National Portrait Gallery: Alexander Calder's Portraits

A few weekends ago, I finally made my way out to DC to the National Portrait Gallery. I really enjoyed the trip and thought all of the artwork was amazing! In particular, I really liked Alexander Calder's portraits. He uses wire to create 3-D portraits. He somehow twists the wires to construct portraits with facial expressions and emotion. Calder began his career in portraiture in the 1930s and has been extremely successful with his art. Throughout his life, he has been most renowned for his wire mobiles and stabiles. His mobile figures incorporate suspended that move in space within the sculpture. I was amazed by his unique sculpture portraits as I had never seen anything like it before! I came back and did some research on him. He was born into a family of artists and showed great talent in art as a child, however he did not originally intend on making a career of it. He went to school for engineering and worked in the field for several years. Eventually he decided to try out the art career and thrived. He started creating figures of wire and found that he really enjoyed the material. He started his career in portraiture by creating wire portraits of friends and family. He eventually began creative some kinetic mobile sculptures.

I was very intrigued by his artwork. It looks as if he made a sketch of a person or thing and then magically turned it into a 3-D piece. Walking around each sculpture, I could see through the sculpture and view it from all different angles. No matter what angle that I viewed the portraits from, they always looked like portraits. Looking at the wire portrait face to face wasn't the only way to view it and understand what it was supposed to look like. Some portraits also had a fair amount of detail, which I was impressed by because it seems to me that incorporating detail into a figure made all of wire would be difficult. Non-theless, Calder made it work. I think the meanings of his work are that people can be seen and thought of in different ways by different people. People also have different emotions at different times. I believe Calder tries to incorporate emotion and a bit of personality into each of his unique portraits. I believe he does so magnificently. 

In my opinion, Calder's artwork is amazing. There wasn't a single piece that I saw and didn't like. Every portrait was unique and exciting in it's own way. I honestly can't think of any way he could improve his artwork. He is a master of crafting wires into objects of beauty with meaning.

Calder at the National Portrait Gallery

Calder Foundation

Artist Talk: Animated Film Series: Lewis Klahr

Lewis Klahr is a very unique filmmaker. He makes short animated films via elaborate collages. He creates each of his collages from cut outs of magazines, papers, books, comics, etc. He came to St. Mary's earlier in the semester as part of the animated film series. I found his films very interesting. Of the films he showed, all used cut outs and themes of an earlier era. They seemed to be set in the 1950s time period. The films he showed were "April Snow", "A Thousand Julys", and "The Nimbus Trilogy." Each had it's own unique theme and style. I thought his particular type of film really applied to what we were learning in digital art at the time. When I saw this lecture, we were working on our vector portraits and viewing some of the vector animated films. I really enjoyed the style of these films so I was interested in seeing some other types of unique animation.

"April Snow" was all about the love he has for his wife. Klahr said a few words about the film after our viewing. He said he wanted to portray the ideas of married life and how relationships change over time, yet stay just as significant. He chose appropriate images to display this feeling of love. He said most of the images chosen were from old comics that he read as a kid. I thought it was interesting that he chose to display current feelings for his wife through old cut outs. "The Nimbus Trilogy" was the next film he showed. I found this one a bit harder to gain meaning from. However, the animation was very interesting. I noticed certain cut outs making appearances several times in different ways. For instance, a penny kept sliding across the screen at different periods in time. A student asked Klahr the significance of the penny and he didn't really give a clear answer. I know the broad idea of the first part of the trilogy was a about a man and woman struggling with their relationship. Klahr added some word bubbles similar to the ones found in comic books. I thought this really helped portray his message since their was no actual dialogue to be heard. I think he was trying to portray the miscommunications and misunderstandings that are bound to be found in relationships.

I really liked the uniqueness of Klahrs films. I have never seen animated films where cut out figures are used with or without background music and without dialogue. The ways in which he positioned the cut out figures with cut out backgrounds and slid them across the screen was very creative and I am sure very time consuming. I enjoyed watching is films for the visual aspects, however I sometimes found them rather hard to understand. This may be partly due to the fact that I had never seen animations of this sort and kept getting distracted by the different visual aspects rather than focusing on realizing some meaning. Most of the clips that we viewed seemed to present messages about relationships. Some relationships were good, some were bad, others were repetitive and boring, and still others involved lack of communication. I like the messages he presents because they are ideas that everyone can relate to and they are very realistic as well.

