for learning the language. There can be great wisdom in calling things that are not as though they are. I also found out that for me, learning is much easier in writing. Gionata's mother, Rita gave me some Italian fairytale which are currently my most highly prized possesion. They're just familiar enough to give me some context for words I don't know and keep me interested rather than bewildered. I think once I finish these (memorize these?) I'll buy another book in Italian, something more challenging. But not too challenging, Leah has Harry Potter and it seems to be in such dynamic language that it's breaking all the rules we're still struggling to learn.

On the Regionale train from Faenza to Firenze, a woman from Russia who had taken two wrong trains in an attempt to go to Rome asked us for help and we tried to sort her out, communicating with some station employees in Italian (she spoke some English but no Italian) but it didn't seem like there would be a train going to Rome that night. I hope she got where she was going, coming from Russia with only a small handbag.

Monfoo's "Celebration of a Dream!"

In which Maramac goes to Carnivale, and nearly catches hypothermia.

At this point, coming up with a project in which I have genuine interest is about as easy as flying a spaceship. I get the impression that the majority of people have gotten the hang of it, hitting the atmosphere at the right angle to pull off a landing. I'm the guy who got his rocket in at the wrong angle and is burning to a crisp in the hemisphere. Oh, shit.

Pessimism aside, the weekend in Venice has given me a great deal to digest, both gastronomically and mentally. Though I feel like the our experience in Venice has been defined by the eternal search for affordable food, I'm also at a loss of words to describe the experiences along the way to our overpriced pastas. I feel like I'm living in a black-and-white film right now, so colorful were the Venetian streets and people. The contrast of a 3-foot wide "street" to the enormous space of Piazza San Marco (the only landmark anybody was capable of finding, because Venetian streets defy map-reading abilities). The toddlers dressed up as pandas and ducklings, passed out in strollers by the day's end. The "Free Willy" music (as Monica dubbed it) that boomed out over Piazza Roma and through the streets. The smell of seaweed and the sound of shifting water. The constant sound of glass bottles being kicked through the streets, over voices in a dozen languages.

And yes, despite the overwhelming stimuli that crowded all five senses, I still feel as if I'm coming up a bit short in class. After meeting with Jana, I realized that I'd been pushing myself in directions contrary to my artistic interests, and that going with what I'm comfortable with is no bad thing. I think I'm going to continue playing with making gestural ink paintings of the different Annunciations—in addition to the idea of gesture and human interaction in this subject matter, I also got interested in the contrast between the stiffness of early painting and the movement in a quick ink wash. What I'm doing, in the most general sense is taking an ornate painting, wrought with detail and weeks of labor, and reducing (or elevating?) it to a gestural rendition of dark/light, created in minutes on a flimsy piece of paper. 

As midterms draw even nearer, I hope that sticking to this idea and exploring its potential will yield some sort of result before I find my head on the chopper. Hopefully it won't degenerate into a frantic search for "something, anything," because it freaking sucks to be committed to an art project you're not actually interested in. Fingers crossed....

....and photos uploaded.

ps. In an effort to relate the title of the blogpost to the actual blogpost, I will mention that wearing a backless dress and light jacket in February, in a city on the ocean, is Bad News Bears.

Siena V

It's amazing to me how monkey-hear monkey-say lingual learning is. At least by immersion. I am constantly imagining myself as a transmorphic sponge, keen on absorbing as much of my audio surroundings as possible. I'm thinking of it as being auditorially observant in a similar way to how I've been practicing being visually observant with Drawing class, ecc.

In terms of heightening my observation acumen, Photography is proving to be a worthwhile endeavor. Prepare yourself for an over-the-top simile. You might actually want to be sitting down for this.

Somewhere in the tortuous (not torturous) innerworkings of my mind I've started linking photography to learning a new language. Both involve capturing a "phrase" (visual or auditory) and then recreating it later (photo print or spoken sentence). I've actually been trying "double exposure" with language more than with photography, where I try to layer phrases or apply disparate grammatical rules that I don't quite understand. That way I sound less like a parrot (and as it turns out, more like a parrot with hiccups who's had too much to drink and can't find his shoes). I have much less fear of vulnerability when it comes to learning a new language. I tend to be more outgoing than in my native language. What do I have to lose? I get much more instantaneous feedbak with language, whereas photo takes a darkroom and the whole shebang. When trying to "develop" what I've heard several things come into play such as shutterspeed and aperture size used, filter, exposure time, ecc. On the language hand, you have to pay attention to pronunciation, emphasis on certain syllables, supplementary hand gestures and the appropriate time to plug in said phrase.

One of my favorite parts of speaking my non native language is that the most banal and painfully obvious observations suddenly become cute an almost validate international publication. Per esempio, we were driving around very windy country roads this weekend. L'autista Gionata ha detto "qui' ci sono le strade ocn tante curve." Later on, we walked by a playground cannopied by twisty trees and I said "anche questi alberi hanno tante curve!" Mentre redendo, lui ha detto "devi essere programmatrice di computer perche' trovi le somiglianze fra le cose diverse." Ecco qua' il piu' bello complimento della vita mia. :)

I understand that potential negative framing of traveling so often, but it gives me a chance to really contemplate what I'm into. Some of those train rides are looooong. I keep finding myself drawn to language and etomology, but that rarely shows up in my actual creations. I do enjoy tinkering with materials and just seeing what I come up with, but sometimes I would like to try to have more specific intentions. I've been reading on Xu Bing's website and looking at images. These are some quotes I picked out:

"My viewpoint is that wherever you live, you will face that place’s problems. If you have problems then you have art. Your plight and your problems are actually the source of your artistic creation."

"As long as you are a true artist every field that you are engaged in outside of art circles—living and working—will produce treasure, which sooner or later will be used in the creation of your art."

One of my favorite pieces is the Magic Carpet from 2006.

I find words very tranquil and pleasing. Writing letters is one of my favorite things to do. I don't actually write "poetry," but I simply try to appreciate words in order to conteract the daily drone of taking them for granted as mere utilitarian gears.

* * *

After a whirlwind weekend navigating the confetti-doused canals and side alleys of Venezia, I am nothing less than completely exhausted… but inspired.

This past week in Theme Sequence, I’ve started to realize the glittering, glowing, and twinkling qualities of light that always catch my eye could probably transition into the materials I use to create my work. Among other things, this somehow has led me to an irrational urge to cover one of the those large, cobalt blue recycle bins (the ones that look like giant space pods and practically are as tall as I am) completely in thick, crusty silver glitter… can you imagine the way it would look when the sun just hit it? Or how different little pieces would pop and it would shimmer and twinkle as you walked down the street toward it? I’m finding myself really drawn to these “low,” whimsical, childlike, or discarded items (like anything from confetti and silly string to even cigarette butts strewn throughout the streets) and maybe putting them in a new context, where that secret feeling of giddy joy I see when I come across them interacts with the public in a new way. I like that these materials are simple and can be transformed; that they are celebratory and childlike in a way that can take you back to that carefree innocence you owned when you looked at the world unweighted, taking everything in with those big, sparkly eyes. Technically, all this stuff is trash… or it’s ordinary; it doesn’t enter our repertoire as artistic or beautiful or precious… but I kinda think it is.

