Art show= Ilene Segalove

I was intrigued by Ilene Segalove's work. There was a quirkiness to her works of art. From her installations to the videos you can see her development as an artist. She grew up in L.A. and her work reflects that. She had a kind of old Hollywood glam look with some of her photographs.  One of my favorite works was "Close but no Cigar". She reenacted the original image and placed her self in the same scene. This piece was very effective especially placing the images side by side to compare them. I placed my second favorite image bellow. This one was very interesting because she placed a Jackson Pollock painting with in her photograph. The painting is also in color which gives it a higher level of importance in a way. Pollock's paintings are easily recognizable and I think Segalove was using that as inspiration for her work. It is interesting to see the juxtaposition between the color of the painting and the rest of the photograph. The title of the photograph is also intriguing. She refers to the painting as a program that they will be watching. And in a way one can look at Pollock's painting and see something different every time. And the fact that is "Today's Program" means it is universally reaching all people.

Close but no Cigar

Today's Program: Jackson Pollock, "Lavender Mist"

wednesday is free day!!!!

So I have completely fallen in love with print making. Betsabee Romero has truly inspired me. Her work is so eloquently done. By using the tires of cars she carves out a design which becomes her print. The images have been displayed in galleries on scroll like pieces of paper and plastic. This tires were placed in the gallery and museums along side the prints it had made. At one museum she placed sand on the floor and had the tires roll over it to leave a print in the sand.

The use of traditional Mexican iconography is very beautiful. She mixes the different aspects of Mexican culture (the old and new) into one large print. I think it is very innovative to use the rubber of old tires to make the image block from. It has a lot of metaphor behind it. Tires are on cars and they get people from point A to point B. And this print leaves a trace of that journey for others to see. It is really impacting to the viewer to see these large trails of paper depicting the intricate details of the print. I really admire her work. 

Confessions day 3

Everyone did an amazing job today. I could tell that they used the extra weekend to amp up their projects a lot. I really enjoyed Eddy's piece a lot. The craftsmanship was well done considering he has never done stained glass before. I like his universal approach to have the confession being able to relate to everyone, male and female. I thought that The imagery was well done, not to forward but enough information to help me get to the confession being told. He tied in a the major characteristics of the Catholic religion into each of his panels. I am glad that the middle panel was very structured with lines unlike the other two panels.

Ashley's piece was very well done too. I liked her idea and the beautiful words she wrote as her performance piece. However, I feel that it would have been more effective if she would of had it memorized. I have recently taken Kip's spoken word class and memorizing the piece helps connect you to the audience. It would of had maybe even more emotions with it because she would have been making eye contact with the audience. I feel that it would of made it stronger and I would felt more pulled into her performance.

Monday April 25, 2011 lecture

Lecture 5. Personal Narrative 

1.) Based in the real
2.) includes signifying details
3.) non-transferable
4.) allows audience empathy via specificity

This lecture reinforced what art is. And for this class and I think for the rest of my art carrier art is making meaning happen. I want people to always be able to feel some kind of emotion through my art. I want to evoke all the human senses. My art work is very close to me and is always personal so I want people to feel what I was feeling in that moment that I decided to capture.

This picture is an amazing narrative. Learning how the photographer risked his life to take it and knowing that this man being photographed was not trying to be a hero but was standing up for what he believed in. 

Every image goes on to tell a story. We look at them and we want to know what is happening and we want to know the out come of these peoples lives. This image is making meaning happen. 

Making meaning happen does not have to evoke a sad emotion , it can evoke happiness and love. Sally Mann's images do just that. They are beautiful rendered and show a childes innocents. 

Personal narrative is hard not to have in a piece of work. The art work becomes a part of you and you a part of it. So maybe all art is in a way personal narrative in different forms. 

Robert Raushenberg

Robert Raushenberg has always inspired me. Not only with my own art work but just in life in general. His art work has made people learn to look again and to really understand the piece of art. His use of mix media has always been well thought out and it is always intentional within his work. This piece above has always been one of my favorite works of art from him. The burns in a way form the shape of the United States. The arched back of the male in the image is like he is hiding. The placement of the American flag with the burnt affect a crossed it leaves a silent impression of the American dream and the American past. 

