Video

Most of the artwork I have done has been hand drawn and I have a somewhat limited experience with digital media. I did a little work in high school, but most of my art was with drawing and painting. Since in college, I began to work more with digital programs, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Final Cut. I want to take this post to talk a little about my digital work, in particular video.

I was never really exposed to video art until I took a class in it. Most of my knowledge of video art was taken primarily from more "artistic" music videos. After becoming more involved and exposed in the world of video art. I began to realize how different the two are.

It is funny how ideas of art change as you slowly get influenced more and more by professionals. I remember thinking when I made my first video art piece, that I needed to pick out a song that would suite it. It seemed like such a necessity to have music in it. Now I think the only time I included music in any of my video works was for a music video.

One becomes much more aware of the little sounds when you make a video work. Since then I feel that I have really grown as an artist. I feel much more confident in my work. My work accomplishes what I want it to much more successfully.

Duality

I had previous touched briefly on one of my more recent projects I did on existence and duality. It is an artist book that translates natural elements into human emotions. It deals with opposites in nature together with opposites in personalities. It gives nature a human identity. I am interested on expanding on these ideas in a later work, so I want to expand on it through this blog.

The book itself consists of 24 pages and is divided into two sections: dualities and trinities. The dualities consist of two elements opposite in nature parallel to each other (light/darkness, fire/ice, air/earth, water/lightning, plant/metal, sand/mist). These objects are similar in one aspect, but opposite in another. The second part deals with trinities (bone/blood/flesh, sun/moon/stars, time/space/void.

The purpose of the book is to show that nothing can exist without its opposite. At the end, the last page is void, which is the absence of time and space. Since everything exists in time and space, the entire book becomes the opposite of void. The book proves that in order for something to exist, nothing must also exist because everything must have an opposite.

My obsession with existence probably has much to do with me growing up in church. I find the subject of existence very interesting. I often find it creeping into my work, even when I don't intend it to. All of my work can be traced back to religion. It is very important to me in my life so I suppose it's only natural that I make art about it.

Drawing to Digital

I have always had a strong background in drawing. I did four years of drawing classes at my high school and have taken a couple since I have been at OU. Although I love drawing, I realized that it would be much more difficult for me to get a job with my drawings than it would for me to just go digital. I still love to draw and that is probably why I still try to incorporate it into my digital work.

I have only used a small number of programs since I have been at school. Most of my experience has been with Photoshop and Final Cut. I have experimented with drawing several times, but nothing has really stuck. I really like the idea of using both in my work and finding someway to get the two to coexist in my work. I'm starting to think that I might have to choose between the two of them.

Art in Second Life

Most of the art I have been currently working exists in Second Life. I only have one studio art class this semester so I'm limited to what I am doing in this particular class. I've never worked with Second Life prior to this, so it has been an entirely new experience for me. When looking for some information on SL I happened across this article.

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/artnetnews1-23-07.asp

It is amazing to see how many things are happening through Second Life. I never thought that there would ever be a thriving art world hidden in SL. I think the reason it attracts many artists is how easy it is to make things. It is surprisingly simple to make incredible sculptures that defy physics. Of course there are also so many more ways of creating art in SL.

Whether it's sculptural or social art, SL is really designed for this environment. It's so easy to gather small or even large groups of people together. No one has to step outside their front door. I also thinks SL attracts more people to art than I website might, is because of its three dimensionality. 3D art always loses something when transferred to two dimensions. This is a way of avoiding that.

I'm not sure how much most SL artists make, but it sounds like from the article that it's quite possible to make a decent living. Even if the transfer rate is about $250 to L$1, if your selling art in the 6 digits, it can really ad up. Plus you don't have to deal with any expenses in making the art because SL is free. The only costs would be if you want an island to show your work instead of gallery space, or if you wanted to buy something someone else made to use. I wouldn't be surprised if more artists start working virtual, even if it isn't just in SL.

Why I hate Mark Rothko

I recently had to give a presentation on Mark Rothko for my art history class. I never really liked his work, but here was a chance for me to find more about his art. I thought that maybe if I understood his art a little better, I would be able to appreciate it. After studying his art and theory I came to a conclusion. I really don't like Mark Rothko.

