Mod 6 - Sculpting, Glass & Ceramic, Oh My!!

Through the Eyes of the Sculptor

1.    List/discuss the key concepts you learned.

“Through the Eyes of a Sculptor” was in part about a sculptor who creates marble works of art, Emmanuel Fillion.  I like how the video walked with him to show his past works before showing he worked on a new piece.  He talked about the marble, how he works with it and even how he has to take the elements the sculpture will be at into consideration.  When he worked on the sculpture he used a modeling and carving methods to form it.  They type of figure he did was a human figure.  The media used was clay then plaster.

2.    How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

The videos relate to the text in that the video did things that the book described.  The book talked about the different methods of sculpting, the types of sculpting and the media used to sculpt.  The video showed these things in action.  The clay being modeling.  The plaster mold model.  And the carving and polishing to a finished product.

3.    What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the topics: Sculpture, Installation, and Craft?

Much like the other videos in this series, the videos enhanced the reading.  It showed what we read in action and did a great job explaining in detail how the art is done.

Glass and Ceramics.

1.    List/discuss the key concepts you learned.

Heating sand with components called fluxes to super hot temperatures until the sand breaks down and turns to molten glass.  That’s really cool how that works.  Then the artisan pulls some of this glob of glass they blow and form it into glass.  I’m sure this isn’t how glass is made any longer but it’s nice to know that glass can be still hand made.   The art of glazing glass to make stained glass was nice to see how the artist started with a small rendering on paper, then a larger paper rendering then the large is cut down to use as templates to cut the glass.  This would definitely be the assembling method of sculpting.  The ceramic process was similar to the glass in that the base is combined and heated to high temperatures.  The video did cover them using a modeling method. 

2.    How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

This video was a little less about the readings in the book but specific to glass and ceramics.  While it doesn’t cover the whole 40 pages of reading it does indirectly support a lot of what we read.

3.    What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the topics: Sculpture, Installation, and Craft?

I was really interested in seeing this video as I’ve always wondered how glass is made.  The first minute it tells us that glass is made from sand.  That’s amazing that something gritty as sand can break down to glass.

My Logo

1.    Discuss what you thought about creating your logo.

I decided to just create a logo for my name.  My favorite colors are black and white.  So I create a logo that I could use white on black or black on white, depending on the media it would be on.  I’m submitting the white on black version.  I wanted to make something that describes who I am. 

2.    Describe the process: creative thinking skills and ideas you used in the logo creation.

I’m a person who is an adult doesn’t like to act grown up.  I’m a full time analyst working 40+ hours a week, I take three classes at Buffalo State, I work one or two nights a week cooking at a country club for extra money, and most importantly I have two children who are with me almost 50% of the time they are not in school.  So my life is pretty crazy, unlevel and blurry.  I made my logo to be like my life.

3.    What was the most important discovery you made in the creation of your logo?

The best discovery was that simplicity was more appealing to me.  Much like the video where the company choose a much similar logo for the one they wanted as compared to more artistic ones, I did the same.  I added and removed shapes, pictures and other effects, trying to come up with a more creative logo, but the simpler the better was what I like the most.

4.    What is the most important information you learned from watching the videos, powerpoint, and reading material  for this project? What is your opinion of the videos?

I like the most how they explained the process for getting to make a logo.  The creative process.  How some ideas the artist may think is great is nothing near what the client wants.  How you have to take into consideration not just the artistic value of the logo but the intended audience of who will be looking at it.  How you have to make it so it attracts people to what it represents.

Project 2

Allbright Knox

First I’d like to say that I am glad that I am taking this class.  Had it not been for this class I would not have made a trip to Albright Know Art Gallery and seen the Monet and impressionist exhibit.  It was cool to be so close to such old and valuable stuff.  To think about how sought after some of these works may be it’s nice to be able to be so close to them.  For the questions for this project I’m am applying works that I was able to take pictures of, anything was free game except the Monet exhibit.

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Question 1 – Which artworks make an impact or impression on me and why?

