for ivan

Myra, Marcus Harvey, 1995
Acrylic on canvas, 156"x126"

Basically, its a HUGE portrait of Myra Hindley (more specifically her arrest photo), who is famous for assisting Ian Brady in a series of child molestation/murders. Her image is composed of tiny black, white, and grey handprints (Harvey took a mould of a 4 year old's hand, and used the plaster prosthetic though,) which enraged plenty of people, before, after, and when it showed at Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997.

for sojourn

Medusa, William Kentridge, 2001
Anamorphic lithograph on chine colle, printed on
6 different pages from the 1906 French Larousse Encyclopedia


Key to the Laboratory of Doubt, Carsten Holler, 2006
Anamorphic key cast in sterling silver

beauty vs. anti-beauty

While reading Chapter 1 of Digital Art by Christiane Paul, I was intrigued by Nancy Burson's Beauty Composites: First and Second because there have been many interpretations throughout art history of ultimate beauty (or the lack thereof.) Specifically, female beauty. In Burson's interpretation, she digitally combines images of film stars Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelley, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe for the first composite, and Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields, and Meryl, Streep for the second. The composites mesh cultural icons of beauty to speak about historic trends in attractiveness, while simultaneously diluting the individuality of each star.



Immediately, the French artist Orlan came to my mind. She literally made herself into a composite of art historic beauty via plastic surgery. She documented the surgeries as performance pieces into videos and photographs during the early 90's. Using pieces of specifically male artists' portrayals of female beauty, including the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon Gérôme's Psyche, the lips of François Boucher’s Europa, the eyes of Diana (as depicted in a sixteenth-century French School of Fontainebleu painting), and the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Orlan has transformed her own face into something of questionable beauty rather than ideal beauty.







Vanessa Beecroft's version of beauty is not a composite per se, rather a performance of beauty. Her pieces include a room full of "ideally" thin women, usually nude, all wearing the same chosen garment (boots, wigs, or stockings.) There is a strong reference to the fashion industry in Beecroft's works, and the fashion industry has a strong influence on the cultural "goal" of ultimate beauty. They are all beautiful, together though, they loose their individuality, which Beecroft exaggerates in the 2001 piece I chose VB 47(VB 47.378.DR) from the Peggy Guggenheim. The women become just bodies, a collection of objects of beauty, without faces. Contrasting the previous two pieces, the viewer can only imagine how beautiful the individual faces are.


Finally, I travel back in time to the "origin" of ideal beauty, or at least the question of it. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the most obvious composite I could mention. She is the most famous image of intriguing and mysterious beauty. There is debate about where her image came from though, it has been said over time to have come from the artist's idea of the most beautiful woman, more recently as from a sitter, Lisa del Giocondo, and it is also argued that Da Vinci used his own image in the painting. All of these ideas could be true, at the same time forming a composite of legend, beauty between genders, and a sense of anonymity.

The well known saying is that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Which leads us to understand there is no perfect universal beauty, only infinite attempts to achieve it and subsequent interpretations of it. It seems though, that every time ultimate beauty's epitome is attempted, it is simultaneously undone.

hello, fall..

