Comics Reading Response Chapters 7 and 8

Chapter 7 deals with the questions that arise while creating and defining art. Does art have to have a form, a function? It dealt with the choices and the different ways that artists create art. Art is made in some way by everyone at some point in their life because it is a human expression that we cannot get away from. So in this way, art makes someone human. They must do something with themselves when they aren't performing necessary survival functions. These actions are done for one's pleasure and thus are considered art.

In chapter 8 I liked the author's use on color and description of how it is used in art in different ways. It was nice to finally see some color on the pages of this book. Color is something that I tend to incorporate in my work a lot. I love different color palettes and mine tend to always be vibrant. Colors can convey very different things to different people and can be used to give work a mood or a feeling. I love color. as weird as that sounds. I will buy an art piece that is nothing but an arrangement of color. I think that colors are very powerful visually and sometimes can be experienced best in their pure form. Color and the color scheme combinations highly dictate my work. I liked this chapter the best so far. It's use of examples was very effective.

Reading Response: Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg is an artist that is unlike the other artists that I have read about so far. His life was much different. It seems that he lived a very normal life, he liked to draw but never thought anything of it. He was in the Navy and that's where he discovered that he was talented. He seemed to live a more sheltered lifestyle than the other artists that I have read about in the reader so far. I found that very endearing and almost more of a pure art than some other artists. I like his style. It is a bit disorganized and crazy but that's how he wants it to be. He has a very unique style and I love the collages that he did. The collage above is amazing. It embodies a whole movement of the 60's and what that decade meant. It was so influential and I think that this work embodies that perfectly. His piece with the goat is very interesting and visually engaging. I think the fact that he finds things that he likes or ideas that just seem good to him and goes for it and just does them. He seems to take chances and that is something that not all artists want to do, but it can be a very effective mechanism for creation. I think that he furthered the conception that art doesn't have to be beautiful to be powerful. The story in the reader where an old lady comes up to him and comments that his work was ugly and how she didn't understand the process that he went through while creating it was a perfect example of the concept that perspective is the key to looking at art and you sometimes have to suspend your preconceptions in order to understand someone else's work.

Art Show Review

I went to Desiree's art exhibition this week. It was a very unique and awesome show. I liked the portraits of the boxers and noted how they weren't set in a ring or necessarily an athletic setting. This made me feel like the message of the portraits went deeper than showing the form and beauty of the sport. They made me feel like the boxers were fighting in their personal lives and familiar settings as well as in the ring. Their strength was being carried over into other aspects of their life. The decision to hang the portraits with over sized clamps was very interesting. I could tell it was a very conscious decision. They were photos that were kept open by only those clamps, otherwise they would roll up. I know that this was an important element to the images. Maybe it meant that they were being strengthened by boxing in their lives, that boxing was a release and could help them open up and stay stable. The boxing elements that were installed in the room helped tie together the exhibition and strengthen it. The hanging punching bag and the custom made ring immersed the viewer into the boxing atmosphere. The ring was impressive. I had no idea it was custom made until I read the description. I thought it was for little kids or something. I enjoyed the exhibition, a lot. It seemed simple but that fact actually led me to pick up on the fact that there was so much more there. In light of our confessions week, I have learned that a lot of times in art there are deeply personal choices made in art, and some of the best art is something that is very deeply personal to the artist.

My Confession

For my confession I dug really deep to a very personal fear that I hold close and have never told anyone. I have never really been close to my dad, he is very different from me and he was always the enforcer and critic of the house. We never really made the extra effort to have a good relationship. My Dad had a heart attack last year. It was mainly due to eating very unhealthy. My dad is a great cook and loves to cook things like steak, filet mignon and other rich food on a very regular basis and this is a high contributor to why he had a heart attack. My confession was that I fear that he will die of heart disease before we get the chance to have a good relationship. I set out this place setting. I carved a heart out of bell pepper, which is also really a really healthy food that is good for the heart, put it in a deep bowl that had spinach and a blend of red lettuce and other greens that are great for heart function due to the levels of iron in them. I wrapped the utensils in a two page letter that I had written to my dad. This letter stated the way I felt and how I missed out on having that relationship with him. I also stated that I would like to see him eat healthier. I read it out loud to the class after they had observed the sculpture in order to explain my confession. It was actually therapeutic to have the way I feel written out concisely and to finally speak it. I was very emotional throughout the whole thing. When I made the decision to read it out loud I was unsure whether I was going to be able to get through it and I was tempted to ask someone else to read it for me, but it was something that I had to do myself. I read it and shook and had to gather myself at some points but I did it and I got a very emotional response from my peers. It felt supportive, and many people could relate to what I felt. That was amazing. I didn't want everyone to feel sympathetic or anything, I didn't want that kind of attention and I felt like everyone was more supportive than anything so that was great.

