Artist # 13 Anish Kapoor

I've seen a couple of Anish Kapoor's sculptures before and didn't quite understand them. I saw Cloud Gate and Sky Mirror.

I didn't see them in person, just through a different art class. I believe that Sky Mirror is about the world around it. It reflects the buildings all around it upside down. It's in Rockefeller center in New York City, so it's offering a view of downtown New York City upside down. It's made of polished stainless steel so it's very shiny. When I look at it, it reminds me of a contact lens. That also works for the piece, because a contact lens has to do with viewing parts of the world too. Cloud Gate seems to have the same function. It's giving a distorted reflection of Chicago's skyline and the land that the piece is sitting on. It reminds me of one of those mirrors that distorts your image and makes you look funny. This sculpture is making the city look funny.



I think Kapoor's work is mainly about the space around the sculpture. He creates a piece like this modern looking one and then makes it so it can interact with the space that it's in. To me there doesn't seem much more to it than that. I'm not a huge fan of Anish Kapoor, but it is a little bit different, more modern looking that I do like.

Easter

In spite of Easter, my sister, niece and nephew died eggs. I tried to make some really cool ones, but they ended up not so cool. So after that I gave up and just mixed the colors making them look pretty. Some of them came out really good, and you can tell which ones my niece and nephew did :). They still did a good job though.

Happy Easter!

Artist # 12 Marc Quinn

I remember seeing one piece in class from Marc Quinn and it was very gross. It was his head cast with his own blood. I don't like blood and the fact that it's his blood and he had to save it and extract it is even worse. If he used someone else's blood, that would be even more messed up. I learned that he used close to ten pints of his own blood saved up over about a five month time span. I would never think of using my own blood for a piece so he is definitely thinking outside the box. The piece has to be in this refrigeration case, to keep it in good condition because of the blood.

I looked at other pieces he's done and it looks like he's fascinated with the human body. Many of his sculptures are of body's, but in different forms than you would normally see. A couple of them in forms that are impossible to be in. Only people who are extremely flexible and have some kind of joint problem or something could be in these positions.



I couldn't find what these are made of. I read a long article and it talked about marble, but to me, they don't really look like marble. I thought it was interesting that the first one is wearing a bathing suit. I'm glad that he chose not to make these girls naked, because that would be pretty awkward with the positions they're in. I think it's more about the movement of the body and the flexibility and functions of the body. I also thought it was interesting that they're completely white, no color. To me, that says they're not supposed to be realistic, and the positions say that too. People don't just sit down like this. When the sculpture is white, everything around it becomes it's background. I think it interacts with its surroundings better that way.

Here are a few more of Marc Quinn's sculptures:



I was drawn to the baby when I first saw it. I like how it's this huge sculpture of a baby, something that's small, and it looks like it's just floating. Only the baby's hand is on the ground, the rest looks so effortlessly held up. I think this piece is very successful because of that. It makes me wonder how it's being held in that position. It's also very odd at the same time. Why is there this giant baby sculpture in the park?

The last sculpture is very odd, I honestly don't even know what to say about it. It looks like a person that was born with some kind of disorder that didn't allow parts of the body to grow and develop properly. It almost looks like a half baby/ half adult. The only piece that I saw of Marc Quinn's that I really didn't like was Self (his head cast with his blood). I liked looking at his other sculptures. They were different and somewhat refreshing.

Amazing Pools

I recieved an e-mail from budget travel, it's a magazine, about the top pools from hotels around the world. I thought they were pretty cool, so I'd share them.
You can take small sailboats out on the saltwater pool at San Alfonso del Mar, in Algarrobo, Chile. The pool measures two thirds of a mile in length—Guinness World Records calls it the largest in the world. (Courtesy San Alfonso del Mar)

(Courtesy Park Hyatt Tokyo)

The Park Hyatt Tokyo's sleek, 47th-floor swimming pool has jaw-dropping vistas of Tokyo and even venerable Mount Fuji. (Courtesy Park Hyatt Tokyo)

The two-acre pool deck at the Viceroy Miami features Japanese blueberry trees, swanky chaise lounges and beds, and three types of pools: an 80-person hot tub, a wading pool, and a football-field-size swimming pool. (Courtesy Viceroy Miami)

(Courtesy Hotel Caruso Belvedere)

(Courtesy InterContinental Hong Kong)

You'll swim with five species of sharks (16 sharks in all!) at the Golden Nugget's $30 million pool complex in Las Vegas. (Courtesy Golden Nugget)

Take a waterslide straight through the Golden Nugget's 200,000-gallon shark tank. You'll see stingrays, massive Queensland grouper, and silvery jack crevalle, too. (Courtesy Golden Nugget)

(Courtesy Al Bustan Palace InterContinental Muscat)

So there were more, but it is making wish I was at one of them where it's warm! Right now it's spring break and it's so cold outside :(. I am ready for summer!

