Sarah Moon's Art Room

a weird and wonderful space to write, document, inspire, and dream. Your commitment to your art is a commitment to this world becoming a fuller, more magical place. Let it be your magic lantern, your flying carpet.

[sarahmoonartroom]

Sarah Moon and her psychedelic light room... (2023)

Psychedelic light shows are a form of light art that surfaced in the early 1960s to accompany electronic music performances. As I watched the psychedelic light shows of the 60’s I could not help but think of I could channel this with Miley Cyrus’s 2015 album Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, “a collection of experiments that exist for no other reason than because they can.” This is my psychedelic rock anthem is a masterwork of whack genius. It is ridiculous and brilliant.

In connection with the album, I performed a light show to present to the class as the “magic carpet ride” I take them on today.

The performance made me feel like a sort of hippie scientist, pouring, mixing, and dropping different liquids and colors to watch the shapes dance over the light. The oils and inks separate, connect, and are in a constant state of change and movement. Watching the light beam through clouds of ink and oil, I was sucked in for hours experimenting and dancing alongside the paintings. These paintings are temporary and in a constant state of metamorphosis. I tried to counteract this impermanence by snapping some photographs and printing them larger as paintings or prints themselves. Besides these images and recording, the show cannot be recreated live, as it is intuitive and comes from a flow state that I reach through painting.

Painting as meditation has been a part of my practice forever. This liquid light performance feels like it is bridging the gap between painting, time-based media, and music (WITH COLOR AND LIGHT).

Other Influences:

Pipilotti Rist

Jeremey Blake

fluid painting as meditation

[sarahmoonartroom]

another caterpillar in a kaleidoscope

[sarahmoonartroom]

caterpillar in a kaleidoscope 🐛

[sarahmoonartroom]

my studio is all of its gloryyyyyy  ✨

[sarahmoonartroom]

"I HOPE YOU DANCE" (2023)

installation art..... visual poetry.... immersive sculpture.

Sarah Moon | Group Critique | March 2, 2023

Artists:

Sara Applebaum (the vibe)

Hank Willis Thomas (light text)

Jason Rhodes

Ugo Rondinone (public sculpture)

Adam Frezza/Terri Chio (material- papier mache)

Ideas:

Visual Poetry

Kitsch Movement

Shadow Play/Filtered Lighting

My work is rooted in my fascination with the phenomenological, or the creation of a conscious experience in art.

Through immersive approaches like filtered lighting and shadow play, I have connected my interests in music, literature, and material to create an experience that subverts the space between the wonderful and the repulsive.

“I HOPE YOU DANCE” is an invitation to the viewer to enter the gallery space and sit with the strange tension in the room. Between the ornamented, playful physicality of the sculpture’s surface and the line drawing on the wall, the filtered light creates a strange environment that reveals a sober, hidden message Shadow Play is used by many artists, Cornelia Parker’s large square lamps for example, projected onto the wall, giving the viewer something to interpret for themselves.

Initially the piece reads as a party or an afterparty scene. By drawing the audience in with filtered, festive lighting and reference to music of the early 2000’s, the initial excitement of the experience is replaced with a deflating stiffness or melancholy. The party is over.

I enjoy playing with delight, pain, humor, and language. I also enjoy dancing with material. I pull inspiration for installation of text or “visual poetry” from public performance or sculpture artists… Ugo Rondinone, Jason Rhodes, and Hank Willis Thomas.

Party balloons. Spray paint. glitter glue. Resin. Rhinestones. Pantyhose.

Other ingredients: Immersion, Experience, Play, Explore, Wonder.

Claus Oldenburh wrote in his 1961 writing I Am For… “I Am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drops, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.”

XOXO, Sarah

[sarahmoonartroom]

"I HOPE YOU DANCE" (2023)

snap of installation piece from my critique last night....

balloons, paper machie, glitter glue, rhinestones, fabric scraps, resin.

