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

Artist Post: Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois is an extremely talented artist from France. She was born in Paris, then emigrated to the US in 1938. She began her art career primarily as an engraver and sculptor. She eventually found her niche in sculpture. Her early pieces were often abstract shapes carved in wood. She experimented with materials such as rubber, bronze, and stone as well. The central theme of the bulk of her pieces is her childhood. She often uses portrays family relationships and sexuality of family life in her works. One concept seen in her artwork is the role of sexuality and innocence of humans and the conflicts between the two.

"Maman," pictured above is a sculpture of a female spider and happens to be the piece for which Bourgeois is most renowned. It is a 30 foot tall sculpture is made of stainless steel. Underneath the body of the spider are 26 marble eggs. The sculpture was first displayed in London in 2000. Since, she has made many bronze casts appearing in other museums around the world. It is one of the world's largest sculptures. The intended message behind the spider was very surprising to me because, personally I am not a huge fan of spiders. Bourgeois' intention was that the spider would represent her mother, hence the us of the french word for mother, "maman." Her mother was not only her nurturer and caregiver growing up, but also her best friend. The ways in which she compared her mother to a spider actually made a lot of sense. Her mother worked in the tapestry business. So similar to a spider weaving a web, her mother wove tapestries. She also considered her mother to be clever, like a spider. In Bourgeois' opinion spiders were protective and helpful because they killed harmful mosquitos. Furthermore, she thought of her mother as protective due to her maternal instincts. In these ways, it makes a lot of sense why Bourgeois would choose to make such a large sculpture representing her mother, someone very important to her. She created the spider to appear scary and threatening because of the great size, yet also vulnerable because of the marble eggs hidden beneath the spiders' belly. It seems that Bourgeois wanted to bring forward the ideas surrounding the relationship between mother and child. In her particular case, this was a good relationship, which she portrayed through the protectiveness of the spider. She hints towards sexuality because of the eggs . It seems as though she wants to bring forth the vulnerability of females in general as well.

I think her artwork is amazing. In this particular work, I thought she brilliantly combined making this huge sculpture that one may assume would have some blatant and obvious meaning, when in my opinion the meaning is a bit more subtle. I personally think a vital part of the sculpture is the sac of eggs which is underneath the body of the spider and can't be seen from most pictures of the piece. I really like how she created this huge spider, but was still able to include some nice subtleties. Obviously it was a popular sculpture because she created other versions that have been placed in many other museums. I really like this sculpture and much of her other pieces that I cam across. I think she was very successful in getting her point across in a creative way. I honestly can't think of any way she could change the sculpture to improve it. I think it serves it's purpose as is! She is a fantastic artist!

biography

quote about Maman

article about Maman

Project 2: Vector Self Portrait

Chris Leavens: Vector Artist

Chris Leavens is an extremely talented vector artist from Pennsylvania. He spent his entire life making doodles of crazy creatures and make believe worlds. It was always a hobby for him; nothing he took very seriously. He went to Penn State and majored in film. He went on to become a filmmaker, but became tired of the job and gave a shot at becoming an illustrator. Little did he know, he would turn out to be an incredibly talented and successful vector artist!

I was drawn to Leavens' artwork because it is so vivid and exciting. It's very creative and invigorating to see all of these fantasy worlds that he creates. He draws a lot of inspiration from the outdoors. This is another reason I was drawn to his work. I am a big outdoors fan and the way he takes a landscape and warps it into this unknown realm is amazing. All of his illustrations have a central theme of humor and absurdity. He tries to tell stories about places through his illustrations. Eventually he wants to create a line of children's books. After that he hopes to turn those books into animation. Most of his work is created for a young audience. He never incorporates violence into his images. He uses many bright colors and imaginary creatures with a positive ambience. This is the perfect art for children because children have so much imagination and positivity about life. Some of his artworks include Manzanita, an illustration of a very slow growing tree that eventually becomes huge and beautiful. The image has some cute little creatures dangling throughout it as well. This is one of the images at the top of this post. Another interesting project of Leavens' is called Glitch. Glitch is a video game that Leavens collaborated on with several other vector artists. Each artist created different areas within a fantasy world. One of the illustrations Leavens created for this game is also at the top of this post. His art is all fun and full of life!

In my opinion each of his illustrations has their own meaning. For example, I believe Manzanita is about how something that may seem small and insignificant at first can really become something beautiful and amazing. It has a very positive message. Overall, I think all of his artwork exudes positivity and humor through vivid images of creative creatives and fantasy landscapes. It is very imaginative and obviously geared towards the child audience.

I think Chris Leavens artwork is extremely successful. It serves the purpose that I believe he wants it to: to get the creative juices flowing, inspire positivity, and make the viewer smile. His work is his own and is very unique to his style. The images he creates are so imaginative and elaborate that they could only be created by his brain. I really don't see any way he could improve. Each illustration is different and each has extreme detail, humor, and absurdity. I love his artwork!

Line Drawing Sketch

This is a sketch that a friend of mine drew and which I manipulated on Illustrator.