There was one painting in particular that made me stop and take an extra look, it was La jeune bonne (The Servant Girl) by Amedeo Modigliani.  At first glance it was just a full length portrait of a lady in old world dress with a kind of plain look to her.  But it was how Modigliani chose to paint the Servant Girls eyes that caught my attention.  They were not eyes but eyes filled in whole in a light blue color.  The blue eyes made them stand out and create separation from the rest of the painting.  This took, what could have been a portrait, and made it very interesting to view.

The next painting that I viewed that made an impact to me was Carnaval d’Arlequi (Carnival of Harlequin) by Joan Miro.  I like it because it’s busy.  It has a lot to look at and every object on the painting is not to scale and open for interpretation.  You can pick individual objects and think about what they really are and what they may signify.  For example there is what looks like a unicycle bent at a about a 135 degree angle right in the middle.  Why is it bent like that?  Is it one unicycle or pieces of two and not actually bent?  How does a unicycle relate to anything else in the painting?  I would like to own a painting like this.

Question 2 – Which artworks do I feel a connection with and why?

                A piece that I felt a connection with is Walking Soldier by Alexander Archipenko.  What I didn’t see in it was a soldier but the sculpture itself was something that was well put together.  It doesn’t look like a human but the pieces put together give it a human shape.  It’s striking that he (or she) is in motion and moving forward and onward.  The fact that the title tells me that it is a soldier makes it even better because the composition is solid, just like a soldier.

                Another work that I felt a kind of connection with was D IV by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.  It’s simple, that is what drew me to this one.  But more importantly it was the fact that it was colored shapes on a black background.  Black is my favorite color and I really like to use black backgrounds for a lot of things I do, or at least a dark color like black.  For greens, I always pick a darker one like hunter and blues are usually royal.  The yellow, red, tan and blue shapes stand out on the black.  The greys and other lighter value of black  work well.  The fact that the shapes seem to have no rhyme or reason other than to be shapes on a picture does not matter.

Question 3 – Which artworks would I like to more about and why?

                One work that I’d like to know more about is La vie paysanne by Marc Chagall.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but it is a great picture to view.  In the forefront is a man and a horse.  Looks like he’s feeding the horse.  And there is green on top of the horse and behind the man, not sure what that green is.  But the thing about the painting is what’s behind these two.  A house that looks not to far away from the man and horse but at a severe uphill angle going left upwards to right.  The figures to the right of the crooked house seem to be almost level and definitely not at the same angle as the house but their size and scale is close to the house.  Lastly the white around the painting makes it look like winter time but that would not explain the people outside dancing and sitting at a table in front of the crooked house.  Interesting painting.

                The other painting I choose for this question is La Musique by Henri Matisse.  For the lack of a better reason I chose this because it is one artist that I have actually heard of, other than Monet.  It is not really the artwork itself that I’d like to know more about, it’s the artist, Matisse.  What I see in this picture is odd forms.  The lady to the left, her shoulders are like a football player but she has a petite head.  Her breasts, like the other ladies, look like they were crafted by a child, not a renowned artist.  The lady to the right looks like her left leg is detached  and her right foot is bigger than an eight foot tall giant.    The walls behind them are out of normal proportion too.  Are all works of Matisse like this?  And if so, what makes his art more special than anyone else’s?  

Module 4 - Colors and Value

Creating the value scale and color wheel were interesting.  Once again, I was able to apply what I read about by myself.  I especially like the color wheel because it was interesting to see the colors change as they were mixed.  Adding different colors striving to get the right color was the fun part.  The most important discovery I had was how colors do mix.  The blue was the hardest to work with as it was the most dense and needed less than red and yellow to make the intended colors.  The two videos for the scale and wheel were reinforced the assignment very well.  It was interesting to see the value scale being done, even though he used different pencils.  And it was nice to see the colors mixed by someone before attempting to do it myself.

Project #1 - 14 Elements

This was a fun project in the fact that we had the opportunity to use what we learned in this module while not necessarily having artistic skill.  Knowing that I would not have enough free time for the rest of the week to put a lot of time into this I waited until Wednesday, after work, to work on it.  Unfortunately, it was snowing and pretty cold.  So I decided to do the project’s 14 elements in my house.  This, to me, was really interesting to do.  There were a couple that I struggled to find a good subject matter, especially balance and movement.  

