Artist Response: Julian Schnabel

 Julian Schnabel

“We all jump in a hole and if you can crawl out then you get to go home.” --Schnabel

Julian Schnabel is a well-recognized artist.  This lecture was held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and was fairly crowed.  The lecture was designed to be a question and answer set up discussing and comparing Julian Schnabel’s work as well as Pablo Picasso’s.  As soon as Schnabel walked onto the stage in his pajamas I knew it was going to be an interesting lecture.  I enjoyed how I got to hear experts and artists talk about paintings from the Picasso exhibit because I learned things that I didn’t know before and it also encouraged me to revisit the Picasso exhibit.  For instance, Schnabel discussed Picasso’s painting “Women joined hands” and Schnabel explained how there are sketches on the sides of the drawing were Picasso was experimenting.  Schnabel also explained how you could tell that mostly likely no one was interested in buying this piece of work because of the creases in the painting that it was most likely rolled up and put away for quite some time.  Another thing that I learned from Schnabel’s lecture about Picasso is that in many of Picasso’s painting he left them unfinished because Picasso knew he could finish them he didn’t need to prove to us that he could because he had done it before.  

Schnabel’s also discussed his own work and compared many of them to Picasso’s work.  I had never seen Schnabel’s paintings before and really enjoyed what he said about them and how he got started of each one.  One statement I really enjoyed that Schnabel said was that he liked the subjectivity of paintings and how “people take away different things, people liked to be surprised.”   Another quote I enjoyed by Schnabel was

“We all jump in a hole and if you can crawl out then you get to go home.”  This quote related to Schnabel and how he works on projects, he mentioned that if he is filming and they get to the location and it flooded then he decides on the best angle to shoot from and doesn’t change locations because there is an issue.   I respect this dedication and trust he has for things working out to benefit his work. 

Julian Schnabel did not answer any of my questions however overall I feel that Schnabel creates work that interests him.  Overall I enjoyed the lecture I was disappointed that the Curator kept the lecture very structured I feel like it would have been more interesting if Schnabel was allowed to talk freely.  Schnabel seemed really laid back and appeared to be enjoying himself on stage.  I was glad that the curator brought up Schnabel’s films because I love and have seen them all (except for his newest film Miral).  

Artist Questions- Julian Schnabel

Since you are a multi media artist when you come up with an idea or concept how do you determine which medium you should use to carry out your idea?

Since you work with multiple different mediums including filmmaking and paintings, what is your favorite medium to work with?

Your three movies you have created deal with individuals and they contain diverse and strong topics how do you come up with these ideas?

Idea 12: Lighting

Lighting

–noun

1. the act of igniting or illuminating: the lighting of many candles; the annual lighting of the Christmas tree.

2. the arrangement of lights  to achieve particular effects: to work out the lighting for one's living room.

3. an effect achieved by the arrangement of lights: Several critics praised the lighting of the play.

4. the science, theory, or method of achieving particular effects by the use of lights.

5. the way light  falls upon a face, object, etc., especially in a picture.

As I have changed my project around yet again I have noticed how important the lighting has become in each photograph.  When I originally began this project I photographed the women two ways, me looking through the dollhouse window from the outside of the house and me looking though the dollhouse window from the inside.  Ultimately I chose my first set of photographs based on the lighting.  However I changed to a ore portrait like template for my final photographs therefore I had issues with the lighting.  After playing and editing the white balance on my camera as well as the lighting I was using on the women’s faces and in the dollhouse I think I have solve many of the lighting issues I was having.  

Article

http://photoinf.com/General/NAVY/Basic_lighting_techniques-_Outdoor_and_Existing_ligt_photography.htm

This article is about the importance of lighting in photography.  There are several different types of lighting when it comes to photography such as outdoor lighting, front lighting, side lighting, and back lighting.  


Light meters read; photographers interpret. - Catherine Jo Morgan



Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.
George Eastman

Submission 3

Show submission to the PF Magazine contest.

