Fibers, Sara Robinowitz, Anna Voog, Ann Hamilton and Cai Guo-Qiang

Crocheted Hat by Anna Voog

 Many people would not consider fibers to be a type of medium for art. When I think of fibers I think of clothing and weaving and sewing not a form of expression and something really cool to look at. Surprisingly fibers is a truly interesting and beautiful form of art. Sara Robinowitz, a professor of fiber at the University of Oregon, lectured to us about the difference between art and craft. This truly fascinated me. I always thought that crafts were kind of a form of art but I guess a lower grade than real art that is meant to be shown. Crafts are shown in peoples houses or given as gifts, but art is shown in galleries and looked at by art fanatics, not just by your mother. The difference between art and crafts is the hierarchy and the meaning of the two words. Art is higher class than craft, meaning that art is more valuable than crafts are. Professor Robinowitz also talked about fibers is an art that doesn’t really show all that is gone into it. Unlike painting and sculpting, where you can see little details and kind of how it was made, fibers is a finished project. The finished product doesn’t necessarily show the labor, sometimes hard and lengthy labor, that went into making the very impressive piece of art. Most of the time the piece of art looks simpler than is really is. Fiber and cloth have always have cultural significance. By the process by which a fabric is made, or the designs on it you can tell what part of the world it is from. Also with fiber you can tell how expensive the artwork and fabric is because of what it is made of. Fibers has had great cultural effects.

           An artist in this field is Anna Voog. Anna Voog is a musician, visual asrist, and writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Her career with art started with performance art. She set up a webcam that she names Anacam, which filmed her in her house 24 hours a day. She wanted to live her life openly by doing this. While doing her Anacam she got into crocheting and making freeform art with fibers. She would then use her webcam to sell her pieces of art. He pieces of work are very interesting, often times being crazily crocheted hats. Some look like caterpillars and snakes, but others do not really seem like it is supposed me anything more than a really crazy design.

        

      Another artist of this medium is Ann Hamilton. “Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University” (art21.com). Her work has often times been considered installation art, meaning art that is supposed to transform the audiences perception of space. Most of the time this is done in the interior of a building rather than the exterior. When asked about her art being called installation art she replies, “ I think the form, for me, of working in installation is one that always implicates you actively within it[…]it's that you're coming in and you're in some instances animating the space, and the process is often very social; for me, that part of it is very satisfying. There's a way that it (the installation) has an ongoing life as it meets the public. Every moment that it's up it's different. It's different from moment to moment, and somehow it's that live time that's just a factor of the form really, or something that is characteristic or inherent in the form is something that makes it continually interesting for me” (art21.com). I find this very interesting that her art is social. It is a new idea to me. Both that she uses fibers and the fact that audiences somewhat get involved in the making of her art. Each day the art piece is shown reactions are different which is a really interesting concept.

  
 Another artist in fiber making is Cai Guo-Qiang. “He was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1, New York” (art21.com). With his artwork he wanted to confront the “controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China” in his art he uses chance and luck to decorate his canvas. For instance his artwork made our of gunpowder going of. The designs is made were made randomly. He states, “I had a streak of bad luck in 2003-2004, and it was told to me repeatedly—through various ways. Bad luck or unlucky things, are in themselves a work—it is a work of a very neutral nature” (art21.com). His work is very random, but is unique and truly amazing. Just because fibers isn’t a done with paint, pencil, paper, or canvas it is a medium of art.

Digital Art, The Vocabulary of Comics, and Chris Coleman

icon drawn on Adobe Illustrator by me

Digital art entails characters and icons that are drawn out on the computer in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Michael Salter of the University of Oregon is an artist of this profession. He started out as a designer for multiple surf companies but later became a professor at the University of Oregon and started displaying his digital artwork in art galleries. During his lecture I attended he discussed the idea of the character and icons. The idea of the character is everywhere, there are characters in advertisements, posters, comic books, boxes and many other things that we see everyday. Characters are icons that often try to influence to buy something, or that are just totally random and have no meaning. Some of these icons we can see plastered all around town such as graffiti and random posters, and some are meant for us to question. As Michael Salter said that the logic behind many of these characters and icons don’t really make sense but they still make art. The great thing about the character and icon is that they don’t need to make sense to be art and because they don’t really have a meaning behind them people can guess the meaning or make up something that is meaningful to them. Characters and icons are simple, and often times less is more. The picture is the meaning and is the only thing that shows the meaning, it isn’t spelled out.

            To me a comic book is a bunch of pictures put together to tell a story, kind of like the saying a picture is worth a thousand words. In a comic, the pictures set up every aspect of the story it is trying to tell. They represent the setting, the characters and everything that is the essence of the story being told. In other words the pictures are the most important part of a comic. The idea that we relate to these pictures, of people who barely look like us is a profound idea looked at in “The Vocabulary of Comics” by Scott McCloud. He discusses many ideas in his comic book about how people react and how people recognize the pictures that we see in comics.