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Color in Art: More than just Roy G. Biv

1 – I think color and it’s effects on emotion are a product of repetition in daily life.  We grow accustomed to emotions based on what we expect from that color.  Red is a cautionary or dangerous color.  I associate it with a stop sign, hot or boiling, blood, and things like that.  If you change the hue of red to pink it is a more subtle emotion.  I associate pink with babies, valentines and breast cancer awareness which is really a joyful thing where people are together for a cause.  Red and Pink is just an example of how I think color effects emotion, much the same could be said for most colors.

2 – One aspect of color that I like is the optical effects of color.  I like how when complimentary colors are next to each other they seem more vibrant and how a massive amount of dots can look like something totally different when you get farther away.  Things like this I never really took notice of until reading this module.  I remember reading the Sunday comics as a kid and each week there was one of those strips in there with the picture that you had to stare at until your eyes changed focus and you could see another image.  Color, when looked at with a little more of an educated angle, can be used to an artistic advantage for the eyes of your audience. 

3 – In the Color video, the biggest impact to me in regards to color and it’s effects on emotions was on the artists struggle to get the colors on the canvas just right.  Each time she made a change the painting seemed right to me and it’s effects was nice.  But as she worked at it the final product did make a difference.  It was more visually appealing compared to the original subject matter.  I also like how she didn’t just decide the colors didn’t match her emotion by just looking at the painting.  She looks at it from different angles, she used what looked like binoculars and she even went outside and looked through a dirty window to feel the effects of her painting.  She said she painted how she felt about the subject and worked hard to show that feeling and that to her was the emotion that she wanted to convey.

4 - In the Feelings video, the biggest impact to me in regards to color and it’s effects on emotions was about perspective.  This has always been a fascination of mine with art.  How an artist can paint a picture of something that looks like it is infinite, never-ending.  Or something, like a person, painted at an angle where it seems that you actually looking at them and the closer arm is shorter than the arm farther away because of the angle.  This I’ve always struggled with trying to depict on paper when I try to draw it myself.  The video covers how the renaissance artists used perspective in their paintings to evoke feeling.  Especially in their religious paintings which were awesome pictures depicting artist renditions of religious events.  The perspective was not only on the figures in the pictures but also in the structures in there.

Aesthetic Art - Lots of reading and video watching

1. For each video and article list/discuss the key concepts you learned.

With Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts I learned how a lot of the past’s great artists had different views of aesthetics.  CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics both showed me one persons view of the origins of aesthetics and another’s lecturer’s ideas of how art effects the mind.   The CNN article did a lot more of the same with talking about how art effects the brain and how the brain accepts art.

2. Which philosopher's theroy on aesthetics do you feel is most important? Be sure to mention the philosphers name, era (time in history), and contribution to the aesthetic theory in your response.

I like Hagel’s view of aesthetics.  I like his because he used symbolic, classical and romantic art.  The quote of Hagel they uses talks about sensible art.  This is the kind of art I like, things I don’t have to think about but just admire. 

3. What do you think about Changeux and Ramachandran scientific view of aesthetics and art? What was the most interesting fact you discovered from each speakers lecture?

I like Ramachandrans view much better, not just because I could understand his dialect better, but because his made more sense.  He explained how different people can look at the same thing and see a different thing.  I liked how he explained the piece of Indian art of a Goddess of the cosmos and he explained how the western people looked at the same thing and instead of seeing the art they critiqued the form and look of the Goddess.  Different eyes, different views.

4. How do the videos and article relate to the readings in the text?

The videos do support the readings in the text.  The text is textbook style.  Covering one fact at a time and moving on.  The videos give us a verbal explanation of all of the things we read and applying those things to the information they are talking about.

5. What is your opinion of the films and article? How do they add depth to understanding of the topics in your reading in the text?

I liked the Carta video the best because it was a lecture that seemed relevant to the book.  The first video was hard to follow and engage in because of the slow moving and talking pace of the video.