ART 1103 Drawing Studio

How We Rep-re-sent...

2012-01-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is a great way of seeing just how many options you have for making images. You are not strictly limited to the naturalistic look, the realm of abstraction, or the economized image alone. You have all of the spaces in between. Your options for experimenting and discovering are endless...

A progression from "real" to "icon"

The pyramid in simpler terms, as a triangle

Everything in between: Click for larger image

Artist(s) of the Week: The Plains Indians

2012-01-26T09:01:00.000-08:00

PLAINS INDIAN DRAWINGS

Dead Calvalry Horses

Artist: Red Horse

Tribe: Lakota

1881

"A profound sense of history has long compelled Indian peoples of the Great Plains to chronicle their lives pictorially. As the nineteenth century progressed, the trickle of white explorers and traders across the continent and up the great rivers turned into a veritable flood tide of soldiers and settlers. Their presence changed Plains life irrevocably. Plains Indians adopted a new medium for recording their visual histories, obtained through their contacts with whites: they began to draw in bound ledger books--commonly used for inventory be traders and military officers--using pens, pencils, and watercolors. They also worked in small notebooks and on drawing paper." (Berlo 1996)

Sinte Riding at a Gallop

Artist: Sinte

Tribe: Lakota

1886

Inspection of Indian Prisoners, Fort Marion

Artist: Making Medicine

Tribe: Cheyenne

1876-77

Cheyenne Village Scene: Women's Ceremony with Large Hide

Artist: Red Horse

Tribe: Cheyenne

1876

Pencil, crayon, and ink

8-3/4 x 11-1/4 in.

Top: A Meeting with Three Crows

Middle: A Meeting with Two Crow Men and Two Women

Bottom: A Meeting with Three Crows

Artist: Unknown

Tribe: Cheyenne

1890s

Watercolor, crayon, and pencil

7-15/16 x 12-1/2 in. each

Troops Assembled Against a Cheyenne Village

Artist: Bear's Heart

Tribe: Cheyenne

1876-77

Rescue of a Comrade Under Heavy Fire

Artist: Unknown

Tribe: Arapaho

1878-81

Pencil and colored pencil

7-3/4 x 12-1/4 in.

Wicoun Pinkte Maka Kin Ta Wicokunze Oyake Pelo

(They Said Treaties Shall Be The Law of the Land)

Artist: Francis Yellow

Tribe: Lakota

1995

Ink on antique map

27-1/2 x 17-1/4 in.

"Plains Indian drawings tell many stories. But writings about these drawings have focused too much on one set of questions, based on European models: Who is the artist? Who is depicted? What are the identifying details of the narrative? These drawings have seldom been treated as complex works of art rather than simple historical or ethnographic documents (Lessard 1992). Yet the unraveling of ethnographic details is only one narrative thread in a complexly woven story. We sadly underestimate the evocative power of these works if we unwind only that thread. To most art historians and Native scholars in the 1990s, what is of greater interest are the subtleties of interpretation involving social, religious, and economic history and artistic biography, which reveal each work as an individual creative phenomenon within a complex social nexus." (Berlo 1996)

In Berlo, J.C. (Ed.) 1996. Plains Indian Drawings 1865-1935: Pages From a Visual History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers.

Artist of the Week: Toba Khedoori

2012-01-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Toba Khedoori

Khedoori is an Australian-born artist of Iraqi heritage, known primarily for highly-detailed mixed-media paintings executed on large sheets of wax-coated paper. Khedoori's works often fill the spectator's entire field of vision; a 'typical' Khedoori painting combines elements of drawing, painting, and art installation. Some of Khedoori's best-known paintings feature architectural renderings surrounded by a vast expanse of white or blank space. In recent years, Khedoori has incorporated natural imagery and landscape into her work.

350 x 762 cm

144" x 144"

Khedoori begins each of her immense yet delicate artworks by laying stretches of heavy rag paper on the floor. She brushes these panels with a thin layer of hot, clear wax, giving the surface a translucent and antiquated feel. Her method deliberately traps elements of the studio — dirt particles, footprints, fuzz, and pet hair — that stray onto the otherwise clean surface during waxing, so that the finished work recalls the process of its own creation.

After stapling the waxed paper to the studio wall, Khedoori incises an image into its surface, which she then painstakingly fills in with subtle color. Here, fragments of receding rooms hover in the center of the waxed field. It feels like an architectural drawing, yet the lack of detail and the sense of stillness and solitude lend the work an abstract, otherworldly quality, as if it were a trace of a memory or a daydream.

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/109334#ixzz1kP8A8TzN
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Artist of the Week: Chuck Close

2012-01-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

CHUCK CLOSE

b. 1941, Monroe, WA

Lives and works in Bridgehampton, NY

Represented by Pace Gallery in NYC since 1977.

from Wikipedia
Close is known for his massive-scale portraits.

Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique) of family and friends, often other artists. In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors.

Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. As he explained in a 2009 interview with the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."

Close suffers from Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces. By painting portraits, he is better able to recognize and remember faces. Watch this interview on PBS News Hour:
Close

On the subject, Close has said, "I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."

Artist of the Week: Ernesto Caivano

2012-01-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

ERNESTO CAIVANO

Born
b. 1972 Madrid, Spain--Lives and works in New York City

Education
2001 MFA Columbia University

1999 BFA The Cooper Union

Caivano, as with most artists has explored a number of different themes within his work. One body of work in particular comes from concepts, inspirations, departure points that is unique, strange, and unexpected. Critics describe his work in a narrative framework using literary language to describe it. It has been observed to be "in line with the slippery divide between abstraction and representation (or legibility and obscurity)."

The New York based artist here shows the process of telling an ongoing epic story. These drawings tell an ongoing epic story. They are visualizations of excerpts from After the Woods,"a fantastical tale written by the artist that involves a man and woman, separated for a millennium, who attempt to reunite in an unspecified post-apocalyptic future. During their time apart, he has become a knight with the power to aid the evolutionary development of plants and she a spaceship who symbolizes (and fosters advances in technology. Caivano's protagonists consistently encounter exotic creatures throughout their journey, and even transmit messages written written on the wings of birds the artist calls "Philapores," who, incapable of normal flight, travel through dust, water, and other matter." (Brian Sholis)

His work is informed by:

Albrecht Durer (prints and drawings)

William Blake (Romantic visions)

Early Modern explorations of abstraction

Fractal geometry

Contemporary telecommunications technology

Advanced scientific inquiry

Fables and fairy tales of medieval literature

etc...

Classwork--Experiments

2011-10-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

We are currently experimenting with mark making and found surfaces. Here are some artists who use these media as a part of their lexicon.

MARK MAKING

Repetition of a mark

BRUCE MARDEN

SIMON FROST

TOM MARIONI

YAYOI KUSAMA

FOUND MEDIA

Transmutable ephemera

XU BING

Tiger Skin Rug made of cigarettes
(here is an example of a repeated mark--a single cigarette)

TAM VAN TRAN
staples, hole punches, spirulina and chloroform mixed with acrylic on paper

AGNES MARTIN