[sarahmoonartroom]

artist statement (March 2023)

It starts as a daydream. A place I would rather be.

My work is rooted in my fascination with the phenomenological.

My practice is expanding beyond just painting on canvas, where now, exploration in sculpture and technology is facilitating this space-rock, psychedelic pop, magic carpet ride.

I am inspired by the ephemeral and visionary space we visit in our heads when we hear our favorite music or flashback to a sweet memory. Essentially, the moments on Earth that successfully subvert the melancholy and take you on a fantastic voyage.

My existence is heavily influenced by fantasy-world-building internet societies like Webkinz World and Club Penguin. Ever since I was able to hold a crayon, I have been escaping for hours at time to construct my own psychedelic reality. 

With an innate fluorescent color palette and attraction to the artificial, craft materials like glitter glue, acrylic paint, and papier Mache effectively allow me to explore scale and material intuitively.

My hope is to can create an accessible space that invites viewers to escape reality and envision a future that is as radical and abundant as the work itself. I want to turn the white/cube gallery into a sort of amusement park. To create experiences and push the absurd.

We are all made of stardust.

 Minute specks of glittering dust that hold together to create this infinite crystal universe of wonder, delight, pain, humor, and exploration.Join me in filling the void with glitter. Let us spray paint its insides neon pink, coat it in resin, and negate the space between the wonderful and the repulsive. 

[sarahmoonartroom]

Alison Hiltner Lecture (February 22, 2022)

Wowza. What a week at art boot camp. Joseph Norman, my undergraduate drawing professor, would always encourage us to exhaust yourself chasing your dreams and basically explained that in order to make your dreams a reality, you need to go to bed EVERY night completely exhausted exercising your talents. And every night, when I crawl into bed around 11:30. I am most always sore and drained from making, talking, dancing, teaching, and listening all day erryyyyday. I love alllllllll it allllll. I never want to leave sometimes.

Anywho, this past Wednesday we had visiting artist for our MFA Lecture series..... Alison Hiltner.

Hilter received her BFA from Kansas and her MFA from University of Minnesota, home to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.

Listening to her was totally engaging, inspiring, and hilarious. Not only did she show us plenty of images of her work, process, installs, and processes..... but she totally unlocked a few memories in my subconscious (will expand on this later... maybe)

Her work boiled down seems to take an ordinary object and turn it into an entire fantasy world. A cotton swab with earwax turns into a weird etherial forest, cultivating life from earwax. Through anthropomorphic, interactive installations, Hiltner uses materials like hot flue, rubber bands, and balloons to create choreographed sculptures and time based media.

She pulls inspiration from the natural world, referencing media like The Secret Life of Plants and Planet Earth.... Personifying flowers, and exploring curiosity in the natural world with her own personal flaiiiiir.

"I want people to experience that intense pulsation that makes every living creature alive"

She went on for an hour and I wrote everything down, sweet tea, coffee, and prozac pumping through my blood I was fixated since I had been up for 48 hours listening to this lecture (its midterm Szn okay)..... but essentially she proposes the question.

"How do I bring my crazy mind to life?" she asks.

How do we make the world we want to exist a reality. She said she's inspired by things that are real, that are other world from the deep sea. How does one create a playground to invite people into to wonder? this was absolutely crazyyyy for me and unlocked a whole new memory. When I was younger I was also was obsessed with sea creatures, specifically the Loch Ness monster.... which you can read about here, in the website I create for him when I was in elementary school. I consider this a an archival piece of art from my subconscious.

She closed by acknowledging that collaborating with others and listening to how differently people see the world is mind bending.

...

After listening to Hiltner talk for about an hour, I had laughed plenty and seen about a hundred slides of her story and work. It was lovely and engaging.

Sophia Hatzikos , a colleague and friend of mine, acknowledged Hiltner's refreshing spirit by asking about her emotional experience with the process.

