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.