Self Portrait Collage

Bad Music Video

"Bad Music Video Project"

Cosmic Dancer by T. Rex
Starring Matt Giordano as Cosmic Dancer

Lead Pencil Studio

Annie Han and Danial Mihal Yo are the two founders and sole parts of Lead Pencil Studios.  Based out of Seattle, Washington Daniel and Annie are architects from the get go, but when they met eachother working in the same architecture firm, they realized how well they work together, and they also developed an urge to work as fine artists.  They eventually left the firm and started their own as partners.  Their work seems to be an exploration of space and how it is used which I can imagine would be an obsession that an architect would have. They spoke of "Site Specific Pieces" which means a piece of work that is designed or created to speak about, emphasize, utilize, and/or just plain work with the Specific Site is is being displayed on. 

Mr. Ben Volta

Ben Volta was such a positive power in the lecture room.  His work with children seemed sooo important to him, and he seemed to genuinely care about the work he did with the children.  He seemed to treat the people he worked with as his studio.  That sounds weird.  Sometimes he is approached with a project idea, and asked to work with children or within an educational institution.  He then begins what seems to be a REALLY greuling process of brainstorming, trial and error, more brainstorming, starting over, more brainstorming, construction, production, more brainstorming, and what makes this seem so intense is that it is done with children.  Essentially he begins a path for these children to sort of start to follow, but he lets them learn on their own, take the path in their own directions and take is as far as they see fit.  All of this creates amazing pieces of art done essentially by children. He is a shephard I believe.  He seemed like a really wonderful person with a lot of energy and a lot of love to give as well.  Finally someone asked him if this was a rewarding way to practice art, and asked if it was fullfilling for him as an artist, and he responded basically saying that he had let go of the selfishness of creating art for oneself, and the reward was helping the kids do something amazing that they could call THEIR OWN.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

That's my Mom in the bottom right hand corner.

Jessica Hische

This is Jessica Hische.  She is awesome.  Her presentation was supremely interesting as she touched on being a student, her transistion into the workfield from art school, and her transistion from the dream job to working for herself.  As I am quite uneducated when it comes to type, font, and lettering in general, this was a huge eyeopener for me because it made me trully realize that there are tons of people in this world with some really particular obsessions, like letters for example.  As you can see in the photograph, she has the word "Type" tattoed on her muscle, which means it is her strength.  ANYWAY, she discussed her success and attributed it to having a general path, but not a "dead set never vear off the path" path.  One thing I was confused about was the difference between type, font, and lettering.  And judging by the tattoo I'm going to assume that her main thing is Type.  Most of her presentation was about being in the type/font/lettering field and what one needs to be leery of, ways in which one can organize their habits as professional and so on.  Overall her talk was very interesting and I have realized just how specific artistic practice is sometimes.

H. John Thompson

This Mr. Thompson seemed like a cool dude.  He comes across as a regular Joe, kindof monotone(maybe that is under the pressure of the great doom eyes of young studenti) but he also seemed really comfortable talking about his art.  And although he was monotone, I sensed a great deal of pride and confidence in him.  He seemed very happy about his work.  What kind of work you ask??  WELL, he seems like a boy from the countryside that probably turned out a little weirder than everyone else.  He uses things like the land and broken down trucks on his farm.  He loves to create spaces in places like a field, where he can show an installation.  For example...his family works a farm, and there has always been this ooooollllllld broken down truck sitting in a field with weeds growing up around it.  Some time after having an extrememly emotional moment with some horses, he subconciously constructed an installation referencing this emotional horse experience.  I thought it was really wonderful that he could talk about an emotional experience almost from a matter of fact stance.  He constructed a small shed/barn structure, took the old broken down truck apart, and wired it and lit it up, and lifting it off the ground to display in the shed structure.  Simple, and honest reference to the life and times of a horse.  It was very interesting, and again...simple to me.  Which I liked.  It wasn't like, "Ohhhh I was going through this terrible dark period in my life and the broken down truck represents my broken soul." Although I would not be totally opposed to that or anything, but I'm pointing out the direct reference to an event and how simplified and also seperated it became.  I like this guy a lot.  He seems to build his studio wherever, or make wherever he is his studio. 

My Face

Hans Rosling: The Good News of the Decade

Hans Rosling discusses the good news of the decade in this lecture.  He is a professor of international health and discovered a paralytic disease in Africa.  His lecture began by talking about the United Nations 8 Goals for the progress of countries.  The goal that Rosling focused on was child mortality.  He discussed the statistics of Africa, and the individual countries within.  He brought up how the average mortality rate was measured on a more long term scale, and suggested that the progress be measured in 10 year incremements.  He also discussed how the statistics of progress aren't fair in Africa because for one thing, it is measured as a continent, not as individual countries, which he says are vastly different.  In measuring the progress in 10 year increments, we can also differentiate between different era's and time periods, such as the 1990's when the the AIDS epidemic was peaking, there were obviously a lot of child deaths, so to group the 1990's with a decade after that is making immense progress is not fair, because there are different circumstances.  He then describes how smaller families tend to have less instances of child death.  There is also new research that says 50% of the falling child mortality rate is attributed to female education, as the effects of the education may not show until 15-20 years later, but none the less it comes through.  He mentions at the end of his lecture that the environmental crisis depends on the stabilization of the world population.  This can be achieved by lowering child mortality rate, access to family planning and educating women and girls.  He stresses long term perspective, but measured in 10 year periods.

