Artist Response 5: Doris Salcedo

           

Doris Salcedo's work send very powerful, stark messages.  Of the above works, the one in the top left appeals to me the most.  I had the opportunity to see this piece in the Boston ICA last year, and it strikes me as a very interesting, thought-provoking piece.  It is composed of a wooden chair encased in concrete and held together by several steel bars.  What appeals to me about it is its rigidity, the sharp lines as well as the very weathered surface of the concrete.  I believe this piece is telling a story about education.  The chair she used is very similar to those used in schools.  The piece is showing how a strict education system can indoctrinate a child, and lead to a very closed-minded way of thinking.  Upon entering school, a child has a very open and light mind, represented by an empty chair, that can adapt to and engage many new things.  As time goes on however, the child's mind becomes weighed down with sets of rules, structures, and ways of thinking that are taught to them.  The rigidity and weight of a material such as concrete demonstrates how someone's mind can become permanently locked into a way of thinking, unable to adapt to new situations and ideas. I think this piece is challenging not only strict styles of education, but the whole idea of learning in a classroom as well.  It's a statement that learning about the world while sitting in a chair will not get you far, you have to go out and experience new things for yourself to develop and mature educationally.

SPA 3

Douglas Beube's above piece represents human activity in a number of ways.  He is showing that when looking at people from a distance, many of us appear to have similar purposes, do activities in a similar way, and look similar as well.  He is showing that humans need to get close and engage with one another.  By doing that, humans feed the creativity and ideas of one another and can create much greater things than any individual could.  I think that each book represents a person and they all contain separate information and ideas that together, strengthen them as a whole.  Everyone has their own niche, and each one is equally important.

Douglas Beube map

Response to Chihuly video

The sociocultural factors I saw at play in Dale Chihuly's video were the techniques involved, the tradition, teamwork, group-roles, styles used, individual thoughts/ideas/tastes, gender roles and the organization of the shop.  The materials/tools involved were the glass, rods, fire, gas, oven, freezer, shaping tools, marque (italian spotting technique), protective clothing, strength, and the actual knowledge of the malleability of the glass.

Artist Response 3: Douglas Beube

Douglas Beube, of the Center for Book Arts, cuts and carves the pages of books to make them into entirely different creations.  He takes average looking books, and transforms them in a way that opens many windows of interpretation.  In the first picture below, he has cut and crisscrossed the pages of a map book.  He achieves a very interesting contrast in this piece, as the pages seem to be both perfectly organized, as well as tangled together at the same time.  I think one of the themes he was going for in this piece is his world view.  By making this kind of "organized mess" with the map, he has led me to interpret it as a portrayal of the world as a place that is very interconnected and organized, while at the same time very complicated.  The bottom picture is of a piece titled City.  In my opinion, the books are all shaped the same to represent the very similar looking buildings found in cities. They are generally different in shape but other than that all very similar.  As they are books however, each “building” contains entirely different writing on it.  It is impossible to know what the book contains unless you get up close to it and read.  Though cities, buildings, and even people tend to look similar, there is really no way of knowing what they contain unless you get up close, engage them and investigate.  I found this piece to be the artist’s take on “don’t read a book by its cover.”  Beube’s work doesn't just please the eye, but it makes one look at situations differently, and engages the viewer.  The simplicity with which he does it in the above pieces is quite amazing.  Many of his other pieces are much more in depth in terms of how he created them, but they have that same engaging affect.

http://www.centerforbookarts.org/artistmember/bio.asp?artistID=132

Reading Response: Chapter 1

      Chapter one in the Social Production of Art deals with creativity, and how social structures have a profound impact upon it.  Whether artists are aware of it or not, there is a manufacturing process going on in their head when they create a work of art.  This process is shaped by social, cultural, historical and economic influences whether the artist tries to isolate themselves or not.
      Wolff argued that creativity is not a special gift that artists have, but that people use creativity in nearly all professions.  Before factory jobs and the onset of capitalism, humans were individually creative in all their fields of work.  Stone masons, blacksmiths and tailors for example all worked creatively, however capitalism has replaced that individual creativity with profit driven demand for perfection and uniformity.  The reason artists are seen today as having this "gift" is because they work in one of the few areas that relies almost entirely on individual creativity.  Wolff also claims, however, that artists are not entirely "free" from capitalist demand.  They are influenced considerably by the expectations of their audience, the economy, etc. Although capitalism is increasing the demand for creative works of art, it is becoming increasingly marginalized as artists think more about how much money a work of art will make, as opposed to what they want to express in it.  Wolff sort of went back and forth on her position to capitalism and it's affects on art during this chapter.  Is it the necessity to make art that will sell what clouds the artist creativity? If so, is no one truly "free" to act creatively or is there a distinct difference in the productive between someone who is an artist as a career and someone who makes art as a hobby?

Artist Response 2: Stephen de Staebler

   The ceramic work of Stephen de Staebler is truly astounding.  Much of his work shows the relationship between humans and the environment.  He is able to transform the clay in a way that makes it look much older than it is in many of his pieces.  He works a lot with the human form, however he approaches it in a unique way.  In much of his work he sculpts the human body with some or all of it represented as a geological type of formation.  This is what really caught my eye about de Staebler's work.  It shows humans and nature as one connected thing, worn down together through time.  In the works below, it seems as if the human forms are encased in the stone, and are struggling to break free.  Many of them are extending upwards as well, as if trying to shed the weight of something to reach upwards.  In the piece below on the bottom, I believe the person trapped within the stone represents humanity, which is trying to break free from the natural constraints put on it by mother nature.  All of his pieces, however convey a different sense of constraint put on humanity by nature.  Some of his pieces evoke a feeling of determination and hope.  Those are the figures that rise valiantly despite the constraint of stone.  Other pieces by de Staebler, however, give more of a sad and sympathetic feeling, as if the human forms are permanently disfigured by nature in their struggle.