Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Inherant Meaning....

Installation view, Fog, 2004
2 rollei medium format projectors, medium format slides
Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

So I was reading Raymond Williams' Keynotes the other day; yesterday, in fact. He is exploring everyone's ideas about a word, although he is aware of his own biases. He is defining the variations of complicated words and at the same time saying they are impossible to pin down.

And I was also reading another excerpt, this time from one of my coursepacks, about how language carries different meanings. There is the intended meaning of the artist, and the symbolic meaning (for example, the symbolism inherent in the Christian cross).

This applies to Kevin Schmidt's work because his fog and forest things were vastly different in the interpretation I got from seeing them and what he had to say about them.

I thought it was more about the desire for magical experience, the desire for phenomena to take us out of ourselves.

He said that by putting this art piece in a darkened room it made the viewer very aware of themselves in the gallery space, instead of dissociating themselves from it the way they would if it was a paper-photograph on a white wall.

Make sense? Both views are about the viewer, about the presence of the viewer's body in relation to the artwork, but they're both a little different. It's neat to be able to draw my own conclusions about a work and then hear the artists' opinion. (I'm sure my paraphrase isn't entirely accurate, but que sera sera.)

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Kevin Schmidt is Awesome



So last semester, one of my favorite professors, Cristine D'Onofrio was often showing us slideshows of photographs, and a lot of them were really interesting. She showed some of Kevin Schmidt's works, too, and I didn't make note of the name, but the art stuck in my mind as being INCREDIBLE and interesting and basically, right up my alley.

Then I'm sitting in my Installation class, and our bland looking professor is like, "let me show you some of my work." And it was this stuff. I am so excited to have a professor whose work I am really interested in, because I am sure I will learn a lot. I'll let you know in three monthes if I did or not, and will post a bit more in the future about what and why I like it.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Contrast



If the white cube is the gallery space, and the theatre space is the black cube. Does that make reality a gray area?

(photos: Arabella Campbell and Karen Kucharski)


If I make a Blaqk Audio vs. White Video regarding the members of AFI, do you know what I reference? I don't know where to find it.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Portfolio; what to expect from an Online Course


I have some online portfolios here, which perhaps you may be interested in. This is the sort of thing an online course at ECIAD will result in. If you're interested in my final mark for this work, it was a "B".

E-Katana work

Critiques of Classmates

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Creativity Manifests itself in Tall Tales

My real name is not Katana, but its the name that everyone knows me by. All my ID, of course, says Tamara.

I am sitting around a table at a pizza parlour in California with friends. We've set up a makeshift poker game with a deck made out of photo ID, reward cards, hotel swipe cards, et cetera, found in our wallets.

JB is looking at the Queens, which consists of my drivers' license, student cards, and security guard ID, and they all have pictures taken last year. He observes, "How come none of these actually says Tamara on them?"

"I have a DUI and we had to cross the border from Canada so I borrowed her ID and her name is Tamara."

He looks at the pictures, than at me. Katana, with her poker face, and Tamara, unsmiling plastic photographs. "Oh, okay. I see- yeah, her jawline is lower than yours." And Katana is prettier than her twin sister.

Or, more accurately, I am not so photogenic.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Luc Tuymans


Detail from Maypole. (2000, Oil on Canvas)

What I love about Luc Tuymans' work is how dreamlike it is. The subtle variations of colour give a thick atmosphere to the paintings, the same way that fog defines a landscape when it sinks onto the ground.