For this assignment it was more difficult because I dorm and I wear all the clothes that I have. I decided to put on the only dress I own, take off my glasses, and put my hair up in a ponytail. I ended up just hanging out with my friends at the dorms in my new outfit.

All of my friends reacted in similar ways. I usually always wear plain grey or black shirts and leggings with socks and slides. When my friends noticed that I put a little more effort into my outfit they all assumed that I was going out somewhere. Most asked why I was wearing a dress especially because it was a little too cold to wear a dress. I explained the assignment afterwards and asked them about my major and name. They all agreed that my name would be Ella and my major would be biomedical. One of them told me how they thought I was having a hard time and going through it. That same friend’s roommates thought the exact opposite and assumed that I woke up in a good mood and decided to get dressed up.

My conclusion is that your appearance really says a lot about you. We are all always making first impressions based off of looks and associating with certain things based off looks. In my case with my friends, they already have a pretty good idea of who I am and what I look like so for me to look different they obviously knew something was up.

Artist: Destiny Randall

Exhibition: YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE

Media: Photography/videography

Gallery: Marilyn Werby Gallery

Within Destiny Randalls work, she explores the ideas of “beautiful” and the pressure that many deal with to look and feel beautiful. She asks her audience to consider the ideas of beauty based on large social media followings or to question if someone even has the authority to tell you what is beauty. Her goal is to have people question their ideas of beauty and why we think certain things are beautiful while others are not. Who decides? Or why do so many of us imitate what we see online just because we are told it is Beautiful. In truth she does an excellent job at reaching her audience and forcing them to reconsider their ideas.

Her Exhibition “Your attention please” included 6 photographic prints along with two videos. Each of them included her as the main focus of the image portraying what might be consider “shocking art”. With in each piece she is posing in what one might consider an “unflattering way” with outfits that one might not normally see. Her make up is also usually from the typical ideas of makeup as in it is “messy” and what I might describe as “Dramatic”.

Randall’s art is all about the ideas of art and how everyone considers beauty based off of others ideas when in reality, No one has the authority to determine what beauty is for everyone else because it is so subjective. She performs these bizarre photo shoots and forces her audience to consider their ideas of beauty based of her extreme images of makeup and fashion.

For me personally I am really happy with Destiny Randall’s exhibition, I think it was beautifully done and it was extremely eye opening. Often when I see art work related to beauty ideas the message seems to get lost. With Destiny Randall it was so nicely done because of her questions that she included with her exhibition. To look at her work and ask myself the questions really inspired me to think about my own ideas and how I cherish “beauty”. Being a girl and often feeling the pressure of having to be beautiful can be tiring but with with Randall’s exhibition it gave me a sense of freedom from the strict ideas of beauty. Over all I would consider myself a huge fan of her work and bravery for putting her self out there in such a way.

These were other works that I saw that I connected with. I consider these to be my favorites of all the galleries.

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The overall idea for my piece can be interpret two ways I feel. The message I was going for was that people often create the biggest problems for themselves. Essentially the butterfly is meant to represent ones hopes, opportunities, or overall happiness. The hand with the match is of course meant to represent people destroying their chances.

I wanted to call attention to how we as human’s create problems for ourselves. Example that inspired the piece are like a person who aren’t loyal in a relationship and then loses someone they love, or one who drops out of school and never pursues anything else and is forced to work terrible jobs. The example of mental health comes to mind as well. Not to say people have control over there mental health and chose to be depressed but rather that essentially we attack ourselves when we are facing those issues.

There’s a second interpretation of environmental issues that can be seen in this piece. In this interpretation the butterfly would represent our environment and the hand humans affect on the environment. However, I was aiming to communicate the first interpretation rather than this one. I’am not sure how well I was able to communicate this message unfortunately

I chose this idea because it I’ve been seeing it a lot within the last year with love ones setting themselves up for their own downfall and even with my self. I don’t think enough people acknowledge that it’s not the world against you but sometimes yourself against yourself.

This assignment allowed me to have an excuse to create art and with that I decided to try out new medias I wasn’t completely comfortable with. This being I tried for the for time using color pencils and copic markers to create realistic art. I also added a water color wash to the background and I struggle adapting to that media the most I found. As a result of all these new media if I were to have to do it again I might change the medias to create a more unified image that could convey the message better.

Another message I might want to explore would have to be infidelity and the affects it has on love ones. In today’s culture it’s talked about a lot however and I am not sure how I would shed new light on the matter.

Humanity was drawn to turmoil and self-destruction as inevitably as the earth was drawn to complete its annual revolution of the sun.

-Dean Koontz

These photos capture the memories and dorm life experience on a weekend at Long Beach University. Myself and group of friends create an Olympic style party games and competed against each other.

