Senior Seminar in studio art... Christopher Newport University... Victoria Mulgrew, graduating class of 2013, but in reality graduating in December of 2012.... What on earth am I supposed to call this thing?
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for the upcoming year. But I like to be able to call a blog a certain thing and know what it is. But here, there seem to be so many names to call it, my name, year, university, or instructor... (shout out to Sir Skees!) that I find myself wanting to go out for a Starbucks instead of naming this first blog. As to the blog itself, the writing of the thing, I understand that I should be posting something about an artist of my choosing, a contemporary un-dead artist at that. Also, I am under the impression that this blog should include "documentation of my artwork as I create it, inspiration, sketches, etc" (not sure where that quote came from....) Well, I guess every aspiring, blog-writing, senior seminar-taking, artist/writer/senior should start somewhere. So here it goes....
My name is Victoria Mulgrew (fanfare) and I am graduating in December. I am not afraid of senior sem. I am excited and looking forward to the challenge. And I like writing blogs. Actually, I wrote some blogs while I was in Ethiopia last summer, ethiopianupdates.blogsomething-or-other.com.... it was great fun. I will be resuming that blog when this one is done because I am moving to Ethiopia next year upon marrying my Ethiopian fiancé, Tilahun. For those of you who know nothing about Ethiopia, it is a beautiful country full of beautiful people and donkeys and sheep and rolling green hills and Africa trees and great lakes. It is the country that discovered and invented coffee. It houses a couple of very old fossils, and is the place I want to raise my kids. While I was there, I worked as an art teacher and mural painter. I worked with orphans and orphanages. It was incredible... I didn't want to leave. I took a piece of that country with me, and left a piece of me there, so needless to say, my senior sem project will revolve around Ethiopia, specifically Ethiopian orphans.
I am a portrait painter/drawer... that's kinda my thing so I am hoping to do portraits of Ethiopian orphans from the gazillion pictures I took while I was there. I have a few sketches that I have completed that I hope to draw inspiration from at first... but obviously there is tons of room for improvement, embellishment, that sort of thing. YAY. So exciting.
I'd like to start off my research with Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist I was told to research during my latest portfolio review. Muniz has been living and working in New York City since the 1980's, but he was originally born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He started off as a sculptor, but as his work has progressed, he has gone more in the direction of installation pieces and photography of his work. He works in strange mediums, like chocolate syrup, garbage, sugar, and spaghetti, and uses photography to freeze these images in time. He talks about the control we have in photography these days in an article on his website. He says, "Today, in the aftermath of significant breakthroughs in the field of digital imaging, the photographer's control over the image is potentially unlimited. This new development raises interesting questions. How will the way we look at photographs change? How can a photograph be trusted as a reliable picture of reality? And how will our memory of the past, which is so often buttressed by photographic images, be affected?" His view of photography is interesting considering the
In an article about Vik Muniz on his website called "Illusionism Beyond Specular Appearance," Aracy Amaral talks about his endeavor to actually "make" and not merely conceive a work. "This "making" involves the artist's technical skills to carry out an idea. For example, he can start by competently and meticulously reproducing a work of art or a photograph, chosen (as a challenge or out of admiration) among selected artists that include Corot, Courbet, Monet, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rothko, and Morris. In this process, he reproduces in his own manner the work of an "Other.'' With Vik Muniz, every time I mention the reproduction, in his own manner, of the work of an "Other", I am referring to materials he employs, which are different from those found in the works he selects. Photo reproductions of images made with sugar or refuse, or yet a Last Supper recreated with chocolate syrup involve a highly creative poetic license."
