Paula Hayes

Paula Hayes is a landscape designer and artist who is heavily influenced by the natural things in life, more specifically plants. She uses various materials to house her arrangements but mostly uses blown glass, acrylic or silicone to house a variety of plant life cleverly placed. Currently Hayes has an installment in the Museum of Modern Art which is 15 feet long, horizontal wall mounted sculpture and a free standing egg shape sculpture all filled with lush vegetation. Hayes stresses the importance of the landscape and its impact on her as a child and that she likes to include organic shapes in her peices such the as image below of the peice slug and egg.

When people refer to her art as a seductive art object rather than her interpretation of a garden she likes to say that the its not an object its a verb that will hopefully be a transforming process in the life of these organic objects inside non organic object. The piece above is the largest scale of project she has worked on and most of her project are smaller orbs and jugs made of blown glass with arrangements growing inside of them. Coming from a landscape architecture back ground its really nice to see an artist doing something with the natural and taking time to appreciate something that so many people take for granted.

Light Painting Dean Chamberlain

Dean Chamberlain is a photographer who specializes in lighting effects, more specifically light painting. This type of medium is very sensitive and is used while the cameras shutter is open, light is painted onto the places of desired color.

        This produces a very psychedelic effect and is very unique. Born in Boston, Chamberlain was interested in photography from the age of 13. Dean got very into the psychedelic movement and after attending Sheradin college for only a year knew that his passion was light painting, working very closely with LSD guru Timothy Leary.
        Deans works are very colorfully painted, using vibrant colors and overlaps giving the photo a ghostly trip feel to it. I'm really interested in this medium and am hoping to give it a try this upcoming photography class, i particularly like his portraits of people surrounded by absurd colors.

Museum Exhibit

   Over the break i had the pleasure of briefly checking out the lay out of my ex-girl friends moms boutique shop.. It was a real joy let me tell you.. The layout of the store is pretty typically to that of the average clothing store, large womens section, two racks of overly bedazzled mens' clothing to which you dont even want to flip that price tag over for fear of financial heart attack.
   The organization of the store is divided into several categories, obviously the men and womens clothing is separate, the jewelry, candles, other random accesories are grouped, and then the clothing is sorted firstly by color then by size. I noticed the flashiest and most expensive items were often set on the mannequins, im not sure if this is because the store hopes to show off the items that pull the most profit or if the most expensive items just look better to rich people. The mannequin was almost always raised above the rest or in the window being sure to provide lots of exposure for its outfit.
    The store flows together like one big bedazzled bitch disco ball from wall to wall, blinged out jeans to some seriously questionable button up shirts for men, If i had not been here before and was completely blind to this sort of thing i would laugh my ass off; truely ask my self wtf is this and how not only can anyone wear this but how you can justify paying this much to look like a walking financial status. SILLY. Unlike a traditional museum, much less is told about the garments sold here, except for the occasional brand tags on the outside and the tags on the inside, much is learned about the material instinctively.



Buy clothes from the 80s from savers... and rock them.

Ara Peterson

Ara Peterson is an American born sculptor who specializes in the medium of laser cut birch and paint. Using clever placement of color and geometric shapes she creates a psychedelic blur of color. In her piece the tube she uses black and white on the out side with a crazy blend of rainbow colors on the inside, a really cool looking effect, you have to appreciate oppositions side by side!

 

here is another example of her tube effect this time in all black; its really cool how she uses the computer and a laser cutter to make her pieces perfect every time allowing her to make such intricate patterns with this wood, she almost seems more like an engineer than an artist with the use of some of this soft ware, its really cool.   

Post project Disasters

First the foremost the extension of the body project... DAMNIT!!! i should have just left this shit, the shellac still didn't harden and now my shirt which used to be perfectly aligned and exactly how i wanted it but not freestanding is now a freestanding pile of steaming shit. not only am i pissed that my project turned out like this but this was an expensive ass project, seriously.. over 50 dollars for a failed project. its particularly frustrating because now i have to have it critiqued, which is just annoying, i feel like i have nothing to show for except a hole in the pocket. I feel like i'm just so mad and disappointed because when it comes to stuff like this, art with unconventional mediums, you need to be the one who is practical and solves the problems allowing you to complete the project you desire. i failed in that mission for this project, i took a leap of faith and instead of noticing that this probably wouldn't work i just kept covering it in shellac. another problem was my choice of materials and the fact i used a flannel shirt and not a regular dress shirt.. stupid stupid stupid. Well epic fail for this project sir, bummer. Next time on a brighter note i really liked this idea and really want to find a way to make these out of plaster or something actually rock hard and use this same idea because i feel like there is a lot of ideas and values to convey in clothing minus the human form constantly associated with it. hopefully next time i will think things through a little more and not end up in this situation, disappointing either way, note to self try to avoid large last minute modifications....

Kitch Korner

Just a brief blog about kitch. Kitch is so grand motherly and just strange, why on earth any one would collect these things is beyond me. is it so ugly and gnarly that people are fascinated by it? like an ugly sweater party perhaps? i recently had a good little experience with kitch and thought it should be shared with the blog. Sunday after being very hung over, me and the room mates were on the hunt for food around the vista area, my hommie chads sister told us about this spot called cookie lady. The cookie lady specialized in cookies but also made bomb sandwiches, after mentally preparing our self for such a place of magnitude i was quite surprised to see where we were seated; the kitch korner. A corner of the store that is entirely decorated in kitch, from little old lady's holding baskets of goods to cat clocks. this place has a decent collection of items from Mrs muffet on her tuffet to the spider that ate her whey. or something along those lines, if you dig kitch and cheap sandwiches with a real down to earth local busi. check out the cookie lady!

Body as a Subject

To be honest, i feel like this project im the least clear on. what the hell is the body? how do express such a thing that interpreted in so many ways, obviously you can express the human body in a human like figurine but thats a cop out, especially in regards to this class. how can you challenge the body and what it means, what it feels. In class today we watched the art 21 of Tim Hawkinson and Yinka Shonibare; i really wish we would have watched these EARLIER! they were super sick and gave a really interesting perspective of the human body and not really what it looks like or what it means but what it feels, what its subjected to, how it reacts, it would have made a killer introduction to the project, really awesome film erin!

Tim hawkinson reminded me of a star trekie type of guy, super into technology and our interaction with it. Almost all of his pieces are technologically advanced yet he chooses not do really plan a lot before doing he says in the film which was cool but seemed un-practical. The first piece self portrait had cut out pieces of his race attached to pistons and electrical "rotators" (haha sounds official...) moving his face almost in an emotional way, but not really, more in a confused what the fuck is wrong with you face. The best part is the way the face movements are controlled, they are hooked up t a black and white tv with light receptors that interact with the light levels moving his face... to me that was just like the exploration of the idea of mass media and television and how we just suck it in.. subconsciously.. its absurd to think about really and the people we've become.

In another one of his pieces he uses timed circuit boards and pressurized hoses to created a musical effect of squirting and dripping water into buckets with pie crusts in the bottom to amplify the sound. the hoses were twisted and tangled and all over, this stuck out to me and i had to just criticize cuz that's just what i felt like doing. he totally could have organized the hoses in a more interesting way... make a big ass octopus i don't care, i feel like it had more potential. with that said it was really awesome and i really like the idea of controlling rain drops! Check out super organ and other stuff below on a previous post a couple weeks ago.