Hilter admitted that besides the 10% of excitement, inspiration, and energy you have at the beginning of a project, and the 10% of satisfaction at the end of making a piece, its pretty much a brutal, chaotic process. Things go awry and there are lots of tears, this was totally reassuring and inspiring to hear.... as I was crying earlier this week in the bathroom over the stressful amount of paper machie I have assigned to myself for the semester.

Thats THE TEA, I enjoyed getting to know #AllisonHiltner and seeing her work.

Until next time space blog!

Sarah Moon (www.moonart.co)

[sarahmoonartroom]

[sarahmoonartroom]

Jordan and Alison lol. Today was packed full of studio visits, interviews, trips to airport, critique…. among other LIFE things …

Now watching a TFIOS to let out soe relief… an homage to 2012.

Ughhh Rest in Power Augustus Waters ♾

[sarahmoonartroom]

"you can dance if you want to!" (2023)

self portrait performance piece for my phantom bodies elective.

(sound is the instrumental version of Agnes by Glass Animals and it is in fact their greatest gift to society.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC3UxJ8ipME )

[sarahmoonartroom]

WHO AM I THROUGH MOVING PICTURES?

🕯 🧸 🕊🌙 FIRST "Phantom Bodies" assignment 🪐⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡♡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆🪐୧

To start I would like to acknowledge I might have made a wrong (or right 😏) turn when interpreting the prompt. I was thinking of this the as more of a portrait of my truest SELF, my art, or my soul, rather than my (quite phantom) current body. I guess I rarely think about my body as a tool or think about my body much ever in relationship to art.... but now as of this course, my brain is growing watching how differently everyone interprets "self-portrait" through moving pictures.

I am going to re-attempt this project next weekend after my papier Mache costumes are complete... I’ll have more to work with and can further expand next week how professor Hutamo’s lecture and our introduction to media studies has started shaping a new way of thinking about moving pictures. My body can be the prop or the sculpture. And of course, how photography, video making, and sculpture can transform the “white cube” gallery space

But for now, this is what I have been up 48 hours doing and I have some nice take aways.

Patricia Olynyk proposed to us the question… “Who are you? Who you in relationship to moving pictures and media?”

I’ll admit I’ve always been fascinated with media. I’ve been glued to the computer since Fergie released her music video Glamorous in 2006. Literally still in that YouTube rabbit hole 16 years later.

Although I am not inherently pulled to use technology in the making of most my work, I have roots in video editing and online internet antics since the year 2000. After all, I did spend every day after school designing elaborate, outlandish spaces for my Webkinz to thrive and STAYED collaborating with online friends and other 7-year-old moguls on the magical website.

Essentially, I’ve been in a long-term relationship with technology my whole life. I have been sculpting, annotating, and documenting behind a glass screen all my education at least. This reality has completely altered our generations view on privacy. Our world of moving pictures has created a surveillance system for even the most distant of strangers to read our inner most thoughts, view our relationships, and even track our physical locations. Although we are helping build this reality, the new generation of internet babies have had to learn walking the balance beam of the private and public under this surveillance system that Steve Jobs essentially birthed into our society. (Yay! Man fixes some problems with technology, but now there a whole other can of worms opened)

- the multiverse -

I think about all the annotations I’ve scattered on the internet throughout my life. I would love to examine the receipts of my online commenting, emailing, posting, even the writing in my notes app….

                                                          ….

I do love the mystic of flipping through someone's handmade book or journal, it's like a peep into their perspective and process. Their truest thoughts are in their annotations, their doodles and scribbles of lyrics stuck in their head that morning. Opening someone’s personal copy of a book takes you on a trip through their brain and conversations with themselves.

Since forever, I’ve been accumulating my favorite lyrics, quotes, images, receipts, ticket stubs, anything stretch out the moment and remember.

I want to look back at my life and see myself wearing rose colored glasses, platform slippers, paint-stained jeans, and a raspberry beret. Through the lens of fluorescent colors, loud laughs, and impromptu dancing. I am an optimist at heart, a lover of Sunday mornings, sweet tea, sunshine, AND THE RAIN!

