WLCM BCK Review

1.) Lyda Craig, Jean Craig, S.A. Craig, 1998

1.) I immediately loved this piece when I saw it. I'm not sure if my initial pull to this piece was because it was the most interesting in the room dedicated to Lyda, or that since all the pieces in the room were mostly mixed media pieces, or paintings, this one stood out. There is something very intimate about this painting paired with these golf ball sculptures, and that Jean Craig was making them as her cancer got progressively worse. They almost acted as something real amidst the often abstract concept of cancer. I feel like just as the progression of one's own life is an abstract concept, the actual diagnosis itself is abstract, these things that happen to us throughout the course of our lives, until they happen, these things are not real- they do not exist for us. Cancer to me is one of those words that doesn't really describe what the disease truly does to a person. Sadness, happiness, contentment- all kind of self-explanatory words that contain within their meanings their own portrait. When you say these words, people understand what you mean, just as when you say you saw a green frog, many people will see the color green differently in their own mind, but green none the less. But cancer? To me, it's one of those words that really don't describe the magnitude of its destruction in the word alone. That's why it was nice to see these golf balls. They acted as some sort of embodiment of the cancer as Jean's motor skills became increasingly impaired. It also added another element to the piece- this sense of actually being able to touch the destruction of this illness. There was such energy and life to the golf ball structures with their bright colors and varying forms, which was this amazing juxtaposition against the portrait of this sick woman, and the caption which described her illness. The golf balls were also taken outside of their original form to the point where she created art from these found objects, and decorated them like some cherished ornament. The fact that they are displayed so prominently takes them outside of their own limitations as things you hit on a golf course, and makes them objects. It's also playing off the forever debate waging objects versus things.  The amazing thing is that Jean probably had no intention of displaying these objects in a gallery space, these were things she did to pass time, keep her hands busy, and I think the fact that they were never supposed to be seen adds to their meaning. I think the caption even helped add another element to the piece as well, where the viewer becomes connected with the work

2.) Lyda Craig, Oregon, 2000

2.) This piece was also in the room with the collection of Lyda Craig's work. I work heavily in collage and mixed media so it caught my eye right away. I also liked how this piece was right after the piece I just discussed in my first entry because I felt like it played off of its energy but in a different way. Instead of this lively fluid feeling like in the golf balls, there is this stationary movement. These figures are just silhouettes, anonymous forms, and even the one figure that has a clear body in the background doesn't possess a face. I can't help but relate it to Jean Craig and S.A. Craig. In that piece the portraits are very defined, but these decorated golf balls are these abstract things that define the piece more than the portraits do, even though all the elements of the face are there, supposedly the most expressive part of our bodies- the golf balls express more pain and growth than the portraits. This element is similar in Oregon, these nameless faces define the piece more than if they had clear-cut expressions. The fact that Lyda chose to remove their identity goes against the idea of a form or a face, where artists spend hours drawing figures and defining bodies and faces with their medium of choice to convey emotion and carve out space. Here what you would expect would be this romantic gathering of souls but is transformed into this lonely happening. We cannot see their expressions, only these forms against a vague background. This might also speak about cancer, the diagnosis, how patients are often just numbers and anonymous individuals labeled with the words, "cancer patient." There is also something beautiful in this piece, something beautiful in this feeling of isolation I get when I look at it. I think the blatant embracing of anonymity and helplessness is beautiful. This giant metaphor for our daily lives, the things we do, the habits we have acquired, blindly going through the motions to appear human, to function. But these humans have no faces. Seeing bodies without faces and lines faintly defining limbs is this refreshing dismissal of what we think forms are, and what we think they should be.

3.) Damian Catera, EOH v.v1, 2010

 3.) This piece was magnetizing, and part of the interest for me occurred trying to figure out whether or not I was enjoying being captured by its constant motion and buzzing. In a way it wasn't just noise and tiny flickering pixels of light, but represented this numbing aspect of technology. I felt completely powerless and taken by this TV set, trying to figure out whether I was watching something or nothing. I can't say I felt a whole lot of strong positive emotions when I was involved with this piece, but I did feel completely overwhelmed by it, caught in the noise and movement, almost like the same feeling I get when I'm watching fireworks or enjoying a rainstorm from my porch. It was this cathartic experience, and I realized I actually had to make the conscious decision to leave. I remember telling myself, "Okay, time to go see other pieces," where it's usually just such a normal mindless thing to look at a piece and walk away, look at another piece and move on to the next one. There was this vibration white-noise like element to it. In a way it reminded me of my own mind. I thought that maybe this is where my thoughts go when I have a blockage, or I'm staring off and locked in a gaze with a piece of dirt on the floor only to shake my head and realize that I've wasted so much time. 

