Saturday, April 24, 2010
Louis-Pierre's non-show becomes a show...
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Last class discussion made me think a lot. After talking about Menand's Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety made me re think about my question about interdisciplinary in an Institution. Through our my 2 years in Tyler, I have been thinking about where I stand as an artist. Going to classes upstairs at the painting department and having many many studio visits, I didn't understand why people were asking me to identify who I was as an artist.
I felt a lot of overlaps in my work that was about printmaking and painting. The dialogues between the two departments were complicity different. I knew I had a stronger connection with printmaking but I wasn't making any "prints" in my work and the painter had a strong connection with my painterly work. I enjoyed the classes and continued taking classes upstairs but really didn't know why or where I stand. That is when I started to think about interdisciplinary. Why do we divide departments when the contemporary art dialogues doesn't necessary require which departments we had our degrees on.
I have been asking myself this semester "why am I doing what I am doing?". I have certain habits in my practice and never questioned them. I simply just made work. My thought for right now is that I have been avoiding the most basic stuff in my work. Meaning I wasn't covering my basic elements. I narrowed down a lot of elements. After our last class and the discussion about Menand's Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety made me realize that I need to
redefine how my disciplines exist in my practice. Going to Tamarind Institute was to learn and master the medium of lithography and coming to graduate school afterward, I didn't need question about the medium anymore. Therefore I didn't need to go over any basic learning of the material that I was interested in. My attention was to develop my practice in graduate school and making more work related to the meduim helped me develop my creative thinking. I slowly recognized my habits of making. The process of physically engaging myself, using the sam
e surface and materials was the main overlaps that I never questioned but never ignored.
The work that I have been making recently allowed me to recognize some fetishes of printmaking practice.
Krauss's Sculpture in the Expanded Field made me rethink about my relationship between printmaking. It allowed me to accept where I am coming from and how I should take printmaking in to a positive practice.Learning the discipline is very important (at least in my art practice) because I took me to where I am right now. Last class made me think about where I can go with my work.
I felt a lot of overlaps in my work that was about printmaking and painting. The dialogues between the two departments were complicity different. I knew I had a stronger connection with printmaking but I wasn't making any "prints" in my work and the painter had a strong connection with my painterly work. I enjoyed the classes and continued taking classes upstairs but really didn't know why or where I stand. That is when I started to think about interdisciplinary. Why do we divide departments when the contemporary art dialogues doesn't necessary require which departments we had our degrees on.
I have been asking myself this semester "why am I doing what I am doing?". I have certain habits in my practice and never questioned them. I simply just made work. My thought for right now is that I have been avoiding the most basic stuff in my work. Meaning I wasn't covering my basic elements. I narrowed down a lot of elements. After our last class and the discussion about Menand's Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety made me realize that I need to
redefine how my disciplines exist in my practice. Going to Tamarind Institute was to learn and master the medium of lithography and coming to graduate school afterward, I didn't need question about the medium anymore. Therefore I didn't need to go over any basic learning of the material that I was interested in. My attention was to develop my practice in graduate school and making more work related to the meduim helped me develop my creative thinking. I slowly recognized my habits of making. The process of physically engaging myself, using the sam
e surface and materials was the main overlaps that I never questioned but never ignored.The work that I have been making recently allowed me to recognize some fetishes of printmaking practice.
Krauss's Sculpture in the Expanded Field made me rethink about my relationship between printmaking. It allowed me to accept where I am coming from and how I should take printmaking in to a positive practice.Learning the discipline is very important (at least in my art practice) because I took me to where I am right now. Last class made me think about where I can go with my work.
Interdisciplinary
Big discussion Friday around the subject of interdisciplinary in the context of the institution. What can bring or not an open program in a school of art ratter then a set-up like Tyler where we can find specific departments? I was explaining in class the way the educational system works in France: you come with an idea and they guide you in the good department in order to realize it.
That sound to me like the best way to create, but I am aware that it could be very difficult in an institution like Tyler to manage this kind of system. It could be hard to financially plan a system that allowed students to flip from department to department, but more creative!
I would like to thanks Gerard for this discussion, it opened my mind to another position that I didn't thought before. I don't know if I am an artist, a painter or a print maker, but I am me, so far!
That sound to me like the best way to create, but I am aware that it could be very difficult in an institution like Tyler to manage this kind of system. It could be hard to financially plan a system that allowed students to flip from department to department, but more creative!