In correlation with my concept of gifts or giving, I’m realizing why I’m really drawn to store displays, pasticceria cases, etc. – it’s the idea of presentation, of taking the time to arrange and present something beautiful to someone else. I’m seeing this concept of gift entering my work as a way of presenting – artfully planned and arranged. I’m still in love with the concept of some great emotion propelling the gift giving (because it’s such a beautiful thing to give freely to someone else), but I feel the presentation of this “gift” is just as important. Whether it be as literal as gift-wrapping and distributing a small map to a location of something beautiful, found or created, or if I slip maps into the little crevices of Florence – at ATMs, on a café table, etc. for those paying enough attention to find… I’m not sure. I have another idea that I’m really excited about, but I’m currently at a loss for finding materials; a little more planning is involved… but, if all goes according to plan, I feel as if the whole process of the work could be really something wonderful. And the presentation aspect is much stronger and much more integral (maybe more literal?) to this endeavor than with this idea of glittering of ordinary objects. Maybe the gift there is even just my intention behind it, although that goes unseen. It’s what I’m glittering and for whom… but I don’t know if a formal presentation of the item in necessary. The work I’ve done already has been placed strategically, so its intended recipient(s) will come across it in their daily or weekly trajectory… it’s just a matter of when. I don’t want them to be “invited” or given a map to the location; I want them to be going about his or her life and then stumble upon the object and experience that sweet serendipity. However, really, the intended recipient(s) don’t ever need to find it; I’ll never know if they will, unless I happen to be there when it happens. For me, it’s more about the feeling behind the action of creating the work, and I know someone –by many someones – who will interact with and “receive” the experience of it as an anonymous gift as well will see it.

for more... * * * 

Erin

in which grace is obsessed as ever...

Uffa. Venice overload.

Digesting all the images I took from Carnivale weekend has taken quite some time, but guess what? I was surprisingly predictable in the pictures that I took: holes in walls, confetti, shrine-like things. Which is exactly the direction my now combined Drawing/Theme Sequence project has gone.

Theme Sequence-wise, I'm following my bizarre urge to fill the holes in the walls in Florence with...things. What things, you ask? Why, 1 Euro/99 cent store things, of course! I've amassed enough Euro store "supplies" by now to make lame and/or awesome secret santa gifts for half the city. Okay, that's probably an exaggeration. But the three overflowing grocery bags that I carry to and from studio are no joke. Someone needs to take a picture of me with all my stuff - I think I probably look like a crazy trash lady.

For Drawing, the the "masterwork" I'm working with is the idea/form of the traditional shrine/altar as we've seen in the churches and old buildings here. I'm also trying to think about quality of line as it applies to an installation - thin thread versus rough twine, textured confetti sewn together versus smooth plastic straws....And I may also do drawings of the holes before/after or of the objects I'm putting in the holes themselves.

And I'm thinking about incorporating this into Drawing Perspectives somehow...? Maybe the things I put into the holes will be attached to the walls by little flaps like in a tunnel book...or maybe my tunnel book will mimic the space of a hole in the wall.

I've already started the madness. Click here and here for pictures of intervention #1.

See the rest here.

-Grace

a felicitous weekend in venezia- the fifth one

Over the weekend, I ate an apple in its entirety, Jorie-style, everything from the skin to the core, except for the stem. Afterwards, I decided that this was obscure but bizarre enough to blog about. So yeah, I ate an apple this weekend.

I guess I did other things too. Like many of my colleagues, I went to Venezia to see the famed Carnavale, which was, needless to say, incredible. Incredible in the way that it cannot be believed. The costumes, the city, the energy... how someone can throw a fistful of confetti in my face and get away with it (joke). But really, it was amazing. A feast for the senses.

As my weekend consisted mainly of walking aimlessly through the Venetian geography, I did not get very much done with my projects. However, with the long train ride, as we sped by the serene Tuscan countryside, telephone lines whipping past like written scribbles, there was much time to contemplatively meditate upon my project. While I did not originally intend to, I will be combining my theme-sequence and my drawing projects together. The Doors of Paradise is my masterwork, and I will be photocopy-transferring the images onto an *almost* life-size piece of fabric, which I will then draw over and wrap myself, in some shape, way, or form, which I will have to decide on, I am keeping the exploration I've been doing in Jana's class in my mind, dealing with themes of emptiness and this external skin that we can wrap around and transform, s well as an inquiry of the nature of wrapping as an act of hiding, protection, or trapping. This piece will be more personal than the little experiments I've been doing in the last two weeks (reference: the package. Yup. That was it. Just that brown little thing), and I would like it to reflect my own state of being, looking out from the inside, somehow separated or removed. 

I've also been thinking about the Baptistery doors themselves and how they relate to me (=mind-mapping!!) I thought about how doors usually represent some sort of portal, a connection between two stages, an entry into grown, a transition. Also the doors were so revolutionary with the development of the one-point perspective, and marked the beginning of the Renaissance. I feel that I am also at a door of sorts, at a point of transition, slowly growing up and becoming a real, functioning person... or something like that.

Si! 

PS. Venice

PPS. Packages

PPPS. Work Progress

// Laura Javier // 05

I think I'm in the execution phase of my projects at this point. (Read: there aren't enough hours in a day.) I have everything planned -- or I think I do... things always end up working out differently -- and now I just need to crunch it all out.

Drawing project
I'm going to make an undisclosed number of photocopies of Ingres' painting Ambassadors to Achilles, fold them into paper sailboats, write draw text excerpts from the corresponding Iliadic passage on the sails' interiors and float them down the Arno (after which they would ideally be retrieved and I would remain un-fined...)

Theme Sequence project
I've settled on using a tripod to take a series of black and white stills that play in a sort of stop-motion animation. Now I need to take all the shots, get the pacing right, etc, etc.

Re: Venice... I would like to revise my very first assessment of Florence. 

But there were boats and bridges galore, and even an umbrella ball for Siena.

--- - - - - - flickr - - - - - ---

theme sequence

obligatory tourist

past work

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La Distrutta Vivian vorrei sapere: Dove che LA MENTA?!?! Perche non che in il mio stomaco, o in la cona!

To say it in the words of Vincenzo: O Madonna! Che stress! Sono distrutta! Talk about a settimana pazza… I don’t even know where to begin!

An update, I guess: I’ve decided that my theme sequence project and drawing project are going to be one and the same – the PBS style “edu-tainment” (as Regan said) video of my family as though we were like the Medici. After talking to Regan Tuesday, I was advised to go directly to the Uffizi and purchase the best Medici portraiture book I could find… which wasn’t as easy of a feat as I thought it was going to be… there wasn’t much to choose from… either an English book on the (not so handsome) Medici dukes, or a pretty awesome Italian book on portraits “of those in power,” I went with the Italian; and, although my wallet is a little lighter it was definitely worth it in the end, after having spoken with Jana… who thought that I should use scans of the actual images from the book itself to tell the story… Regan’s original idea was for me to use the book as a reference to draw individual portraits of my family members in a “pre-final-painting” style sketch; or even work with under layer tonal paintings of an “unfinished” painting of my family.

… all this aside, I’m sortakinda…confused as to how to balance all the different input I’m getting. My original idea of how this project would develop keeps changing as I speak to different people, and try to work out all the kinks. Not to mention that taking on this project isn’t easy, in the more personal sense. The narration aspect seems to consume my thoughts.., I keep randomly narrating the events in my life in different ways, then thinking “no no that’s too intense,” “no, that’s just plain mean,” “ha. hahahaha.,” “wow. coorrrnnnyyy”. It’s just that I realize the story is the driving fact aside from the visual… and I just need to do it justice, I guess.

