Reflections

ART 2701

[nadiaiholcomb]

Staircase III (2010) by Do Ho Suh

[nadiaiholcomb]

End Game (2018) by Jaishri Abichandani

[nadiaiholcomb]

Jaishri Abichandani

I was really happy to hear Abichandani’s response to “how can we best practice love?”

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It seems straightforward, but I’ve found it to be a tricky question. Her response was that we should reach out to our community to help and all come together. This was a nice response, but I think it was a little unrealistic and probably more complicated than that. What if your community doesn’t know love? What if you don’t know love? If you put the most hateful people in the world together and told them to find community within them, would they find love?

Maybe they would. I don’t think so though.

I think we probably have to look inward, as is usually the case, and find love within ourselves. It’s probably the best way to help others, especially in a society so saturated with self-hatred. Once we can find this love, we can begin to see that our change changes others, too.

Anyway, I’ll consider her opinion in my search for true love.

[nadiaiholcomb]

The ugliest kind of socially engaged art

[nadiaiholcomb]

The other day

I was taking a bus from my apartment on north to collegetown. The bus had maybe five people on it. At one point, the bus stopped to let someone off and, as soon as the doors closed and the driver tapped the gas pedal, someone pulled the cord. The “stop requested” announcement went off and the driver quickly stepped on the brake assuming someone had meant to get off. He opened the doors and waited. At least 30 seconds passed, during which the driver stared through the mirror at all the passengers... just waiting for someone to get off. And the passenger who pulled the cord did the same thing... waiting for the driver to continue. Finally, the driver kept on, stopped at the next stop, opened the doors, and the passenger left.

I thought about this moment for the rest of the ride to collegetown, even thinking back on it throughout my day. So many things could have happened. The driver could have assumed the requested stop was, in fact, meant for the next one and kept on. The passenger could have said, “Sorry -- that was meant for the next stop.” The driver could have said, “Is anyone getting off?” SOOO many things could have happened, but this was the path we chose. The way we interact with the world, with each other, is so absurd. We’ve created such a complex language of acceptable behavior and expectations of ourselves and it absolutely blows my mind. We, as things that exist, have come such a long way for this scene to have played out. It was the most beautiful piece of art that I’d seen in a while. I hope my statement isn’t perceived as sarcasm because it truly was.

Is that not the most artistic scene you’ve ever heard of? THAT is socially engaged art. It’s all of us all the time. It’s life. It’s everywhere. It’s in this blog post. 

To necessarily quote Nato Thompson’s “Living as Form”, “As art enters life, the question that will motivate people far more than What is art? is the much more metaphysically relevant and pressing question What is life?”

[nadiaiholcomb]

Socially Engaged Art

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all week is from Pablo Helguera’s “Education for Socially Engaged Art”: “Most artists who produce socially engaged works are interested in creating a kind of collective art that affects the public in a deep and meaningful way.”

Haha... What?

To claim that some art is not “socially engaged” is one thing, but it’s a whole other thing to claim that works that aren’t “socially engaged” aren’t as deep and meaningful. I really don’t even know how to respond to this statement, but it’s really painful to constantly see art being spoken about in ways like this... all the time. Have you ever looked at a piece by Joan Miro? And not been affected in a deep and meaningful way? I don’t believe that one bit. We care about social engagement so much and look down on artists who want to make their impact on the world by just doing their own thing. One of my favourite Ram Dass quotes is this:  “I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.” The most moments happen within the individual. Let’s not disrespect that. 

[nadiaiholcomb]

Style Wars

A disheartening conversation. There aren't sides, just different people all trying to live together. It just takes a little bit of compassion to see that. There is too much hate in each of us. Hippies create police, police create hippies, if you're in polarity, you're creating polar opposites, you can only protest effectively when you love the person whose ideas you are protesting against as much as you love yourself

[nadiaiholcomb]

Young Basquiat in front of his work in the film Downtown 81

As a fan of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work (who isn't?), I was excited to watch a presentation about him. It was really interesting to see what pieces my classmates chose to talk about, especially because he did so much and was so famous. What they didn't speak to was the film Downtown 81, an incredible time-capsule of the Manhattan scene in 1981 starring 19-year-old Basquiat. What's particularly interesting about this film is how true to reality it is. Basquiat plays a character of the same name who is a struggling, homeless painter. At the time of filming, Basquiat was not famous and was, in fact, a struggling, homeless painter. The paintings he creates in the film are among the first of his pieces as an artist. I encourage everyone who is interested in Basquiat or the early 80's club scene of Manhattan to watch Downtown 81. Style Wars actually reminded me of Downtown 81. Like the latter, Style Wars seemed to be a time-capsule of the graffiti scene of the early 80s. One of the reasons I so love film is because of its ability to whole-heartedly capture a moment in time. These two pieces do just that, and have given us a look inside a time and place we otherwise might not have access to.

[nadiaiholcomb]

Ka-Man Tse and my mother

My mother was a photographer, but I've hardly seen a single one of her pieces. One of her best friends in the art world even told me that she took a picture of my brother being born... as she was birthing him. No matter how much I would love to see it, I will never know what this picture looks like. After I was born, my mother gave up photography because it didn't pay enough. At one point, we were even homeless, living in shelters after leaving the projects of eastern Kentucky. Anyway, my point is, because my mother never speaks about her life as a photographer, never shows me her work, and never talks about art or anything of the sort, I've always subconsciously equated photography to a non-art form, or even to something that is bad. She always told me when I was growing up, "Whatever you do, don't become a photographer."