My favorite part about photographs is that they capture memories allowing people to always look back on old experiences with an actual image. As you can see in the background of the first image in the upper left corner I love having pictures of my friends and putting them on my wall. They serve as constant reminders or old friends and good memories. Due to this I decided to chose this story of my Friday night experience of hanging out with my friends and creating more great memories.

I think I did great because my goal was to capture the memory of the night and I feel as though I did. There’s images of us playing the games and laughing and overall just enjoying our time with each other. My “best” image is the second photo on the top row. The photo to me seems to capture the mood of the night the best with Josh Stanley playing the game “bottle blow” and others sitting around and talking. Anyone who sees the photo knows that its group of kids just enjoying the night.

What I would do different next time would get a group photo of everyone along with pictures of the awards at the end only because if I had those photos they would make me happier and it would have wrapped up my story nicely. Other stories I would have wanted to explore are just more fun events I do with my friends.

I wasn’t able to view the artist work as long as I wanted to but I was able to view Organic Matter gallery. Organic matter is a painting group of undergraduates made up of Vida Diaz, Faboila Sillas and Madeline Taylor. I got to speak to Madeline Taylor very briefly about her work. She told me that this median was very different than others in that there’s a lot less control while with painting you have much more of it. In that sense its very fun and very abstract. Madeline Taylor senior here at Long Beach studying under Studio Art BA. She is a painter/sculpture and in my opinion a very talented makeup artist.

The piece that I found the most profound and mesmerizing didn’t have any title. The color make up was mainly yellows, oranges, reds, and small amounts of purples and blues. Extremely vivid and the piece as a whole had a rhythm that seemed to flow into itself and blend softly together. The piece really captured the idea of organic art. The darker uses of the purples and blues makes the painting seem to have some realistic dept to it, as if there was holes and valves among the orange system.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear much about Madeline Taylor’s reasons or explanation about the painting. From my interpretation of the painting it seemed to be inspired by the flow of paint itself. When I seen the painting its like a visual representation of the feeling of paint. The imagine it self evokes feelings of curiosity and exploration. When I look at the painting it is like I am in the inside of a giant paint splatter or multiple colors.

Madeline’s Taylor art resonates with me in that I felt connected to the paint. As an artist myself I love feeling the cool touch of paint on my skin as I create. This piece was able to evoke those similar feelings with out me having to go dip my fingers inside a paint bottle. The piece inspired me to want to try the same style one day and see how I might like it.

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While at the gallery I also saw this piece. This was extremely profound to me and very nostalgic reminding me of when I was a little girl and child like views of the world. I wish I could have talked to an artist who made this but wasn’t able to find anyone who could tell me about it. Regardless I really enjoyed this one the most.

It was fun to sit outside and sketch. I really enjoy drawing and used to do it a lot when I was younger. Its harder to find time for drawing now that I am older. Also now that I am older I am a lot more stress and anxious which makes it sometimes difficult to just sit down relax and draw.

I know for a fact that if I practice for 100 hours or a 1000 hours I would improve. Like I said earlier I used to draw a lot when I was little and that led me to become better. I actually have seen a lot of people improve really fast after practicing drawing. Drawing to me is definitely a skill not a talent. I also believe that if you stop practicing you get a little rusty. I think I’ve gotten worst because I haven’t sketched in so long.

My major right now is Civil Engineering but I am trying to switch it to possibly a design major. If I do switch majors, sketching would obviously be extremely beneficial. Even if I didn’t switch I think sketching would help anyways with in civil engineering just because it sparks creativity which is always beneficial.

I believe drawing is a language for sure because its a form of communication. People can watch a Disney shorts with no words and understand an entire story based on drawings. Or another example is people can draw or paint or whatever and create a message through there works.

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For my groups art we decided to pick the wall with a white spot on it from water erosion. We chose to box off the bottom to give the frames some shape and include the foundation of the wall with ants crawling by. I personally thought it was humbling watching the arts learn to craw over the tape and totally ignore the ‘art’ but considering them art is hard for me. I think generally we choice this spot because it was a visually appealing spot compared to the rest and it was more prominent than other erosion spots. If I must make some deeper meaning behind the art I guess I would have to say that the ‘art’ just allows us an excuse to observe the world at a closer and more intimate level. People often won’t notice the arts crawling on the sidewalk but if one takes a moment to consider the erosion spot and the ants they might experience a humbling experience. As they realize that the world is so complex with hundreds of creatures and elements that everyone interacts with but don’t often acknowledge.