My Confession

Ch.7 & 8

Chapter 7 was about the six steps to creating art. The six steps that are life the scientific method but for art. They are 1. idea/purpose, 2. form, 3. idiom, 4. structure, 5. craft, and 6. surface. This chapter was interesting because as an artist we have to go through these steps and similar other ones to come up with painting, sculpture, poem, performance, and all other types of art work. Brain storming ideas help weed out the less creative ideas from the amazing ideas. This chapter discussed about how self expression of art is in a way the pursuit of the artist finding the truth. Artist are in a way like scientist they are searching and discovering new ways to create art and to push the boundaries more and more each time.

Chapter 8 discussed the usage of color in art and how color has a huge impact. This chapter was the most captivating because the rest of the book is in black and white and then you get to this chapter and the color is everywhere. I felt like i appreciated it more and could really see every square as a little art work compared to the rest of the book. Color has a way of conveying emotions and expressing those emotions to the viewer which brings them into the art work.

random act of kindness

My random act of kindness was more of a helping hand. The other day I was in the print lab working on my project for print 14 class, another student was in there working on her assignment too. We were both very focused on our projects and did not notice time going by. The other girl looked up and realized she had class in 5 minutes. She started to freak out because she was using the automatic press machine and it takes a at least 30 minutes to clean it completely. She was rushing trying to clean it so I told her that I would do it for her so she would not be late to class. I had time because I did not have class for the rest of the day. She was so grateful that I did not mind doing it. I had been in the same spot she was in before and I ended up being late to class.  So I cleaned her press machine and the station she was working at and put working on my project on hold. It felt good to do something nice for someone else and not expect anything back but just do it . I hope that one day maybe someone will be there for me when I lest expect to lend a helping hand.

confessions day 2

Wow today was intense!!! Everyone did an amazing job today. I could tell that a lot of time went into today's performances/ presentations. I enjoyed all of them. Each one had a different approach and different medium used. I loved Catherine's performance. The choice of music that was during the performance turned into a heart monitor flat lining was chilling. The fast flash frames of beautiful photographs allowed me to be pulled farther into her performance. I like how she blindfolded herself so symbolize how she was left out of what had happened to her grandmother. Her performance was very touching and breath taking.
I also really enjoyed Max's performance too. It was extremely effective with the lighting changes and the scene changes were he became some else was also great. He spent a lot of time thinking his performance out. The language and tone of his voice made the acting convincing. He immersed the audience into each scene.

I really like Amanda's a lot. I like how she made foot prints that changed colors the more she walked up the paper. Her writing the words was nice it helped me understand her performance before she explaned it. The only thing that I would change would just get a long piece of paper. So that there would be a longer trail of foot prints. But besides that it was great .

Enrique Martinez Celaya

I recived a lot from this presentation. Enrique Martinez Celaya is a Cuban born artist. He went into science first because that is what his parents wanted. I really could relate with him about this. My parents struggled to give me the opportunities that I have and they also wanted me to go into science and become a doctor. I struggled with wanted to please my parents and wanted to be genuinely happy with my life. I am glad to know that people have had a similar experience as me. 

His work is amazing. And amazing in the large scale of it. He goes from wood sculptures to large paintings. He takes big risks with his work but it pays off. Each painting emits emotions when looking at it. My favorite paintings were the simple ones that were just black and white with very minimal detail. The shape is all that is need to understand what Enrique Martinez Celaya s trying to convey. During his presentation he shared with us a question that others would ask him "Was it worth it?". I never thought about things with that question but I like that idea of asking myself that to see if I have taken my art work as far as it can go. By asking this question I will know if I took risks and pushed boundaries. 

free form

So I have been working on this art project for my Print 14 class which is beginning print making.  I had to make a linoleum block and cut out an image/ design and then I had to also make a another block by a using polymer plate with Rubylith. I was very excited about taking this class because of the assignments that would be forcing me to try new things. I have never taken a print class so at times the class is a challenge for me but that s what I like most. It forces me out of my comfort zone.

So my project for this assignment made me brain storm a lot about what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to have something that was good enough to put in my portfolio. So I took the idea of idealization of people and translated that from two different aspect and merged the ideas together. I took the religious image of Our Lady Of Guadalupe and merged it with the a photo of Frida Kahlo. So I took very iconic images that are recognizable throughout the world and created a new image. I elevated Frida Kahlo to what Our Lady of Guadalupe symbolizes for so many people, a consent mother to all.

