Q and A on Art

Reflection Questions to answer in Sketchbook

Please answer questions in your sketchbook due the last class, M 12/1/2014

Reflection:

1. What do you want to do in life with your art? Decompress!!  I want to take life one day at a time and try to make as much art and music as possible, and eek out a salary somewhere.

2. What have you learned in this class about being a working artist?  Peer feedback is critical to success.  Drawing, writing or somehow modeling your ideas will help to determine their viability.

3. Where will you be in 5 years? God willing, I will be recovering from a heart transplant or recently recovered.  I will (hopefully) be enjoying living.

4. Have you considered an internship during your college experience? If so, where would your ideal location be to have an internship? Can you start looking now?  I would definitely love to work as an intern, but I am not sure how that would work.  Ideally, I would like to work in a print shop.

5. What is most important to you in life? My three sons.

6. How will you balance career and family if that is what you want? Family first and everything else when there is time and opportunity.

7. When you graduate, art-making can be lonely and isolating working in the studio. How will you enter an artistic community once you leave art school?  I have a large network now in the Hickory, Lenoir areas, as well as the Charlotte area.  A very good way to connect to the art community is through musicians.  I shoot pictures at many live performances.  Photography is also a gateway to other opportunites.

8. Should art be made for an audience or for ourselves? Yes.  I make art for myself because the process is meditative and the focus helps me to exorcise my demons.  I make art for myself because I have something that I want to say.  I make art for an audience because I have something that I want them to hear (message to receive).  I make art for an audience to create a pleasurable experience for the viewer.  I make art for an audience to shock them and motivate action.

9. Can art change the way people think?  Art can give perspectives that have never been seen before.  Art can show love and uncover injustice, and show the world how it is, how it was, or how it could be.  Art can make us happy, or sad, or offend us—all of which takes thought.

10. What is your responsibility as an artist?  My responsibility as an artist is to make art whenever possible, and to be a full-time supporter of artistic endeavors.  I must be a guardian to make sure that art is plentiful when my grandchildren arrive.

SIMULATED Gallery Proposal with Research

Gallery proposal:  Gen Xsquisit

Tom Nail

Exhibited Artists:

Ellen Gallagher

Janine Antoni

Tom Nail

         Gallagher ’65, Antoni ’64, and Nail ’68 are all children of the cold war age.  Growing up with Vietnam winding down, scandal in the White House, and the great American decline of the late seventies, these artists represent different perspectives from the same generation.

         Ellen Gallagher uses many media to produce her third gen feminist views.  Sometimes subtle and other times shocking Gallagher addresses many social issues in her works.  She is most famous for her projections, of “well known” silhouettes in scenes that are new.

Figure 1:  Ellen Gallagher "Bird in the Hand" 2006

         Janine Antoni is a performance and installation artist.  Antoni’s installations consume entire galleries with giant looms, blocks of chocolate that weigh a ton, and other creations—which normally include the artist herself.  Antoni is known to include a piece of herself in all her work.  Antoni also very rarely leaves an art “product,” such as a painting which could be bought or sold.

 

Figure 2: Janine Antoni, "Slumber" 1993

         Tom Nail was born in segregated Alabama and lived through the integration of the state’s schools.  The juxtaposition of the three cultures in which he lived:  the poverty laden South; the burgeoning North Jersey coast; and Asheville, NC—the artistic capital of the South; the diverse communities all pulled at his values and beliefs.  His art is heavily influenced by his time as an Army paratrooper—including an long combat deployment to Iraq.  Other themes of his work include mental illness, violence (institutionalized), drugs, and social injustice.

Figure 3: Tom Nail, "Maggie" 2012, Dry Point Intaglio

         The plan for this exhibition is to have Antoni as the primary artist—because most of her work takes almost a whole gallery.  Once we have Antoni’s planned work, we can plan space for Gallagher, and finally Nail.

         The Exhibit will rent warehouse space from R.T. Barbee Co., in the rejuvenated First Ward Community of Uptown Charlotte.  The warehouse is large enough for an Antoni super-sized installation, plus many smaller rooms for other artists.  The project will be crowd funded using service to be decided.

Here we go again....

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/uva-suspends-fraternities-following-rolling-stone-campus-rape-investigation-20141122

Reflection PSA Poster

In looking back at my development of this work, I feel that I should have at least considered other ideas.  I was hellbent on using words to shock the viewer and draw the viewer to the poster to read it.  My work might have been better had I considered different topics--even if I did return to this topic.

Overall, I think that the message of the poster is clear--sexual assault is a problem and many people don't know what constitutes a sexual assault.  I believe that I could have developed more of an action plan for the viewer, although the addition of the QR codes for the Sexual Assault Prevention web site is a good start.

The Georgia Tech article that I posted in an earlier blog, as well as our discussion in class in which Tammy spoke about "Jamba (?) Juice" shows a culture of males preying on young naive females who are away from home for the first time.

Final Poster Display at UNCC

The Evolution of the Poster

Of course I thought when I originally came up with the concept for the poster project, that it was done--work complete!  Wrong!  The poster has gone through more releases than Microsoft Windows.  First the background color changed from a gradient to a solid.  Then the rationalization text changed from a gradient to a solid.  Then the color of the background changed, the color of the text changed, and I began to simplify the message. I have included several iterations of the poster here.  These versions were close to the final poster.  Most of the changes made to these, were font size, location, justification, color, and the final main text.

The overall message was at last truncated to two words.  These two words were the ones that provided the initial shock value, and now that the extra baggage was pruned off, the expression became a double entendre:  the alternative to sexual assault, or the description of the person committing the assault.

Finally I needed to give the viewer information on how to prevent rape or sexual assault.  That information would eventually come from the UNCC Police Department web site.  I summarized the link into a scannable QR code and placed the code at both bottom corners of the poster.

I provided the gentlemen working at Repros with some amusement for the afternoon on Monday, as the giant words "Jerk Off" rolled down the printer at 18" by 24."

UNCC Police Web Site for Sexual Assault Prevention:

http://police.uncc.edu/crime-prevention-safety/sexual-assault-prevention

Notes from class: Thursday November 13

For the class on Thursday, November 13, our Conceptual Practices class conducted another oral critique of the proposed posters in 8.5x11 format.  Most of the work has changed dramatically from the first discussions and critique.

I found that this critique did not give good feedback for my work or any of the other works.  The critique was dominated by a few outspoken students.  Many of the best artists in the room never expressed their opinion of anything because they did not want to compete with the louder people.  I greatly prefer the written critique.

When we do a written critique, I get to see feedback from all of my peers.  If a change is recommended once, I might consider it.  If a change is recommended by everyone, or a majority of the viewers, then I believe a change is in order.  Because we did not get everyone's opinion on every work during the verbal critique, it is difficult to take the good suggestions and forget the bad ones.