It feels silly to say that a single person I don't even know has changed my mind, but Ka-Man Tse's lecture opened my eyes. Her work is phenomenal and, of course, just as thoughtful and interesting as that of a painter or a sculpture artist. The way she finds the right colours, the right lines, the right shapes, the right angles, the right moments -- I am so amazed. It was the piece she called, if I remember correctly, Steak Face that really allowed me to see just how incredible photography can be. I was even more taken aback by the fact that the piece wasn't completely composed, that the most interesting part of the picture was just something she captured and didn't set up.

What is a photographer? How does she do that? Can my mother do that? Did my mother do that? I think I will ask her and show her Ka-Man Tse's work. She will probably ignore me due to whatever traumatic thing caused her to act this way towards art and photography, but I think this is worth the chance of being ignored. Maybe I will even ask to see my brother’s birth.

[nadiaiholcomb]

these are some things ive made. some people may call it abstract. but i think “realism” is abstract.

[nadiaiholcomb]

why are we calling ourselves artists

when everyone is an artist? my father is an artist when he cleans his car. my boyfriend is an artist when he tells me about his day. donald trump is an artist when he gives speeches. everyone is an artist, even those that seem soul-less and hateful. everyone is a creator. the universe is a creator and i am a part of it, so i am a creator. why am i called an artist when so many others arent? we all create. we all make art. what do i do differently? study a major called “art” in school? why not call it “being human”? why do i have to enroll myself in a game within the game just so my “being human” is validated? why do i have to write blog posts about different types of art when i can walk to fall creek gorge and lie under a waterfall, or go to wegmans and watch the way people push their carts around? what makes these artists better than the ones who are subtle? why are those who have academically, officially studied art more recognized than those who are studying art every second of their day? those who are simply experiencing? if art if about being genuine, being human, being true to yourself as an artist, isn’t the academic study of art the opposite of that? aren’t i being spoon-fed “who i am”? is my art suffering? can i look at something without letting it influence me? what is “me” without others? is anyones art genuine? is anything original? i guess not.

[nadiaiholcomb]

Julie Mehretu

Congress, 2003

Ink and acrylic on canvas

71 × 102”

As an artist most interested in two-dimensional abstractionism, I like to see Julie Mehretu’s work. My goal this past year or so has been to gain the ability to capture the identity of something rather than purely the essence. I’m not sure why I want to learn this. It isn’t necessary valuable to me, and even when I am able to do so, I will likely not keep it in practice. Pure essence is nice. However, I understand the difficulty of capturing something in an abstract way while still portraying the identity in a clear manner. Good for her.

[thunderstruck9]

Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985), Femme et bébé [Woman and Baby], 1956. Oil on canvas, 100.6 x 81.6 cm.

[nadiaiholcomb]

Origins by Jeffrey Palmer

This is a documentary made by one of my professors this semester. A lot of his work surrounds the history of and issues faced by indigenous peoples.

See more of his work here: https://vimeo.com/user2833074

[nadiaiholcomb]

On Being Melungeon

As Columbus and indigenous people are on our minds lately, it reminds me of my own heritage. Because my ancestors come from not-so-accepting Eastern Kentucky, they felt so much shame that they never really spoke about where their roots or kept any records. What I do know is that we are melungeon. "Melungeon" is a term that describes a tri-racial group of people in Eastern Tenessee, Southwestern Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky -- central Appalachia. Melungeon people are European, Native American, and African. While I look very white, and would describe myself as white, I am also substantially Cherokee as well as African. My great grandmother, Wonder, was so dark that as a child in Eastern Kentucky, she was often bullied and was reffered to as 'the n-word'. When my siblings and I were very young, before I can remember, Wonder took us to a Native American History museum. She was asked by an employee what tribe she belonged to, to which she responded by grabbing our wrists and angrily marching out of the museum. It often saddens me that I know so little about my own heritage, but it saddens me even more to know why I don't know much. My great grandmother was faced with so much hatred because of her skin color that she adopted their hateful views and passed it onto my grandmother, who punished my older sister for dating a black kid in high school.

Identity is a very strange thing and is a difficult topic for me to wrap my mind around. While I am technically tri-racial, I look very white. This caused a very traumatic moment for me in high school. Both my mother and I get natural dreadlocks when we don't spend the extra time to apply the proper moisturizer and condition our hair often. In high school, during exams week of my junior year, I no longer had the time to pick out any knots in my hair before going to sleep -- as I usually did -- and decided to let it do its thing for a few days until I had to time to properly maintain it. The next day, rumors began to spread that I was appropriating black culture by giving myself dreadlocks. In just a couple of days, half of my tiny boarding school was calling me a racist. It was very difficult for me to address these accusations, and many people still think of me in this way because no one ever approached me about it. Though I look white and refer to myself as white, I am also many other things that people can't see without asking me.

[nadiaiholcomb]

Paul Vanouse - Ocular Revision (2010)

Art and life. I like to see work like this because it reminds me that everyone is an artist.

[aoeue]

muscle chair (laying down to talk), 2016

by jessi reaves

[nadiaiholcomb]

Jessi Reaves said, “I am very much still a student of my own work and I’m still evolving my practice and what I’m making.” I think this is true for all artists. I hope this is true for all artists. For all artists of all ages. I never want to stop being a student of my own work. I never want to stop evolving my practice.

I used to have this mindset that Jessi Reaves seems to have: “I’m still trying to find my style. One day I will find it and it will be great and I will be done looking for it and that will be that.”

No. I want my work to continue to evolve. I see my art as a physical representation, an extension, of myself. If my work stops evolving, then I have stopped evolving.

She makes cool stuff, though.