I am not done with my project but I will post images of my work as soon as I am not making the prints. 

confessions day 1

There was so many people that had great works of art today. I could tell that there confessions had been worked with a lot to get them to were they were. Erika Frost piece was perfect. Everything about it was very captivating. It brought back a lot of my own memories of childhood. I think everyone has a time in their life were they want to understand what family really is. Seeing who other people grow up makes a person question their own up bringing. I loved the construction of the book. The book being over sized with large pages and big font gave it a childlike appearance but the large vocabulary that was used made it known that this was not a child's book. The confession was so touching. I really enjoyed who she had us sit on the floor it furthered the childhood memories.

The piece that I thought needed more work on was Darcey's shuffle piece. I loved that she danced in the beginning and started with the ballerina moves then went into shuffling. I understood her confession. I think that because we were short on time she was not able to further tell us more about her passion for different types of dance and how this new form of dance has made a huge impact on her life. I still thought it was a great piece.

April 18th 2011 lecture

When I think about mapping I think about life. A map shows all the many different aspects of life. This image above made me re-think everything about what I know thus far in my life. I was shown this in my Chicano/ Chicana Studies class. It makes me think a lot about how we as a civilization were told something and believed it without ever questioning it. 

After the lecture I thought about how I have unknowingly mapped my own life. When I was twelve ears old me and my best friend made are own sisterhood with each other. This involved us to make a list of rules to be apart of this very exclusive group and we also made a list of what we wanted to accomplish in life. This list was kept in a photo album that we made together and over time we added more pictures and ideas to it. Looking at it today we have not really stayed true to all the rules( some of the rules we ridiculous like not wearing any tied dyed shirts). But we stayed true to our goals and have achieved them both.  

Min-Yi Lin's piece entitled tribe #4 made a huge impact on me. It was simple beautiful. It shows what a community is. I think that in today's society people live a faster paste lifestyle and lose site of what it means to belong to something that works together. 

The Chilean Arpilleras I thought was a great way of understanding mapping. Not only are the Chilean women commenting on the injustice that they were experiencing in their country but they were also connecting back to the tradition of their ancestors of telling their story/history with the use of textiles. These works become more powerful with the understanding on what they are showing. 

John Cage

I have not read that much literature on John Cage and his work so I really enjoyed being able to find out more about him and his thoughts about his creative process and works of compositions. I had heard about him in my Modern Art History class. The only thing I knew was that he did a piece in complete silence entitled 4'33". After watching this piece again I realized what he was trying to convey within his performance. That music does not need to be planned or written out ahead of time, that the every day noise that we are surrounded by actual music. I understood his concept behind this and his originality went in the opposite direction of previous composers. I personal like his "Dream" piece over the silence of "4'33". Maybe I have become use to hearing music that is planned. I find "Dream" more enticing to me to listen to it over and over again. 4'33" is something new every time I watch it and I think that is why I do not enjoy it as much. It is a performance piece that has to watched and listened too. But Cage's understanding of silence in the modern world were most people do not even truly know what silence is interesting. To have 4'33" be a metaphor for life and how people live it with out really slowing down to enjoy it.  This interview was helpful to me in fully understanding his idea of silence. 

Saturday: Ch 5 & 6

Chapter 5 was about living in the line. This chapter goes into the idea that art work allows the viewer to have emotions from seeing it and experiencing it. That an image can make the viewer cry, laugh, scream, and a bunch of other human emotions. I agreed with this chapter a lot about how viewing a piece of art work the artist can make the viewer experience a certain emotion by conveying the drama with in the painting and drawing. A certain line or the brush stroke can have an effect on the viewer as well. All these different techniques allow the artist to take control of the viewers personal emotions. 

Chapter 6 is about the aspect of show and tell that is within art. How artists use pictures and words together in a piece of art work to convey there desired effect. This is used by comic book artist all the time. And also artist have worked with this combination as well. I feel that if there is to many words with the image that it becomes very explanatory. The viewer knows right away what the artist is trying to show. I think that this combination works best when there is less words so that the painting or drawing is up for more interpretation.  