Artist # 11 Janine Antoni

With Janine Antoni, I had to read a little bit about her to begin writing about her. I first looked at her work, and chose some, but some of them I had no clue what they were so I had to read about them. The main one I read about was her cast of her mouth with a spoon.

This piece is titled Unbilical. I honestly couldn't tell what it was by looking at it. I read that Janine Antoni is very involved in her work and uses her body many times. This is a cast of the inside of her mouth with a spoon cast in the Antoni silver in her mouth held by a cast of her mother's hand. (Antoni) Everything is cast in silver, I think that's why it made it hard to tell exactly what it was. The palm of the hand also didn't and still doesn't look like a hand to me. When I think about this piece, it makes me think of a baby. The mother is feeding her child. When mothers feed their children, it's usually only when they're babies. Although, I'm not sure what she is trying to say about that fact. It could be that she never really had that, she misses that, etc.

We looked at both of these in class:



I think we looked at the first one when we were doing our transformation project, or when we received our midterm assignment. There are seven chocolate and seven soap sculptures. They are self portraits of herself that she made by licking the chocolate and washing with the soap. Here she made a statement that describes these pieces.

"I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also with the classical bust...I had the idea that I would make a replica of myself in chocolate and in soap, and I would feed myself with my self, and wash myself with my self. Both the licking and the bathing are quite gentle and loving acts, but what’s interesting is that I’m slowly erasing myself through the process. So for me it’s about that conflict, that love/hate relationship we have with our physical appearance, and the problem I have with looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Is that who I am?’"

It's really interesting when I think about that. She's erasing herself with the process of making herself. I'm also really impressed with how they turned out for licking and washing to make them. It would be really difficult. It shows how much she becomes a part of her pieces. Our professor said she was able to go and see this work and the smell was so strong and almost unbearable. The soap and the chocolate are an interesting combination.
- Janine Antoni

Here are a couple more of her pieces:

Artist # 10 Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith's work seems very odd. Some of it is kind of disturbing too. I looked up her images in google and these came up:






All of these images made me question her work and what they were about. The girl hanging is all white except for black thread mixed in with her hair and a little bit on her dress. When I think of white, I think of purity, clean, innocent, etc. So I'm thinking this girl is representing those things, maybe more so innocence. Then she has black mixed in like she has been ruined, her innocence is no longer there. She's also hanging, dead. I think the black is representing that; maybe death, or just more evil coming into her life.

The other pieces were weird and I didn't really see something in them like I did with this girl. The person with it's feet in the deer is really weird and gross. I don't like looking at it. Because I wasn't understanding the rest of her work I read more about her. I found this here, "The recurrent subject matter in Smith’s work has been the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling." In that article, it also talked about her work telling folk tales, or classical mythology. I'll assume the deer and person were in one of those categories.

Kiki Smith has won numerous awards for her work. Her pieces are also displayed in well known museums. She doesn't only work with sculpture, but is also talented in printmaking. Even though she has these awards and I know she's talented at what she does, I don't know if I would want to go and see her work.

Artist # 9 Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell's work is much different than what i'm used to seeing as art. It seems like he has a theme of birds and kind of that natural thing going on. Most of the images that came up on google, his work seems to be in some kind of frame. There are different pieces that look like they're in some kind of box with a viewing window. Other's are just in frames themselves.

I like to first look at the images and try to see what the work is about before I read about it. Because I had no idea about Joseph Cornell, I had no previous perceptions of his work. To me it comes off very natural and strategically places in these boxes or frames. His work all looks old. He's not using new objects, so recycling them maybe. As far as the content, i'm not really sure. I don't know what he is trying to get across. I'm not the best at reading art pieces, so after reading I learned a little more.

He was mostly self taught. I thought that was interesting. He uses found objects. The way he worked is pretty interesting as well. He collects objects from flea markets, souvenir shops, junk stores etc. Then he organizes the objects into categories. The boxes that he uses are very old and they're personal. They are for people that he might not have ever met, but was maybe connected in some way. It said it took him years to organize these boxes. (Joseph Cornell)

Here are a few of his pieces:

The way he organizes his boxes is with great craft. He doesn't just throw it all together, but I think he really thinks about where each object is going to go with relation to everything else around it. Honestly thought, when I read the descriptions of some of these pieces, I didn't see it at all. There are some direct references I guess, like the bird representing freedom, but my mind just doesn't think about that yet. I don't draw those similarities or references yet so its hard to really understand his work.

