MFA gallery review

*this was definitely the weirdest show ive viewed so far. not in the idea of content but with the layout and process or make up of the show. there were a lot of things that werent completely finished with the display of the show. artists placed napkins with tape in the postion of where the name tag should go. this looks very unprofessional. the video piece wasnt even on for veiwers to see. and it looks as if some of the names on the title wall are out of position, they dont all appear to be evenly space. and there are many pieces on display that dont even display an artists name, whether it be on napkin or not. while this doesnt come off very professional, in a way i still found it interesting. in the idea that it seemed like we got a behind the scenes look at the gallery exhibit. we got a behind the doors all access pass in the making or procedure of the show. yet really it wasnt a full out behind the scenes experience, i still got that sense of feeling.*
-couldnt find the name of the artist, but the piece in the first room on the left as you walk in i thought was interesting. the size of the pieces were captivating and i found the juxtaposition of texture on texture to be interesting. this texture on texture being the paint painted over the computerized digital image on the canvas.
-i also like the mixed media room, for the use of one of the pieces actually existing on the wall itself. most of the work ive veiwed so far has been hung on is in a frame. but this work breaks the mold of the frame and actually have the work produced on the gallery wall itself. i think it brings an interesting idea or thought into the piece since the artist had to think of the wall as part of their canvas. and the gallery wall adds to the idea of the "mixed media".
-the sculpture pieces hanging from the ceiling are also very interesting. by hanging the pieces from the wall i think it brings a new element to the art work. for me by hanging on the wall i lose the idea of what is actually hung, and start to feel the shadows displayed by the hanging objects becomes the art. or the idea or action of walking around the hanging pieces becomes the art. and for me im always scared to walk into, bump, or knock over the art pieces that take up the viewers space, so for me this also becomes more of the art that the pieces, this idea of doing a dance or some sort of abnormal walk to get around and through these objects is what becomes the art for me.-lastly i like the pictures of the naked women in the right corner of the gallery as you walk in. i didnt see/couldnt find the info for the pieces but in the long run that really didnt matter. the photo of the splattered paint and the nude i found to be very interesting. i havent really come up with an idea behind the image yet think it captures the idea of time perfectly. in the image you have the splattered paint being captured mid splatter, mid air which to me evokes a sense of time. also with an in depth look of the image you can see the female has goosebumps. it captures the moment of time when the female was "cold" enough to give her goosebumps. goosebumps dont last a long period of time so it captures this moment of when she got these goosebumps freezing them in time. The other image i found interesting was the image with the balloons. There is an oddity at play here and i dont mean the face paint, haircut, or outfit, but the way the balloon in the foreground is positioned is definitely odd to me. the balloon is not floating straigh up and seems as if it is stuck to the wall or possibly someone is holding it in that position. for me thought this is what captivated me. like why is that balloon positioned that way what purpose does that balloon serve. and my thought is that its positioned that way to not capture the reflection of the photographer. when you look closely at the balloon you can see the reflection of the female but not of what or how the image is being photographed. i feel the thought process of being that detail oriented to make sure to not capture the photographer is very interesting.

Bullets from Chapter 3

• "absolutely no dogs allowed"
  
  -found this odd that dogs are allowed in crits but not the galleries. i know the chapter on crits took place in a different location, yet i cant escape the image of rich women carrying around those genetically produced tea cup dogs. dont rich ladies walk around with little yappy dogs in their purses? ok maybe not but just odd that dogs are allowed in one aspect of art yet not allowed in all... at least i found that interesting.
• "There is something about standing before the object you want and the person you're going to buy it from"
  - this has got to be an odd situation. i have grown up going to flea markets with my parents and my mom is great at bargaining, and i feel thats what this situation boils down to. my mom will walk through a flea market and spot things she wants and get them at half the cost, or pay full price but get like a buy-one-get-one type deal. yet this could be over some seemingly stupid piece of furniture or another wine rack to add to the kitchen. yet with this situation talked about it the book. i can only imagine how odd it is, i feel awkward when my mom haggles for that wine rack. yet this is someones art work, how can you haggle the price of that.
  
