(note: i know my last blog had correct capitalization, such as "I's" and starting the sentence with a capital.... but that really gets to be annoying after one blog. so this one is in all small case. don't judge....)
today was a very interesting and wonderful day for me in terms of art. not because i drew a leaf, not because i discovered this totally cool artist on stumbleupon..... not even because i'm starting a new drawing of my late puppy dog of ten years. no, today was AWESOME because today was the first day of my art camp for kids!
i mean.... come on folks. if there is ANYTHING cool about art its discovering art for the first time in a fantasmagorical way, which usually happens when you are seven, like little joy, the youngest kid in my camp. i want to work with kids when i grow up, and teach art, and that's what i am doing this week. it's quite literally thrilling. i was a nervous wreck the hours leading up to the camp today, i went to michael's and office depot and the dollar store and the grocery store.... then i just kinda paced back and forth, sure no one was going to come, eating mac and cheese and wanting to die. which is ridiculous because it went fantastically.... everyone had a great time! me especially. i'm so syked for tomorrow too, we will be doing self portraits tomorrow from mirrors and photographs.
yall remember going to summer art camp when you were seven? i did art camp every year, sometimes multiple times a year with my elementary schooltimes art teacher, miss lisa zadravec. she was the coolest, albeit a little scary at times, and taught me loads and loads when i was just a wee lass. below are a few examples of her works. ahhh memories..... eating lunch halfway through the day in the backyard wishing she would let us back in the studio so i could get back to work because who needs lunch when you can do art! yes. art camp was the shizzang back then.
as far as senior seminar goes, i had a dream of doing gigantic canvases with the children's eyes and ethiopian landscapes and cityscapes in the background and collages of things surrounding it in a sortof displaced dreamlike kind of way..... sketches and using negative space to my advantage and being awesome and stuff..... but it was only a dream so most likely that's just not gonna happen. a misplaced senior-sem-art-camp-anxiety type thing. there should be a diagnosis for that... SSACA. do they make medication for that?
today's feature is ana teresa fernandez. i discovered her on stumbleupon, proving that wasting time is not always a waste of time. she was born in tampico, mexico. her list of awards and accomplishments is quite long, and includes scholarships, stipends, and recognitions at schools and shows. she has taught art at many prestigious universities, such as the san francisco art institute and uc berkeley, as well as other countries such as haiti and mexico. her specialties include paintings, and an interesting medium i just discovered called "social sculpture." according to wikipedia:
Social sculpture is a specific example of the extended concept of art, that was advocated by the conceptual artist and politician Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term Social Sculpture to illustrate his idea of art's potential to transform society. As an artwork it includes human activity, that strives to structure and shape society or the environment. The central idea of a social sculptor is an artist, who creates structures in society using language, thought, action, and object.
fernandez is very interested in the interactions of people and art. she said in an interview about her home city, "I am very grateful that I ended up here. San Francisco is a perfect city — there is such an array of artistic expression. There is space to investigate things, to be outside, to go to events." her social sculpture is all about that concept of investigation and the interaction of art and people. an example of this is her installation social sculpture, "flock," which is a metal detector covered in black feathers. people were encouraged to walk through the detector, touch it, take pictures under it.... and basically interact with it.
today was a very interesting and wonderful day for me in terms of art. not because i drew a leaf, not because i discovered this totally cool artist on stumbleupon..... not even because i'm starting a new drawing of my late puppy dog of ten years. no, today was AWESOME because today was the first day of my art camp for kids!
i mean.... come on folks. if there is ANYTHING cool about art its discovering art for the first time in a fantasmagorical way, which usually happens when you are seven, like little joy, the youngest kid in my camp. i want to work with kids when i grow up, and teach art, and that's what i am doing this week. it's quite literally thrilling. i was a nervous wreck the hours leading up to the camp today, i went to michael's and office depot and the dollar store and the grocery store.... then i just kinda paced back and forth, sure no one was going to come, eating mac and cheese and wanting to die. which is ridiculous because it went fantastically.... everyone had a great time! me especially. i'm so syked for tomorrow too, we will be doing self portraits tomorrow from mirrors and photographs.
yall remember going to summer art camp when you were seven? i did art camp every year, sometimes multiple times a year with my elementary schooltimes art teacher, miss lisa zadravec. she was the coolest, albeit a little scary at times, and taught me loads and loads when i was just a wee lass. below are a few examples of her works. ahhh memories..... eating lunch halfway through the day in the backyard wishing she would let us back in the studio so i could get back to work because who needs lunch when you can do art! yes. art camp was the shizzang back then.
http://www.lisarts.com/
as far as senior seminar goes, i had a dream of doing gigantic canvases with the children's eyes and ethiopian landscapes and cityscapes in the background and collages of things surrounding it in a sortof displaced dreamlike kind of way..... sketches and using negative space to my advantage and being awesome and stuff..... but it was only a dream so most likely that's just not gonna happen. a misplaced senior-sem-art-camp-anxiety type thing. there should be a diagnosis for that... SSACA. do they make medication for that?
today's feature is ana teresa fernandez. i discovered her on stumbleupon, proving that wasting time is not always a waste of time. she was born in tampico, mexico. her list of awards and accomplishments is quite long, and includes scholarships, stipends, and recognitions at schools and shows. she has taught art at many prestigious universities, such as the san francisco art institute and uc berkeley, as well as other countries such as haiti and mexico. her specialties include paintings, and an interesting medium i just discovered called "social sculpture." according to wikipedia:
Social sculpture is a specific example of the extended concept of art, that was advocated by the conceptual artist and politician Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term Social Sculpture to illustrate his idea of art's potential to transform society. As an artwork it includes human activity, that strives to structure and shape society or the environment. The central idea of a social sculptor is an artist, who creates structures in society using language, thought, action, and object.
fernandez is very interested in the interactions of people and art. she said in an interview about her home city, "I am very grateful that I ended up here. San Francisco is a perfect city — there is such an array of artistic expression. There is space to investigate things, to be outside, to go to events." her social sculpture is all about that concept of investigation and the interaction of art and people. an example of this is her installation social sculpture, "flock," which is a metal detector covered in black feathers. people were encouraged to walk through the detector, touch it, take pictures under it.... and basically interact with it.
it, however, was her paintings that originally drew me to ana teresa fernandez. they are social pieces all on their own, a commentary about women. women swimming, women doing laundry, women ironing clothes, women mopping, women imprisoned in strange cages. these paintings are very sculptural in style, especially the water pieces and the laundry ones. the women's faces are hidden in every piece, using their hair and body parts to create extremely dynamic compositions. since fernandez started off as a sculptor, it makes sense that her paintings would have a sculptural-like quality to them. they bring to mind michelangelo's doni tondo, or the sistine chapel ceiling. honestly, i find her paintings breathtaking.
many of her paintings are performance art pieces. performance art has a broad definition that can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. in fernandez's case, her paintings look like dances that have been stilled for one second, and at any second might start up again.
http://anateresafernandez.com/
in short, ana rocks. can't wait to be back here on my blog next monday.... hopefully stumbleupon will help me again..... (wink)
tori
ps: art camp rox. that is all.
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