I story-boarded out all the main events, and how I want the sequence to be, where I should include interviews… so now its just doing it. Getting it right. Bleh! I think too much. I should just trust my gut impulses; they are what made the restoration video a success, anyway.

On a side note, or maybe not so much; considering the masked-reality theme I’ve got going here (har har)... I went to Carnevale this weekend (woop! just like all the rest of us), and I’m just going to put this out there: I really didn’t like Venice the last time I went in the summer of ‘06… I just wanted to die: I was over-heated, sweaty, no AC, and “soo many tourists.” God was I an idiot, so many tourists?! No. Today, I was moved through the streets by the crowds. I had no say in the matter. Tourists aside, Venice parte due for me was extremely more pleasant than my first go. Maybe it was because I was with friends, or more likely … hello, the costumes?! Totally up my ally. O Madonna! LOVED IT! The Maschere! I wanted to take one home!.. I wanted to make one, I wanted to be one… It would have been a frighten sight if anyone would have put an ample amount of tulle and glitter in front of me. I got a potted plant Maschera to hug me!!!! Yeah, so.. super awesome.

Oddio! … back to narrating my life.


- Vivian (all photos)

megan&shadows.

Frustration is quickly becoming my best friend (with sleep-deprivation coming in at a close second). I don't know what it was but I was having serious issues trying to find inspiration and ideas... and sticking to them. It's even more frustrating because I feel like in Florence, of all places, I should not have this problem. It just seems to grow and grow. I figured if I just keep doing and making things, something will come to me but I'm starting to feel the time crunch of midterms and I don't know if that's helping or hurting. However some new ideas have evolved out of my old ones after lots of brainstorming and image searching in attempts to stimulate inspiration. So I'm hoping that's a sign that I'm out of this funk.

As much as I loved the maps, I kept feeling like I was hitting a dead end (which is incidently also how I felt trying to navigate Venice this weekend.) Every idea I had seemed trite or overdone. Instead, I decided to go on what I liked about them aesthetically. After talking to Regan, I've realized that I'm really attracted to line. I thought the cutouts were a great way to emphasize that detail in a simple, elegant way.

So with all this swimming around in my head, I was still having trouble figuring out where to take it so I made a list of qualities/ideas that interest me:

1. presence vs. absence (and positive vs. negative)

2. bringing art unexpectedly into daily life

3. temporality

Somehow (in a bizarro Google-y/list/mindmap hybrid) this brought me to shadows. I'm currently playing with the idea of projecting shadows on walls using cutouts. I say play because I'm still wrestling with size, placement, materials, subject matter, and timing. I like the idea of them only being there at certain times of the day to be randomly stumbled upon. I'm also considering whether or not I want to combine it with my Sketchbook project. I know that I definitely have some ideas on integrating shadows and cutouts into my tunnel book for Drawing Perspectives.

(Photos in title).

hg's 5th post

    First of all, Venice was gorgeous and wonderful. Even though at home I'm not surrounded by any body of water besides the Ohio River, I felt very at ease and relieved to be on the Grand Canal. The way the light was hitting the waves and the boats were all cruising by put me at ease. I was a little stumped for my next move last week, but I think stepping away from everything for a few days helped me get back on track. I did a lot of thinking and some drawing during the 6 hrs of traveling by train, and I finally have a solid idea.
    I want to combine theme sequence and drawing to make a more personal and sentimental piece of artwork. Like I said before, I had this dream about buttons--so I’ve decided to roll with it. Regan noticed my attraction to round shapes, and now that I’ve become aware of this, I’ve realize how true it is. I picked up some post cards at the Peggy Guggenheim on Saturday, only afterward noticing that they were rounded compositions (side note: I fell down the stairs on my way out of the gift shop). Peggy’s collection gave me some ideas for future techniques I want to experiment with such as using collaged paper and paint, or making a wire wall sculpture. There was also this great painting that looked like an explosion of paint straight out of the tube. So many artists just load the paint on the canvas, so I think I need to get more bold with that in the future. Another source that was useful to me was the Unmonumental book Jana brought to class Tuesday. It allowed me to see other found work and realize the possibilities with working on or with found items.
    Going back to my project: From this round/button theme grew an idea of putting scaled down drawings into the buttons. The sentimental aspect will come from the personal images I include of people from my own life in relation to the master works of the past. When I was walking around Florence on Thursday night I also found a hubcap that I wanted to use for something, so now I thought about making my piece interactive. I want to build a vanity out of collected trash and let people put on all the jewelry or clothing I make while sitting in front of a mirror. I also want to gather other students’ reactions to the pairs. I think this has really excited me because it has suddenly become more personal. Thinking of people in my life that demonstrate similar qualities or ideals as those in the master works allowed me to think about those who have left impressions on me. This is allowing me to truly transform mere buttons from Piazza Ciompi into jewelry of sentimental value.
    On a different note, I was so fascinated with all the elaborate costumes I saw this weekend. The way they sparkled in the sun and slowly waltzed through the sea of people was mesmerizing. It is weird that it eventually became normal to see a clown, a mouse, and a drag queen sitting outside for lunch together (I caught that on my b&w cam for photo class). I bought a mask and made a trip to Murano to buy my mom some small glass figurines. For some reason the prisons in Doge’s Palace were also one of my favorite things to see. I am intrigued with the stories that lie behind places and objects. I try to imagine what they may have been used for or what kinds of people were wondering the halls or pathways when the facilities were actually being used.

To end: if u have not tried a Fritelle yet, u have not truly experienced the goodness Carnevale has to offer!

Holly

Pictures (I included some from Siena too)

Monica MC Runs Away from Vicious Dogs

This weekend was really a fascinating experience and I'm glad I got to do a little traveling. I tend to get stuck in a routine and not think about taking a traveling break every once in awhile, so the trip to Venice was a nice change of pace. And boy did I get to see some awesome costumes! I've always been fascinated with mask-making, and the elaborate costumes even gave me some ideas for the marionettes I am making for Theme Sequence.
Even though Venice was an amazing and beautiful place to spend the weekend, I really enjoyed exploring my theme (city versus country life) in Tessera, a more remote suburb of Venice where our hostel was. I actually spent the whole first night with friends exploring Tessera and taking pictures of the beautiful fields that surrounded us. And much to my delight, as soon as the gate to our hostel opened, we were greeted by a rustic front yard complete with chickens (funny how my theme seems to pop up in one way or another when I least expect it). I noticed that, although people in Venice were cordial, the people in Tessera actually went out of their way to help us. When we missed our bus stop, the bus driver helped us find our way to the hostel. When we were still lost, a man driving a truck on the nearby street actually pulled over and ran to a cafe for us to find directions. Staying in a hostel was a little more like staying with my grandmother; we were expected to get up at a certain time to eat breakfast, keep our room clean, etc. But in a way it felt a lot more like being involved in a loose family of travelers rather than just one guest in a colossal Best Western or other chain hotel. Though getting confronted by a vicious farm dog was maybe one of the downsides of being out of the city.
Under my picture section for this week I have some shots from my new Little Lamb book, along with a tattoo design of Donatello's St. John the Evangelist that I hope to be "tattooing" on one lucky victim soon (that project is for Sketchbook class). The marionettes I am constructing will go along with my Little Lamb story, and hopefully I'll have a puppet show up and running soon.
Until next Sunday!
Monica McClain

Alexandria's 5th post

Well, this was a pretty difficult week, it was a little stressful between classes and traveling and being in this position where I have to find a direction for my projects and start actually realizing them. I think now that the two projects will be in some way combined either through the theme or actually in the final work, not sure.