• "(collectors can't be expected to carry small change for such trifles)"
  -come on these people are throwing around millions of dollars and they dont have money to spend for coffee and ice cream. so they come with just plastic? even i as a not yet official degreed individual know you need to carry cash around with you. how do these people get the money, positions, and stature without having more common sense. unless its not about common sense but like a trait these rich ppl think makes them appear richer, or better then a common folk. i dont know maybe its me that finds this weird, but i dont understand how you can have few million benjamins but no washingtons, lincolns, or jacksons...?
• "artists tend to view art fairs with a mixture of horror, alienation, and amusement."
  -i guess the horror comes to play in the fact of your work not selling and your work basically bombs. but i wonder how horrific this is when 1. if your in an art fair doesnt that mean you have had success and made money on your way to getting there? or 2 is it even horrific after all the years of crits and the bumpy road it took to get there. i feel the more crits you go through the tougher you become so is i guess im more curious whats horrific? than i would imagine the alienation comes in to what i wrote about before on an artist trying to be haggled to sell their work at a different price. or maybe it comes in when in the end the gallery dealer has say in what something sells for. and amusement i wonder if it comes from watching the rich ppl and how they meet stereotypes or cliches of typical rich people. im not saying all rich ppl play into these cliches or stereotypes but they are there for a reason so im sure some ppl fall into them.
• "if artists are seen to be creating art simply to cater to the market, it compromises their integrity and the market loses confidence in their work"
  -i wonder how often this comes to play in school work and projects. if a student creates work that carters to the professors likes do they get a better grade? and how is this not a possible thing for artists that work for galleries? why would an artist want to not cater to a gallery who in the end displays and sells their work. i understand the theory behind the statement but i question its validity. i dont see how a gallery you keep an artist on commison if their work didnt some how cater to the same ideas of previous work. wouldnt a change in the style of artwork change the likes and dislikes of the galleries? its like a question or idea i feel is almost inevitable. but maybe the art lies in an artists ability to overcome conformity, to stay true to ones self?
  

Grad School?

so grad school is not my cup of tea. its just not my thing. my experience at rutgers has pretty much killed any brief ideas i had of attending grad school. not that i have not/am not enjoying my time at rutgers. but ive had enough of the politics, school work, and the RU SCREW. i have had more than enough of time management between classes/work/life/living. and with all thats on my plate and since i dont have the desire to go to grad school, looking at grad schools is the furthest thing down my list of things to do. its just not something i want.

Gallery Review- Looking in: Robert Franks The Americans

For this gallery review i decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. my art history class, architecture and society in england, took a trip to the MET, so i used this time to browse the Robert Franks photography show. this blog is going to boarder line as one of the blogs where i talk about how i did not like the gallery i visited. most of the work did not intrigue me nor captivate me as such gallery visits in the past have. for this visit i enjoyed the organization and layout of the show more then the work itself. as i walked through the show viewing the photographs in sequential order of 1 through 83 of Franks series titled The Americans, i found it hard to find any images that i really feel in love with or ones that struck me as captivating. from reading the wall captions or title wall (again another title wall i enjoyed, it must be the large text in paragraph form on a large wall, i dont really know... i like title walls ) i realize the series is more about the time in history he was taking the images and the way in which he traveled and made a more photographic documentary, but it just didnt wow me. a few things i did enjoy were: title wall, contact sheets, picture frames, layout of show. the contact sheets i found to be more beautiful than most of the images. i think this is because it shows more of the process, the process in picking out which images works best or says what Frank wanted said. as a photographer you take numerous extra pictures not quite sure which one will work the best, this is why the contact sheet is so important. i helps you find the "it" picture. i think this is why i enjoyed the red wax pen on the black and white contact sheet. the pen juxtaposes colors to represent the "it" photo being found. the picture frames i liked because they displayed the photos in a clean cut manner on the white walls of the gallery space. the frames didnt appear out of place or awkward in relation to the photos displayed inside them. i think the black frames and white lighting helped give color to the black and white images, i think the lighting helped to bring out the tones within the images. i enjoyed the layout of the show, yet it seemed long but theres 83 images so the display space has to be long. but the way you follow the images from 1 to 83 around walls through rooms, interacting with other viewers give the feeling of a journey. this journey relates to the one Frank's took while photographing the American landscape. the last thing that struck me as i traveled through the gallery space was the different colors in race that were captured within the images. the journey shown in the images starts with colored people but around image #65 the images start to show and are made up of more white people. im not sure if this was just by chance or something that Frank's deliberately did in his work, shift from one race to the next. more importantly i feel though it does show and represent the social and racial issues of this time in the Americas, but i wonder if race and color of the photographed area/scenes have changed, would these same scenes still look this way if photographed today?

exhibition review of my choice: Blocks of Color, Zimmerli

Blocks of Color: American Woodcuts from the 1890's to the Present.

-Again found the title wall very provocative. Had very evoking type size, that as I'm reading it I felt engaged with the title wall text. I did not however enjoy how the gallery workers seemed to hound me, even at Chelsea where works are for sale, the gallery attendants did not bother me. At times it felt I had more than one shadow.
-I fell in love with the texture the wood grain gives the work. I was captured by these woodcuts much more than I ever have been with other works such as paintings. This captivation could be due to the fact that I was the only one in the gallery at that time. It was quiet so I had time to reflect. The quietness brings to life the fact that someone somewhere cut these images and works out of wood. In paralleling this show, I for the first time started working with woodcuts and relief making. So working hands on with this style of art for sure is helping to engage me in the work.
-I found the piece titled "Hokusai" by Leonard Maurer to be the most insteresting woodcut. The color and feel of the print really stuck out to me. The print having text on top of the image I found amazing. I love the description the text describes, it has a playful yet cynical tone. All the while possessing a very serious attitude. Loved the way Maurer choose to carve out his text, by allowing some of the wood grain to show through.
-In the section of works inspired from Japan by American artists, I notice something in the way the frames were hung. What I noticed did not appeal to me at all and looked sloppy with such elegant and well crafted works being held inside the frame. Each frame was hung on the wall by hangers, yet instead of the hangers being at the top or on the back of the frame, the work was hung from the sides of the frame. It seems to be a very simple thing yet something I found very displeasing with the work. It would seem very easy to hide any type of frame hangers used either at the top of the work, putting it out of the viewers eyes sight, or directly on the back again hiding the hangers from the viewer.