Come Back

My roommate told me about this book that I should read titled: Come Back by Claire and Mia Fontaine. She said some parts were really sad and hard to read, but the end is so good it makes it all worth it. I decided I would read it, since I don't read much. It's about a mother and the struggles between her and her daughter who decided to get into the drug world.

I started it last night and read about five chapters until I had to go to sleep. Some parts were pretty disturbing and almost made me feel a little sick thinking about it, but at the same time I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen. I like those kinds of books, otherwise I'll put it down and won't pick it back up for awhile. This mother and daughter have had a crazy life and I know it just gets crazier as the story goes on. Mia, the daughter, was sexually abused as a child by her crazy father. Claire, the mother, married this guy who turned out to be a complete psycho. He would walk around naked all the time and read to his daughter in bed naked... this was the beginning of small signs that Claire began to pick up on that something wasn't right. He would say comments like why is child molestation so bad? Or children should be able to experience everything an adult does whenever they want. This guy was really messed up. He would go on rages and threaten to kill Claire, then be fine the next day. When Claire would go to the authorities, they wouldn't do anything. It took a long time to finally be free from this guy.

I haven't gotten too far into the story, but it's already been pretty crazy and it says that it gets worse. The daughter grew up having a good relationship with her mom, then one night just left. She wanted to experience the world-meaning drugs. Their whole lives changed that night.

I'm excited to read the rest, but at the same time I know I'm going to be reading more stuff that I won't like reading. I'll trust my roommate though and know that the end will make up for everything! It's just that anything that has to do with pedophiles, or child molestation of any kind makes me sick. So I hope there's no more of that!

Class Notes-Traditional Sculpture

-Casting/replacement/substitution
-Mold: shape for clay or metal to make object
-Lost wax
-Patina: chemical reaction (penny turns green in rain) can have it on purpose,

like a stain
-Plastic/plasticity: refers to material that can be changed and molded, state

of a material

-Relief:
-Low/bas relief, high/haut relief: sculpture that comes off a 2D surface
-Maquette: small sketch in clay, or small model in metal. Practice before

real thing
-Subtractive/additive: adding materials or taking away
-Armature: something to build onto. An internal support structure
-Assemblage/constructive
-Base/pedestal

(We didn't go over all the terms, or some of them are self explanatory)

Michelangelo worked subtractive. Started with forked chisels. It removes more stone quicker. Then used finer chisels. He started from the front then worked to the back. His form was very different from other artists.

Mountain High

The other week my boyfriend and I went up to the cross that's up on a hill here in Boise. You can see it lit up at night. I think it's on table rock maybe? Anyways I've been wanting to go up there at sunset because you can see all of Boise and it would be really pretty at that time. I was expecting to have to hike up to it, but we found out you drive almost to the top then just have a little ways to walk. Once we were at the top you could see paths that do start from the bottom, so it would be fun to walk all the way up. The view was really pretty, it would be even better once everything is in bloom again. We didn't stay up there long because it was REALLY windy and cold. So unfortunately I didn't get to watch the sunset. We took in the view, took a few pictures and left. I'll have to go back up once it's warmer outside.

Midterm

I knew that this last Tuesday was going to be our midterm in the class, but I had no idea what it would be. We were told that there would be no way to prepare for it, so I just went into class with no expectations or anything. We first went over traditional sculpture. Then we received the assignment. It was the best midterm I have ever had. We had a "contest" to either sculpt something out of spam or soap. I was thinking about using spam, but it all was passed out before I really decided, so I had to go with soap.

We had to have something done by class on Thursday and I was thinking, "I can't get this done in time!" I had no idea what to make out of the soap. I was asking people throughout the day what I should make, and I never received an idea that I really liked. I was thinking about soap and what it's used for. I was thinking about the culture that's associated with it, and I thought of washing your mouth out with soap. It's something of the past now, but I had to do it when I was little and I know others did too. I thought of making a mouth with a piece of soap coming out. I liked it, but didn't know if I would be able to make it look good.

To start, I made some sketches of a mouth. Then I just grabbed the soap, lightly outlined some lines, but then just carved away. I was surprised at how easy it was to carve the soap. I have never used it like this before. I shaved the top to get rid of the dial written on it too. It didn't take me too long to make the whole thing either. I was expecting it to take me awhile, but it really didn't because the soap shaved off so easily. I didn't try to make it realistic, I wanted it to be kind of like those mouths you see as examples at dentists. So here is my mouth, it's not completely finished here:

When we turned them in, we had to leave the class for awhile then come back to see who won the prizes. Everyone did a really good job on their sculptures. I was really impressed. It was nice because after we knew who won we just had to take them over to the PA building and then we were free to leave. I only had one more day to go and then a week of break! (The only thing is that I will be doing many posts over this break to get myself caught up).