I still don't feel like this is narrowed down enough yet but after drawing class, I think i am going to focus on classic gestures of hands/arms in masterwork paintings that show the theme of attachment but in a more subtle way, like love, compassion, caring, kindness, delicacy and also the idea of how attachment transcends space/distance, time, and material things. And also the interaction and connection between the two things/people attached. In the first few weeks I remember taking note of all the madonna and child paintings and scultpures around florence in churches and museums and maybe this is why it caught my attention then and is coming back. I'm not looking at them through a religious lens or even exclusive to mother and children but also a father or family connections in general, probably because I think i am experiencing a case of separation anxiety from my family and the normal, comfortable routine of home. Regan also brought up an interesting thought about how parents and their children, even when they are older, still think of each other in those roles father/mother and son/daughter, its just something that doesn't leave and we don't let go of.

I really want to keep the feeling of the dolls I made in class last Tuesday, but I also think i could expand on them and incorporate the masterworks for drawing - so potentially i could some form of two sets of dolls but i still need to work out the ideas from some really quick sketches and notes. I feel like I've been thinking about my project a lot without really trying so I think that is a good thing and I am starting to become more connected to my work. I also want to draw the dolls and see if they could be part of a larger body of work or stand alone. My original line of thought for the masterwork project was towards paper dolls of figures from masterworks but after talking to Regan, i think my attachment ideas will be incorporated instead of having a separate project from theme sequence with the only thing in common the basic "doll" idea. I still may try to follow the paper dolls a little and see if it works out - maybe instead of "attaching" clothes as with traditional paper dolls but somthing they are "missing" or "need." I also tried out the making of a ground from text/handwriting and because i feel like my mind and thoughts are overloaded it was actually helpful and created an interesting drawing/ground with the ideas I've been focusing on incorporated but they are hidden beneath layers of words and thoughts.

My pictures are a little sparse, but there are a few masterwork hads that caught my attention, a couple drawings/notes from sketchbook and my dolls. (maybe even a Venice picture or two)

Regan gave me a book to look through on tuesday and there were a few images that I really liked, but i didn't have time to photocopy them so I found a few online but I will copy the others before tuesday.

Noah, somewhere in venice..

Hi all,
I'm back from venice exhausted and a little bit energized at the same time. I've learned that despite our best efforts, no americans could ever hope to make as much of a disgusting mess of themselves as the Venitians do for carnival. I've eaten pastries in numbers that i could never have anticipated. I've seen a city that makes Firenze seem almost sensical and easy to navigate and after all was seen and done i managed, though not without some stressful train moments, to return in one piece. va bene.
One of the things that i have consistently noticed in florence is the contrast between the new and the old, particularly with graffiti and advertising sharing visual space with ancient buildings, art and ornamentation. This tense realationship was even more pronounced in Venice. Even more than Florence, that city has completely resisted any kind of modernization which makes it shocking, but a little bit welcome, when you turn a corner in a little cobble stone street and find a solid wall of tags. I thought that this was actually a saving grace in that it reminded you that this is actually (at least to some extent) a real city and not just the disneyland atmosphere that it starts to feel like at times. this is reaffirmed when the bizarre techno starts to pound and tiny drunken italian men start to beat the living shit out of each other, in duck costumes. it's a weird scene.
Anyway ,though i hope never to revisit the duck-men, i took a lot of inspiration from venice and i hope that i can carry some of the energy of that place into my work.

Incognito

For the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of self-reflection and I am coming to the conclusion that I am really interested in the way people view themselves, me and the world. So for my projects in both Sketchbook and theme sequnece I am exploring art and life through the perspectives of others.

Maybe it was in the spirit of carnevale, but this week I was all about dressing up and going incognito. For sketchbook I decided to re-enact the self portrait of Ghiberti on the Gates of Paradise. I suffered some minor setbacks(cracking skin, red eyes and almost not making it to class because the whole upper part of my body was a mix of red and bronze.), but I have to say before that I totally was having a great time seeing myself totally painted in bronze. However I still have a lot of work to do to make it look like I am on the gates.
Another disguise I was playing with was "the blonde". I was always curious about what it was like to be a blonde and this weekend I set out to find out. Although I was one in thousands of people who were incognito, it did make me more aware of how people acted and spoke about other races or creeds. How a blonde wig relates directly to my project I am not so sure. How it relates to me and everything that I am not I have thought about all my life and I will probably never be sure.
Sasha

pictures

Speeding Up, Slowing Down, Speeding Up

Now that midterms are approaching I am starting to feel stressed out about my classes, as well as flustered. While I have been thinking a lot and working a lot in my art classes, I feel that I have been especially unproductive lately simply because I have too many ideas, and need to get back into the groove from exploring to creating finished, well thought out works of art. On the bright side, through thinking so much I am finally beginning to pinpoint the theme that I have been working with in Theme sequence, exploration of larger, grander ideas (the political or ethical) through the personal. I still think that my video has been my most successful piece because it was my story, and although it used appropriated imagery, it was honest, and did not have an ulterior motive. So that is what I want my work to be at least for the duration of the semester, honest and transparent.

So in Regan's glass, constructing a memorial for individuals who have reported being physically gay bashed in the US in 2008 (1,341), having been a victim myself, it is an especially challenging task, because unlike my video piece earlier, I want to link my personal experience more closely to a political/ethical statement. So, with where I am right now I plan to do this with anecdotal audio and a drawing/sculpture work channeling influence from contours from different gestures of christ and texture and contrast from cimabue's cross, so that the memorial is meditative rather than violent like most of my sketches for this project were. I am fairly certain that I will be including 1,341 cutouts in this piece so that the number of victims is represented visually, so ideally the cutouts will add up to a larger composition and more complex structure, but in themselves will be minimalistic. This project relates closely to my work in themesequence, and could count for both classes, but there are other works I want to explore in Jana's class before midterm. Besides drawing at Santa Croche I have been looking for textures that resemble the texture in Cimabue's cross, and utilizing simultaneously some form of cutout or flat shape.

Currently in Jana's class I am wrapping up my second finished video, working on some quick large drawings, and brainstorming for a project about slowing down and simplifying, because everything has been moving so fast, including thoughts in my head, which are becoming diluted and overly complex cryptic.
This idea of over-stimulation was literally manifested in my trip to Venice as although everything was beautiful and inspiring, after several hours of walking around I felt overwhelmed and fatigued. So one way that I started simplifying things was going to my hostel in Tessera and walking around the town which, was partially rural, reminding me a lot of suburbs in from my home in Maryland. Another way that I started to simplify things, was to start taking underdeveloped pictures of the environment around me until everything started to appear more calm and void. I am not sure exactly where I want to go with these images I have collected, but I do know that I want to speed up a bit, as midterm is approaching.
Wow, this blogpost gave me a bit of clarity to my thoughts.
Signing off
here are a lot of images
-Danny

Welcome Back Alex

Ok so this week was a turning point. I finally just began producing art that engaged me fully and excited me. I'm really enjoying working around a theme and just experimenting with new ways of doing it. This week I tried out some original pattern-making from masterworks. I love just taking certain details from paintings or floors or ceilings and then changing the scale and repeating them, rotating them, weaving them taking. I'm really interested in 3-D design, but on clear plastic so that its really just the lines that create the form. I'm going to keep playing around and see what happens.
So this weekend we all went to Venice. It has to be the most exquisite place I've ever witnessed. We went to the Ca'Pesaro museum, which is this modern art museum on the Grande Canale. There was this exhibit on the top floor that was all japanese art. I was in awe. Usually, I overlook the oriental arts when I'm in museums, but this time I was really intrigued. I just couldn't stop staring at the fabric and how they created forms by shifting different patterns, colors, lines. It was so fascinating how at the same time they were flat and rendered. I think it might be interesting to create something like that with my own patterns and maybe do it of one of the architectural sites we've visited.
The tunnel book was a a surprise to me as well. I really enjoyed making them and I found a way to incorporate my patterns into the book. It was another way for me to take something that I'm already attracted to and already wanting to try. It's kind of like an in between 2-D and 3-D art. Anyway, I think I'm going to try it out on clear transparency paper and maybe even change the shape of the book itself. I was in complete awe of Matthew Ritchie's work when I saw the art 21 video. It was everything I had been hearing/wanting to do on such a large such. AMAZING!! I think I may try blowing some of what I've been making on a really large scale on either white paper or fabric.

