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.