Day 4: Think about an object In your daily life and how it has affected you...

No object has had as much an impact on who I am, in a deeper-than-“surface” sense, than the food I eat. Food as a simple object doesn’t necessarily cover it either, however the whole social facet of food, from the people you eat with, to the people you observe (in the least creepy way possible), to the relations the simple, indispensable act brings forth, holds great weight. From being fed as a baby, establishing motherly and fatherly bonds, to family dinners building my family relationships, to lunches with my brother building a brotherly relationship more than that of familial determinism, to late-night fast food missions that define, otherwise unsuccessful, high school weekends, food has been the backdrop of my social life since day one. I can say, retrospectively, that food has shaped, in some way or another, how well I know the people I am surrounded with, and has been one of the many settings with which I have been able to shape my social life. The older I get, the more I realize this. When you’re a young kid, a “play-date” is suffice, when u get a little older, just hanging out becomes the “normal” thing to do, but the older you get, the more there must be some kind of reason to get together (however, informal it may be), and food, at least in my experience, has taken the role of the impetus. 

ART SHOW REVIEW 1

Last night I attended the UCSB, Department of Art, Honors Thesis Show entitled, Whenever You Are, We Are Already Then. The show consisted of an array of art forms, from interactive installation pieces, to pen and ink displays. The first piece that I saw, by Julian Alexander Scalia, entitled Telemodelectriver (CRT’s, Conduit, Oil Drums, Video), held my attention the most, and was my personal favorite. This piece was in a separate room that the rest of the show, in a sense, isolating the experience of the viewer, allowing the piece to stand out with its own unique display. Inside the dark, ominous room stood a cloudily transparent tarp dome (similar to a yurt) with a small entrance. Inside the dome was a cylindrical stack of oil drums with many T.V. screens around it at different heights and sizes. On each of these screens was something different. From a close up of a mouth (with a seemingly wet mustache) laughing and smiling, to screens with random flashes of posed, nude body images, to images of men with stockings over there faces (like criminals might wear) flashing with a lone hanging light-bulb, to screens with plain static, the video images gave the piece an extremely eerie, even sinister feel, taking the viewer out of his or her comfort zone. Making the experience even tenser was the amplified, scratchy and screechy sounds coming from the speakers outside of the dome, contributing to a truly encompassing sensory experience for the viewer.

      Another set of pieces that I enjoyed in the show, which contrasted greatly to the aforementioned installation, was that of Lillian Edwards. This Untitled set of pieces consisted of a set of fine, intricate pen and ink drawings of various plants that she, the artist, found along her walks by Sands beach. Some of the pieces were easily distinguished as plants, however, many were extremely obscure and abstract. When talking to the artist, she elaborated on her ideas of blowing up tiny pieces natural objects (like plants), and seeing how the difference in size, and scale affects how people interoperate what the objects are. The differences in types of works in this show made for a slightly broken up, yet fresh and stirring experience.

           

Day 3: "FREE FOR ALL!"

As I'm sitting in front of my computer, trying hard to think of an interesting topic to explore for the "write about anything", open-ended assignment, I find myself drawing a blank, not allowing myself to draw a random topic without shooting it down, criticizing it, categorizing it as stupid thing to write about for an art class. So, as sifting through potential topics in my head doesn't seem to be working out too well, I will simply write about what is around me, using the little things in my cramped dorm room for inspiration. Directly in front of me, taped up against the shelves on my desk is perhaps my favorite detail in the shared room. There lies a long panoramic photograph, about two feet in length, an inch in height, capturing a pulled back view of the entire Venice boardwalk, taken some time in the 90’s by a friend of my dad’s. This photograph, in a sense, encompasses my whole childhood and life back home. My house is situated on a small walk-street off of the boardwalk, so naturally, the long, dirty, chaotic attraction was a backdrop to my home-life for years. With its many street vendors, artists, drum-circle attendees, crack-heads, gypsy travelers, skaters, surfers, and yuppies alike, the boardwalk has been, and will continue to be, a mixture of a vibrant cultures, and a home for the derelicts in society, without which, it would lose much of its authenticity, and raw identity as a place. This strip of concrete hasn’t changed much over the years. Slightly more gentrified…maybe, same characters…always. In an sense, the boardwalk is, as cliché as it may sound, a living piece of art, never quite finished, and always slightly confusing…a true intersection between art and life.

Day 2: CONCERNS / FEARS / HOPES FOR THIS CLASS

For this class, my main concern is that I be able to follow the lectures, as, if the first lecture is how the rest of the quarter goes, I may find myself slightly confused as to the focus of the class, which brings me to my next concern. I believe that to get the most out of this class that I possibly can (based on what little experience I have thus far), I must try not to worry too much about whether the direction of the course makes perfect sense or not, because I think that a slightly convoluted course would seem inherent of an art class that attempts to deal with topics that are not only very broad, but also mean different things to different people based on different life experiences. Another worry is that when looking at different pieces of art, in many different mediums, I may tend to immediately attempt to find the meaning, looking first for the messages that may or not be present. While in this class I want to endeavor to first enjoy the various works for what they are, before trying to pick them apart.  

Day 1: RESPONSE TO LECTURE 1

Towards the beginning of lecture, Professor Fulbeck kept referring to a question, which appeared to be the theme throughout the entirety of the lecture. He kept on returning to the question, "How do we allocate meaning?” Tied to this question was the question of "how does something perforate our consciousness?” Fulbeck then went on to explain how the purpose of art is to “explore and comment on culture”, whether through taking images, changing them, or probing them with a critical eye (including mocking and parodying them). I personally enjoyed the way that he preceded in furthering this point, by showing a flurry of quickly flashing images that, in they’re respective time periods, were (or are) the central focus of the media’s attention. In doing so, while randomly calling on people to identify the images and what they stand for, this quick paced activity seemed to be making a connection between how and why different pieces emerge as meaningful. This process began revealing the ties between socially relevant figures / issues, and Images. Just as these images held come cultural relevance to the students in the lecture hall, and triggered different affiliations, varying types of art forms (photography, as were the pieces shown in lecture, being one of many forms of art) trigger different reactions based on the cultural context. In a nutshell, that is what I took away from the introductory lecture.