P.S. Fabulous show Friday night Jana!!!! Mozal Tov!


Pictures:
Pictures:

Upload "Rachel.ugh" complete. Errors: ∞

Rachel reporting, lethargic and emotionally floating. It's amazing that a week has passed so fast. So, this week has included a lot of personal meltdowns, which sort of surprises me because I thought I had used up my full quota already. But between sorting through my relationships and my place i them, losing my wallet (having it stolen?) in Siena, being a complete spaz and forgetting real ly obvious important stuff, and traveling to Venezia for the weekend, I feel kind of like I have just stepped out of a blender, amazed that I am still whole. But it's strange, I feel sort of mellow right now because all that is over. Like maybe at least there isn't much in front of me anymore. That and I am kind of ridiculously tired, considering that I got 8 hours of sleep last night.
So, my art? I was struggling a lot with the masterwork project for drawing because most of what I like to make art about is personal. I had trouble coming up with an idea I could really connect to and devote myself to. I scrapped my original idea and chose a new masterwork which I love: Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome. Many masterworks, Italian ones especially, tend to have a lot of Catholic religious content that tends to make me feel either uncomfortable or disconnected. The Pieta, though, seems to me to have a meaning outside its religious context. There's little of the atmosphere of horror contrasting with adoration that is what I usually read from Catholic religious works. Instead, I read this intimate, empty moment between a mother and her dead child. It relys grief, that feeling of emptiness, and somehow the all-consuming nature of such an event in one's life. That whole scenario is something I relate strongly with a certain aspect of myself; my parents lost my twin brother Joshua about a week or so after his birth. So for my version of the piece, the Madonna will reflect my mother and the figure in her arms will be a transparent shadow of who Joshua might have been, and within that figure will be a more solid figure of the reality of his life, as short as it was: the figure of a baby, of him. Both Regan and Jana asked me where I was in this, and that absolutely threw me at first. I think I have always so carefully removed myself mentally from the whole scenario as a homage to the fact that I was too young to grieve for him, that I am unable to greive for him even now because of my distance from the whole thing. But I am tentatively pushing myself to see that it isn't that simple, that Joshua has sort of followed me through my whole life: in the form of a story I have since childhood instinctively labelled as inappropriate to share; as a tree planted in front of the old house in his honor that I see once every couple years, suddenly taller and stronger; as a missing counterpart to myself that I can never retrieve, and that inability causes me to find myself insufficient somehow. And I think really all of these things allude to my parents' grief and the effects it has had on my life. So in order to express this I tried to incorporate myself in the concept for my piece. Regan suggested making some small detail into a self-portrait, for example, drawing my hands instead of the Madonna's or my mother's. But that feels wrong because the whole concept and conflict in my mind is based on my feeling of distance and simultaneous proximity to the event of Joshua's death. To be part on the figure holding him would make our contact too real and too close. I thought of drawing myself beside my mother, holding her hand, with my own figure faded like Joshua's, though to a lesser degree. But Cat said that could easily read as some part of myself having died with my brother. I have always found that whole concept odd and unrealistic, romantic and overly simple without any real conception of what the loss might feel like. So then I changed the idea to my figure reaching out in apparent longing toward my mother or my mother's hands, toward where her contact with my brother would be. The parts of me closest to her would be the most transparent. This is supposed to express how my parents' grief, whenever it surfaced and took hold of them, caused me to no longer exist in the same sense. That grief made me suddenly and irrevocably not enough to make things right, permanently un-whole no matter what I tried.
I was afraid of this idea. I guess that is just another good reason to grasp it and use it. But I don't want to upset my parents, either with this morbid idea or the last one I decided to use (drano). I don't want them to think that they have failed or hurt me somehow. They and their happiness and their opinions are so important to me I often feel I am ridiculous. But this idea is what I care about, and for now I will pretend that it's that simple, that that is all that matters.
On another note, Venice was fun when it wasn't really frustrating or depressing (I've been arguing with Cat too much for me to be okay with lately; what we fail to do for one another is upsetting). But I had fun shopping, eating, buying gifts for my family, taking pictures of costumes, just watching all the amazing stuff around me, enjoying the water and its calming presence everywhere.
But yeah, I think that is way more than enough for now. Thanks for reading my über-long post, and ciao for now.

Jennifer learns not to get in unmarked cabs

As I'm sure will be the case with everybody else on our program, the main topic of my blog this week is going to be my Venetian Carnaval experience. Upon exiting the train station, we were immediately bombarded with what seemed to be a mix between Disneyland and Mardi Gras. The entire weekend I was constantly shocked at just how many people had come to Venice for this once a year event, but for whatever reason the tourism didn't bother me as much as it sometimes does in Florence. Perhaps it was because I knew that it was Carnaval and I wasn't trying to live there. In actuality, my favorite part of the weekend was sitting on the dock on Saturday and Sunday for several hours while every single other person in Venice tried to get into the famous Palazzo. When Regan showed us the sketch book of a girl last year who spent her entire time in Venice drawing the Gondolas at the pier, I thought, "Well...that's a waste of a weekend", but I understood exactly why she did it. We spend all of Friday touring the city going back and forth and back and forth and I felt like I was passing everything but not really taking it in because of the crowds and costumes. It was complete insanity. When Mara and I took a gelato break and sat on the pier, I decided I did not want to move from that spot for the rest of the afternoon. The weather was perfect, the views breathtaking, the crowds behind me, and the smell and sound of the salty water reminded me of the Outer Banks at home. I was able to watch people come and go around me and I did feel like I got a much better sense of Venice just sitting and letting it come to me rather than me superficially taking from it. Halfway through my time on the pier, an old Italian couple from Naples sat down next to me and started a conversation. Less than 3 minutes in, the lady was squeezing my cheek and stroking my hair as if I were her own grand daughter haha, and it made me feel very much a part of her culture. On Sunday, in our 4 hours between checking out of the hotel and catching the train, Soo and I decided to repeat my experience so we grabbed a sandwich and sat on a random dock more in the city and away from the crowd for the afternoon. I could not have been happier to just sit and take in everything rather than rushing around as we are always doing in Florence. It was the perfect end to a crazy weekend.
On a slightly funnier / could have been a very bad / WAS a very bad idea note, Saturday night there was a group of seven of us making our way back at 2:30 in the morning from general Carnaval craziness. When we made it to the taxi stand, only one was there and he would only take 4 at a time. So, Monica, John, and I were left to wait for another. While waiting, a guy came up to us and asked if we needed a taxi...so of course we said "yes"..and followed him to his very not-taxi car. So of course we thought it would be fine to get into this unmarked taxi, assuming this guy knew what he was doing. An hour and a half (what should have taken 15 minutes) later in the middle of can't-see-3-feet-in-front-of-you-fog-car-going-way-too-fast-to-see-anything-driver-had-to-call-dad-4-times-to-get-directions-us-not-knowing-what-to-tell-him-tried-to-drop-us-off-in-another-city...we finally made it back to the hotel. I actually thought at one point that we may be in the middle of some "hostel-esque" horror film, which would have been an interesting end to a Disney-esque day. NEVER AGAIN
Finally, alot of the decay I am attracted to is caused by water, and what better place to see the effect of water damage than in Venice? Every wall and building showed layers and layers of beautiful water decay. It really gives the city such a unique character. As a joint drawing and theme sequence project, I am working with one of the gorgeous pipes I always take pictures of. I found that the style and character of Klimt's paintings (seen at the top) remind me of the qualities of this wall. Therefore, I am going to sneak out early in the morning and work one particular Klimt painting into the wall using chalk, flowers, and wool amongst other materials. I am excited to see how it turns out! I still can't upload all of my pictures because of the stupid flickr limit but I will try to get them up as soon as possible!