I would like to thanks Gerard for this discussion, it opened my mind to another position that I didn't thought before. I don't know if I am an artist, a painter or a print maker, but I am me, so far!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Sculpture In The Expanded Field
This weekend my parents visited me for the first time since I started the MFA program. Both had been to Philadelphia before, but neither of them had spent so much time on the fringes of the academic art world.
The weekend started out with a visit to the Tyler Grad Thesis Shows at the Tower Gallery. I was excited that so many of my peers would be in one space at one time so my parents could meet them. That is where they were encountered by their first few instances of obstacles of understanding. Asking people what department they were in and then what there work was proved confusing. "I am in the photography department, but my work is sculptural." "I am a painter, but I am mostly making installation." "I am in the fiber department, but I mostly do soft sculpture." If everyone was doing sculpture, you can imagine their surprise to see that the sculpture MFA candidate in the exhibition showed two videos.
We talked to another sculpture grad about this at length. Vanessa said, "Yeah, the only one in our department who is really making traditional sculpture is Tim." It sounded like the rest of them were focusing on video.
Back at school when I guided my parents on a pretty good tour of the facilities, there were even more examples of the kind of art that Mr. and Mrs. Shealey just could not have expected. And upon finding the Wolgin bust, my stepfather said with some relief, "Now, this is sculpture."
True. My parents are NOT members of the art world, but they do not live underneath rocks, either. I think what they questioned is completely valid and one that we, in the middle of the ebb and flow of art discourse forget: why call something sculpture that is something else? Why not just call it video. (For example).
In the essay "Sculpture In the Expanded Field," Rosalind Krauss discusses how sculpture has morphed in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. She uses diagrams to show how maybe sculpture should be freed from certain other artforms and they should have their own name: marked sites, site construction, and axiomatic structures. Including sculpture, these artforms are varying degrees of landscape and "not landscapes" and architecture and "not architecture." To be honest, these designations seem a bit dated to me and, if it is helpful, I am happy to have them included as viable alternatives to calling everything sculpture. But I don't think that they get to the heart of the issue--the heart that is still very much beating today.
Krauss, in the beginning of her essay, writes of the broadening definition of sculpture in 1979, "We had thought to use a universal category to authenticate a group of particulars, but the category has now been forced to cover such a heterogeneity that it is, itself, in danger of collapsing." I believe that renaming facets of art and various trends within art (like site constructions) do not solve the problem of this collapsing. And perhaps the collapsing is not the problem, but the inevitable sign of things to come.
Interdisciplinarity is what most contemporary artists want for themselves. One should not forget that the context of my story began in an art school environment where people have to apply to specific departments. But, once they are out in the world, away from the academy, they are not necessarily going to say "I am a photographer" if in fact they are mostly making sculpture.
That said, these words begin to lose some meaning over time if we allow the boundaries between disciplines to be so malleable. My suggestion is, however, that the art should trump our concern for vocabulary and ability to discuss these things. Like Krauss says towards the end of her essay, our art lexicon is "organized instead through the universe of terms that are felt to be in opposition within a cultural situation" and that specific mediums do not matter so much. It is when we challenge the structure (in this case definitions) that we make the most interesting and progressive work. When you ask a Tyler grad, for example, what their deparment is and what there work is like, they are giving you answers that have to do with what is going on with their art practice right then, in that moment in time. They can use mediums to describe the situation, but ultimately, if they are like the majority of us, they cannot be defined even that rigidly longterm. They might be making sculptural altars today and will be painting tomorrow. Or maybe not painting.
It might make for more confusion with artists' parents, but I think they can handle it. And I think, by the end of the weekend with my parents, they were enjoying the play they could have in talking about art.
The weekend started out with a visit to the Tyler Grad Thesis Shows at the Tower Gallery. I was excited that so many of my peers would be in one space at one time so my parents could meet them. That is where they were encountered by their first few instances of obstacles of understanding. Asking people what department they were in and then what there work was proved confusing. "I am in the photography department, but my work is sculptural." "I am a painter, but I am mostly making installation." "I am in the fiber department, but I mostly do soft sculpture." If everyone was doing sculpture, you can imagine their surprise to see that the sculpture MFA candidate in the exhibition showed two videos.