Art show= Bridging Through The Arts:Transracial Community Building

I extremely enjoyed this art show. The range of different styles and mediums was very interesting. The art show consisted of paintings, collages, and photographs. All of the works of art had a narrative aspect to them. The first art work that was on the walls of the MCC lounge was by Evan Bissell. It was a collaborative work between the artist and prisoners and there families, it was titled What Cannot Be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project. It was through weekly workshops that the participants were able to come up with there own ideas that then Bissell translated into 8ft by 5ft paintings. These are just 4 of the 8 he did.

Another piece of work that I was interested in a lot was by Ozi Magana entitled La Sonrisa . The depiction is just breath taking. When I first stood in front of it I did not see the hands grasping out for the woman that was placed in the middle. The placement of the middle figure and the smaller figures just glide together perfectly. The figure having a skull as a face is very interesting since the smaller figures have faces. 

I also really like this painting by Fabian Debora entitled Shinning Star. The arm colors and the size really has inspired me to go bigger with my paintings and to take more risks with my content. 

confession:fearful/scary moment.

The most fearful scary moment I had was when I was ten years old. I have a huge love for being in the water. I grew up with a pool and learned at a very young age how to swim. I was on competitive swim teams for three years already. I was a confident swimmer and that I think was my weakness. I was at Camp Pendleton Beach in California with my family and cousins. We had been there a week already camping on the beach and every day I was in the water. However the tide had become stronger as the second week progressed. I being naive at ten years old and thinking I was unstoppable did not pay attention to my uncle who told me to stay close to the shore that day. I was playing in the waves with my much older cousin, who was holding my hand. Diving under the waves as the came crashing onto the beach. We had swam out far enough so that our feet could not touch the ocean floor. I got distracted by my other cousins in the distance behind us and got hit by a wave. I was holding my cousins hand really tight but the wave was so much stronger then me. I was engulfed within the wave as it thrashed me farther and father under the water. I could not tell which way was up and which way was down. I panicked and tried to swim out of the centrifugal force of the wave, but in doing so I swam down and hit the ocean floor. I did not know what do and I needed air so I stopped fighting with the wave and let it take me. Luckily it pushed me back to shore and not farther out into the ocean. My cousin was freaking out because he could not find me he waved to the lifeguard and the lifeguard spotted me and pulled me out. I felt like my lungs had been crushed but I was ok and only had bumps and bruises from it. To me It felt like I was under the water for ever. That day I thought it was last and in thinking that I learned to respect mother nature in all of its power. 

Confession: happiest/proudest moment.....

My happiest/ proudest moment was actually getting excepted into UCSB. I was a transfer student from Sacramento, California. I had come to visit the campus a month before my application was sent. The moment I stepped foot on campus I knew this was the place for me. The location was perfect and the art program had everything I was looking for in furthering my education. I applied and waited with the other thousand of transfer students and freshmen to see if we got it. I was devastated the day I checked my email and was told I was not excepted. This was my top pick school. I cried as if I had broken up with a boyfriend about it. But I could not take no for an answer, so I appealed the decision and called the school every day. I was not allowed entrance because I took my statistics class in the spring and not the fall. To prove to the school that I wanted to be here I had to send them my transcripts showing my overall GPA of 3.8 and two letters of recommendation. I was fighting for something I wanted so bad. Then I waited again. The school called me and told me that I was excepted into the school and would be a part of the class of 2012. I was ecstatic! All my hard work paid off. I proved to everyone that I could do it and I proved to myself that positive actions always equal positive results.

most proud moment after creating favorite work of art

My most proudest moment with one of my pieces of work was in my intermediate drawing class. This portrait I did of my self took me out of my comfort zone. I usually worked on a smaller level but for this project I went large. I stretched out a piece of 36x24 paper began to construct my placement of images. I first drew the lower image and felt like i was not going large enough so I erased it but left a little bit of the graphite on the paper so that I created an over lapping effect of the exact image. I placed the tree in the top left corner to represent my great grandmother who helped raise me. Behind the branches of the tree I drew a portrait of my great grandmother that I took from a picture of her from 1945. The roots of the tree come forward and reach out into my hair and becomes one with me. I was trying to get across this idea about you do not know were you are going until you know were you have been. I used this project to try new methods of drawing. I drew this with large graphite sticks and drew standing up on an easel. I forced myself to use different drawing strokes and tools. I am very proud of this project because I tried new things with this medium. 