Until next time....

Jen

Jorie thinks the paper clips embedded in the toilet seat at crazy pizza were really cool

But to my dismay, the most fabulous part of Crazy Pizza was in fact not the toilet, but the indescribably delicious little pocket of nutella pizza dought that we orderered for dessert. I doubt Im capable of sufficiently illustrating the beauty and decadence of such an orgasmic experience, but I am sure Felicia will be able to help me out there when she thoroughly blogs about it.
Really quick, random note- I just had to pat myself on the back for meeting my one goal of the week: for the first time, I am NOT the last person to blog. Sorry, I just had to wallow in my pride for a second...
Okey dokey, on an atleast slightly artistically relevant note:
I was showing Regan the nude pictures from the photo shoot last weekend (which, defying the expected outcome, actually did not go horrendiously and result in a freak out or an explosive bout of fear or the start of world war three... I thought it was done in a really beautiful and tasteful manner, in such a way that both myself and the photographer felt comfortable... but more on that later). Anyway, we were discussing the book "Letters to Young Artisits", a compilation of letters between young artists and well established, in which the well established artist responds to an actual letter from a younger artist doing the whole Im-living-in-an-apartment-in-New-York-and-I-have-no-money-but-Im-following-my-dream thing. I was reading some of the letters online, and suprisingly they are answered in a really hearfelt, articulate way. In one of the letters by Xu Bing, he discusses the concept of a "Limitation Well". A limitation well is basically all of the things you concieve in your head to be limiting, because at the time you are experiencing them they are scary, uncomfortable, and push you into an emotional, and I guess sometimes even a physical place that just dont feel right at the time. He talks about how the percieved limitation well is really the place where we draw from to create our art, and how these things that seem to be limiting are instead freeing and beautfiul and full of potential and inspiration. As I was talking about this with Regan, she looked at me and said "Stop your short marks drawing. Replace it with a limitation well. I want you to begin writing a limitation well- and if you keeping writing over it and over it, the words and letters will build up over time and maybe turn into something. No one would even have to know what you are writing."
So, soldiering up my handy dandy sketchbook and sweet Eurostore pens, I have begun my limitation well for 15 minutes per day.
I mean, I know these arent really supposed to turn into anything or maybe they will or maybe they wont or I dont know, but I love my limitation well. Sometimes it helps to just personify something so abstract and hard and difficult to understand, like limitations in our lives or the things that we percieve to be limitations... I dont know, it helps me to write them all down in my little well. And I also like that I can pick up my little well and carry it with me all the time, so if I think of a limitation or something that feels limiting at that time, I can pick up my pen, write down my limitation, and drop it in my little well that I carry around in my little backpack.
Here is the only thing I will say about Carnival in Venice:
Monica McClain and I were on the train coming home, and I said "I caught myself off guard in my head. Florence is now somehow registered in my head as home, and I am in this wierd mindset where it feels like we are going home- which I never would have thought before in a million years, even like, a week ago."
She said: "Yeah, Venice was cool, but the funny thing is Florence didnt really feel like home to me until we left it, and it was gone."

If anything, anything at all, in terms of being uncomfortable and scared and terrified of the world and being young and limitations...
It still makes absolutely no sense to me, but I appreciate the beauty of all of those things, that each in their own way have this incredible way of freaking you out and making you feel so alive at the same time.

I think Im moving forward.

Cat's week 5

When I first heard about our drawing midterm I was excited. I started off thinking gee what work could I base my work off of. On my walk down from Piazzale Michelangelo I found myself drawn to one of the four gate towers around Florence. I thought it would be really cool to somehow draw myself into the niches of the stairs that are so starkly vacant. This idea morphed with the idea of reflections and edges that I had been thinking about in theme sequencing. I love how the past and the present always overlap. Time and events always seem to repeat themselves just with different people or different places. As you saw in my last post, I took pictures that dealt a lot with reflections. I decided to build a costume and dress myself as one of the traditional highborn but not Medici class women from the 14th century. I based my costume off one in Santa Maria Novella. I want to where it and get my reflections photographed. Hopefully, if I do it right, the photos will serve as windows that capture the two worlds past and present. I think the biggest problem will be making this not feel kitsch. But I think if I make the work a body, the dress, the pre-sketches and really well done photos, I hopefully can elevate the work to say something deeper and make the audience think about the connections between time instead of just saying ow wow that's cool. I also plan to do a piece that is film based where I consume a work and it is somehow reflected in my perception. I am planning on it being the same fresco of a woman that my dress is based loosely off of. Originally I was thinking it would be reflected in my eyes but I think Regan was right when she said that I might want to think deeper about how it is reflected and tie it in to mirrors possibly.
Well I think I aught to get cracking so aufitizein till then! Oh I have a few pics from Venice up. Work in progress will be up soon.

Anna's Week 5

so normally I wait till the week's over to post, but I think that I've just come to a turning-point in my work over breakfast this morning, and now seems like a more appropriate time.
*Brace yourself for the complete story of my mid-term project*

When Regan started explaining the mid-term drawing project of reinterpreting a master work, I immediately thought of Leonardo's sketches for the Last Supper. I remembered reading about how he would walk around the city following people, looking for people whose faces and gestures he thought exemplified the personalities of the apostles. He didn't know these people, he just discreetly followed them around the city, trying to make studies of them. I've always been into spying and being sneaky, and by the time Regan was finished talking, I had basically decided for sure that this was what I wanted to do. But I felt that there was really nothing behind it. (Note: I have been shown this week that there doesn't always have to be something behind a work of art if it elicits a strong response in the viewer.) But Regan had specifically asked us, Why do these sketches need to be reinterpreted? Why does this artwork need to be made? I would feel a little silly if someone asked me why I made a work and I said I like to spy on people.
Not that I'm saying that wouldn't be a legitimate concept for a work, but I just couldn't help thinking farther than that. So I started thinking about Judas, and how for the longest time he didn't have a face. DaVinci's commissioner kept pressuring him and pressuring him to finish his painting and daVinci kept searching and searching but Judas's face remained blank.