We talked to another sculpture grad about this at length. Vanessa said, "Yeah, the only one in our department who is really making traditional sculpture is Tim." It sounded like the rest of them were focusing on video.
Back at school when I guided my parents on a pretty good tour of the facilities, there were even more examples of the kind of art that Mr. and Mrs. Shealey just could not have expected. And upon finding the Wolgin bust, my stepfather said with some relief, "Now, this is sculpture."
True. My parents are NOT members of the art world, but they do not live underneath rocks, either. I think what they questioned is completely valid and one that we, in the middle of the ebb and flow of art discourse forget: why call something sculpture that is something else? Why not just call it video. (For example).
In the essay "Sculpture In the Expanded Field," Rosalind Krauss discusses how sculpture has morphed in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. She uses diagrams to show how maybe sculpture should be freed from certain other artforms and they should have their own name: marked sites, site construction, and axiomatic structures. Including sculpture, these artforms are varying degrees of landscape and "not landscapes" and architecture and "not architecture." To be honest, these designations seem a bit dated to me and, if it is helpful, I am happy to have them included as viable alternatives to calling everything sculpture. But I don't think that they get to the heart of the issue--the heart that is still very much beating today.
Krauss, in the beginning of her essay, writes of the broadening definition of sculpture in 1979, "We had thought to use a universal category to authenticate a group of particulars, but the category has now been forced to cover such a heterogeneity that it is, itself, in danger of collapsing." I believe that renaming facets of art and various trends within art (like site constructions) do not solve the problem of this collapsing. And perhaps the collapsing is not the problem, but the inevitable sign of things to come.Interdisciplinarity is what most contemporary artists want for themselves. One should not forget that the context of my story began in an art school environment where people have to apply to specific departments. But, once they are out in the world, away from the academy, they are not necessarily going to say "I am a photographer" if in fact they are mostly making sculpture.
That said, these words begin to lose some meaning over time if we allow the boundaries between disciplines to be so malleable. My suggestion is, however, that the art should trump our concern for vocabulary and ability to discuss these things. Like Krauss says towards the end of her essay, our art lexicon is "organized instead through the universe of terms that are felt to be in opposition within a cultural situation" and that specific mediums do not matter so much. It is when we challenge the structure (in this case definitions) that we make the most interesting and progressive work. When you ask a Tyler grad, for example, what their deparment is and what there work is like, they are giving you answers that have to do with what is going on with their art practice right then, in that moment in time. They can use mediums to describe the situation, but ultimately, if they are like the majority of us, they cannot be defined even that rigidly longterm. They might be making sculptural altars today and will be painting tomorrow. Or maybe not painting.
It might make for more confusion with artists' parents, but I think they can handle it. And I think, by the end of the weekend with my parents, they were enjoying the play they could have in talking about art.
Monday, April 19, 2010
My Presentation to Foundations
I wanted to tell you about my presentation to Katie Murkin's foundation class before I completely forget everything.Katie's class was finishing up a unit on color theory and when I asked her if there was a way I could gear my presentation to what the class was studying, she asked if I would create a presentation about how I use color in my work. The challenge seemed initially easy: my work is colorful, therefore there MUST be a lot to talk about.But the truth is I really hadn't talked about the color in my work before. Color had always been what I considered a self-indulgence--I printed the color combinations I liked. Of course there was room to talk about this in my presentation, but I knew there had to be more to it than that.
I asked some of my students in my silk-screen course what I should talk about. They said that after an intensive color theory unit, they are almost afraid to approach color. Thus, my goal was to inspire the Foundations students to have fun with color.Basically, I organized my presentation around three areas: color inspiration, historical or contextual reference, and emotional utility. First, like I said, I use the colors I do because I am attracted to them. When I see other artwork, and there is an amazing color combination, I remember it and try to apply it to my work. This is what I called color inspiration.
Second, I talked about my academic and personal interest in the civil rights/peace/anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s and the art that came out of that time. Like protest art, my work is attempting to be socially conscious. I talked about my reverence of Sister Corita Kent. She used some methods that the class would be familiar with: complimentary colors make something POP and get the attention of the viewer, even if the image is one that might make people want to avoid, like this one depicting a Newsweek cover. Or with regard to her poster that has a Camus quote in red white and blue. Kent is using a common color combination to make an association for the viewer. It says, "Apply this quote to you and your feelings about the United States." But it is her other posters, with their bright, cheerful color combinations that really inspire me. These pallets unify and welcome the viewer. They do not push him or her away.