The idea that when we cartoon objects, we focus on specific details rather than eliminating details is very true. As we make the cartoon version of whatever we are drawing we take away many details to make it more recognizable. I feel we take away these details also to make it easier to relate to the object. Say it’s a cup of coffee; everyone would know a cartoon drawing of a cup of coffee, if the cup were simple most people would be able to relate to it. When you add detail, such as what kind of coffee, not everyone can relate because of differing opinions. When we lose the distinct details that differentiate between different types of products we can start to make a “universally” relatable drawing.

            This relates to the happy face. We all know that a circle with two dots and a line makes a face. Everyone around the world will recognize that. When we look at the simplest cartoon face it makes me feel like drawing is a universal language. Most people will understand drawing of a cat and dog and will instantly know what it is. No matter how simple the drawing most people with understand. I believe that pictures and drawings are the stepping-stones towards a language that everyone can understand, and I think that this is profound. Drawings are their own language that everyone can understand, and comics are books that are universally understood as well.

            An example of an artist who does digital art is Chris Coleman. He makes physical art, digital art, sculpture and video. He makes a lot of art that is random and maybe doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. Such as a series of animated videos that show a house with some sort of flashing light in front of it called “My House is not My House”. The artist has a meaning behind it but it’s so plain, simple and ambiguous that viewers can come up with their own meaning behind it. Coleman uses his art to spread messages, kind of like a universal language. The same message isn’t necessarily spread to everyone, but a meaningful message is still sent. Everyone understands a message, so it’s essentially a universal language.

Drawing, Art Theory for Beginners, and Margaret Kilgallen

lion drawn by me

          The art that we all do and look at today and in the past couple centuries is considered modern art. This era started when painting and other media were used as art rather than a purpose. What I mean by that is it was made to enjoy and ponder rather than just portraits and sculptures of religious or rich figures. The modern era started when our society was industrializing and developing rapidly. “Modernism valued ideals of uniqueness and progress, while responding to the new, fast developing and changing industrial world” (pg 99). Within the modern art era there many different art movements that were still considered modern art. There is Futurism, Vorticism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract, Formalism, and many others. Modern art is anything that was different than the art in the past. Society was changing and the artists wanted to reflect the new changes in their art. “[I]deas of tradition and history were rejected; what modernists wanted was originality and newness” (pg 100). It was a whole new idea that reflected and responded to the 

modern change. 

        One type of the modern art is surrealism. Surrealism means “transcending the real” which is exactly what these artists did. “Surrealist artworks, although often stylistically different, showed an interest in the unconscious, in chance, in sexuality and the taboo” (pg 102). A lot of surrealist art was derived from ideas written about by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams. This book completely changed people’s thoughts of the human mind and the unconscious. “The surrealists wanted to tap into their unconscious, and even employed techniques that were used in Freudian analysis” (pg105). This type of art consisted of writing your train of thought exactly as your thoughts change, or scribbling and rubbing and making random marks because that is what your unconscious is telling you to do. It is art that isn’t made from something real, it is what your unconscious is telling you.

           
Drawing can be a method used to make modern art. Drawing is defined as the graphic representation of something. I think that drawing is much more than that, and also has the potential to be much more than that. As Laura Vandenburgh said drawing doesn’t necessarily mean pen or pencil, it can be anything that makes a mark. I found it interesting that a jetty that makes a design in the ocean, and landscaping is also considered to be drawing. When I hear drawing I think about sketching and doodling, not rocks and plants. Drawing is also very different than other types of art media. It shows everything that went into making the final product. It is also a medium that is used to plan out projects for other medium. It is a medium that works on its own or used to aid with another type. There are a wide variety of things you can do with drawing which makes it way more than a graphic representation of something; it can be anything that makes a mark.

            One artist that entails drawing in Margaret Kilgallen. She is an artist that was born in 1967 in Washington DC. “Kilgallen has a love of things that show the evidence of the human hand.” She is an artist that draws directly onto walls, and makes murals the size of rooms. She intends her art to “recall a time when personal craft and handmade signs were the dominant aesthetic.” Not only does she do art in galleries she does them in communities. Often times her murals portray women that seem to be heroines, or dominant figures. She states, “I do paint a lot of women and I do have a lot of heroines, as well as a lot of heroes too. But I definitely paint more women and I think maybe it's because I'm a woman. I like to paint images of women whom I find inspiring.” I also find these women inspiring, and also aesthetically dominant. When Kilgallen does art in the community she lets the community help her. The art that Margaret Kilgallen does is inspiring and also gives back to the community. She uses drawing to show that woman can be dominant figures as well as men. Margaret Kilgallen uses the drawing medium to show her version of modern art.