At this point I was at a bit of a dead-end in my thinking, so I started to consider something else I was interested in, immigrants in Italy. Last semester the director of the film L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio came to campus and explained some of the tensions between native Italians and immigrants, and it reminded me a bit of what I'd heard in the news about immigration controversy in our country. He said that the concept behind the film was for immigrants in Rome (where much of the controversy is) to create something beautiful and try to show people in the city more than the itty bitty fraction of immigrants they hear about on the news who lead one to make negative associations with the various populations.

And I was thinking about how Michele, the police officer who visited us during orientation, kept saying that illegal immigrants were "ghosts" to the police. They don't have ID, fingerprints, documents, or anything on them. So then I felt this tenuous connection between the two ideas, apostles Leonardo needed to find faces for and people the police needed to find faces for.

I felt like I had hope, but Jana and Regan still had questions for me: how do I present this material sensitively, so I'm not objectifying my subjects? They both said that there's a need to put myself in the work, but how? I don't know any illegal immigrants. I've met two immigrants total. And how can I identify with them? I don't get discriminated against on the level that they do, although I should "belong" here less, considering the amount of time I'm here for, the fact that I'm only a visitor, I don't have a family here. In Jana's words, I would be speaking about them from a more "privileged" position. What gives me the authority to do that?

So what I had was the opportunity to do some really hypocritical work. My original plan had been to sketch people while trying to infer something of their personalities like I thought Leonardo did, and then black out certain faces to represent the residents of Italy without documentation? But I couldn't do that without jumping to conclusions about people, trying to judge whether they belonged without having met them, which is something that Michele told us was impossible anyway.

So... last night I forwent (Is that a word?) my daily run and sat in my room with my back against the really warm radiator, reading BBC articles on immigration in Italy. What I learned:

• according to the head of one of the research organizations, the majority of illegal immigrants are actually French or Austrians who have been unable to renew residency permits
• Romanians are the largest immigrant group in Italy (I think this means legal immigrant group), followed by Albanians, Moroccans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Philippinos, and Tunisians. I think that this list may differ between immigrants and people with work permits, though. The guy I met at the laundromat I think was only here as a seasonal worker.
  
• There has recently been emergency legislation in response to several high-profile rape cases involving immigrants that includes harsher deportation policies, I think--but for sure in the legislation there is specific reference to immigrants--which can send the message to the public that it is the immigrants in general who are the problem. This has spurred the Vatican to issue a warning to the Italian government to be careful of passing laws that might promote hostile feelings in the public towards immigrants.
• There have also recently been attacks on Roma camps--in Rome and other cities they don't live in the city center with other Italians but in camps by themselves--and on innocent individuals. The Roma are an ethnic group in Italy, many from Romania and some from other eastern European countries, commonly referred to as gypsies. Before I started researching immigration I would always see the word "Rumeni" I think in the paper, with other words having to do with court and crime. I think it was about one of these court cases, but maybe I still have the papers.
  
• While the Roma live separately, the children attend Italian schools and many (I don't know if it's the majority or how much 'many' is) are fluent in Italian. However, children born and raised by foreign parents are not automatically Italian, so there is an awkward kind of situation for these children who are a good part Italian but not citizens.
• As I understand it, the 2 main parties in the national government are center-right and center-left. The center-right has a much harsher view of immigrants and is the government in control now. Many of them live in the north, and there is an organization associated with them called the "Northern League," I'm not sure of the specifics of the relationship, that I believe specifically is concerned with immigration policy.  The center-left party, on the other hand, includes the first black member of Parliament, who is also from the Congo and I think is himself an immigrant. I could check. (Random thought: what do the center-right members of the gov't think about the son of a foreigner to the States becoming president? Because I've never ever heard of an Italian who dislikes Obama. Would they say that it's different in the States, or they secretly dislike him, or something I haven't thought of?)
  

So I went to bed with this kind of broad base of new knowledge behind me, and this morning I woke up thinking about The Last Supper again. How do I relate these two ideas? How do I put myself into this? And the relationship I found to all this was a relationship to the Italians. I'm here reading all these news stories just like they are. (Sort of.) I'm isolated from immigrants at least as much as they are, I'm trying to be an empathetic human being and understand the people around me who I interact with on the bus, even if it's just the decision of whether or not to offer my seat, understanding when to move out of the way, or when to make eye contact, ask "Scende?" or smile. Like everyone else, I want to make people around me happy. 

     But just having that intention isn't good enough. Everyone who's had Psych at WashU has learned about the IAT test on the Harvard website that shows how almost everyone has unsettling biases toward certain groups of people over others. For example, most people--regardless of race--associate white faces more with the words with positive connotations and black faces more with words with negative connotations. Because of the effect on all races and anonymous questionnaires on conscious feelings, it's been established that these biases are independent of conscious attitudes. But what a load of guilt that is! Not only am I biased towards more favorable impressions of European-looking faces, I'm biased to associate women more with domestic life and men more with career life! One conclusion drawn from this study, especially considering the data from the participants biased against themselves, was that these unconscious biases reflect associations built up from all the experiences of a certain kind associated with a certain group of people. For example, if I watch a few hours of a news program that shows mug shots of people of the same race or haircut or color eyes or all with a mole above their left eyebrow, I will build up subconscious negative feelings toward people with that characteristic--even if I know with my brain that not everyone with a mole above their left eyebrow is a criminal. So the next time someone with a mole above their left eyebrow smiles at me on the street, I'll be less likely to return the gesture. 

     For me, this is very unsettling. I'm not in complete control of my actions; my chance encounters, and which articles I happen to glance over in the newspaper, and what I hear from other people about certain other people have more influence than I would like. And everyone who is exposed to some common form of communication--the City newspaper, for example--develops some kind of association whenever a certain group of people, like Romanians, is mentioned in a certain context. 

     So I see my subject becoming the trap that I feel myself in, along with everybody else whose perceptions of other people are altered in this way. (Which seems to be everybody.) My subject isn't anymore these groups of people I don't know and can't find a way to identify with, but I think it's more myself and this guilty feeling.

      The fact that I don't have a clue how to tell an immigrant from an Italian is actually quite interesting to me, and I think I can use it in my work. Because not only can't I tell an immigrant from an Italian, but I also can't tell a "good" person from a "bad" person, because my mind is clouded by these biases. I can observe people like Leonardo, and hope to capture in my sketches what they're feeling at the moment, but there's no way I can learn anything for sure about their history or their personality. This is where my contemporary interpretation differs from the master work, because Leonardo spent days and days trying to find a face that looked evil enough to be Judas. I'm saying from the beginning there will be no face there, and the real "evil" seems to me to be the influences that the newspaper and other forms of mass communication have on us as a society. 

I hope that all of this is intelligible, because this was the first time I've written down what I've been thinking, and it's not exactly the most concise that it could be. But at least now I'm not in the place of knowing that my ideas don't work, and I'll have something to think about when I'm on the bus today with my sketchbook. Rest of the pictures here I'm only allowed 3 sets, so I moved last week's. 

Oh yeah. I forgot to say that the reason it's interesting to me that I can't tell the immigrants is because I think it'll help me get the personalities that I see there and not be distracted by these biases, which I haven't had much time to build up yet because I'm a newcomer in a foreign country. We'll see how it goes.

Leah's week five

where to begin? Everything has begun to blend together. Work seems like play seems like learning seems like love seems like dream. And what was once my social life is now my prayer life, what was once drawing is now theme sequence.