 Our language and our inner most thoughts evolving as we grow older are the “moving pictures” I want to capture in this assignment.

You ask who I am? I am an open book.

Specifically, these up-cycled, overstuffed books from my personal archives.

"annotations" (2016-present)

www.moonart.co

.....My first (official) video piece.....

(Extra Nonsense because I'm on a roll)

PROS in doing the assignment wrong....

I have a new piece regardless of if anyone likes it or not (I do a lot though!!!)

I took some time to pay attention and document these journals that have traveled with me since high school... pretty cool moment to see how far I've come as a artist yes, but seeing how I've been able to channel some serious depressive episodes into BURTS OF RAINBOW ND GLITTER. I like to fill the void with glitter.

Scanners are dope and way more animated than just taking a photo with a camera.

I can confidently use adobe premiere now.

I have like 300 documented sketchbook pages, a speedy video previewing them, and a PREFORMANCE piece because I was literally so delusional after the critique, I spent 45 minutes watching my video projected super large and just dancing to the music (because this is the favorite song of all time of course)

Clarified and came to an answer to the question... Who am I?

      Notes moving forward:

Record my own music and sounds.

Be more theatric, performative, and daring.

this was great for the blog and documentation but let’s finish these papier Mache costumes/props and see what we can cook up for the next project.

[sarahmoonartroom]

ECONOMICS FOR ROMANTIC ART STUDENTS

Notes from Professional Practices. 2.14.22

There is this silly lil idea that art making, and economics cannot interact, that economics will taint the art itself. That art can’t be infected with money, capitalism, and commerce, and if you do you are compromising everything you are saying and making. That if art becomes a pure commodity, it loses its nature as art. 

“We don’t talk about money; we shouldn’t think about money.”

But we HAVE to.

As a part of your practice, you are a businessperson and a member of society (which sadly includes, the EcOnOmY.)

The value of the creative economy is over 64 billion dollars. There are more artists than lawyers, doctors, and police combined. Women artists of any race earn 77 cents for every dollar a white male artist makes. We can trace this connection of artists and the economy, back to age of artisan craft, where artists were primarily working on behalf of somebody else’s intellectual property. Artists were the hand for the economic and spiritual elite, the ones who are commentors and contributors to the economic system itself. Payment was primarily commission based, and as artists started taking control over their own content, there became a separateness between art and the economic system. Almost like we are participating right outside of it.

But if we take money out of it and think of this more as a structural system…. the connections between the studio practice and the demands of the economic systems set up today are redefined. 

How can we make things better? We have more power than we think? How do we make structural change that benefits us as a collective field?

Recognize the different distribution pathways.

Make your invisible work, visible! There’s a mystic that we as artists work very individually and isolated to put our work up for display without revealing the strange circumstances that led up to the creation of this object. We don’t always show the labor, but that labor is why we deserve to be PAID. 

No more starving artists, but no sellouts either!

Let’s think of the market as a design medium itself

We can create networks and communities that bring the vision of future systems where creatives have more education and information. 

Our ways of living can be as radical as the art we make itself. It may sound impossible to have this fantasy art market where we decide what do with our resources, allocations, government, and ownership over our art, but our ways of living can be as radical as the art we create ourselves. ART is the place where we can bring the vision of the future to life. *You will begin writing your first grant when you realize all the time, effort, and money that goes into an exhibition. 

And….

You are worthy of a life where you don’t have to fight for your existence.

So, how do we push back against the ways our labor is often taken for granted or not dignified?

Fake it till you make it…. Have confidence in your skills, website, portfolio. Be able to understand and write about what you do, why it impacts people, and why anyone should care is essential in getting funding and living a sustainable life as an artist.

Create communities of people with similar passions…. together we can bring the future of the new systems where creatives have CONTROL over their education and information. Show collaboratively! There are ways to increase the pie before we break it off!