Embarrassing Moment

One of the most embarrassing moment I have ever had was when I was twelve years old. I was on vacation with my family and my older sister and I stayed up really late watching the show Jackass on MTV. The episode we were watching was about the casting being in France. One of the cast members was dressed up as the hunchback of Notre Dame. He was frolicking about in front of Notre Dame following people and I thought it was the funniest thing ever. I could not stop laughing. My sister started making fun of me cause she did not think it was that funny. So the episode ends and the next one starts and I look out of our hotel window and I see a real person who has a hunchback and I start laughing again because I can't believe it. And I know it was wrong of me but it was uncontrollably laughter and my sister told me I needed to stop but I couldn't. She kicked me to get me to stop and I went to kick her back in retaliation and I pulled my back mussel. I could not stand up straight for the whole rest of the vacation. And when someone would ask me what happened I didn't want to say that I made fun of someone else and this is what happens when you do that. From then on out I have believe in karma .

I tried to find a youtube video of the episode but was unable to.

Monday: Kips lecture

The body has always been viewed and used as art. Live art performances have used the human body to interact with the viewer and get a reaction out of them.  Marina Abramovic created this performance were she and a another person stood naked in the gallery that was displaying her art work. Her and the other person would stand so close together that the audience would have to squeeze through them and choose which person to face. Another one of Abramovic's work that I find very interesting was when she displayed a bunch of instruments on a table and stood naked and had the audience use these items on her. One item was a rose with thorns and as the thorns were dragged a crossed her body she began to bleed. This interaction reminds me Yoko Ono's work but taking the interaction between the audience and the performer to the next level. 

Kip's lecture brought to light James Luna's work to me. All of his performance art pieces had such a deep meaning. Being looked at like an artifact and some people thinking that he was not even real is astonishing to me in his piece "The Artifact Piece". It was astonishing to me because people go to galleries and museums to look yet they really are not actually looking because they are to busy reading the little information cards on the side. His work is on the representation of how people have  become objects. And that people have these stereotypes of what certain cultures of people should act and look like. The most interesting piece to me was "End of the Trail". I am part Native American and I feel that I have just become a statistic to people finding out that my great grandfather, grandfather, and father have all had alcoholism and people expect me to be that way to yet I am not. I break the stereotype. 

sunday: 3 ideas for confession

1.) First confession is that I am afraid to grow up. Maybe everyone is actually afraid of this. I am not afraid to grow old at all, I am just afraid of not really living a life. That maybe I need more time to figure out exactly what I want to be in life. I feel that growing up you are told that you have to go to college and then they say get a job but that job you will have for the rest of your life. That scares me and I want more time to live my life how I want it to be. My idea of showing this was to have a series of timers going off. Everyone can relate to being late and hearing their alarm clock go off but in my head I hear 5 alarm clocks. One for my mother that reminds me to stick to my plan and graduate, one from my boyfriend telling me to hurry back home so we can live our life together, another alarm from my father telling me to figure out my carrier and get a real job,  an alarm that represents my whole extended family telling me I need to hurry up to get  married, and the last alarm is from myself, my own body telling me I have only so much time to have children.

2.)Confession number two is personal to me because I can never take it back. In a huge fight with my father I told him that if he ever put his hands on my mother again I would kill him. Just thinking about it sickens me. I am not an angry person yet I let this person bring out the worst in me. I can never take back what I said, no apology will ever erase my words. I was thinking about showing this my breaking a mirror and having the cracked pieces showing. No matter how much glue is used the viewer will always see the fractured lines just like I can not take back the words I said.

3.)Last confession is that i drink my milk from the carton. I have no idea why I do this. I have been doing this since I was very little. My mother would yell at me and I would get in trouble. But for some reason I taste different to me being in a cup. I know that sounds weird. I am not lazy I grab a cup for everything else but that. Luckily I do not share my milk with my roommates cause that would be disgusting. I haven't figured out how I would show this yet I was thinking that maybe I would bring in an item milk carton.

SAT - Reading response: Comics chapter 3 and 4

I really enjoyed reading chapter 3. I liked the whole idea of the gutter that is within comics and within art. I never had referred to it as a gutter before but that term fits perfect with it. Especially in a series of sequential prints of art work. This gutter allows the audience to assume what will happen or what is going to happen next. A way I though linked this back to art is when an artist has a cohesive theme within their art exhibition. Like in Cynthia Sherman’s work the viewer assumes the whole scene that is being depicted my how Sherman has set up the seen that is photographed. Because the artists leaves out certain elements which allows the viewer to think it also allows the viewer to make assumptions about the invisible and visible elements of the art work. This totally goes with the article about Duchamp and how the artist loses control of the work once the viewer sees it because the viewer is allowed to make assumptions. 

