New work!

Just wanted to put some pictures up of some new work I made last week!

Damian Ortega

On Saturday, October 12, I visited around 12 Chelsea galleries.  One gallery that struck me in particular  was the Gladstone Gallery.  Damian Ortega is currently having a solo exhibition here.  When you first walk into the show, you see a few sculptures on a table and you also see a framed drawing of the alphabet.  After looking at the curvy letters, the viewer then walks into a large darkened space, that has bent steel sculptures, suspended from the ceiling.  The lighting in the room, is so focused that it produces a specific shadow of each sculpture onto the gallery floor.  These steel sculptures are very large, and it intrigued me, how the artist hung each one relative to the previous.  Ortega also managed to have the works hanging in rows and columns relative to one another.

After contemplating these sculptures, it finally clicked for me, as to why the artist gave so much presence to the shadows.  The shadow of the sculpture in front of me almost made a Y on the ground.  This was very interesting to myself.  As I pondered why this shadow resembled a Y, it then became clear that the artist formed the steel into a shape, that when the light hits the shape at the right angle, it forms a shadow of a letter on the floor.  Ortega, constructed sculptures that produced shadows from A-Z.  He also hung them in left to right order.  This order can only be seen when standing in the doorway of the room.

To get more information about Damian Ortega or his current exhibition click on the link below
http://www.gladstonegallery.com/artist/damian-ortega/work#&panel1-1

Bad Crit? No problem, but how do I make sense of it?

As an artist, whether amateur or professional, one is bound to receive a bad critique now and again.  However, one of the hardest parts of a negative critique, is not keeping oneself composed during the crit, it is taking the criticism and moving forward with it.  But how does one move forward?  One student might find destroying the work in question cathartic.  Another student might take solace in crying.  These methods wont get an artist back in the studio.

One of the biggest questions that I ask myself, after a negative evaluation is what is the reason for critiques.  Reviewing an artists work, while the artist is present, is important, in giving the artist a chance to explain their reasoning behind the piece and for the artist to clear up any discrepancies that a viewer is having.  Assessing work, from a viewers perspective is crucial to artists because it allows a party to point out positives and negatives and give advice on how to find solutions.

Even though its clearer why critiques are essential to artists, its still can be very difficult to move on from the negative, with your confidence intact.  Its okay to give your self a day of pity but no more than that.  After your day of pity is over, its going to take some time to process what has been said and sort through the negative, to pick out the useful comments.  Once you decide what is useful, the artist has to chose, whether or not, to listen to the critic.  Depending on how many different people have viewed your work and the comments you get from them, will really push an artist, in how you listen to viewers.  I also think its important to value and listen to viewers that have been in the art world for many years.

Make work, talk about it and learn from it.  The more one critiques their work, the better an artist they will become.  

Wendell White at Mason Gross

After viewing, On photography: Culture, History and the Narrative, I was very struck by the 28 pigment inkjet prints on paper by Wendell White.  One of my first impressions of the prints, was that they had, an eerie sense of time standing still.  Another feeling I had while viewing this series, is that the viewer was welcomed into the picture.  They are very cold and abrupt which is why, I believe they're not inviting and keep the viewer at bay.  White uses formal techniques such as one and two point perspective and extreme contrast in colors that are juxtaposed to one another, in the prints as well.  Seeing the strong use of perspective shows that the artist was well aware and considered his surroundings in conjunction with formal techniques applied in the prints.  Given the title of the show and the images that these prints are made up of, I believe, that an issue White deals with is Americas past and how it is still looms, in the architecture of the country.  The fact that he photographed specific schools dedicated to colored children and made the school so dark, deffinitly plays in to Americas past.  Also, in the print that focuses on The School for White Children, the artist again uses color to convey on of his reasons behind making this series.  In the Print, The School for White Children, the work becomes overwhelmingly about the US, and how it was once separated by skin color, was the norm.  I also found it very compelling that out of the 28 prints, two of them did not overtly say they were schools in the title, thus prompting me to research.  However, after researching the Whitefield House and Millers Grove, Millers Grove was once the site of an African-American farming community, established in 1815.  The Whitefield house in Nazareth, PA, was once used as a nursery for children of the Moravian community.  This house is also the oldest Moraviam site in North America.  Not only do these prints pertain to communities and children, but they also support the viewers theory that the underlying issue in these works, that have to do with race from America's past.