I guess it would be rude to limit it to just Rothko. Other groups gave presentations on other artists during the same time period. I think it has more to do with the Modernist ideology, than anything personal against Mark Rothko. The one commonality I found between the painters, Rothko, Pollock, Rauschenber, and de Kooning was that they are all hypocrites.

Rothko goes on and on about how he doesn't care about form and how his works are taking away form. His work his supposed to be about the emotions of colors. The problem is that if he didn't care about form, then why is he so obsessed with the rectangle. Every single one of his paintings contains rectangles. Over and over again, all he paints is different colored rectangles. Obviously the rectangular image must mean something to him, otherwise he would paint it so much.

The same holds true to all the others. Pollock tries to create random splatter art, but as soon as he decides to do something to the canvas, it is no longer random. Rauschenberg sits around complaining about how everyone else complains about art. It's all so pointless. It just feels like so many wasted years in art.

Memory Games

Most of the experience I have with art has been with drawing. I have slowly started to dable in painting and more digital media, such as video. Since I am not really familiar with a lot of video artists, and haven't been exposed to too much video art, I feel really limited in the field. I've started exploring it a bit on my own and came across this video.

http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/VideoPage.cfm?Artist_ID=2757&ArtWork_ID=3082&Player_ID=2

It is a video piece by an artist named Yuval Yairi called "Memory Game." I found the piece particularly interesting. I love all the texture that is in the video, from the old worn books to the stone of the buildings. I found the comparison between taking books of a shelf and tearing down a building very interesting and intriguing. I thought the piece was simple, yet it got its point across smoothly.

To me, the piece was about books being a symbol for memory and the idea of tearing down knowledge. The video reflects on how books are slowly being removed from our society and as they are knowledge and memory are being removed with them. It uses the scenes of the buildings being torn apart to help show how destructive removing the books is. The video ends with scene of rubble and fades out, giving a grim outlook on the future.

I felt this video was very strong. I agree with the artists feelings about the loss of books and knowledge. It seems that with everything turning to digital and going paperless, the actual need for books becomes less and less. A person can now buy digital books, in which thousands of digital books can be stored and brought up at any given time. The question is, will deconstruction of books truly lead to the deconstruction of memory as well.

Number Theory

The last few posts I have been talking mostly about other people's art work, so I would like to take this post to discuss my own. Since I have spent much of my time learning a lot of new programs I haven't had much time to really focus in one particular area. Therefore, much of the commonalities in my work is in concept rather than any particular style or medium. The many reoccurring ideas in my work consist of time, existence, religion, nature, and numerology. Not all of them are obvious, but I find that some of these always exist in my work, whether I intend them to or not.

Much of my work dealing with time and numerology go hand in hand. I often include clocks in my work in order to bring focus to specific numbers, usually those that the hands of the clock are pointing to. I am particularly interested in the number 7. The number is meant to represent completion, this stemming from Genesis (the world created in seven days). I have been experimenting with patterns on the clock, particularly combinitions that add up to seven (1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2). Counting seven itself there are six numbers on a clock that when broken down to single digits, add up to the number seven: 7, 16, 25, 34, 43, and 52. Being only six, therefore incomplete, it lead me too latest obsession, the number 61.

Since there are only 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, for a clock to reach the number 61, it is impossible. 61 is a number that cannot exist in time. I have also been studying duality, meaning everything as an opposite and nothing can exist on earth without something to balance it. This means that if time exists, there must also be an opposite plain where time does not exist, where the number 61 can exist. This absence of time is called void and is represented in my work as the number 61.

I plan on expanding my theories on time and numerology as I continue my work. I don't really know where all of this will eventually lead, but at the very least I would like to create a set of symbols that helps to identify my artwork. These symbols would only mean something if the viewer was familiar with my work. The number 61 is only one item, but as I develop my own person theories I hope to add more to the list.

Art Theory

I am currently taking an art history class that focuses in art from 1940s to the present. Much of the work done in this time frame is some of my least favorite art. I would much rather be looking at art from the 1700 - 1800s, but that's a different matter entirely. What I would like to talk about today is art that we have been discussing in the class I AM taking. Art that is justified through writing and without it, would be truly atrocious art.