I think artistically and visually, Klahr is a master of his art form. I think the only change I would make if I were making a film like his would be to somehow make the message more clear. He did a good job using different songs in the background to symbolize different emotions, however more word bubbles with the human cut outs would have been helpful as well. Overall though, Klahr's work is extremely visually pleasing and flows together very naturally. I enjoyed viewing his unique film style. I couldn't find any of the films we viewed at St. Mary's on youtube, but here is a link to one of his other videos.

Artist Talk: Gabriela Bulisova: "Portraits of Iraqi Refugees"

Gabriela Bulisova is an extraordinary documentary photographer from Czechoslavakia. She came to St. Mary's earlier in the semester to present some of her work in the WGSX Colloquium on "Women in War." Her photographs were hung all over upper Monty. As I walked past, I took a look at some of them and was in awe. Each photograph was so distinct and had so much emotion and purpose. I used to do a lot of photography in high school and have great interest in that particular art form so I decided to go to her talk. Of all of the lectures I have been to at this school across the many disciplines, this lecture was by far the most interesting and moving to me. Not only is her artwork amazing, but the research and stories behind each photograph is amazing. Each photograph has it's own in depth story to tell. For this particular art show, Bulisova was displaying portraits of many Iraqi refugees. She titled this project, "Guests." It focused on refugees who fled the war in Iraq and relocated primarily to Syria. She said that this was one of the greatest refugee crises in history. Approximately 15% of Iraq's population is or was in flight. She found a lot of interest in this topic, especially because it had received little to no attention from the media. 

Bulisova went to Syria and interviewed and photographed many of these refugees. She said she wishes she could make a bigger difference for them after hearing their stories, however she already has a made a difference by telling their stories through her art. Many of the people she interviewed fled due to political or religious affiliation. While in Syria, she stayed in a very poor area and was restricted from photographing in certain areas. She learned that many of the refugees in Syria don't have the same rights. Some can't even work or earn money. Many of the women had to resort to prostitution because they couldn't work.

Bulisova took the time to go through some of her photographs and tell the stories behind them. One of the photographs shown was of a man whose house was bombed targeting him. He was luckily not home at the time. However two of his four children were killed. Of the other two, one received major burns to the stomach and the other has post traumatic stress disorder. After the event, the mother had a stroke. Another image showed a man who had been shot at seven times and was in severe need of spinal surgery, but couldn't afford it. One of the photos that moved me the most was one of a man with a sign reading "a boy for sale." The man holding the sign was too poor to take care of his son anymore and loved his son so much that he felt the only option for his son to survive would be to sell him to a family who could afford to take care of him. He took his son out on the street then began weeping and took his son inside and said they would figure out some way to make it work. Bulisova went to Syria a second time. She went in search of people who wanted their stories told and found that many people had given up and didn't want to talk. Upon arriving at the house of the her translator, the translator said, "I need a break; let's go to the beach." Bulisova reluctantly went along with little hope of finding refugees to interview on the beach. Luckily they found a group of woman at the beach with their children. The women forced their children to go to the beach that day because they were too depressed and needed to find some happiness. The photograph was almost a bit humorous because it was of these smiling woman in long black robes in beach chairs; quite different from the majority of the refugee photos. The last group of refugees that Bulisova discussed was a group that had made it to the US. Upon hearing about refugees relocating to the US, most would think this would be good news. However this particular group was made up of Iraqis who actually had been helping the US by being the eyes and ears for the US army. Many of them worked as translators. They were marked at traitors and were targeted to be assassinated. There were over 100,000 of them and only about 3,000 were granted visas to the US. Once they arrived, their lives did not improved. They were forgotten and felt abandoned. Many Americans ignored them or looked at them as if they were terrorists.

I really look up to Bulisova for doing this project. I think it takes a lot of bravery and determination to do a project like this where she went to dangerous places to document and tell the stories of the refugees that some people may have tried to ignore. She really is making a difference in the world through her art as is her goal. She is currently working on a project on women in prison to tell their stories. I really admire her work because she completely delves her mind, body, and soul into it and really cares about these people and their stories. I can't think of any way she could possibly improve her work. Not only does each photograph have it's own emotional story, but each photo is taken with delicacy and purpose. I really love her work and enjoyed going to her lecture.

Gabriela Bulisova at Mica

Gabriela Bulisova Website

Info on some of her work