Rikki Reich

Last week, we were visited by Rikki Reich, a New York photographer who is currently working on getting her 9/11 show together. I loved her earlier works that she showed us; they were earthy and natural but still something more than just a picture of an abandoned building. You really got a sense for what was going on at that location, the physical surroundings and even a figurative sense to. The way she played with light really help capture the idea of the past and the present encapsulating the place- a sort of spirit over the place. And of course her 9/11 pieces were just astounding, just absolutely incredible. I don't really know what to say about it; it was just absolutely mind blowing. Each shot recorded the Towers going down but what stuck with me was this idea that she wants the pieces not to look doom and gloom, like the end of the world. Instead, she wants to bring down this spiritual force, similar to the one she felt that day.

I also though it was great that she said to just mess around, to stop thinking so much about doing art and just to do it. Experimentation is healthy.

Final Project

I think for my final project this semester, I want to make a "kaleidoscope-book". I don't really know how to explain it except that i see how I want it to look in my head. I want to use vellum or tissue paper as the pages, something transparent that I could draw on one side on image and them use the outline that would appear on the back of the paper to draw another similar, but different, image. Eventually the original image would be distorted to the point where the beginning doesn't resemble the end. It's kind of like those word games were you start off with a work but with each word after you have to change one letter to end up with a completely different word.

I want to explore the idea of the veil that I used in the response to Berger's essay, how there more lurking beneath the surface than we are really willing to let on; how we see everything superficially but as we dig deeper we see some more and something different until out original perceptions are completely altered.

Claire Hoch

This week, we were visited by Claire Hoch from the VCCA. She had just recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon. I thought she was pretty interesting in that her art depended on people. She chose to work on projects in which she could involve the community and fellow artists to accomplish the same goal. I'm always so caught up in thinking that art making is a solitary act, that it's all about the artist's expressions and impressions that I forgot that without an audience, there would be no artist. And collaboration doesn't necessarily have to relate to other artists. Collaboration can revolve around the community and involve the people you work around. Collaboration is community outreach in its simplest and most natural form.

And I think that's a great idea.

My own career goals is to work with community outreach and to bring art back to the public. It's nice to know that it is possible and it is viable.

So, this week we had to choose a son that we felt depicted love as true, wise, or inspiring. I chose Dancing by Elise. Below I listed a link to a video of the song- just as a note, the video is from So You Think You Can Dance but I felt like the dance matched the song and how I felt it represented love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Hc9uk_zO0

Love is ambivalent. Love is painful and it knows it. When that one special person walks into the room, you suddenly can't breath, you can't feel you fingers, your heart is trying to escape you chest. Love means you have to compromise or risk sacrificing everything. Love is selfish and no matter how hard you try to meet someone halfway, the playing field is never going to be even. Ever. Love seems painless but after a while, you're just left fighting to keep it. People push you away, try to keep you around, but you know that you can't stand to live without them. Because no matter what, that one special person is going to leave a hole in you heart, even after you've moved on. You're still going to see them on the street and wish you were with them.

And love makes everything seem worthwhile. You are willing to compromise, meet someone halfway, put up with the arguments, put up with the dirty dishes, put up with the wayward glances, put up with the yelling. Love isn't going to pay the bills or put food on the table or make everything go away. Love isn't going to keep that family from hating you, love isn't going to get you a raise. But for a little while, love will make things feel better. At least you'll have someone who will love you for everything you have, or you hope. That person will have to put up with your annoying habits, those stupid movies you like, with your crying jags, and your pleas to never go. You'll put up with their bad moods, their need to be alone, their own little annoying habits. They'll tell you little lies to make you feel better and you'll lie back. You'll curl around each other at night, pray that the morning will come so that you could at least see their face one last time in the daylight. Love will, for a moment, make you believe that everything is ok. So you hold on, you hold on tight, and you hope to never let go.

Love is ambivalent, but love is like a bandaid, it will hang around, get gunky and funky, but it won't go away until you decide to rip it away.

Not To Be Reproduced

For this week's homework, I decided to pick and focus on Rene Magritte's "Not to Be Reproduced." The painting depicts a man staring into a mirror, only instead of seeing his reflection, he sees the back of his own head. I love the surrealists; I have always loved them, so it was exciting to see Magritte's painting as one of the selections in Berger's photo essay. I think what I'm really drawn to is the fact that while at face value the painting seems absurd (after all you can't see the back of your head in a mirror,) after looking at it, really looking at it, it makes a lot of sense. When you look in a mirror, you always see versions of yourself, monsters, beauties, the person who stares back wondering what on earth are you doing. Staring at the back of your own head is almost contemplative. You are watching yourself being watched, sort of like Berger said in Chapter 3. You are watching yourself to see how are you being watched, what are people really seeing when they see you. And of course, I think the title is relevant in the sense that you can never reproduce the same look, the same body motion, the same idea. It's always going to get changed just a little bit each time, because we are constantly picking up on different cues, reacting to different things, learning little things that can change something on a bigger scale. Our perceptions are never the same twice.

You Only See What You Want To See

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Dear Mr. Berger,

Women are the muses of men, to just be looked upon, right? We're naked in front of you, slabs of meat, right? We're to be seen but not heard, right? At least for argument's sake.

How about this....

We only reveal what you want you to see... You see only what you want to see. We hide behind veils, cold masks, without emotion. Dear spectator, we have eyes of the dead, nothing behind the surface actually being revealed. We impose our own veil, to hide what really lies beneath...

We are Powerful.

We are Peaceful.

We are very Comfortable in Our Own Skin, if you will let us be.

We are Terrifying.

We are Free.

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Take another Look. What do you see?

Photo Credits: Shahzia Sikander, Pino, Vanity Fair, History Channel, personal photos, public domain.

Joelle Wallach

Joelle Wallach has spunk; she was lively and interesting. I think what I liked most was that what she was saying was relevant. We are, theoretically, women artist, so it's interesting to see how women have progressed and have started taking a vital role in the art world. I think it's interesting to see how far we have come and how other women have made it in the art world.

Women are still restricted or at least still haven't been entirely taken seriously, but to see women composers finally taking a role in the music world is inspiring and just another reminder that women can be taken seriously and can make a difference in an otherwise male-dominated world.

Ways of Seeing

For this project I selected Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with a Necklace of Thorns (see above.) In this painting, Kahlo was mourning her divorce from fellow painter Diego Rivera. The necklace of thorns is her own representation of Christ's crown of thorns; she sees herself as a martyr and in a way she was. Rivera had numerous infidelities while married to Kahlo, which she accepted, asking that he just be loyal to her. However, when she discovered Rivera in the act with her sister, she demanded a divorce- he had broken her loyalty. The crow and the black cat are representative of bad luck and death, while the butterflies are representative of resurrection, a sort of "Frida will rise again" message. The monkey was actually a gift from Rivera to Frida.

I first posted the painting on my window, where you can see the trees without leaves. This I feel aligns with the meaning of the painting the most, very stereotypical of death, barrenness, etc. That and I felt it aligned with the natural visual elements of the piece.

Then I went into the elevator and posted the painting over the floor keys. I did this to contrast the visual parts of the painting with the cold metal of the elevator. In a way, the meaning of the painting is still captured. Kahlo is very cold, very emotionless and so is the elevator. Everything is just very mechanical.

Finally I went back to my room and dumped out my makeup bag over the painting. This time I was just playing with the idea of "lipstick jungle," sort of a play on the visual elements again. Women use all of this makeup to hide what's underneath and Kahlo's painting is so obviously what she really is feeling. Nothing is hiding, it's raw and in your face.