summer was great, an independent study with greg, and grad studio seminar with binks. the highlight was definitely getting binked. it made me a little heated, but it happened 10 years ago, and ...eh... whats the big deal? im in school. the worst is i just have a couple drawings to mend. in any case, i did get alot of drawings done, some new and even more random ideas out. all black on black. <3 (which im absolutely in love with!!!!!) im still definitely working completely intuitively (which is incredibly liberating and fascinating because i feel like im watching someone else make my art...) and so this semester im taking photo with libby, drawing with connie, and this digital media class with leslie again. i had so much fun in the spring with the videos, i want to make another one or two. i also hope to completely overhaul my website. i have new, vastly different work from before, and i want to add this blog, as well as the online exhibition i made last semester (but add to it), and other links. my other problem with my current website is that its hosted by yahoo, and the web builder software doesnt download to macs, and of course i have a mac, so thats why the website is so outdated. i want to switch over to one that will download to mac, or maybe use weebly (i want to compare my options first).
i feel digital media is crazy important for art in so many ways, from commercial and communicating aspects, to expressive and creative aspects. as more and more means of interaction are digital, why shouldnt art be? "traditional art" has its place, but experiments are always in the works, and help keep the contemporary art scene in sync with reality. nothing is one thing anymore, instead, its a jumble of mediums and interpretations. synonymously, i want to experiment with combining my drawings with video this semester..
as for a synopsis of my latest work, it went from some (vaguely) narrative images of a figure in a bathtub, to some images of fabric floating in water, to some more metaphorical imagery. for example, the last 2 drawings: one is of water falling out of a mouth onto a wooden chair outdoors, and the other is of a curtain, with red wine-filled eggshells floating in water behind. because they are black charcoal drawings on black gessoed panels, they are very ambiguous and uncertain.
honestly, i have only a slight, vague idea of what i want to do this semester, but im beginning to trust what happens when i surrender to myself. i was thinking about ideas too hard before. things came out so literal. more and more, i was finding, the pieces that i had thought about the least were the most successful. now i just let it come out. any idea i might have that lingers in my head a little, ill go with. the explanations come later. its fun watching my subconscious make itself known. i definitely (for whatever reason) am still absolutely in love with water, and will be using variations of it in my work for awhile, i feel.
in other news, i moved into an adorable old house to rent with my incredibly loving boyfriend, whom has helped me turn my life around from the misery im still amazed i endured. however, i feel kinda mildly chaotic because the house is still in disarray, but itll all get put together and settled soon enough.. :) i am gratefully happy.
in conclusion, im SO excited about this semester and cant wait to see what manifests itself through my art next!!

intense recap

well, this semester has hosted a huge transformation for me. from being trapped in a horrible relationship to finally getting out and happily falling into a healthy one. from making work that had to do solely with advertisements to leaving them all behind and making work that involves the figure. i had to bite the bullet and get a job two thirds of the way through, only to take a bunch of time off to get through crits and reviews. it all happened so fast, i feel i should take the time to reiterate how ive grown and whos helped. first of all, i owe megan, gissett, and chris huge thanks for their honesty, support, and for pretty much holding my hand to help me not only conquer that relationship, but to put my foot down and stop the subsequent stalking. since then, ive started talking to a counselor here at school, and she and chris are helping me to regain my self value, to set boundaries for how people are allowed to treat me, and to learn how to tell people no. last semester, in critiques i was being questioned about my use of advertisements, and at my first semester review, i promised i would try new things in my work, from subject, to the medium. when the visiting artist from the intense concentration show (her name escapes me) came to my studio, she suggested that i just start all over with my work. from scratch. that is something hard to hear, but at that moment in my life where i was escaping a kind of prison, it was absolutely liberating. but where to start is scary. i started with the self portraits. having to do with drinking and being an enabler. but the message wasnt clear, they were more like cathartic drawings i had to do in order to cross some lines in my own head, beginning a journey. thats where the first video, 'goodbye' comes in. but as i had mentioned before, my ptg/drwg critique stated what i already knew: the drawings didnt say much, and who cares about my self portrait and who cares if i drink? the video, however, spoke more about what i wanted to say, without being literal. then after hearing that i dont need to draw nudes because they are simultaneously typical and loaded with art historical references i wasnt addressing, i kept going from my gut. then the other visiting artist, rosalyn schwartz came to my studio and somehow quickly linked all of my different kinds of work together and encouraged me to roll the walls in my studio black and play with it. paint objects black and make still lives or create environments. i had the idea to draw/paint black on black and mysteriously to me, begun to have the word brooding swim around in circles in my head. and for some reason, i wanted photos of myself (i am always a willing and available model) in the bathtub, but not nude. this photo shoot, i wound up drawing from, printing from, and making another video from. i gave into the torment and needed to read the definition for the word, even though i already generally knew what it meant. i was amazed:1. preoccupied with depressing, morbid, or painful memories or thoughts, and 2. cast in subdued light as to convey a somewhat threatening atmosphere. i mean, is that just perfect, or what? i also realized im having some kind of affinity for liquid. pouring and spilling especially. i feel it might be a metaphor for something, but im almost to what. the video i wanted to be about pouring and spilling different liquids over and over. but why? when i began editing, i decided to cut out all the pouring scenes i was in love with so much and wanted instead to build up the anticipation for it. the interjecting scenes are of fabric floating in the water (me in the bathtub) and the audio is the slow, repetitious sound of sharpening knives. end of semester critiques, as i wrote in the last blog, were positive and encouraging. i definitley want to keep my work ambiguous and open. ill be taking ptg/drwg in the summer, and in the upcoming semesters i will definitely be taking printmaking and digital media again. if a video class specifically is offered, ill be there, i feel like it is a medium that speaks for me in a way i didnt know it would. grad school is definitely an adventure within the grander adventure of Art and my life, and im open to everything. thank you everyone involved. ~vikky