How can we leverage our skillsets as artists but redirect them with community engagement, training, workshops, that will automatically? There are lots of grants with a component that is public and engages with the community. Doesn’t mean you shift your whole practice to be totally about the community… but is there a strand where you can experiment for yourself for some public engagement that will interact with other audiences? 

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” Someone important once said that once. 

Sure, this an optimistic approach in thinking about how we can improve this system of economics in the arts, and it IS the worst system we have, except all the others.

but Hope is all we got.

Let’s chose to be hopeful. Or just try for the following of this daydream.

Economics is not magical. Art is magical AND radical. Our ways of living as artists can be JUST as radical as the art we are making.

Sources:

Financial Health: Big Picture, Economics and Art, by Amy Whitaker.

Home

A resource designed to help you navigate the business that’s crucial to successful creative careers.

[syrenum]

[wetheurban]

ART: Painted Photography by Shae DeTar

Photographer Shae DeTar brilliantly infuses her photography with art in the most beautiful ways. Her technique of hand-painting photographs dates back to before color processing, making the feeling of her work inevitably vintage.

Keep reading

[withoutyourwalls]

Grimes by Petra Collins

[sarahmoonartroom]

#inspiration for my #phantombodies class. Going to start filming tonight maybe experimenting with filtered lighting and projection.

I have a couple of Ideas how I'm going to attack this project, but I have legitimately zero expectations for how its going to look.... since I have not made a video since I was in like 6th grade. (Which I will need to post some day, they are quite amusing and inspiring... so CAMP tbh)

I also have been thinking about #TonyOursler and projecting onto sculpture, might save this idea for another project.... but also I want to use editing like #NatalieDjurberg and #JeremyBlake . I think I need to make some videos of my paintings and animate them like use paint as a medium and filter it through video. But then I am wondering if I should also dress to the max, totally decorate my space and body and pull inspiration from #CindySherman and just get weird as hell with my costumes.

The assignment is a self portrait- so now I'm rethinking my whole project. I think I just want to take a series of clips maybe make around 10 clips that represent mi soul.

[sarahmoonartroom]

Al-An De Souza is a California based trans-media artist. They work across many different disciplines, including photography, digital media, text, performance, and pedagogy. 

DeSouza was born in Kenya and came to the United States for a group show in 1992 and has been a practicing artist in London, NYC, LA, and the Bay Area. They have their MFA from photography from UCLA and a BA from Bath Academy of Art in England. De Souza’s book How Art Can Be Thought (Duke, 2018) was published as handbook for the artists of our world— for students, critics, curators, and makers themselves. De Souza makes a strong case for university-level studio art research and examines art pedagogy within the contemporary world. The book is a comprehensive manual of strategies and suggestions for how we as artists can discuss art while considering new artistic and social challenges. 

This afternoon, our MFA program has the pleasure of having lunch with De Souza at Sam Fox. 

My favorite quote from their discussion with our graduate program….

“By doing things the wrong way, you will discover new things."

We listened to De Souza wrestle with the idea that fiction is purposeful. Fiction is liberation. How can we use fiction to convince us of this life? It seems that in a fictional world, everything could be possible. That factional world is art (art as in visual, performance, audio, language, all of it) and it's a lie, it's a fictional proposal, that helps us realize THE or A truth. 

My question for De Souza that I (may) ask if the opportunity presents itself:

Your work engages with issues of migration, relocation, and international travel. Your series of photographs The World Series explores memory through recording AND preserving. While reading your book in class, we concurrently discussed themes of place, displacement, and relocation. Some of us are working through similar subject matter, do you have any other artists you are looking at exploring these motifs? Could be musical, an author, a visual artist, a professor, a friend, who else do you refer to when drawing inspiration for your personal work? a secret guru maybe?

- Language and how language is used, framed, and connected. Dorthy Wang’s Poetry and her views on perpetual Invasion. Keith Piper. Sonia Boyce. Their grad students, theorists, and other gurus. 

A few images pulled from their website.