In chapter 4 it discuses the idea of time and space. And what I like about this was how artists use tools and different techniques to convey this. 

FRI - Reading response: Reader - Duchamp

What I found most interesting about this article was Duchamp's theory on how the artist is not really the creator because the viewer is allowed to be a part of determining what the art work is as well. By giving the viewer the ability to become just as influential as the actual artist was a huge deal. The artist in a since has no control over their art work because they cannot control the viewers own personal impressions and assumptions. 

It a way this scares me as an artist because what if now one views my work like how I had planned for it to be viewed. Maybe I am a control freak. Wither way I know that it is the audience that becomes a part of the work and documents it. The audience tells how the felt when viewing the art work even without knowing the artists explanation of the work.

Duchamp’s idea about this reminds me of Eastern European artists that performed the “outings”. Where they bused people in to remote places on the outskirt of town and and when the people got off the bus they waited for ten minutes and then someone would come up to them and tell them they had just been a part of a live art performance and were handed a piece of paper confirming it.  Then the artists involved would asked the participants to tell them what they had just experienced and through their documentation it was art.  

Thursday-document a non-art object as a work of Art and vice versa

This here is a new sculpture by up in coming artist Bak. He uses the stainless steal to give a really streamlined effect. The smaller pieces of metal come together and intertwine which allows the viewer to look within it. The metal pieces create a large volume that holds space in. These smaller pieces of metal are bound by a larger and shiner piece of metal that joins them together in a elongated line. The simplicity of the lines is what is very appealing to the sculpture. The viewer can follow the curves of the metal as it goes back to its original exist. 

Martin Puryear has created the newest item for your household. This a drying rack for towels. Summer time is approaching fast and every backyard pool party will need this. This is towel drying rack is 100% environmentally green. It is completely made out of recycled wood. The drying rack is assembled in a way that leaves these gabs in it which allows the air flow to be greater and your towels to dry faster. The towel rack has many racks to hang towels evenly throughout it. This towel drying rack will help lessen the cost and energy of running the household conventional dryer.

p.s. Martin Puryear you are an amazing artist and everything I just wrote about your work is made up for my class project...sorry!

My everyday action that I decided to perform was washing my face. I wash my face every morning and every evening before going to bed. This action is always done in a bathroom, a private location. However I have decided to perform this action on UCSB campus. I did this in front of the print lab across from Storke Tower. I wanted people who were walking by to be able to see me so thats why I decided to stay on the walking path side and not the bike path side. I brought face wash wipes and slowly began taking all my makeup off. After each wipe my true skin began to appear. My idea was about not conforming to what the standards might be. To basically except who you are and be happy with yourself. 

By performing this in a public location I know people noticed me and saw what I was doing but kept walking. I think to be more effective I should maybe have a sign that says something. Maybe a quote about inner beauty and acceptance of others or something along those lines. I was nervous to be in public doing this so I never made any really eye contact with the passerby's so I hope I was effective with performing my work. It took two face wash clothes to take off my makeup and let my true skin shine through. 

Art Show: Michael Powell Tuesday April 5th

I had the opportunity to go to Michael Powell's graduate art show exhibit . His show was located in the College of Creative Studies on UCSB campus.  All of his work was on a large scale. The majority of his work was mounted pieces of art work.   Each one had a different look but they all had the same theme and color scheme. Placed in the middle of the room was a stack of painted wood pieces that I thought were interesting and worked well to connect it with the rest of the art work.

His work consisted of using what I believe was wood to directly paint on. After painting on it and adding prints of repetitious color Powell then draped the wood canvases in clear plastic. Then he applied paint to the piece of plastic. Another one of his paintings that I felt was very intriguing was one that looked like a black and white elementary school photo. The portrait was actually missing the face and in that space was a blurred image of colors. This immediately  made me think about the theme for this week of truth and fiction. Maybe art work of a portrait is actually pointing out the truth that we all have distorted images of ourselves and others around us. I am excited to see what Michael Powell plans to exhibit  next. 

