Field Trip

This past Friday Gerry took us on a field trip to see some design studios in the city. For me, this trip succeeded by showing me exactly what I DON'T want to do... ever. The first design studio for one was 10000 degrees but thats besides the point and it was 6 people in a small room as a total of 2 separate design studios. I admired the fact that Ken and his partner worked for themselves with their own company. I think a lot of people have goals to be their own boss. The only problem with this 2 person business was that there was immense work put on their shoulders aside from designing for clients. I feel like the stress level of that must be crazy but it also must be nice to be able to choose what you think is best for your company. What I disagreed with about their duo was that they started this company because they were sick of working for corporations and those corporations not "appreciating their design" therefore starting their own business for people who do appreciate the graphic art presented in front of them. (I believe Ken said this about working for Target). Anyway the cons in having your own company is the fact that it needs to be established and well known for it to be successful and profitable. In my opinion, as long as a company is paying me well and I am doing what I love, I will never take a pay cut just because someone else doesn't appreciate my design.
The other design studio on the opposite side of the room was made up of 4 people and they showed us the Yale art website they built. As I am looking at this site, I am thinking, "Do they think this is good? Because from what I have learned about web design, this site is everything I was told NOT to do". Then we find out it was voted worst website of 2010. In my opinion that is absolutely nothing to be proud of and definitely not something to show aspiring designers. Anyway that was that, and I left more sure of myself than ever before that I don't ever want to work in a design studio.
The Whitney art department was more of a place where I could see myself working. They have constant changing content due to different exhibitions, but there was also that certainty that they will always be busy with work. I would hate working in a design studio where the content is changing constantly and there is no guarantee you will have enough work to keep you busy due to the fact your looking for random people who are just looking for a designer. I like consistency in design. I like knowing exactly the work I would be doing and the Whitney seems like a cool place. I think the hardest part about their job was to come up with a poster for an exhibition that represents it well that the people curating the show will approve of. Although that is challenging, its interesting and keeps your creativity flowing.

Information Sites

Here are some cool information websites I came across. Im making an infograph in Processing for design class (if i can ever figure out HOW), that I think would be really cool to use for my thesis project. If I can make it really nice maybe I'll incorporate it with the photos I need to get done...
Anyway here are the sites. I'm making an infograph about the increase in women getting plastic surgery over the past ten years or so. Enjoy whenever.

http://www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html

http://womenshealthnews.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/increase-in-cosmetic-surgery-in-the-us/

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/02/22/increase-plastic-surgery-sign-better-economic-times/

Mass Distractions and Cultural Decay

The new gallery exhibition has a lot of good representations of past and present American culture. My favorite piece was Michael Paul Britto's "Unarmed" 2007 digital video with sound. I am not much of a video fanatic because I find them to be too complex and sometimes hard to understand. People don't walk up to watch a video because it is aesthetically pleasing, they have to be drawn to it in other ways such as video descriptions if it's long etc. Anyways, I liked this video by Britto because it was short simple and to the point. I found the message about racism to be clear. The video was at eye-level and it showed a leggo cop raising his arm and shooting after each clip of a black or hispanic leggo flashed on the screen. Although this video was made in 2007, I think it's ironic that this video can perfectly represent the events occurring present day New Brunswick. The protests against racism happen everyday within the town due to a cop recently shooting an alleged innocent colored man who was in fact, unarmed. It goes to show that since this artist made a piece representing such a scene, means that it happens too often and that it has become a flaw in our culture. Racism is not dead and I think that is the point he was trying to make. I also noted the fact that the cop was white which has a lot to do with it, if he had put another race as the cop, the story would take on a different meaning such as abuse of authoritative powers.