Artist Post 12: Cao Fei

Cao Fei

Cao Fei was born in Guangzhou, China in 1978.  Fei studied at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2001 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree.  Fei creates playful, creative, and innovative art.   Inspired by old Chinese architecture, landscapes and art Fei mixes old with new when creating new work. Fei creates photographs, video installations, and various media works.   Cao Fei has had her work shown in multiple solo exhibitions including HIP HOP, Lombard-Fried Project in New York, COSPlayers, Para Site Art Space in Hong Kong, and The San Yuan Li Project, The Court Yard Gallery in Beijing. 

Fei uses a variety of different materials to create her work dependent on the project she is creating.  Fantasy and playfulness has a large impact on Fei’s work and subject matter.  After college, Fei began creating work about her critique of society and the grind of people in the workplace.  In her later work, Milk Man Fei created a video piece that consisted of a more thorough understanding of society as a whole.  I found this interesting because Cao Fei’s artwork changed as she grew and experienced more things.  COSPLAYERS also known as role-playing are young people who are highly influenced by cartoon culture.  In Fei’s piece COSPLAYERS she created a film with carton inspired teens in their everyday life displaying a role reversal situations.  Over the years, Fei has mixed multiple topics and interests of hers to create videos and work that relates several of her interests together each time expanding her creativity. 

I am attracted to Cao Fei’s work because of her creativity and how she expands her topics and projects each time she creates a new series.   Fei’s work relates to what I am doing with my projects because of the playfulness that she brings to her artwork.  I have been working with women and the characters that they play or used to once toy with.

Quotes

“It also has this Avatar like element with the workers role playing their fantasies, I often have the feeling that their truly valid is a kind of opportunity to remake themselves.  For corporations to that artist creates works with the factory as the backdrop is an attempt to form a corporate culture.”

“What Artists do in reality to the art world is not all that important to the corporation.   What is important is the project that is created”  

Website: http://www.caofei.com/

Interview: http://fillip.ca/content/your-utopia-is-ours

Gallery: Para-site, 2006 Hong Kong

Cao Fei, COSPLAYERS, C-Print

Cao Fei, COSPLAYERS, C-Print 

Deep Breathing

Cao Fei, Fresh, C-Print

Unattainable Love

Cao Fei, Fresh, C-Print

Not Going Home Today

Works Cited

Cao Fei. Biography. <http://www.caofei.com/2.html>. 

PBS. Art 21.  Fantasy. <http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/cao-fei/>.

Idea 11: Characters

Characters

–noun

1.  the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.

2.  one such feature or trait; characteristic.

3.  moral or ethical quality: a man of fine, honorable character.

4.  qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity: It takes character to face up to a bully.

5. reputation: a stain on one's character.

6. good repute.

7. an account of the qualities or peculiarities of a person or thing.

8. a person, especially with reference to behavior or personality: a suspicious character.

9. Informal . an odd, eccentric, or unusual person.

10. a person represented in a drama, story, etc.

the environment.

A character is a representation of a person.  Over the course of this semester I have photographed many women and reshot most of them at least three times.  It interesting to look back at their photographs and see their personality through the photograph even though its just their torso and up.  




We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
Walt Disney

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities.
Walt Disney

Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/characters.html#ixzz1KZ1EAI9J

Artist Post 11- Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953.  Weems studied modern dance in San Francisco after graduating.  Weems then decided to continue her studies at the California Institute of Arts, Valencia.  Wems then continued on to receive a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego.  It wasn’t until Weems came across the book, “The Black Photography Annual” a book by African American photographers that she became interested in photography as an art form.  Carrie Mae Weems has earned several awards including being named the Photographer of the Year by the Friends of Photography.  Later Weems was awarded the Distinguished Photographers Award in 2005.  Weems is now represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.  

Weems is a photographer and artist and is known for taking black and white photographs involving race, family, and gender issues.  Storytelling plays a large roll in Carrie Mae’s work she often intertwines themes that have occurred in her life.  Weems first collection, “Family Pictures and Stories” was documentary of her family.  This collection built characters and a voice for her following work “Ain’t Jokin” and “Kitchen Table” series.  Weems made a statement in regards to using her family in her images, “My family becomes the representational vehicle that allows me to enter the larger discussion of race, class, and historical migration.”  Weems work often relates back to her African heritage so it seems appropriate that she would photograph her family.  Another statement that Weems made was, “Digital technology has enabled me to enlarge my photographs to a scale that allows the viewer to enter physically into the work of art. Each series was a multi-media installation, encompassing digitally produced images on muslin cloth and canvas and an artist-recorded audio piece.”  I found this interesting because I have been wondering and thinking of ideas on how to hang my work for my current series. 

