Curatorial Rational

               In the SAS Visual Arts Seminar I was supposed to create 3 art pieces. In  this class, most of my work explores the concept of personal identity, and/or a lack of control. I started my body of work in unit one with my catacomb piece, titled “no way out”. It explored the sort of helpless feeling I associate with cave horror movies. The piece was meant to physically manifest how these movies make me feel. I wouldn’t call myself claustrophobic, but the idea of being trapped in a cave and not having any control over what happens as a result of that makes me nervous. 

              My unit 2 project, “Kafkaesque” ended up further exploring the experience of lack of control. I made a diorama about a story, “The Metamorphosis (Kafka),” which contains strong themes of being trapped and isolated against the character’s will. Going even further, the author who wrote this story, Franz Kafka, wasn’t able to dictate what was done with his story once it was published. This is what inspired my diorama. He had originally said that he didn’t want the main character, a man turned into a beetle, to be drawn at all (Kafka). He wanted the audience to have to view the character with the same hazy discordance that the character viewed himself (Kafka). However, once a piece of art is put out into the world, the creator cannot control how it is received or manipulated. There is a fairly popular illustration of his character. I decided to take the illustration, make a diorama of it, and then obscure it with a sheer semi transparent fabric, giving back to Kafka’s original intention. 

 

              My final piece, titled “Mweheh…Mouf” is meant to serve as a literal example of how artists represent pieces of themselves in their art. I did this by making a mold of my teeth and casting it with clay. I put these teeth in a sculpture of a character; the character themselves has no real meaning. I wanted to show how even if the piece of art doesn’t seem to have much meaning or depth, artists are still representing some portion of themselves, whether it’s about something they enjoy or their life experience. This piece supports my initial unit one piece. The theme that the piece was supposed to be about was personal identity. While enjoying horror movies doesn’t seem like something one could count as part of their identity, it goes deeper to what one is scared about. For me, being scared of getting trapped in a cave is more about being scared of not being able to control what happens to me, and the fear of leaving things up to chance. That's why I had my unit three character be a seemingly mundane weird little character, but it has a part of me, or at least a replica of a part of me, physically in it. 

              For my unit one piece, the media I used was very intentional and there was a meaning that I would only be able to emulate with those materials. I used a fine tip brush pen for the bones surrounding the face in the middle. I wanted to create a very stark image of the bones, that had a clear 2 values. The brush pen allowed me to create very fine details and very natural looking lines. I had a very extreme perspective in the piece that I wanted to use so that the background would look like it went on infinitely, and one couldn’t see the end. In the middle of the piece I have a linocut (a hard rubbery material used to carve stamps) print of myself. Again I kept the stark black and white values. I used linocut because the texture that remains after carving looks like a static energy radiating from my face. I wanted there to be a palpable, visible tension in the air, making me look frantic and scared. It was difficult to carve the detail into the linocut, and even more difficult to print. I am not satisfied with the face in the middle, but I suppose the whole point of the piece is to show me in a situation where I don't have any say in the outcome, so by not liking the way it is printed I’m strengthening the meaning. 

I was inspired by the various cave horror movies I’ve watched. In particular, I had in mind the poster for a movie called As Above So Below (Dowdle). I was unable to find who designed the poster, but the poster as well as the actual movie were what I had in mind while making this. While I was making this piece, I coincidentally watched a long list of horror movies and television shows, which lent to a bit of anxiety while working late into the night, drawing bones.            Creating this piece for unit one was an immersive experience.

             In the second piece the materials I used were chosen purely on utility. I used whatever type of clay would fit in my tiny toaster oven, and I used scrap wood for the walls. The only new materials I bought for that piece were a different type of sculpy when I ran out, and the sheer piece of fabric. The media itself didn’t have any inherent meaning. The only material I used that contributed to the intent is the fabric covering the opening. The fabric is there to obscure the scene from the viewer. As said previously, the scene is supposed to be hidden to fulfill Kafka’s desire for no one to draw the beetle anywhere in or outside of the book.

             The inspiration for this piece was again a piece of art(Seattle Art Museum), where the artist's name was impossible to locate. I didn’t have any other artist in mind with respect to the diorama. The actual composition and content of the piece, though, was from a black and white ink illustration. 

In my final piece the most influential material was my retainers. I am currently using invisalign, and so I had an old set that had a perfect mold of my teeth. Of course I’m not going to put my actual teeth in the piece, but the replica of them works just the same to communicate my meaning. My meaning is: “look, my teeth are in my art, it's just like me, for real.”

              I didn’t have any outside work in mind when it came to my unit three piece. In fact, this piece is inspired by works I’ve done in the past. I’ve made characters that look like this out of clay before. I’ve made some small ones out of sculpy when I was starting out in clay, and out of ceramics when I got a bit more advanced. Honestly, I took a step backwards using the air dry clay, but without access to ceramics or a large oven I can cook sculpey in, it was the best option. I just enjoy the dopey energy these sorts of characters have, regardless of what they are doing. There was some debate while I was planning this piece about why it should be this character, and I wanted it to be this weird guy because the character itself doesn’t have meaning other than it being fun to make. That's the meaning in most of my art, is that it engages me and it's exciting.

             I have never cared too much about what meaning is attributed to my art. I suppose when someone tells me what “I am intending it to mean” I don’t like that.  But if someone interprets it a way while understanding that it's their interpretation, not necessarily my intention, I don’t mind. I want the audience to experience my work, like I did, I think. I want them to see each detail one at a time, like I made each piece one at a time. I think viewing something by looking at each component individually makes art much stronger because it becomes recognizable how much work went into it. For example, I don’t want my pieces to have a focal point really; I want the audience to drift from each detail to the next. It may not seem like that because my first piece has a very strong focal point, and people are obviously going to look at the large face right in the middle. Regardless, I don’t mind if that’s where people look because I’m making the art for myself really, and as long as I get to look at all the details and enjoy them, what's the harm? 

              Throughout this class we’ve really focused on media testing as a way of possibly discovering new techniques or materials we would want to incorporate into our art. I have refined certain processes like using a laser cutter to transfer a sketch onto a lino cut, and I have come to conclusions about different media. I would really like to further explore using black pens to make detailed illustrations. I have had an urge since I started making my unit one piece to illustrate little greeting cards with ink and maybe watercolor. I also want to branch out of dioramas and fix up this old dollhouse I have so that I can use it as a background set for stop motion animations. With my unit 3 piece I’d love to make more figures like it. Probably not with the teeth because that was very time consuming, but funny ceramic figures in general. I’d do it with ceramic clay, though. That material is much sturdier and then I could have the figure standing up without worrying the legs would break off. I'm happy with the progress that I made, and I think that some of the work from this class could be used in portfolios for art programs.

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