The piece that I wasn't impressed with was Sam Durant's "Defaced Monuments" 2008. I thought it was a great concept but the way it was executed seemed kind of lazy. Being a design major and seeing how someone put together pictures and images and presents them has a lot of importance in the success of their project. This project was displayed on the computer, not at eye-level and the images were in the top left corner kind of small and the typeface was Times New Roman. Even non-designers know that Times New Roman is totally boring. Anyway I think this would have just been more successful with more attention to design. :)  

Heidi

For some reason whenever I think of plastic surgery amongst young women, I think of the most recent drastic surgery that I've heard about and that is Heidi Montag. I have never seen The Hills (the show that made her famous), but I have seen her before and afters and heard it all on the news. This young girl who felt pressure to look good before she became a star, pushed her over the edge when she eventually had all of this media attention. She had 10 plastic surgeries in one day and apparently the star told magazines that she is now unhappy with the results. I remember reading how her nose job gave her breathing issues, she had visible scars under her butt and her boobs were so big she had back problems... but hey! pain is beauty, right?
Attached is the link to her video of her pre-surgery and why she wanted it.
http://www.people.com/people/videos/0,,20336496,00.html

DH Cooper Video

I received a link from Amy Glass about an artist she saw a video about in class pertaining to plastic surgery. DH Cooper is a middle aged women who is feeling the effects of aging and is contemplating plastic surgery. She video tapes herself in the streets holding up a sign asking for change towards her face lift fund. Surprisingly a lot of people give money from what I think is out of amusement and not because they actually thought she needed surgery. She includes commentary battling with herself over whether or not she should go through with it and how she has stated that she is "ashamed that I've absorbed cultures messages about youth and beauty". I think that this statement applies to more than just middle aged women looking for the fountain of youth. It also pertains to young women who are looking for perfection via what media says and shows is perfect. The only difference between the young women seeking perfection and the middle aged women seeking youth, is that the young women have an insecure conscious and don't realize it is from the media they see everyday.
I also liked how a man on the street guessed her purpose by thinking it was artistic and a "fabulous statement about our times" and he looks at it as a "fabulous work of art". Ironically she was doing it in an art sense and if she wasn't then maybe she would have gotten offended. I just think it is interesting how someone looked at this experiment differently than most people walking by who were just staring and not thinking of the reasoning she was doing this. I also think that this was a test to the public to see how many people supported the idea of plastic surgery. Although it obviously wasn't for themselves, they thought about the idea for someone else and although most people said she didn't need it, they donated anyway.
 http://vimeo.com/29116705

2011 Welcome Back Show

The Welcome Back show at Mason Gross was a very diverse and intriguing show to view. The variety in mediums and experience made the show very interesting. I don't particularly like saying someone's art is good or bad because all art has a meaning. I believe if someone thinks a piece of art is "bad" then they didn't understand it correctly.
Since we had to choose our favorite piece and least favorite piece, I went by what was visually alluring and which wasn't. My favorite piece was by Steve Orlando who did drawings on handmade paper. Although I am a design major, my next favorite art form is drawing, especially intricate drawing. This piece had a different part of nature within the symbols. + had trees, - had mountains, > was oceans, < was desert. The way they were rendered were very intricate and had tight details and a great greyscale making the piece dynamic and realistic. The piece almost had a double positive space because from afar we see shapes but up close we see a scene. I'm sure there was a reason that each piece of nature was put into a specific symbol. My guess probably sounds silly but I think that it means we need to add more trees, we don't have enough mountains and we have more oceans than deserts. I feel as though it's an environmental awareness piece and I found myself looking at it the longest out of the whole gallery.
My least favorite piece, or the one I didn't understand at all was Rita Leduc's "Around Nodal Point Winding Outward". I didn't understand the meaning of the piece or use of materials. I question if the piece was experimental and if so, if there was a direction/point it was trying to make. On the other hand sometimes art doesn't have to make sense, but it also wasn't appealing at all to me. I also didn't understand they random way the individual pieces were hung. It seems as though the pieces can only work as individuals and don't work together as a whole. The one thing I do like about the piece are some of the organic shapes.

Finding a Direction

After my first critique, I came out with more questions than answers. I know I want my topic to be about plastic surgery and its role in society today. I want to show the phenomenon going on amongst young women turning to plastic surgery when they aren't confident in their own skin. I was asked if I am going to show this in a positive or negative light, but I didn't plan on showing it in a bad or good light. I just want to bring it TO light for people to see and understand. I want to leave the viewer wondering when this started and if it is getting out of control. I want them to recognize how society and the media are the reasons for young women to want to altar their body into what is beautiful by media standards.

