judith tannenbaum

It is relieving to hear her point of view as a curator. I am very grateful that they're are curators out there that look for the role of the art behind the "popularity" and famous aspect of it. Although not wanting to go into this job myself curators help ALL artists. We see the art that they choose. In gallaries, in magazines, on t.v., on popular internet sights. When we see art in the public eye we are usually seeing what someone else has chosen to be presented to the public. It is hard for an artist to get work out to a wide range of people with out help from curators and others. To have some one such as Judith who looks for young, new, fresh, meaningful art and trying to look beyond the artists personal self and knowledge and look directly into the art is very good quality. These types of curators affect me as an artist because of the work that i am able to see because of the possibilities that i have.

She takes the step back to allow room for failure. A work may not be popular and it may lead to a museum or gallery loosing credibility. But by affecting one person- that effects SO much! New ideas in art need to be embraced- that is what art is about. Let the artists make the art and let it be displayed, it will effect someone. The future of art is in our hands, is in the curator's hands, is in the hands of the gallaries, and those that reach out to the future of what art can become.

Fear 2D/3D project.

I liked doing this project because it gave me the ability to build something instead of just working with 2d dimensions like i have been lately. 

My project was based around the idea of being afraid of my own (and others) thoughts and dreams being controlled by others. So many of us base our decisions around what others say instead of following our own feelings and going with that. My 3D piece sort of just came to me, and although it changed a lot from the original idea, i very much like how it turned out. I had this idea of a cage that looks hand made and inside of this cage would be something to represent a person- it started with a heart but soon it turned into light bulbs. I thought that light bulbs represented a more full part of a person. Your ideas and thoughts come from your brain- hints the light bulb- Although your heart controls your emotions, it is your brain that you use to determine whether you follow your own emotions or let others prevent you from doing that. So inside of this cage i have some crashed up light bulbs (dreams being crashed) and also some "whole ideas" that are just still caged in. The cage represents the people on the outside influencing you in such a huge way, stopping you from following what you really want to do. The cage has no way out either- so once you have let others take over your mind- thats it, it could be to late for you to decide you want to follow what you want to do.

From here this cage was placed in a cardboard box with 2 signs on either side saying "Do Not Open". I wanted to determine how many people would follow what someone told them not to, or just do what they wanted. I placed the box in various places around campus and out of about 431 people who walked by only 4 people total opened it! I was very shocked. Most people i could not tell if they just do what they are told or if they just weren't curious. There were plenty of people who approached the box only to decide to not open it. The last person documented to open the box only did it because someone else did before her. The conclusions were very different than what i expected. 

I loved doing this project because for the first time ever i was able to have my audience interact with my art whether they opened the box, stared at it, or just walked by without even noticing it- in any of those aspects they were interacting because i was watching and taking notes about them.  The idea came very quickly to me for this piece but it took me a lot of time to put it all together. 

If i were to do one thing different it would have been to have gotten a few small light bulbs working and to have placed them in the cage as well. I think that that may have had a larger impact on the people who did open the box. I just did not have the time and resources to get that done once i was given the suggestion to do that. Over all though i think that it turned out very well.

My 2D piece was set around the 3D one after it was finished. I painted (with acrylics) a light type of thing in the middle with the darkness over taking it from all sides and then placed my information from my experiment on the board- that way it was all displayed together and now the audience will be able to tell what happened and how that the role of them was incorporated into it.

The artist that influenced my piece was Dan Flavin. Dan Flavin is someone who works with fluorescent lighting to create interesting pieces of art that trick the eye. He is able to use colors and shape and length to make you believe that you are seeing something that you really aren't. If i had light bulbs working it may be more like from his influence, but just the idea of light bulbs inspired me. 

Fear

Art is something that releases peoples emotions and lets the artist express him or herself in there own ways; but what about the fear of it all. This article expresses well why even after failure time and time again an artist should not be afraid to still display his work but to take that make move on. In the art world, critisism is always going to be there. No artist has ever made it to the top without others bashing their work at some point and time. I love how it says that there are countless numbers of drawings that an artist will do; and none of them seem masterful until that artist has a very popular piece; and then all of a sudden his past work is also genius.

Yes art may be a natural thing to some but it can most definitely be learned by any. To be a successful artist can trully be a lonely road- just as with anything else. There are going to be times when nobody likes your work and you are the only one. There are going to be times when you yourself feel frustrated with what you are doing and have to find that drive from within to keep going- we can't let the fear of not being successful hold us back- because then, in fact, we can never be successful. My favorite line out of the whole article was "Consider that if artist equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all!" That was very inspiring to me.

Nausea

I will say that the Introduction and whole first section that was a required read was a bit of a jumble in my head. Existentialism seems to be a movement that can not be defined and was interpreted differently by each individual. The individual defined how they looked at it and it came from their own personal lives.

Nausea in and of it self how ever provided a lot of information through the eyes of Sartre into Existentialism. In the beginning when you have the undated passage about him having fear one day- fear that he could not control and seemed so real; and then just a little while later he is unable to recall that fear and feel it again. This happens to me personally a lot. Something in our lives, in the world around us will make us feel a certain way and we feel as though it will not end, but then a short time later that feeling is gone- we now see it as "ridiculous" and are unsure of why we felt that way in the first place. The atmosphere played a huge role in Nausea. Sartre felt his sick feeling as he went about things that he did normally and was out in the lit streets, but when he was taken away from that by the music and then also when he was walking down the Boulevard Noir his feelings changed, he was no longer feeling nauseous. The very opposite happened with Lucie, who in the darkness of the Noir was able to feel that fear- and suffer there in that type of atmosphere. Sartre recognized this and saw how the environment affected them differently, and he thought of bringing her into the light to change this mood of hers- but he refrained because he saw what he was feeling and felt as though she needed to feel that because he hadn't been able to feel that strongly lately. 

I believe that people do that all the time: they see someone suffering, or even the extreme opposite (feeling really happy) and they let that person live that out because it is good to feel emotions in ones life and it is our responsibility to deal with them ourselves and place ourselves in environments that make us feel what we need to. It is the area around us that makes us feel- this is what i believe Sartre was trying to express, that it is not ourselves, but the way that things are outside of us that impact us. 

"Scoping the Audience"/ "Thomas Kinkade"

A lot of artists and those on the outside of the art- see an artists work as a personal creation. This text shows another side to this thought. Art is not created for the artist alone, whether intended to or not, the audience makes the art what it is. An artist may create a piece of art and to them it is just another creation of there's; but as soon as there are other's involved, they are the ones who critique and categories it. "Scoping the Audience" section really made me realize that as an artist we can focus our art work towards a certain group of people or we can not at all; but either way the role that the audience plays is important.

Thomas Kinkade is a perfect example of an artist who targets his audience. It is no secret that when he creates a new piece, it is not only for himself, but to please the people that will be looking at and buying it. His work is something that can appeal to a very wide variety of people and is not just focused in on any specific type of people. This is something that we as artists must think about- do we care who likes our work and do we want to let the audience that will like it influence the direction that we take it. I believe that subconsciously artists always have the audience (whom ever that may be) in the back of their minds and it comes out in their pieces. With out the audience our art is merely work on paper, we should try to show it and let the audience determine what our art is; that is not to say that you must agree with them, but criticism, good or bad, is always helpful.