The Daily Nexus

Famous television psychic John Edward ,from the show “Crossing Over with John Edwards”, will be the class of 2011 Commencement speaker. Not only will the infamous John Edward’s invite the spirit of Chris Farley to actual give the honor of presenting the commencement speech, John Edward’s will also be helping the six hundred and eighty-two UCSB seniors that died last week graduate. “At 1:34 a.m. last night, Bill’s Bus careened off the side of the road and burst into flames on the corner of Calle Real and Hollister Avenue. Six hundred and eighty-two UCSB students were pronounced dead at the scene.”

Luckily the institution had enough money to get John Edward’s to the graduation. This graduation will be one of a kind. And a very special moment for the friends and family of all the victims. It will help give closure to the many families. However what is most up setting is that the parents will not be receiving a refund for the education of their died child. The institution increases tuition by 40% and then doesn’t even give back the money for the unfinished school quarter. That is like buying a gift card and not using it and then being told that the store went out of business and you your gift card is worth absolutely nothing. 

Fortunately Pop and R&B singer Rihanna felt bad and will be performing at the graduation in remembrance of the students. She has even created a Facebook group that is giving blessed thoughts and prayers to all the family and friends. She has decided to perform her number one hit “Disturbia”. You might ask why this song, well it is because this is the song that was playing when the students died that very tragic night on Bill’s Bus. 

Truth & Fiction

When thinking about the words truth and fiction I first think about what makes something true and what makes something fiction. Truth means it has concrete evidence that it happened and fiction is un true, made up stories or ides excreta. But isn’t everything fiction at one point or another. Or maybe fiction has merged so much with truth that we as humans cannot tell them a part at times.

Art has always worked in this realm of truth and fiction, clamming fact within the artists work. An example art being a fact is Joseph Turner’s Slaves Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying from 1840. Turner is commenting on the injustice of enslavement and the unethical actions of the Diaspora. I feel that previous artwork was more truth based. That art was used more as a form of documentation of actual facts and less on the fiction. However at the same time there is all of Dali’s artwork that is all based on fictional places and time. Dali’s Persistence of Memory depicts melting clocks in an ambiguous location.

In lecture on Monday Kip viewed the movie Cynsin by Valerie Soe. This movie was based on her friend Cynthia entering a beauty pajent as an undercover reporter and winning the contest. Soe’s movie is very bias and only from her point of view. I think the movie is truth from her perspective and not from Cynthia’s at all. Soe is commenting on the way people are blinded by the fictional lives we live as being truth. She even states at the end of the movie that if she were in the same shows as Cynthia maybe she would have done the same thing. Maybe people actual forget who the really are when they conform to others standards.

Lecture Monday April 4th

I liked the theme of this lecture being based on identity. And how classification is a human instinct now. I have always had issues with being classified, to be put in a box when I was younger. I hated filling out information boxes about myself and being told I could only check one box for my ethnicity. This always made me angry because I am half Mexican and half Black. I did not feel that checking other was an ethnicity.

The portraits that were viewed in lecture were different from what I first would say was a portrait. I was intrigued by Cindy Sherman's images of herself with different persona's. Yolanda Lopez's work struck a cord with me because I could relate to the art work, a depiction of a Chicana as Our Lady Of Guadalupe running with a snake in her hand. This image is about conveying power because the girl in running, running to gain control of her life and her destiny. The colors are very warm and and vibrant. Yolanda Lopez’s work is commenting on the Mexican American woman and the stereotypes that have been placed on them in the work place and in every day life. 

begin preliminary thinking about all upcoming assignments: a. Confessions, b. Sequence and narratives, c. alternate persona, d. personal space

A.) Confessions = Anytime I hear the word confession I just think of confessing my sines to a priest. I am Catholic and I attended a private Catholic elementary school and a high school and all the structure and rules have been kinda cemented in my head a little bit. A project that I would like to do that wold involve this idea of confessing ones sines is to have an anonymous confession box on campus. this box would have a piece of paper next to it and it would state "Bless me for I have sinned. It has been ________ (the amount of time) since last confession. This is my sin______________________________________.
These papers would stay anonymous just like it is when a Catholic goes to confession. I made the slip of paper not be connect specifically to a religion because I believe that no matter what religion people always have secrets and crimes to confess. This "Confession Box" would help people let go of there mistakes.