4.) Erik Schoonebeek, Trevor, 2010

 4.) This piece immediately stood out to me because it was a lot smaller than the pieces surrounding it. It was  also in one of the last rooms I looked at before I left the gallery and tied the whole show together for me. It spoke to this theme of anonymity I had been feeling from the pieces I had really connected with throughout the exhibit. Trevor has a name, but his face is covered. How is he any more important than the figures in Oregon? By just giving someone a name that doesn't define them, just as the figures in Oregon defined their area spatially, but not as these real living breathing creatures. Their lack of faces almost dehumanizes them, makes them not relatable as people, but relatable as feelings and allegories for these abstract concepts in life we constantly grapple with like identity, being, and self. There is also this urge to pull off the covering on this figures face. I want to see what is beneath the surface of this teal covering. I think it's also evoking this human urge in me to dig deeper, to always believe there is something more to a person, a situation, a feeling. Maybe this is a physical representation of that blockage, that some things should be taken at face value (or lack thereof)- that there are aspects of ourselves and life that should be accepted for the way they are. I think this also concluded the show for me, tied this whole theme of entrapment, consumption,  transformation, and  loneliness together. Each piece I enjoyed represented some aspect of those feelings whether it was these blank covered faces, a mesmerizing blurry TV, or golf balls decorated like vintage Christmas tree ornaments. 

Interview with Lisa Martiny Festa

"I like clean and simple things."

Katie: Talk about what you do-

Lisa: I do Graphic Design, I started last year. I don't feel like I can call myself a graphic designer. I've been doing art since I was three. I like to make things look good, pretty, and nice. As far as wanting the public to hear my opinions and ideas on life, politics, and the meaning of art, anything that makes art interesting, I'm not so into meaning. Art is not meaningful, making things look nice, drawing, working with my hands, putting things together, design is a good field to go into. I was a problem solver at a young age, and I would like to give advice when I was a kid. I feel like design would be a good way to work with people and work with peoples' ideas, and collaborating with people. I also played softball in high school, so I have always been bouncing ideas off people, and if I tried to make a living solely as an artist I would miss that interaction.

K: What inspires you/ what are the inspirations in your life?

L: My biggest inspiration is Kiki Smith, she is an amazing printmaker, and is why I am interested in printmaking. Inspirations in my life- the human body, not in a figurative painting kind of way, but in biology and anatomy, like in plant anatomy. I'm obsessed with feet, bones in feet and hands because I can make things with my hands. I love my hands, they are my favorite part about me.

K: What makes you want to make art?

L: "I have to. I enjoy it and I think I'm good at it. And I feel really lucky because a lot of people go through their life not having something they think that they're good at and it's kind of depressing, and I always thought I was really lucky to be like alright, this is what I'm good at and what I really love to do and this where I'm gonna go." I also didn't go to art school at first. I went to Montclair State for a year and didn't know what my major was. I was upset and depressed. The applying to college experience was really traumatizing, and I didn't apply to art schools, just private liberal arts schools, and I didn't get into any. I was crushed, and I'm a horrible test taker. My SAT scores were awful. I just had one rejection after the next. I put so much into it. I even silkscreened my college essay on the back of t-shirts and sent it in with my portfolios. Then I realized I probably didn't get in because I didn't apply to art school. If I went to a liberal arts school I probably would have gone into writing. Then what the determining factor was to go into design was a senior internship I had. I went to high school in the city, and my school made the kids get an internship, called senior project, where you would take the trimester off to do an internship. I worked for Paper Magazine for the creative director Peter Buchanan Smith. I idolized him. He doesn't work at the magazine anymore, and is becoming a successful designer now. He's really cool, and I liked it a lot.

K: Why did you decide to come to Mason Gross?

L: I heard a lot of good things about Mason Gross. My best friend went here for journalism and said good things about it. I visited it and liked it. I also came from a really small high school. There were forty kids in my graduating class. It was like a little community and I knew all the same people and hated them at the end of high school. I never had that big school environment. Here it's like a school within a school. You get a community feeling but a bigger feeling around that so I could feel anonymous, which I really like.

*Lisa received a phone call during the interview from Career Services at Princeton University about a possible graphic design internship she applied for the night before.*

K: What was that?

L: That's really exciting. It's a paid internship where I would make promotional stuff for them. The deadline was five days ago but my teacher wrote to them apologizing for not giving me the email about the opportunity in time. I applied last night at one in the morning.