It was suggested for me to look at the artist Orlan who had an exhibition called "Resurfacing"showing photographs of women looking as if they were just out of surgery, or just about to go in. Ironically, this show is similar to what I want to do but rendered in a different way obviously. Orlan shows faces of older women but I want photographs of the faces, arms, legs, butt etc. of young women who don't need surgery and I was going to draw surgical lines myself. I'm definitely going to look up more on this artist for inspiration and ideas on how to make my thesis similar, but make sure it's my own original.

Interview with Amy Glass

Amy Glass is an aspiring and inspiring photographer. Rather than displaying advancements of the digital world today, her work reflects an experimental era of the origin of photo. Her photos are organic, abstract and experimental. Perfection is not the goal, its the element of surprise that makes her work so compelling. Amy transferred to Rutgers and has been a part of Mason Gross for 3 years.    

S: What year are you?

A: This is my 3^rd year at Mason Gross. 

S: Where did you go to school before Rutgers?

A: I started at Middlesex County College.  Over there you’re a fine arts major, so you basically do everything. 

S: Were you always a photo major?

A: I didn’t take photo there.  I was a painting concentration.  Towards the end of my time there I was thinking of careers that I would be interested because there’s not a whole with painting.

S: Why did you choose photo?

A: I thought I would go into forensic photography and I didn’t know if I should start in photo or forensics so I just started in photo and I wound up loving photo more then forensics.   

S: What are your plans for the future?

A: I plan on being a librarian in a museum or art gallery. 

S: I noticed that your photos are very dark and very abstract, what inspires you to do this?

A: I really love dark photos cause they’re reminiscent of the beginning of photography when people were experimenting more and they didn’t know if something would come out too dark or too light.

S: Who are your artist inspirations?

A: Sally Mann is amazing in every way shape and form.  Mary Ellen Mark has really great story telling to her photos and they seem effortless. Arturo Herrera uses technique puts cartridge into liquid. His technique is something I tried out over the summer.

S: What is the hardest part of being a photo major?

A: Trying to break out of the habit of stopping when I get to a point in my work that I like and don’t want to mess up.  I want to let human error really shine in my work and move past stopping.

S: Do you prefer film or digital cameras?

A: I prefer film to digital.  I like old-fashioned work. I wish we had more time with film at this school; I really enjoyed working with it.  

S: It seems that your photos have a lot of experimentation with the human body, what about anatomy inspires you?

A: I have a great obsession with the human body and most of my subjects are humans.  I feel like there is no other subject we know better then ourselves and I find that very interesting.  I love doing self-portraits.  Most of my paintings are self portraits and a great deal of my paintings are based on photos I took. 

S: I also noticed some photos are dark and slightly eerie. Do you ever get inspiration from horror films or stories? 

A: Yes, I have a huge fascination with serial killers.

S: How do you make the connection with photo and painting? 

A: I like making my work completely mine, like every aspect of it is something I did.  I like to see the hand in a person’s work.  Most of the time when I go to museums I look at the works up close first then I step back and take them in as a whole piece.  

S: Do you subconsciously critique other photography?

A: I critique a lot of photographs especially ones in magazines, sometimes I feel like the photographer focuses more on the product then what the model is doing with her hands or face and to me I feel like it should be common sense to take the photo in as a whole.

S: Have you ever interned?

A: I took an internship at an art gallery and that’s what got me into being a librarian as a career.  It’s a great passion of mine to be organized. 

S: Where did you grow up?

A: I grew up in Central Jersey.  

S: Did you always have an interest in art and know as a kid this is something you could potentially be doing?

A: I have always been interested in art and would often draw and collage as a kid. Now-a-days I don’t draw often, I usually write  more about a piece I plan on making then doing a preliminary drawing of it. 

S: What is your least favorite style of art to render?

A: I hate absolutely hate still lives.  I think it has a lot of to do with the fact that I find them difficult and also completely boring.  I understand that it is essential for understanding composition but whenever I am in a drawing or painting class I can’t wait to get to the models.  I get frustrated with doing still lives for most of the semester.