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.