I have actually seen Weems work, “The Kitchen Table Series” on display in a gallery before a couple years ago.  I am attracted to Weem’s photographs and how they tell stories.  Through Weems photographs she has expressed he own experiences of the world.  I am captivated by the lighting in Weems photographs it is striking and delicate.   I have been working on the lighting in my photographs and trying to resolve the issues I had with the light causing colorcasts in my photographs.  

 

Quotes

“Her work speaks to human experience and of the multiple aspects of individual identity, arriving at a deeper understanding of humanity.”

Mary Jane Jacobs, “Ritual and Revolution”

“Digital technology has enabled me to enlarge my photographs to a scale that allows the viewer to enter physically into the work of art. Each series was a multi-media installation, encompassing digitally produced images on muslin cloth and canvas and an artist-recorded audio piece.” ----Carrie Mae Weems

Website: http://carriemaeweems.net/

Interview: http://blog.art21.org/2009/07/10/an-interview-with-carrie-mae-weems-by-dawoud-bey/

Gallery:  Carrie Mae Weems most recent exhibition was, “The Deconsructive Impulse: Women Artists reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991.  Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Purchase, NY Jan. 15- April 3, 2011

Carrie Mae Weems, "Family Pictures and Stories"

Image from American Icons, 1988-1989

Carrie Mae Weems, "Kitchen Table"

black and white Image 1990

Carrie Mae Weems, "Kitchen Table"

black and white image 1990

Carrie Mae Weems, "Slave Coast"

Image from Who, What, When, Where 1998

Carrie Mae Weems, "Framed by Modernism"

Seduced by One Another Yet Bound by Certain

Social Conventions, 1996

Works cited

Carrie Mae Weems. 10 April 2011. <http://carriemaeweems.net/index.html>.

Carrie Mae Weems.  Wikipedia. 25 February 2011. 10 April 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Mae_Weems>. 

Idea 10: Presentation

Presentation

–noun

1.  an act of presenting.

2.  the state of being presented.

3.  a social introduction, as of a person at court.

4.  an exhibition or performance, as of a play or film.

5.  offering, delivering, or bestowal, as of a gift.

6.  a gift.

7.  a demonstration, lecture, or welcoming speech.

8.  a manner or style of speaking, instructing, or putting oneself forward: His presentation was very poor.

Presentation is the practice of showing the content of your work to an audience.  The display of how you present your work can be very important.  Now that the end of the semester is creeping up on me I have been thinking a lot about the presentation of my work.  I don’t want to frame my work because to me that is so final and I don’t want to see my work behind glass.  After thinking about a variety of ways to display my work I have decided that I think I am going to have my photos mounted on gaffer board and create a frame on the back on the board to allow them to be raised off the wall. I am also thinking about how I am going to print my actually photographs and I'm thinking of using a luster finish paper or even possible a matte paper.  

Quotes

I am careful with my material and presentation.
Shelly Berman


Our work is the presentation of our capabilities. 
Edward Gibbon



Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/presentation.html#ixzz1ImivQFPf

Article : http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=10&sid=74255517-f7d3-4a32-8eb6-f034752f216f%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCxjb29raWUsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=cmedm&AN=6187609 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/presentation.html 

Annotated Bib

Tilly DA, Hagen AR.  Preparing graphics for visual Presentation.  1983. <http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=10&sid=74255517-f7d3-4a32-8eb6-f034752f216f%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCxjb29raWUsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=cmedm&AN=6187609>. 

This article discusses the importance of graphics and presentation.  The preparation sometimes takes a long time to make it look professional and well done.  It is important to review what you have created before production.  This article also explains the importance of making sure your craft is good and you can complete the presentation of one piece before finalizing the rest of your work.  

Artist Lecture- Trevor Paglen Response

Trevor Paglen

                                  

“How do we see things that are designed to be invisible?”

