Same Blog Time, Same Blog Channel!

Creativity (9/14)

I feel that creativity is a driving force that is within all of us.  Even when we perform small tasks in our daily lives there is something there that makes us perform these tasks with a little flourish, something that makes us add something new and different to what is done.  Fueled by our imagination, creativity drives us to be unique in our own ways.

The most important factor in fostering creativity is problem solving.  Not any set type of problem solving, though, it must be creative problem solving.  These situations are usually more open ended and generate a wide variety of different answers.  Some of this answers will be wrong but many of the differing conclusions will still be correct.  It is when we are asked to try something new, to see something in our own unique way that we tap into our creativity.

The world, sadly, has begun to become homogenized.  Schools are teaching set lesson plans to improve test taking.  Our sources of visual entertainment are rehashing the same stories and plots.  There are small sparks of brilliance in the grey sea of conformity, yes, but in truth there aren't as many as we believe.  Creativity is needed to rejuvenate our world, to break through the grey with blinding colors.

We have entered and been living in a digital age for quite some time.  New advances in technology also lead to new innovations in said technology, creative innovations.  Art generating software has birthed entirely new forms of work, unknown and without title until now.  For example, Kinetic Typography.  Provided here is an example of one of my favorite songs from the Beatles, Come Together.  A selection of the lyrics, the actual words themselves, have been given movement that is not quite animatic and not quite cinematic.  A new form of visual and audio artwork that advances in technology and advances in creativity gave birth to.





Cat Soup (9/28)


The animation covers a vast variety of ideas.  At its core the animation is about a journey, but within that there are ideas of consequence for one's actions, ideas of time and its passing, as well as life and death.  All these are key concepts that the animation focuses on, in its own completely crazed and animated way.  Speaking of, the animation itself is dreamlike, almost ethereal.  The themes themselves are hit on with in a very real tone but the cartoonish and laughable (not in a bad way) animation both drives those themes home and distracts from them, making the cartoon itself easier to view than if it was a far more realistic piece about the same themes.  The negative aspect of the animation is that there are visual cues within it that are lost upon another culture, things that you look at that you have to know about first to understand.  However, this could make the piece more interesting as you question what you just saw and wish to learn more about it.

For my own animation I think the most important lesson I can gain from this is that you can touch on such deep subjects in a cartoonish manner and yet still respect those subjects.  It's really funny as in another class I had on animation we watched this same animated short to focus on pretty much what was asked of me here.

Cat Soup by Tatsuo Sato

Artist Research (11/16)

Max Grundy

Background:  A painter, illustrator, and graphic designer for most of his life, and a teacher for over a decade, Max Grundy is an artist whose past works have focused on the aspects of fear in our culture and the idea of phobias.  Born in Bountiful, Utah he studied painting at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2003.

Big Idea/Key Concept: Fear.  Fear is the big idea around his work.  Key concepts usually focus around social phobias and aspects of different cultures that modernize and utilize fear to control populations, such as works of propaganda.

Boundaries: The work is mainly restricted to works of graphic design, paint, and illustration with works that focus on the warping of propaganda and utilization of pulp imagery.

Key Artwork:

  Traumatophobia, Graphic Design

Basophobia (Fear of Falling), Graphic Design

Practices:
- Knowledge: Grundy researches source materials relating to works of propaganda and fear mongering among major social superpowers.
- Artmaking: The conceptual strategies focus on using the appropriate imagery and design to form a dialogue with the viewer about the use of fear.  The imagery must be shocking to the viewer and yet understandable.

Berlinde de Bruyckere

Background: A sculptor born in 1964 in Ghent, Belgium.  A large body of her work has focused on unsettling visuals representative of the worst aspects of humanity.  A key aspect of the work is the understanding of the body, and the work, as a whole.

Big Idea/Key Concept: Shelter.  Her work features the idea of shelter and what it is that would cause the need to seek these things out.  The sculpture focuses on visuals of forms in need of shelter, to be safe from some horrific thing.

Boundaries:  The work is restricted to sculpture mostly, but beside that the size, form, and materials used all differ from project to project.

Key Artwork:

 Marthe, Sculpture                                               K36, Sculpture         

Practices:
- Knowledge: An understanding of tragedy in human history and how to capture that in a visual representation.
- Artmaking: The conceptual strategies revolve around generating a piece that captures the unease and horror of tragedy itself.  The work must instill the feeling of the figure within the viewer.

Robert Longo

Background: Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York.  He began a college career at University of North Texas, but left before earning a degree.  He studied sculpture with Leonda Finke and then studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy.  He then received a BFA from Buffalo State College in 1975.  It is thought he was most influenced by his art professor Joseph Piccillo.

Big Idea/Key Concept: Power and authority.  The visuals he creates focuses on certain pieces of social culture the hold authority or items and individuals of power.

Boundaries: Paintings and drawings have been Longo’s focus in art, primarily large-scale charcoal renderings of single images, or intense close-ups on easily identifiable items. 

Key Artwork:

                          Untitled (Big Shark), Charcoal                        Bodyhammer: Revolver, Charcoal

Practices:
- Artmaking: Longo’s artmaking focuses on large-scale representations that capture the complete focus of any viewer of the work.  To create such large scale and realistic work he projects black and white photography and works to create that representation out of charcoal.

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