B.) Sequence & Narrative = I would like to create a sequence and narrative of a nightmare. Have this nightmare be placed on the walls of a room that was a circle so that it would be a complete 360degree turn to view everything. The depictions would come off of the pages of paper and attach to the walls and become an instillation piece. The instillation part of the work would allow the viewer to feel engulfed by the nightmare.

C.) Alternate Persona = My idea for this is to become someone that I am completely not. I was thinking about how Nikki S. Lee takes on other peoples lifestyles. I want to act like I am a foreigner. Someone that does not speak English at all. I want to document the treatment of foreigners by Americans who are rude and cruel to them. This would be something that I would have to do in downtown Santa Barbara and not on campus .

D.) Personal Space = My idea for this starts in a bathroom. I have always been intrigued by the writing on the walls of bathroom stalls. This is a personal space that is semi private or at lest for a moment it is. I was thinking about creating a bathroom stall that would be outdoors and not actually used as a place to go to the bathroom but as a private place to anonymously place ones thoughts on the wall of. This stall would have four walls so it would be private and the only thing others would see would be the persons feet that is in the stall. I would place markers of different sizes within the stall and allow the person to use their own as well. After a week of being moved around on UCSB campus I would take it down and open all four panels up for viewing.

prop/ invention assignment

My group had a large selection of items to work with. There was a cup, a Japanese fan, a strainer, a workout bench, a handheld vacuum, a peacock feather, and a baton. All these items are so different from each other. My group brained stormed a lot of ideas about what kind of invention we could make by bringing all these items together. We first tried to manipulate the objects to create something else. We finalized all of our ideas together to create a kit that would be sold in home all of the country. This would be "A Tactical Home Safety Kit".

This kit would come with every item shown and would be given a new purpose to protect ones self with. To the burglar or predator that think that carrying a baton is all they need to have a successful brake they are wrong and should fear any home with this kit in it. This kit is a set of self defense tools that are discussed as every day items. However, this very classy fan will inflict painful paper cuts to the intruder. The cub houses hot tea bags that will be flung at the intruder with the use of the hand strainer. The workout chair is a trap that would be placed on the floor to help stall the intruder from getting any farther into a persons home. The feather would be used to tickle the intruder.

I had a lot of fun working on this project with my group and being innovative with these objects.

ch. 1 & 2 of Understanding Comics

Chapter 1 opened my eyes to realize just what is a comic. I had always viewed comic books and comic art as starting in the 20th century with my own personal reading of X-men comic books when I was younger. But McCloud forced me to review how I look at ancient texts and depictions to also be considered comic book art.  That these are the first examples of comic art that come from thousands of years ago. 

What interested me the most was how it developed over time and by who. The artist Max Ernest I had know from art history classes for his surrealist paintings, however this book informed me of his “182 plate sequence of collages”.  These images were not meant to be skimmed over but to be looked at in depth, to read the story the artists is trying to convey with each print. After viewing a couple of the images I was able to figure out what I thought each story was for each print. I took my own interpretation because it is all visual with no text. Sometimes I feel that that is the best way to actually view art and comic art. 

Chapter 2 was very interesting about how we connect images as being real. The idea that cartoons always appeal to people in a humanistic way.That as humans we look at something and try to relate it back to humans. To find the eye and the mouth that are shown as a dot and a straight line on a happy face and everyone recognises it as a face even though it looks nothing like a human face. 

response to "Introduction" in the reader

What stayed with me most after reading the "Introduction" was the idea of this "gab" that is between art and life. I understand from the article that some artists work in this gab such as Duchamp and Rauschenberg just to name a few that were mentioned. They changed the way people ideally thought what art is to apply to there work. And within changing this context I feel that they made art more accessible to non art people. For example it opened up this idea of what makes an artist an artist. The previous standard was that the artist had an education and training to become a master artist, however Duchamp changed that by turning a urinal upside down and signing his name to it. He controlled what he believed was art and not what the "art world" thought art should be. 

I also thought that maybe in today's society more artist are trying to not just work in this “gab” but to connect this “gab” between art and life. Maybe art is actually more simple then what we have expected it to be and become over time. The label of defining something as art might be what is stopping a lot of creative thinking. Art is simple to live. So in that context there is no “gab” between art and life because by living we have become the art.