Inspirations for the Garment/ Prothesis project - Valentim Quaresma

      I am soooo excited for the second half of this semester in my Core studio class! We are doing a garment/ prothesis project, and I thought I would share my ideas for the project , as well as one artist who will be / has been a major influence on my work.
       This particular artist's work has spanned several lenses, including sculpture, jewelry, installations and design. Valentim Quaresma "has used experimentation and deconstruction to remove trivial objects from his surroundings, recreating them into works of art," (DirectArts Magazine, ed 01). I love the way that he deconstructs regular, mundane objects and turns them into luxurious items of wearable sculpture.
He combines everyday references with almost antagonistic elements.
An excerpt from an interview Valentim did with DirectArts Magazine (Ed.01) :

 

"Is experimentation crucial for you?

 

Without a doubt. I've tried many different techniques and inspirations, from baroque to tribal, inserting them in different creative processes to see how it would work. I like to turn an ordinary material into something exquisite. At first glance a press-stud seems to only serve the function for which it was created, there's nothing beautiful about it, but by applying them to a piece, I'm creating a beautiful and luxurious dimension, caused by the texture and acheived by the use of reptition of the same element....."

 

 

 

I really am fascinated by his work, and seek to use it as my primary influence during the garmet/ prothesis project. Here are some of his works :

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my project, I think I really want to expand on my newly found joy of welding! I think metal would be the perfect medium for this assignment and I think it would get my concept across well. I would like to make a social commentary with the pieces i construct, aiming at the connection with what is considered feminine with what is beaten into womens' brains from a young age by social media. The idealized female figure has become a large breasted, skinny waisted waif, a far cry from what it was years ago. Girls are "programmed" to believe that they are never pretty enough, never skinny enough. I want to construct devices that depict the destruction of a woman's confidence by all these outside factors- makeup, fashion, the world's view of the female position in life. I want people to be disgusted and made uncomfortable by my pieces, but I also want to take a page from Mr. Quaresma and make them appear luxurious and appealing to the eye. 

Louis Watts and Cable Griffith

Louis Watts

        Louis Watts is primarily a drawer, working in and exploring the medium to its fullest extent, searching for new ideas and new questions to ask himself. The fact that he experiments so much with the medium really intruiged me, and made me realize that I've never really settled with a medium for any length of time in order to perfect or experiment with it. It was especially interesting to me, due to the fact that I love working with charcoal and graphite - I find drawing the most challenging, hands-on  and the down-right most enjoyable form of two dimensional work. He referred to drawing as the way you "figure things and ideas out", and I fully agree, and I identify with his appreciaton of that fact.
    I had heard about using charcoal dust to draw before prior to hearing about Louis' work - but only in the context of using it to blend in charcoal drawings- not in conjunction with adhesives. Louis uses rubber cement and fixatives to draw and create texture, which piques my interest in the outcome of his works.

 

 

    

 

The outcome of Louis' experimentation with charcoal and rubber cement is really intruiging, creating abstract forms and lines, to the point that one can form one's own impression of what the image could symbolize, which is something I strive to get people to do in looking at my work. I think the freedom of interpretation is the beautiful and most precious quality of art as a whole.

 

 

 

 
I also find what Louis said about "line" being conceptual, not really existing in reality. He said that "line" only really exists in drawing. So, what he started to do is "anti-drawings", using paper masking, layers of charcoal dust and fixative to create images, rather than constructing lines to deliniate the object he was trying to show.
    

____ ___ __ _ ________________________________ _ __ ____ ____

___ __ _ _________________ _ __ ___

 __ _ _______________ _ __

_ _ ____________ _ _

Cable Griffith

        One thing that really lasted with me about Cable's work is the actual progression of his personal style throughout his artistic career, and how that progression really illustrates how a person's style can evolve. He started out doing impressionistic work then moved into more symbolic paintings and developed his own sense of balance and harmony within a space.
     Cable's sense of history also intruiges me - the fact that he sees his own work and the things he has done as an inspiration to his current work- rather than leaving a previously done piece, he looks to his past pieces for inspiration to the future.

Cable has a clear sense of playfulness and doodle-like quality to his work. His work explores the depth and constraints of a space, a familiar space recounted as a visual narrative through multiple panels. I find the fact that video games are one of his primary inspirations to be very unique, and shows how something we often think of as a boon to procrastination can be a expedient to someone's creativity.

 

His paintings become almost purposeful, a map to the world contained in his creative mind that is there to explore through both his landscape abstractions like the one above and his current work of creating entire worlds to explore, not unlike videogames.

Shirin Neshat - Video work at the SAAM

On Thursday, October eleventh, my Core Studio Concepts class and I made our way to the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) to view one of the many featured female artists there, Shirin Neshat. The piece of most notability is the video Tooba , which shows "an absorbing landscape where men and women are drawn in procession" to Tooba, "a tree of paradise". It features a woman carefully standing, fit perfectly into the tree trunk of Tooba . It was a spellbinding video, very hard to take your eyes off of.
I enjoyed the presentation of the video, it made you completely enveloped in the scene you were taking in. On one end of a long rectangular room there was one giant screen playing the video from a certain perspective, whilst on the other end of the same room, another screen displayed the video from a different perspective. in combination with the sound of the video, the videography itself was intruiging.
The object in question, Tooba, stood in its own , walled off garden in the midst of the rolling hills of desert-like plains. Not to mention, the tree stood out in this environment as one of the tallest living things in its own habitat.

Ephraim Russell - Inspirations of Our Instructors

    For our professor, Ephraim Russell, we were instructed to ask a question, and to answer in his voice. So...Here goes.

Q: You mentioned the theory that people are led on by preconceived expectation. With your "speed of light" pieces, more specifically, your piece that had an image relayed into thousands of small lights connected through a wall - the "low resolution screen"- were you aiming to revisit that theory of expectation?
A: I think, at large, the piece did reflect that expectation/ reality relationship. And I think that was the reason that not a ton of people understood my intention behind the work. Because it wasn't what they expected.

Bravo! Contestants- and More Importantly- Artists

       This last Thursday my class and the rest of the Cornish community were able to meet two alumni of the class of 2000. These two alumni also starred in the Bravo! TV show "The Next Great Artist". It was so very interesting to catch a glimpse of behind the scenes of these reality tv shows. Their names are Jas-Minh Moore and Mark Velasquez.
          To me, it was really interesting to hear that most of the artists really didn't take the competition itself seriously, and the fact that the show in itself was inhumane.. I had guessed that the producers of such a show wouldn't treat the contestants with much respect, but what they had to share, I found a bit over-the-top. They weren't allowed cellphones, magazines, books, movies, or even the internet to research!
     But what lasted with me, from this presentation, was the advice they gave at the end...at the time, I really needed to hear what they said. They said to commit totally to our artwork, to work hard so we can enjoy it later, and also to challenge our instructors. That stuck with me.