All of my work either has an artist statement at the beginning of the actual piece or following in text.
Artist Lecture #1: Brian Hiveley
Brian Hiveley is an artist based out of Miami, FL who focuses on Zoological based art. His most recent work was a narrative with animals that he would come into contact with on an everyday basis. One of his biggest influences is traveling through ‘Little Haiti’ where he can discover how the locals sacrifice animals. This process inspired him to create the piece ‘Pursuit of Happiness’.
One of the biggest dynamics of his pieces is the act of changing the animals so they are never the same. A lot of his pieces are based on his dog and heartworms. He gets his students involved with animals by using them as subjects for the students to draw an manipulate on paper.
Another inspiration he uses often are nature programs, specifically ones on animal behavior. ‘Lucky shot’ was based on the slow motion shots of when animals are exploding on a hunting channel. He is known to take a lot of zoological imagery and put abstraction into practice. One example that shows this technique is in his piece titled ‘Green Wedge’ where he found an insect in a drawer and kept the actual subject shape but than exaggerated the spots found on the insect. With a deep interest in insects, Hiveley uses beetles and other bugs with patterns because they have good coloring transitional lines.
He created a narrative of the insects through his piece ‘Honeybee connection’. His most popular series was that of teapot farms. This series was more functional than his usual style. He based his teapot series on lizards and another on turtles.
Overall, Hiveley took an everyday concept and connection with nature and manipulated it in a way that didn’t disturb the subject, but progressed it further even after it’s death.
Artist Lecture #2: Tone O. Nielsen
Tone O. Nielsen focused the art produced on the idea that we are ‘performing animals’ and react to things we do in everyday life. Nielsen’s first performance was in 1994 at Southwestern college in Mexico. Cars were parked according to color in different lots and were separated by ‘orange, beige, and red’. This was thought of as a social experiment which involved a lot of people called ‘Carpark’. ‘Carpark’ was viewed as a media spectacle but also public art.
Nielsen studied Alan Kaprow, founder of the “Happenings” at UCSB. In 1993 Nielsen created, ‘Mosaic’. Nielsen believed that the internet could flatten the hierarchy of the art world. From this, ‘Mosaic’ was created as an online platform for artists. It explained how public spheres were not just created by the white male, but by women and other types of people.
Nielsen was also interested in the performance of protest and referred to early videos when the portable video camera was first invented. For example, when protests of Vietnam were created as a form of propaganda. Another note that was further discussed was the idea of performance and the divide in media. The belief was present that we perform for the media and that journalists perform for the camera.
One of the most famous pieces that Nielsen took part in was the series on famous speeches and protests being reenacted. They wanted to neutralize the reenactments and didn’t want to transport the audience back in time but wanted to create ‘historical vertigo’. These reenactments were exhibited in a gallery in Los Angeles as a multi-screen setup.
As a whole, Nielsen projected the techniques of the artists affiliated with the movement called the “Happenings’ Through form and function, these protests were represented in current settings to bring the old and the new together for an equilibrium of art.
Exhibition/Screen/Performance Review:
I was unable to attend one of these because of my conflicting schedule. As one of the only bartenders at my job, I work often and I rarely can request off or just afford to adjust my schedule if possible. I attended the other two and it was hard enough to work that in. As you know, working almost full time and going to school full time can be a task itself and so this part of the course was not met due to my scheduling conflicts throughout these past few months.
*I was somehow skipped over in presenting my triptych in the space. I was scheduled for a certain day and than I was sick so we had changed it, but than it never surfaced again. I understand I should have come to you, but by that time, the other day, the semester had come to a close and the gallery wasn’t being used for the projects any longer. With that said, I do not have a picture from my piece in the space.
Amore e Isolamento
The Big Screen Project: One Day. One Man. Reno
Triptych: Hello, My Name is…
Controlled Video
Uncontrolled Video
Artist Statement: Controlled Video & Uncontrolled Video
For both of these videos, the dynamic of controlled and uncontrolled variables were used to depict a raw emotion that resides within myself, fear. A series of harsh transitions were used to show the consequence of my nightmares and what I see at night.
Sound and Image controlled audio
This sound was a mixture of everyday objects that I felt represented myself as a self portrait in audio.
Sound and Image uncontrolled audio
In this sound piece I progressed upon the previous, original piece and altered the layers, the dynamics, and the textures involved to dictate a further, dream like dialogue.