John Sarra told my painting class, "There will come a time when your life and art are the same thing." And now, really there is little distinction. Theme sequence allows me to process things. It allows me to think about my life, my faith, my future. If that's too vague:

life/faith/future
I'm thinking about the impact my life will have. In Siena I was sitting in the Church where St. Catherine of Siena's head is. I had a mixture of emotions: embarrassment at how strange this religion I practice is, shock at how "cheesy," huge, and plain the church was, and then finally, I was at peace and I felt more authenticity in this church than any other church that I've visited in Italy. It was peaceful because there were very few people/tourists in this huge church, so it was quite quiet. And it was authentic because it wasn't trying to impress anyone. It was what was, and it didn't need to have marble stripped columns to contain God and all that the church contains (the people of God, the sacraments, the Eucharist, the saints and angels).

Anyway, as I was sitting there, it made me wonder about what my role in the church and in this world is. I decided that I don't need to be anything great. My mission is to improve other people's lives. It's not about me, who is a speck of dust with the life time the span of a second in terms of the universe and eternity. But if I can change others, if I can help them realize just how beautiful life is, and then they in turn can influence others to live more "wholesome" lives, then my little life may be significant.

I know that I am an artist, and that's how I operate in this world. I know that I can and will use art to carry out this mission.


how art (and this week in particular) pertains to life/faith/future
I swear Jana and Regan can read minds. In both conversations I had with them this week, it seemed like I was saying ideas, but my words got muddled, and I ended up talking about not the main thing that I had been thinking about, but other things. Particularly with Regan, I showed her a bunch of images and talked about the human figure. Then she took all my confused words and said "So what I think you are getting at is that holiness exists in the realness of things." and I was like "EXACTLY!" that was EXACTLY what I have been trying to say for months now, but just was never able to express it that concisely. And now it's my mission to show that though art.

I can't wait to do that!

I've been experimenting with the vespa mirror light reflections. Photos can be found in my photos for this week.

I have about five projects on the go right now:

1) a button sculpture connected with red thread to show how belly buttons/umbilical cords connect us to our mothers, and their mothers and their mothers, etc, etc.
2) the vespa mirror project
3) developing the idea with connecting the orange, the moon and the belly of a pregnant woman
4) researching saints and honoring them in a way that connects to their lives. (Regan suggested this, and I'm sooo excited to try it and develop it farther.) maybe my orange donation project can fit in somehow.
5)taking photos/collecting things that I consider to be beautiful or precious but other people may not notice

I'm excited and overwhelmed. But that's life. :)

Photos!

Noah's Photos, now up

check it check it

Jorie completely understands if Jana wants to punch her in the face

No sweet bathroom photo this week… I know, huuuuge bummer, but as consolation I have some sweet photos of Giulio and Tommaso wearing my boots on their arms, and because I am so generous I will be giving of my time as I sit here for an hour waiting for them to load. I also have a ridiculous video that I would love to stick on here somehow, but I would probably be sitting here until the next Ice Age waiting for it to load.
Composure. In theory, it is a pretty ridiculous concept- the idea that we must keep up appearances and masks in order to make it look like we have all our shit together 24/7, when in reality everyone is working out some issue or another. The constrictions of composure require that we all restrict ourselves to some extent. In translating what is going on inside to what others see on the outside, a meticulous editing process happens. In my art, I think it is extremely important to try to break down that composure, and reveal what happens when that editing process does not occur. What happens when as a human being, you aren’t aware of or choose to reject the limitations and strict rules of composure? So then I wonder, is composure self-imposed as our way of fitting into the world, or as a result of social pressures that are externally imposed?
I eat my words a little bit- I hope this does not give off the very, very wrong impression that I am a particularly well-composed human being, because that could not possibly be further from the truth. But conceptually, composure has lead me towards something I understand a bit better- vulnerability. When we are not composed, we are vulnerable. Without that protective shell, without that editing process, what goes on internally is immediately apparent. For me, that is utterly terrifying.
So I think I’m going to photograph myself naked. Again, this is another situation where as a human being I will not be in my typical, attempt-to-be-composed state. I won’t lie; I’m scared shitless. These pictures will probably not be of an extraordinarily confident woman, parading about like in the master works you see of naked women in paintings with angels all around them in a comfortable, natural place, or looking straight forward with the unwavering eye contact of the Olympia.
I’m hoping to communicate my own, quiet celebration of femininity, and my own reflection of what it means to be human: what it means to let go of composure, what happens when we do, what happens when we put ourselves in a position of complete vulnerability and honesty. One of the conditions of being human is that you receive a body. You will get one; you don’t have any choice there. Perhaps I can use mine to explore, to express, and to communicate the difficulties and uncomfortable places that I have recently inhabited. I want to show that it is ok to let go of composure, and be completely naked in every sense of the word.
I don’t know; it was just a thought.

Anna: 4.5

Right now I'm in Regan's class working out my ideas for my midterm project. An hour ago I started counting down the time until lunch, but then as I started researching Sophie Calle's early work (who I realized was an artist whose later work we'd already learned about!) about following and spying and trying to tell something about a person without talking to them, I just started thinking a lot and thought it might be good to try to translate my notes into an explanation.
First of all, I'm fascinated by the idea of spying. I was reading parts of her work "The Hotel," where she gets a job as a maid and then photographs and writes descriptions of the rooms, imagining what the people staying there are like. She records her thoughts, what she sees, and then a conclusion she comes to ("My first couple on a honeymoon!").
I love the idea of being able to tell something about someone from watching them or observing their possessions, but I'm also fascinated by what wrong assumptions can be made. Calle was very careful to say 'There was Italian toothpaste,' or 'there was a belt by this Italian designer,' rather than 'the couple was Italian.' Whenever I guess people's nationalities on the bus, I'm surprised by how often I'm wrong.
In my work, I will be sketching people I follow or see on the bus, trying to capture something of their personality. The project is to draw influence from a master work, and mine is Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and his study drawings. He worked a lot with personality, searching Milan for characters who he could imagine as the personalities of the apostles. But in his work, he wasn't trying to say anything about the people he was drawing; he was just collecting facial features that gave him a certain feeling about personalities. My idea deals with the undocumented immigrants in the city, and how to the government they are "ghosts," to use the word of our personal police officer Michele. My idea so far is to collect faces, maybe compose them into a scene or picture like Leonardo, giving them personalities and relationships to other people, but then to somehow erase the identities of certain figures. But I don't want to make judgements about which of these people I should blot out, because I don't know, so choosing which ones to blot out presents a challenge. Point blind-folded?

Good thing I'm not counting down to lunch anymore, because Regan just announced it's a half-hour later than it usually is. Yesssss!

Here's what started my train of thought, I just think it was an interesting situation that happened, and kind of deals with some of what Sophie Calle was saying about chance meetings and how your perceptions of people change upon each encounter.

A couple weeks ago we went out to the discoteca with our house-brother. We were tired of everybody speaking to us in English, so I decided to pretend that we were Russian and spoke no English. Andre' is Ukrainian, and he taught me how to say 'Do you speak Russian?' in Russian. So when we found a guy advertising free drinks in a discobar, we were Russians, and Andre' told him in Italian we're from Siberia. I said we'd come back later to collect on the offer. However: when we returned to the piazza, the guy advertising was British, and we went back with him, speaking English with American accents. But then--while the Brit was taking us back to the bar, we met up with the Italian who thought we spoke no English, and the whole time we were stopped chatting I tried to speak to the one guy so loudly in Italian that he didn't hear the other half of us speaking to the Brit in English. Aaaahhhh!