Additionally, I come from a rock n' roll poster background. I showed posters of the artists from Providence that have inspired me: Pete Cardoso, Darren Johnson, Xander Marro, and Brian Chipendale. Each artist uses his or her own style, but the bright, unorthodox color pallet continues in there. 
So, in this way I showed how protest posters and rock n' roll posters and their color pallets influence my work because they are part of my background.And the lastly, I talked about how I came to realize that the pallet I loved aesthetically and the pallet that was rooted in the political movements I find so inspiring was also very effective in transmitting my artistic agenda. I came to realize I could use these unabashedly wild colors with my political messages and people were more likely to engage with my work BECAUSE the colors made the topics more accessible and less serious. Wild, playful colors softened the seriousness of the message. They introduced a certain amount of humor, especially when they were used in the context of a serious environmental or social problem. In this way, I started to see that color was a tool I employed.
I believe the presentations went well. Katie was surprised how on topic it was with what she was teaching. Students seemed interested (although shy) and everyone seemed to follow along with what I was saying. But more than anything, the exercise of thinking about how color plays a part in my work helped me to better understand myself as an artist.
Intelligent life at other graduate schools
(NOTE: I received this announcement from Ricard Torchia this morning; if you are free I hope you can attend)
The Graduate Student Association of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is pleased to announce the Second Annual FOURTH WALL PANEL REVIEW, a unique public event designed to shed light on the professional contemporary art world.
The panel brings together a distinguished critic, artist, and curator to publicly review and discuss digital images and written statements submitted anonymously by the MFA thesis students from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art's Graduate Program. The afternoon concludes with the selection of three artists the panel determines are most competitive for residencies, exhibitions and other professional opportunities. The event provides its audience with an unprecedented opportunity to gain a better understanding of the criteria and selection processes for grants, residencies, and teaching positions that usually occur behind closed doors.
Encouraged by the resounding, standing-room only response to last year’s inaugural event, this 2010 version will present three new, world renown jurors to help carry this developing Academy tradition forward. Join us as we collapse the fourth wall between artists and the people who are able to help their careers develop.
Panelists:
• Carol Diehl, Artist and Critic
• James Hyde, Artist
• Robert Cozzolino, Curator of Modern Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
April 20, 2010
1:00 to 4:00 PM
Hamilton Auditorium
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art
Broad and Cherry Streets Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The panel brings together a distinguished critic, artist, and curator to publicly review and discuss digital images and written statements submitted anonymously by the MFA thesis students from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art's Graduate Program. The afternoon concludes with the selection of three artists the panel determines are most competitive for residencies, exhibitions and other professional opportunities. The event provides its audience with an unprecedented opportunity to gain a better understanding of the criteria and selection processes for grants, residencies, and teaching positions that usually occur behind closed doors.
Encouraged by the resounding, standing-room only response to last year’s inaugural event, this 2010 version will present three new, world renown jurors to help carry this developing Academy tradition forward. Join us as we collapse the fourth wall between artists and the people who are able to help their careers develop.
Panelists:
• Carol Diehl, Artist and Critic
• James Hyde, Artist
• Robert Cozzolino, Curator of Modern Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
April 20, 2010
1:00 to 4:00 PM
Hamilton Auditorium
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art
Broad and Cherry Streets Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Housekeeping
Dates for next two class meetings:
Friday, April 23, 12:30pm to see and discuss Louis-Pierre's showThursday, April 29, after 3:30 pm to see and discuss Myungwon's show
please confirm that these times work for you!
Next, for Leslie's benefit, I would appreciate it if you'd post a few sentences each in response to the readings we discussed. Since Jose and Myungwon didn't read the "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," I would like to post your reactions to the conversation around it. And since Louis-Pierre was new to "Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety", please post a wrap-up on that.
Next, we talked about having an end-of-the semester dinner at my place. I'm floating Thursday night May 6. How does that sound? Myungwon's suggestion that this be a potluck was very generous and could make it more fun.
Finally, I wanted to thank you for a fascinating conversation yesterday and for the very interesting posts that have popped up on the blog in the last week (and especially for the pictures that accompany them!). I will post comments on each post this weekend, so take a look when you get a minute...
Thanks! - g
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