Mark Dion 03/13/14

     Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1961. He received his BFA and an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford, School of Art. He is an installation/sculpture type artists working with museums and found objects. He often orders objects in ways that they once were in dealing with social, scientific, and political views.
    I have to say that I do not like Mark Dion's work at all. I feel that he has really good ideas and is one of those great thinkers of our time, but I don't think of him as an artist. I understand that art has changed over time and it can be very subjective as to what art is. I just have a very strong feeling about what I feel art is. I do think that there are some of Mark Dion's work that would be considered art, but it seems like most of his "artwork" are things like cabinets of items, or shelves of items with only and idea behind it. Everyone in their own homes and in there work do the exact same thing that he does, the only difference is that he puts an idea behind it and calls it art. I just feel that he is a greater thinker than artist.

     This piece is one of the few of Mark Dion's pieces that I like, strangely enough. We watched the video in class about what went behind this project. He talked about it being about the tar as a sort of punishment throughout history and the social stigma that went along with it. He covered the rats in tar and hung them from a tree. I feel that it sends a strong message as well as having an original aesthetic appeal.


Rats







This is one of the artworks that I very much dislike, only as a piece of art. I feel that it is a science project meant to educate. I feel like it is very well put together and obviously took a lot of time, skill,  and cooperation. I do not understand this as being art, other than the fact that it is constructed by someone considered to be an artist. I feel like this piece is somewhere I would go for a field trip for a science class. Though I don't mean to say that art can't have an element of science and education, but if it does I feel that it needs an art element to it as well.

Neukom Vivarium


Source:
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mark-dion
http://www.pbs.org/art21/files/images/dion-mark.jpg
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/63/76/84/63768438c18f5d1c552ee84c1feedb12.jpg
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4130/5185673224_6806f622ba_b.jpg

Levi van Veluw 03/13/14

     Levi van Veluw us a multimedia artist he practices in video, photography, sculpture, installation, and drawing. He was born in Hoevelaken in 1985. He studied art at the Art EZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem and graduated in 2007. He's had work shown throughout Europe and the United States.

     I am not sure if I really like, like his work. I do find it very interesting though. In most of the work that I have seen of him it's him doing things to his own face either through special effects or materials applied to his face and then photographed. Each series that he does is named in accordance to the type of manipulation he has done to his face. Titles are a little misleading though if you haven't seen his work before. One of the series is called landscapes, but it isn't pictures or paintings of a landscape, it's him putting natural elements of a landscape over is head and face, making it seem like it's part of the landscape.

This is one of his landscapes. I think the title is one of the most intriguing things about this because I feel like it really explains the work. Most of his series have the same form of his head. So it really seems like it's the material that is what he wants to talk in the photograph. He's basically mimicking the traditional art and reforming it in a new way.

Landscape
120x100cm & 60x50 cm
2008






     I find this particular series pretty awesome. It's his ballpoint series, which is just him with his face drawn over in different ways with a blue or black ballpoint pen. I think one of the reasons why I like this photograph and this series is because it the least weird and creepy as compared to the rest of his work.  I think it's interesting the way that he has applied the pen because he does it with cross-hatching, which is a traditional drawing technique, but instead of applying it to paper and applying hatch marks where the forms of the face would be, he just applied it where is already belongs.


Lines
60x50cm & 120x100cm
2006



Source:
http://www.behance.net/levivanveluw
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/04/article-1159302-03BD89B9000005DC-170_306x423.jpg
http://www.levivanveluw.nl/sites/default/files/imagecache/work-original/work/landscape1_1.jpg
http://www.levivanveluw.nl/sites/default/files/imagecache/work-original/work/ballpoints_lines_1.jpg

Dalton Ghetti 03/6/14

     Dalton Ghetti is a Brazilian artist who specializes in caring pencils. He started his craft by learning to create his own toys and boxes from a kit that his parents had given him. He started off sculpting larger objects but then decided to go smaller because of his interest in the small hings in nature. So he began using a pencil as his sculpting medium. He wanted to bring attention to the small things in life.
    I am so ridiculously impressed by his work. I can not even imagine the skill and patience it must take to do this. Just carving something so simple and as small as a pencil. From a single pencil he has interlocking pieces and extremely detailed images. From some of he images I've seen it looks like he uses an exact-o knife, he probably uses other ools as well but that is he only recognizable tool I saw.

I'm very impressed by he chain in this piece. Each link has a uniform shape and size. I also like that it's from one pencil but with the shape of the end piece it looks as though it's two. I'm not sure why but I'm really happy that the pencil is yellow. I've seen in some of his other work that he uses different colors of pencils (not as in colored pencils, but color on the outside of he pencil). Using a yellow pencil in this just makes me feel like it's a more common object.

Chain

I don' really know how anyone could not like this piece. The detail alone on this is spectacular. I'm curious as to how fragile these pieces are. Like the tongue in the boot is just hanging out there, if I touched that would it break off? I'm also curious if he manipulates that uncarved portion of the pencil. Like the yellow part of this image looks fairly worn down and I'm curious if that is intentional or if it's just from so much handling.


Boot







Sources:
http://www.daltonmghetti.com/biography.asp
http://www.daltonmghetti.com/shop.asp

Herb Williams 03/6/14

     Herb Willims is a sculptor from Montgomery, Alabama born in 1973. He earned his BFA in sculpture from Birmingham-Southern College. He worked in two apprenticeships during this time and after his schooling he worked with other artists casting bronze sculptures. He now lives and creates work from Nashville, Tennessee. Though he has made work in different mediums, he was made famous for his Crayola crayon sculptures.

     I first discovered this artist when I was working on our transformation project. I was making a sculpture out of crayons and wanted to see what others had made from crayons. His crayon art is at a much bigger scale than my own was. One of the reasons why I like his art outside of the aesthetic value is that he donates his sculptures to places like hospitals and parks where the people who will appreciate it most will see it, children.

This piece was created for the awareness of wildfires in the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas. With the heat in the area the crayons have since melted and created a new shape and form. The base is what seems to be a skeleton/skin form with the paper of the crayon bonding the two forms.

Unwanted Visitor: Portrait of Wildfire
Crayons
3-8 ft tall




I really enjoy the repetition on this piece of the stripes and how they continue on throughout the deer and into the pond. I really couldn't a good look as to how this was constructed but I'm guessing that the surface is the ends of the crayons.


May 2013





Sources:
http://www.herbwilliamsart.com/#/bio/4575695378
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/images/images_2/andrea/miscellaneous/herb_williams/crayonsculpture05.jpg
http://www.designboom.com/art/crayon-wildfire-sculptures-by-herb-williams/
http://www.herbwilliamsart.com/

Bric-a-Brac 03/3/14

Bricolage: is defined as "do-it-yourself"
    I understood this to be taking something and reordering it to make something new or in a different order. It's finding things that are around and recycling them to a completely new use.

Bracconage: is defined as "poaching"
    I take this as getting to understand a material as it is and making it something else entirely. The meaning is understood and then reworked to evoke a different type of understanding.

Transformation 03/3/14

My object:: Crayons

List #1:

• varied colors
• waxy
• paper covered
• melts when hot

List #2:

• for children
• used for coloring and drawing
• can be melted down
• comes in a box

My project is crayons put into the form of a ball. they are also hung from the ceiling. I would say the meaning of the crayons has changed based on their inability to function as they once did. They're hung up high so they are no long in reach of children, and they are put into a form so that they're draw-ability is taken away,