crits and review

so i was so nervous for the review, and for no reason! somehow i made it through, despite all my obstacles, (having to get a job and my external hard drive failure) and am extremely happy with the results! good feedback, great questions, and encouragement came from each critique. and happlily, the work isnt literal, melodramatic, or (the dreaded) obvious. i think its because ive been working straight from my intuition and not overthinking anything. so when i told them that in the review, they asked why i made certain formal and compositional decisions to help me figure out where it is im going. but they didnt discuss the video i made, which in digital critique i showed a shorter version of. AND while i was trying to add to it to draw it out more and heighten the anticitpation, is where i ran into the biggest snag ever! my damn bookbag fell off a chair with my external hard drive in it accompanied by 2 cans of paint, leaving it a mess and inacessable. thats what i was building the movie on, so thats where all the clips and footage is. not to mention ALL my photos from the past 6 years or so of my life... >sigh< so but i couldnt worry about that. LUCKILY(!), i had burned the .dv file to the dvd instead of using iDVD, and thats what saved me! but of course i had to clean my computer out a bit (couple hours worth) before i could even attempt to start a new project and import that file and chop it back up, upload a bit more footage, and reedit the sound in audacity after downloading that program. needless to say, i was wound up tight in stress. but i made it :) im happy with the new version, which is now a minute longer and i showed it on a black fabric i hung in my studio along with my black drawings. it works well all together, i think, giving it the feel of a moving drawing. jennings liked the parallel of the black fabric as the backdrop and that black fabric is in the video as well. as for the drawings, i had also wanted to have black paintings, but didnt get that far quick enough. however, i decided to try a new surface instead of the crappy black paper i used already. i got some 4x8 sheets of hardboard (which involved my extremely helpful boyfriend and his truck) and applied a coat of black gesso to draw on. it is sweet. it really allows the rich, velvety blacks and the subtle variations in values to come through. next one, ill definitely use some sandpaper and another coat of the gesso though, for more richness and less evidence of the paintbrush strokes. for now, im working (last minute, of course) on prints for the printmaking crit on tuesday. unfortunately, i have to work 3 shifts this weekend to be able to make rent, so hopefully i can pull through!! and THEN ill worry about that how to get all my data off that hard drive....

narrowing it down

i thought the critique of my video 'goodbye' was awesome, it had some criticism, but i was mostly elated to hear that i had, for once, met in the middle of obvious and too vague, so i felt i was ready to work on my painting/drawing critique. but first, i had to stress out and paint for luminaria. i painted on two sheets of 3' x 4' plexi and dropped petals from my collection of dried roses from past relationships in between, sealing them in forever. in contrast to the artist i was showing with, yvette shadrock, whose piece was immaculately white and clean, my painting was dark and dirty, which i was completely happy with :) spring break then was a whirlwind of ideas... ive been working with nude portraits a great deal, and tried incorporating text with them to indicate a power struggle. i also drew a large self-portrait with the giant word 'lush' encompassing the all-together 8 smaller self-portraits from the shadows. but alas, in critique yesterday, i knew i was back to the obviousness im trying to get away from. the drawings are cathartic to me, but it was suggested that im adding to much information with the figure and the text together, so i will make attempts at them separately and see what happens. i thought i was creating layers, but too many, it seems, and the wrong kind, as i was also advised that the nudes arent necessary, they are often typical, expected, and reminiscent of figure drawing class. they also dont show faces, so they are non-confrontational, and more seductive rather than intense and uncomfortable. so i am back to the drawing board again (hahaha), but with more, hopefully clearer ideas, and without loaded, literal, or melodramatic results. As for leslie's class, i would like to make another video and/or sound piece, but i havent quite got my idea yet. with a month before more critiques and the semester review, ive got to get it figured out now... however, ive been looking at more artists, and am inspired to keep trying new ideas and working through to what i want :)