The rectangle did nothing to make the objects art in my opinion. If an object wasn’t art before you frame it and calling it art doesn’t make it art because you just say so. Like I had mentioned in other posts I consider art anything humans create. So yea I guess by that definition a wall can be art because it was designed and altered by humans. But if you frame the sky and call it art I don’t agree with that because like I said before. ART IS NOT THE SAME AS BEAUTY. The sky can be beautiful and profound but I don’t think its art because of that. Emotions don’t make anything art in my definition. Creation makes things art. Art, in my opinion, isn’t just objects because I consider music art and even dancing because people are creating.

As an artist who focuses my work on realism I enjoy abstraction and the the visual stimulation or awe I might get by looking at an abstract painting. However I still very much prefer Realism because like I shared in class I prefer to see the world as it actually is not how I want it to be. It might be fun to imagine but, almost everyone forgets to value the beauty in the world as it is.

When I was finger painting it was interesting because when I normally paint, I usually get paint everywhere and a lot of the time end up using my hands anyways but, I am still always conscious of what I am trying to paint and use my hands to give desire affects. I have painted an abstract painting before, during my sophomore year of high school when I was getting discouraged from painting. It started to become a chore rather than a hobby. People kept requesting paintings I didn’t want to do but I needed money. To give myself a break and to bring me back into my hobby of painting I tried out abstraction and actually made a painting I was into. I don’t have a picture of it unfortunately because I gave it away but it was lots of different color paint strokes and splatters. There was a giant white question mark spattered on top with a black silhouette. The finger painting reminded me a lot of that painting because I didn’t completely let myself get dissolved in what I was doing. Instead I had a goal to create an expression of how I might try to see the world (rainbow explosion with burst of lights) but still add dark elements that creep in on the borders. I wanted to portray how people like myself try to ignore or chose not to see bad things.

One might think that when I am trying to paint a super realistic painting I’d be focused and intensely involved in my painting and when I paint an abstract finger painting I’m in this subconscious part of my brain. It is actually really the opposite and for me Abstract painting take a lot more brain power while painting in realism I’ll end of painting for hours not even realizing or remembering what I was thinking, similar to dreaming.

Painting with my finger did inspire me to want to try more. I am really interested in doing a realism painting on a large canvas like the famous finger painting artist, Iris Scott. I think her work is really inspiring and I love to try one day.

While I was performing the maintenance art I felt like I was suppose to have some passion for it but I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything profound, in fact I like the look of aged things and think that the sculpture had more character with its dust and scribbles. When it was dusty, to me, it meant that it was becoming part of the school, as the school aged so did it. It reminded me of a light post outside my middle school. It had hundreds of chewed up pieces of gum stuck to it covering the entire pole, and as gross as it was, it was like a piece of the school that kids added to every year for years.

As for Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleaning the steps and Richard Serra flinging molten lead against the walls, I can maybe consider them both art only because my definition of art is very loose and I consider anything humans create art. By that definition a chair can be art or shoe or a garden and I do believe in that. I don’t really agree that cleaning the steps are really art however because to me its more of an action of admiration or care which doesn’t equal art. I don’t see actions like running, showering or cleaning steps as art unless someone creates something with those actions. Therefore the cleaned steps themselves can be art and the wall of molten lead.

After the discussion of “women’s work is also art” I did not think much differently about art and “women’s work”. I already had pretty firm ideas about it and I didn’t hear anything to change my ideas or something particularly new about the subjects. As a women and as an artist I have two completely different views for both. “Women’s work” or taking care of a home, cooking, and raising children aren’t necessarily art just because they are beautiful concepts or the feelings evoked by them. To me, Beauty doesn’t equal art and nor does emotions equal art, although they are both very commonly associated with art. An example is like the Ocean, its beautiful and can provoke countless feelings but I don’t consider it art really because art is not a synonym for beauty or profoundness, if there is a synonym it would be creation, by my definition. This is also why I think no one can agree on a definition of art because to many people get art confused with beauty or feelings or even actions when to me they are all completely different and just happen to intact with one another a lot.

Art is not application or a canon of beauty but what what the instinct and brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a women we don’t start measuring her limbs.

Pablo Picasso

Now lastly, the lady cleaning Trumps star. Putting my views of the President aside I do think her action portrays very heavy emotions but, again this isn’t art to me. I don’t know if I would clean a particular star. If I were it would have to be of someone who had died and as a way of honoring them. Similar to how someone might clean a grave stone.

Hello, My name is Gina Olson, and this is my Blog for Art 101. I am a first year here at CSULB and currently am a Civil Engineer major (might switch). I am from Lancaster, CA, but I dorm here. Some of my interest are Art, specifically oil painting at the moment but over all I just really enjoy creating.

I’m excited for the new semester and am really looking forward to this class.