K: Any thesis ideas?

L: I'm in the early stages of an idea. I'm playing with the idea of identity and kind of being alone or anonymous in a big city.

*Showed me her sketchbook and a piece of handmade paper with hair embedded in it caught my eye.*

K: Is that hair?

L: Yeah but it didn't stick that well. I stole it from my friend's hair bucket.

K: A hair bucket?

L: (Laughs) Because she cuts hair, and because she's weird.

K: What other ideas do you have?

L: I was thinking about making clothes that reflect the background of where people are, blending into their environment but still being there. Outfits with texture, like a shirt with the texture of this wall. I really like the Invisible Man. He's a Chinese artist. I would do something more accessible like a shirt, or a projection, but I want to make the project not on a computer. Maybe elements on the computer, but build something, or print something. I'm still in the early stages.

*Lisa also showed me a project for design class. Images of her Neutrogena blotting papers with oil patterns documented over a twenty-four hour period varying in sizes, some enlarged and others slightly larger than the blotting paper itself.*

L: I like playing with things being other things. Looking at something and not knowing what it is exactly.  

Self-Curation

Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube

Gennady Goushchin, Sunset from the Bolshoi Theater

Maya Lin, Pin River-Hudson

Robin Schwartz, Amelia and Hope

Atul Bhalla, Immersions

I selected these pieces because I liked the contrast between the larger pieces and the smaller works. Also, the collage print and photograph add a needed break in between the more substantial pieces, but I felt that some of the larger pieces should be grouped closer together to achieve a greater visual impact. The larger pieces were also the ones that were extremely interactive, whether it involved the movement of the viewer inadvertently shifting the water in the piece, or having to walk around an object to view it. Even shadows and patterns projected onto walls from something as minuscule as pins made these pieces extremely interesting. Their closeness in proximity in my proposal would allow for a more enveloping experience, and I think that would more closely reflect that attribute of water itself.

Water Exhibit

I thoroughly enjoyed the Water exhibition. I think there were a lot of challenging pieces that supported the theme of the exhibition, and the essential nature of this element. I think there were definitely certain pieces like Hans Haacke and his Condensation Cube in the first room, and mainly in the side room with all the depictions of people in and around the water- ethereal creatures, men in boats, and women and children playing in the water that made me reflect on the theme of water and the curatorial intention of the show. The Condensation Cube represented a myriad of things to me, mostly highlighting this enclosed self-sufficient environment that has been around since 1963 when Haacke created it. It also really emphasized the point of the show to me, or rather the question, which was that this cube is a piece of art involving water, and is water a resource and a human right free for all to enjoy, or is this essential part of our lives something that can be manufactured and sold? By making water the theme of this show, it challenges the way we see the transparent liquid. By making a show about water, and art about water, the water is then elevated to another plane, putting a tangible meaning through these solid pieces on something that is normally just this thing we drink, this abstract daily concept we accept: water is good for me, I’ll die without it.

I also really enjoyed the room with all the depictions of mermaids and boats because to me it was the best curated area of the show, not because the items in the room were the most interesting, but because of the contextual background of the pieces. There were men is boats, women on land, and on beaches, and with children, and children looking longingly into the ocean. There were mythological creatures like mermaids and goddesses, and I felt that it was a very potent statement that the only images of females actually interacting with the water did not involve women, but captured a child standing in the water, and a goddess on the waves. That somehow the concept or idea of water was something only men could enjoy, children, or creatures- that women could only enjoy the water from the stillness of the shore, looking out into some grandiose metaphor for their weakness and timid natures. Maybe I’m delving too far into the psyche of these prints, paintings, and photographs, but the room just had the most energy out of the whole exhibit in my eyes.

Overall, I did enjoy the exhibit, although the one complaint I had was that in the last room there was this amazing piece by Atul Bhalla called Immersions, with these glass cases, cast sand and silt, and these ancient archaic looking jars and water bottle artifacts immersed under water. I thought it needed to be more prominent, maybe in the middle of a room so you could really walk around it. There was just so much interaction with the piece, and as more and more people walked around it there was all this movement with the water and the objects in the water. Then the silt rose to the top of the glass case as the water was disturbed by the viewers’ footsteps, and the silt slowly started to mingle with the water. I thought it epitomized the idea of the whole show, the ephemeral quality of water, not in its staying power as a resource, but in the way it has been used as a metaphor for life, and time, and that feeling of still contentment we sometimes have the luxury of experiencing.