Also, I read people's blogs of the critique for that day and a surprising number mentioned me. I felt very proud first of all, it was such an honor that people thought that my work was good,because I hadn't looked at it as art so much as just completing the assignment and getting this very difficult issue out. Many people were affected by it and thought that it was beautiful and many said that I should give the letter to my dad. I think I probably will next time that I see him or maybe write a more appropriate version of it to him on his birthday. The responses made me cry, I felt like I had touched a lot of people and that they actually cared. It was definitely a response that I hadn't expected. If anyone in my class is reading this right now, Thank you. Your responses meant a lot to me.

EASTER

Random Act Of Kindness

I was walking around the other night it was 4/20 and I was going to go get some food when I saw a car with the interior light on. they had forgotten to close their door fully and their battery was going to die if the light was left on all night. My friend laughed and said "haha someone's high! They're going to be sad tomorrow!" and we walked past. After about a second I turned around and booty bumped the door, causing the door to close and the light to go off. I was thinking how simple and small a random act of kindness can be. It was such a small gesture but I saved the owner of that car a lot of time and energy of getting jumper cables and someone willing to help them jump their car after their battery had died. I thought about how many times we see small things like the light on in someones car and do nothing to help them out even though it's completely in our power to. This may seem like such a small act but I know that if the owner of the car had known that someone had done that for them, instead of walking by and laughing at someone else's forgetfulness, they would have been grateful. Sometimes the nicest things we can do for strangers are tiny and take little effort but the effect that they have is much larger. I think that no grand gestures need to be taken to brighten someone's day or just make someone else's life easier and those are the acts of kindness and beauty that people everywhere should try to implement into their daily lives.

Confessions Session 2 Review

I thought that today's confessions were more mysterious than Tuesday's. I felt like a lot of people gave less explanation so I was very curious. For example, we didn't hear the story about the painted footprints confession, and also we didn't hear more about what the girl from the portrait meant to Skyler, or why he lost her. All we knew was that this was once someone he loved and he spent 50 hours or more making a portrait of her, just to delete it in front of us. With an action that bold there has to be a deeper story than just a college relationship break up, not everyone builds monuments (virtual or not) to ex girlfriends.

I thought the most powerful performance was Catie's. Her slide show of her grandmother progressing in age and the action of her being blindfolded got the message across so effectively. It was a beautiful expression of love and loss and not being able to get past the fact that she had lost her grandmother for 5 days without even knowing it. It is an interesting concept to think that as humans we feel a need to know if someone we love is not sharing the same reality as us even if they are far away. The piece was a strongly emotional memorial to her grandmother. I loved the use of digital media as the medium of her project. It helped emphasize the fact that she had essentially relied on technology for her parents to get the message to her, and they did not. I liked the fact that her confession was not easy to give. She had been so hesitant but she gathered her courage and did it.

In class Katie said that she felt that the strongest confessions chose the person, I totally agreed with this. In the process of creating the project very deep things came to the mind, and I feel that we all try to shy away from these because they can be painful or too revealing, but letting out those things make for the most powerful pieces.

I thought that the weakest confession today was Alex's. I mean, I am happy for him that he went to Coachella and experienced music in a whole new way. It was interesting that he made a presentation that mapped his experience and his preconceptions about the whole concert experience. I could tell it was an event that was out of his element by the way that he spoke about it. That was great for him, but I think it revealed very little actually about him. It was more of a story piece or a shared experience piece but not a confession. I feel like the confessions reveal something about the person and that revealed that he went to a concert and had fun. That is just too common of an experience to merit confession status. It was well done. If he wanted to keep the same topic I feel that he could have gotten more personal with it and gone into what music means to him, why it was such a big deal socially to go to his first concert, why he hadn't gone before. He said his friends "just never invited him" his confession could have been about finally going and feeling more accepted or closer with them. I don't know. I just felt like I learned nothing about him really, and I would have liked to.