Warning Sign

Doug Bucci

Doug Bucci gave a very trange and interesting lecture yesterday. It was strange to find out so much about his personal life, almost TMI, but it was sort of refreshing to hear someone so emotionally and thoughtfully involved in their work.  He talked about how diabetes plays a major role in his work, and he was very enthusiastic to discuss this with everyone, despite seeming like a total "dork" or weirdo.  He sort of cheered us on as he sypathized about our foundations year, but reassured us that it was totally worth it.  I feel like some people might not be aware of the amazing gifts, knowledge, skills and even new eyes that we are being given as students.  He told us that the faculty would remain with us for the rest of our lives.  I will already never forget certain professors, I can tell.  He told us about his experience in being a painter at first, and then hating it and turning to jewelry, which may have given people a little bit of a clue that its not going to be so easy to be one type of artist.  His words about juggling time, and jobs and family and studio work and things like that were on point too, I am 27, I have had a taste of the real world and know it's not all fun and games.  I was also impressed that he talked about dropping the corporation job and how that made him totally poor, because that displayed what it's like to take a chance.  Dive right into an uncomfortable situation, which I also agreed with.  I have always thought that discomfort to some degree is important, and as he said, means you are learning. His work was interesting, most of it wasn't really my thing, but it was interesting and some of it was actually very effective and I could tell that he felt very strongly about it, which is very important as an artist.  Over all I enjoyed his story and experience as an artist.

Marrianne Dages

Last weeks lecture was fairly interesting.  I thought that she had some really important things to say but after a while she kept repeating herself in different ways.  None-the-less, she was drilling a very important fact, we are artists because we make work, we don't make work because we are artists.  This was also emphasized by Gerard the following week. I hadn't actually picked up on that until he said it.  She informed us that it is important to start thinking about what the studio means to us.  How we perceive it now, what we might want to have in the studio, what kinds of supplies and equipment, perhaps even starting to stock up slowly.  She talked about residencies and sharing studios with other people.  Her work was pretty cool, and I think her book binding was really beautiful.  I was more interested in the equipment that she was showing photos of, it all looked very big and mechanical and important and fun to use.  This added to my interest in printmaking.

Response to Lecture(Candy Depew)

Some people were unimpressed with Candy Depew.  Some thought she wasn't talking about studios at all, but instead they thought all she did was talk about herself and all this cool stuff she did.  Well thats bullshit.  She talked about so many different ways in which one can use a studio.  She showed us a lot of her work, I think because she wanted to give us a sense of what can be done in a studio.  She discussed residencies a lot which was awesome.  All artists need to know about that, because that is a whole different kind of studio.  She also discussed the networking aspect of being an artist and residencies.  It was similar to what the guy with the mohawk was saying about your network being another layer of your studio.  I found her work REALLY interesting and kind of a breath of fresh air.  Also her information about working as an artist was very valuable.

Text Drawing Assignment

This assignment was to make three different drawings using only text. One representational, one abstract, and one expressive. I had a very difficult time because I'ver never used Illustrator before.

Peter Hanley

Peter Hanley seemed like a very interesting fellow, although his presentation was a big abstract and sometimes hard to follow. His overall message was quite compelling, in that his idea was that your "head" is your first studio. I agree with this notion. He is a multi-talented artist, representing mostly the computer aspect of his art. He focused a great deal on networking, which he spoke of as a layer of a persons studio, along with their head. Layers of life are layers of ones studio according to him, and I like the idea of this also.

Response to TED Video

In response to the TED video that we watched in class, I loved everything that guy was saying. He was right on point about technology and young people. The only disagreement I have with him is when he spoke about the remixing and recreation of already created sources. I think there are a lot of amazing things out there that have been directly inspired, influenced and even sampled from other sources. However, in my book there comes a point where someone is skipping the first step, which is the initial light bulb. The glimmer of original creation. Some people solely base their creative endeavors on things that have already been produced, creatively, and even things that have already had their hay day and seen the limelight. There is SO much new technology and media today that it is hard to one to think for oneself. It is a world that soaks up so much creativity, yet is not re-creating it's own.

Response to Bauhaus Lecture

The presentation given by Pr. Glahn about the Bauhaus was supremely interesting. The idea of breaking away from the traditional school of art at that time must have seemed absurd! I've always been more interested in creating accessible art, so that people who may not generally be able to enjoy it, might be able to recognize that they are enjoying it. This might not be quite on topic, but I truly appreciate the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia for this reason. The more and more I explore some of the city's less favorable neighborhoods, I continue to find these huge murals painted on the sides of buildings. Maybe the people in these neighborhoods can't afford to go to the art museum, or maybe they aren't taught to think about art. They may not even know what First Friday is, but if there is a huge painting in their neighborhood, at least one person is bound to look up and admire a piece of art. That is accessibility. Back to Bauhaus. I also love the idea of functional art, to an extent. When it becomes mass produced then it is no longer as interesting because it becomes the norm. I think a piece of art should be one of a kind, or very rare, which is something the Pr. Glahn talked about.

A phew phun philly phinds.

Washington D.C. and Week One in Philly

The weekend before school started, my friends and I took a day trip to Washington D.C. to see the Allen Ginsberg exhibition. We found out there was a massive rally being put on that day at teh reflection pond. As we pulled into town, we just happened to find ourselves driving one street parallel with the counter march. We went to the National Gallery, saw the wonderful photographs taken by Ginsberg, depicting personal and frozen moments with such geniuses as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and so many more. We decided that since we were in the nations capitol, we would stick around and be straightup tourists. So we did the whole drive by the capitol building, stare at the White House in hopes of an Obama sighting, pretend to stroke the Washington Monument, take pictures of it reflecting off the pond, blabla bla bla. It was good for me, I hadn't been there and done the tourist thing since I was a kid. One of our mates had a killer toothache which climaxed in hell one our way home. We had to stop at a random dive bar off the highway so he could take a shot of whiskey. I don't think it helped.