It's art like this that I really can't stand. This piece by Dubuffet, "Volonte de Puissance," is one of those pieces that truly infuriates me. This has to be one of the most unproductive periods in art. Despite being bashed by critics at the time as literally being called "caca art," many critics later changed their tune and went on to talk about how great it was. I think they had it right the first time.

I think what bothers me the most about art like this is the lack of skill required. This probably explains why I love much older art. I understand that it's art like this that is meant to progress art theory rather than be proof of any sort of skill, but I honestly think that too many artists back then and today that get so caught up in theory that the art itself is completely forgotten.

This ultimately comes down on art critics. An artist can only succeed if he is uplifted by art critics. The problem is that most critics care more about art theory than the art itself. This causes artists to be constantly pushing the boundaries and exploring new theories, and all together abandoning the art itself. I feel like I spend more time hearing about theories of other artists than actually developing myself as an artist...

High Art - Pop Culture

I was looking through some art related articles online when I stubbled upon this. It's article about a gallery in Beverly Hills showing Japanese anime displayed as high art. The exhibition is called "Anime! High Art - Pop Culture."

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2009-05-15

I had never seen anything like this where Japanese anime was being shown in a gallery. Most people see comic book art as something completely different from fine art. It has only been recently that Western comic art has started to be more respected as art.

I used to draw a lot of anime when I was in high school and being involved in art, I had always been steered away from drawing that because it was not "art." There has always been this dividing line between fine art and comic art. It is seen more as cartooning and childish. It's interesting to see how the general definition of art changes over time. It shows just how fickle art is.

It makes me wonder if something becomes art simply because it is seen in a gallery. It seems like as soon as something is shown in a gallery everyone immediately excepts it as art. if something is big, matted, and hung on a wall, it becomes art. This is really frustrating as a student trying to become an artist it means our work is only excepted as art once it shown in a major gallery. It's things like this that make me want to steer away from the art community...

Good Art

One of the questions that always seems to come up in art theory classes is "what makes good art?" It's one of those questions that no one can really agree on a definite answer. When looking at art, it is nearly impossible to get a group of people to agree that a single piece of art is good. There is always someone who love it and someone who will hate it.

Because of this, I believe that is no true classification or defining factors that separates art into categories.

It simply is a matter of opinion. For example, I enjoy a lot of older religious art like this painting by Benjamin West.

I enjoy the complexity of the piece, as well as the themes it depicts. By my definition, this painting qualifies as good art.

This next piece is done by a contemporary artist named Jose Morello. This is the type art that I really can't stand. In my book, this is bad art. I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me. I'm also sure a lot of people would disagree. I'm sure he has his reasons for making art like this, whether I understand it or not.

I think that in order for art to be considered good it must mean something. Whether it means something to the viewer or the artist itself, whether it's intentional or not there is a reason for everything. I think it is the connection that is created between a person and art is what makes it good and gives it depth.

To start of my blog I would like to make my first post explain a little bit about my artwork. Most of the work I have done while I have been attending Oakland University, but I had a good art program at my high school so I did a lot of work while I was there as well. I have taken mostly drawing and painting classes while in high school, but I'm now starting to more video and digital work.

I have been into drawing for as long as I can remember. My dream was to become a cartoonist, then a graphic novelist, to a concept artist and finally to a "I don't care what I am, as long as I can get a job and make a decent living in this economy." I'm still very interested in comic art and a lot of it shows through in my work. I've done several works in ink and marker because I love the medium so much and have even created a 24 page book on ideas of existence, done completely in a very comic book style. This style of drawing has also shown through in some of video work as well.

Existence has been another reoccurring theme in my work. Probably because I've been involved in church all of my life. I keep finding that most of my ideas for art are in some way rooted to existence. I'm really interested in a lot of older religious art, particularly works by Benjamin West and Gustave Dore. I use a lot of similar subject matter such as angels, demons, death, and the four horsemen.

My goal is to utilize my skills in drawing for my digital art. Being unsure as to what I really want to do after Oakland makes it difficult to direct that at anything so I'm doing a lot of experimental work. Although I haven't done much work in it thus far, I think I will probably try to get into web design simply because there is a need for it and I enjoy doing it. It's hard to say for sure, but we'll see what the future brings.