One of these installations that has received a great amount of hype is his Waste Land pieces. From photographs taken from Jardim Gramacho, Brazil (the world's largest garbage dump, Muniz has created portraits. These huge pieces were created from garbage, and are portraits of the people who work, live, and scavenge off of the dump. His portraits of these people immortalize them, and the medium he uses brings the message of their desperation home for anyone who sees.
http://www.vikmuniz.net/
Needless to say I will be studying Muniz's work in greater detail. His passion for his homeland is inspiring, and his choice of medium makes the works come to life for me. Wheewwww... Blog number 1 is finished. One artist down... 49 more to go.
signing off.... Tori
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for the upcoming year. But I like to be able to call a blog a certain thing and know what it is. But here, there seem to be so many names to call it, my name, year, university, or instructor... (shout out to Sir Skees!) that I find myself wanting to go out for a Starbucks instead of naming this first blog. As to the blog itself, the writing of the thing, I understand that I should be posting something about an artist of my choosing, a contemporary un-dead artist at that. Also, I am under the impression that this blog should include "documentation of my artwork as I create it, inspiration, sketches, etc" (not sure where that quote came from....) Well, I guess every aspiring, blog-writing, senior seminar-taking, artist/writer/senior should start somewhere. So here it goes....
My name is Victoria Mulgrew (fanfare) and I am graduating in December. I am not afraid of senior sem. I am excited and looking forward to the challenge. And I like writing blogs. Actually, I wrote some blogs while I was in Ethiopia last summer, ethiopianupdates.blogsomething-or-other.com.... it was great fun. I will be resuming that blog when this one is done because I am moving to Ethiopia next year upon marrying my Ethiopian fiancé, Tilahun. For those of you who know nothing about Ethiopia, it is a beautiful country full of beautiful people and donkeys and sheep and rolling green hills and Africa trees and great lakes. It is the country that discovered and invented coffee. It houses a couple of very old fossils, and is the place I want to raise my kids. While I was there, I worked as an art teacher and mural painter. I worked with orphans and orphanages. It was incredible... I didn't want to leave. I took a piece of that country with me, and left a piece of me there, so needless to say, my senior sem project will revolve around Ethiopia, specifically Ethiopian orphans.
I am a portrait painter/drawer... that's kinda my thing so I am hoping to do portraits of Ethiopian orphans from the gazillion pictures I took while I was there. I have a few sketches that I have completed that I hope to draw inspiration from at first... but obviously there is tons of room for improvement, embellishment, that sort of thing. YAY. So exciting.
I'd like to start off my research with Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist I was told to research during my latest portfolio review. Muniz has been living and working in New York City since the 1980's, but he was originally born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He started off as a sculptor, but as his work has progressed, he has gone more in the direction of installation pieces and photography of his work. He works in strange mediums, like chocolate syrup, garbage, sugar, and spaghetti, and uses photography to freeze these images in time. He talks about the control we have in photography these days in an article on his website. He says, "Today, in the aftermath of significant breakthroughs in the field of digital imaging, the photographer's control over the image is potentially unlimited. This new development raises interesting questions. How will the way we look at photographs change? How can a photograph be trusted as a reliable picture of reality? And how will our memory of the past, which is so often buttressed by photographic images, be affected?" His view of photography is interesting considering the
In an article about Vik Muniz on his website called "Illusionism Beyond Specular Appearance," Aracy Amaral talks about his endeavor to actually "make" and not merely conceive a work. "This "making" involves the artist's technical skills to carry out an idea. For example, he can start by competently and meticulously reproducing a work of art or a photograph, chosen (as a challenge or out of admiration) among selected artists that include Corot, Courbet, Monet, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rothko, and Morris. In this process, he reproduces in his own manner the work of an "Other.'' With Vik Muniz, every time I mention the reproduction, in his own manner, of the work of an "Other", I am referring to materials he employs, which are different from those found in the works he selects. Photo reproductions of images made with sugar or refuse, or yet a Last Supper recreated with chocolate syrup involve a highly creative poetic license."
One of these installations that has received a great amount of hype is his Waste Land pieces. From photographs taken from Jardim Gramacho, Brazil (the world's largest garbage dump, Muniz has created portraits. These huge pieces were created from garbage, and are portraits of the people who work, live, and scavenge off of the dump. His portraits of these people immortalize them, and the medium he uses brings the message of their desperation home for anyone who sees.
http://www.vikmuniz.net/
Needless to say I will be studying Muniz's work in greater detail. His passion for his homeland is inspiring, and his choice of medium makes the works come to life for me. Wheewwww... Blog number 1 is finished. One artist down... 49 more to go.
signing off.... Tori
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