Trevor Paglen, Missing Persons, 2006 

Trevor Paglen, Missing Persons detail, 2006

3 words

1.) Research

2.) Commitment

3.) Knowledgeable

Trevor Paglen is a well-recognized artist and photographer.  Paglen gave a very unique lecture compared to lectures we have had in the past.  Paglen began by explaining that the overall frame work what he tries to introduce through his work is “How do we see things that are designed to be invisible?”  Paglen continued to show us government files and information that is available to the public however is not designed to be understood by the masses of people.  I liked how Paglen explained and showed us the research and information he searches through when working on a project instead of just telling us.  I was amazed that all this information is available to the public. 

The work that interested me the most from Paglen’s lecture was “Missing Persons.”  The CIA had a program to kidnap terrorists around the world and took them to discreet various prisons.  There are no records of these terrorists making them to have a ghostly existence.  I really liked how Paglen researched this project and for displaying it in the gallery he had framed signatures of these “missing people.”  I appreciate the length and time Paglen goes through to investigate his projects. 

Paglen seemed to answer both of my questions during his lecture.  Paglen mentioned several times throughout his lecture how the information he finds when researching his projects is open to the public.  Most of the files Paglen searches are available are unrestricted government documents that the constitution protects people to gain access of.  Paglen also mentioned that he has a wide variety of individuals who specialize I a variety of different things that he can ask for assistance or obtain some of their help on his projects.  Another question of mine that Paglen answered during his lecture was that he has never been frightened by information he has found yet Paglen becomes intrigued wih what he finds. Overall Paglen’s lecture was very informative and intriguing.

Artist Questions: Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen 

Your very interested with the idea that photographs can be truth telling has there ever been anything that you have found and photographed that was frightening to you?

You have been exploring and photographing the things you have discovered about the US government and military.  Overtime have you found it easier to access information or has it become harder?

Artist Post 10- Abelardo Morell

Abelardo Morell

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948.  Morell and his family moved to New York City in 1968.  Morell studied at the Bowdoin College earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art 1981.  Morell has won numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the New England Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and the Alturas Foundation Grant.  Morell is currently a professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art. 

Morell is recognized for creating large room sized camera obscura images in various places and photographing them.  Traveling the world and converting full-size rooms into large camera obscuras bring the outside into the rooms through a tiny pin-hole.   Morell captures his photographs using an 8 x 10 view camera and makes them into mural size prints.  Studying Morells delicate overlapping images is interesting the more you look at them because you find new details that you don’t notice at first.  Morell originally worked mostly with black and white film but has recently begun working with color. Morell stated, “Black and white to me suggests a timelessness, a time forever, the color world feels like it’s that day it’s the temperature of that day, its very specific to a given time like impressionism or something.” 

I am attracted to Morell’s work and how interesting the layers and the details of each image.  The combination between two spaces indoors and outside fascinates me because of the blending of spaces I am working on with my current work. 

 Quotes 

“I thought I’d teach my students so of the fundamentals of photography so I thought I’d make some pictures just showing them the mechanics of it.   I made a photograph of a light bulb inside a box just to again show the simplicity of the history of the medium. I loved it so much I thought maybe I can actually make art pictures about the mechanics of this medium. “---Abelardo Morell

“Black and white to me suggests a timelessness, a time forever, the color world feels like it’s that day it’s the temperature of that day, its very specific to a given time like impressionism or something.” --- Abelardo Morell

Interview: http://www.lensculture.com/morell.html

Website: http://www.abelardomorell.net/

Gallery: Mannerism and Modernism: The Kasper Collection of Drawings and Photographs Group Exhibition, The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY January 21-May 1, 2011

                                          Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura: View of the Manhattan Bridge- 

                                          April 30th/Afternoon, 2010 

Abelardo Morell, Boston's Old Customs House in Hotel Rooml, 1999

Abelardo Morell, The Eiffel Tower in the Hotel Frantour, 1999

Abelardo Morell,  Castle Courtyard in Bedroom, 1999

Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura: View of Central Park Looking North

Spring, 2010

Works Cited 

Abelardo Morell.  3 April 2011.<http://www.abelardomorell.net/>. 

Lens Culture. Outside- in, upside-down-- and now in color! 3 April 2011. <http://www.lensculture.com/morell.html>.