Bullets from chapter 6

-"... a sign informs us that our driver's hobbies are (1) baseball, (2) fishing, and (3) driving."
*were lucky if we get cabbies that can even understand where we need to go. the experience can be so impersonal and uncomfortable, any info on the driver such as this might help to make the experience less impersonal. maybe one could even have a conversation with the cabby. this conversation of course would need to take place in between the horn honking and the profanity being screamed out the window. (and i havent been in large number of cabs, so maybe there is something like this. yet i have never seen it.... all i can do is think "are we there yet", and stare at the fascinating touch screen they have in them now, only getting it to work properly as im pulling up to my destination.)

-"... the partners sold Cuban cigars out of the back of the gallery to help make ends meet."
*partners needing to make ends meet, accomplishing this goal by selling cubans? first when i think of business partners for some reason it applies for me there is already money in the bank accounts. granted this would not always be true for every set of partners, but these are gallery partners, you need money to own a gallery right? secondly, cubans really? if they were making ends meet to sustain the ownership of a gallery off cigars, well maybe i have some thinking to do.... possibly art school is the wrong way to go about making money. i think i could be happy making the equivalent of what is needed make ends meet to run a gallery.

-no one is ever late in Japan
*come on! thats gotta be a lie. no one ever misses a train, waits for a cab, forgets to set their cell phone alarms. i hate being late yet seems the busier i become the more avoidable it is. most often its not much with my doing. "if your not 15 mins early your 15 mins late". i hate the saying but experience has shown me there is much truth to it.

- as i was reading the the beginning of the chapter about Murakami's studio, warhols warehouse came to mind... than what do you know it gets mentioned. one of the few times i felt intelligent about art. despite how much i see i rarely retain enough to remember anything about it.

-"His workstation, a sixteen-foot-long table, was situated in the center of a large room, surrounded by his team of four designers and five animators..."
*that seems like an awful of space to work when your not the only one working. with the help he has does he really need a 16ft table?

-"Murakami is an avowed Warhol fan."
*this i find interesting because in the beginning of the chapter there is mention that art in japan is not very imaginative, but more concerned with technique. so this directly relates to warhols work which that of Murakami's work is more or less based off of, in terms of technique. its not so much the content but rather the production. yet i to am a warhol fan but for my own reasons.

-Kanye West.... REALLY? that was the last name i ever expected to be mentioned in the book. Interesting though, i have a fairly deep love for music and have always hoped my artistic future will bring me closer to music. Maybe Taylor Swift will find my future art astonishing and she will commission me to do work that bashes Kanye, hey it could happen.

interview with fellow BA student Jessica Marin.

1. What was it that got you hooked on photography? What inspires you to take photographs?

- Taking photos of my family as portraiture inspired me toward photography. My mother grew on a passion for me to always take pictures and as time went on, it became my interest. In my first semester at Rutgers, one of my floor mates would ask me to take model pictures of him. When I presented them to my professor, he was amazed at how a beginner student took a good portraiture photograph. Now these days, I am experimenting with color and its effects on how to enhance the mind in losing itself through the spectrum.

2. What content is your favorite to photograph?... Why?

- I have a special interest in black and white portraiture. Sometimes expressed through sensuality. I have also drifted into the understanding of composition, lines, and structures within a square format.

4. Do you shoot in digital or 35mm, why do you prefer that style of photography over the other?

- I like shooting in 35 mm and recently in digital. My preference with 35 mm is to black and white film. I have a fascination for working in the dark room and developing my own film. With digital, it is more with quick works, ideas that burst in the moment and need to be recorded. I also use it when I take on journeys of places I need to remember. It becomes very useful when studying the galleries artwork as a reminder of things that were noticed, looked up close by zooming in.

6. What do you plan to do as a photographer and where do you hope it takes you?

- I have thought of going to grad school to study art therapy. Because of my minor in psychology, a pass-time to analyze people, and making art, it works towards an opportunity to do everything all at once. I would also like to intern in as a photographer’s assistant. Due to transportation difficulties, it has been hard to meet with other photographers. As an artist, I also have to put in the effort in showing my work at exhibitions. I am planning on showing some of my work on the upcoming BA/BFA Open Show.

8. If you couldn't be doing photography what would you be doing?

- If I didn’t do photography, I would have tried to go for graphic design. Adapt it toward Publicity and Marketing would be the additional step. In these present days, selling products through the World Wide Web becomes the new business. If that wasn’t the case, it would have been accounting or physical therapy. I like to be organized in respect to numbers, and like human anatomy. As an athlete, injuries have become my daily life. Learning more about it and being able to understand how the body works to a finer detail inspires to excel in my own workouts.