Sunday, October 28, 2007

Storm King

Storm King is a 500 acre sculpture park in Mountaville New York, about 2hours from Pratt. I went on a trip with my welding class because the concentration of the collection is large modern and abstract welded steel from the 1960's onwards.

My metal tutor was concentrating on teaching us about the different kinds of welds being used and the different metals, but i was obviously more interested in the scenery. I have never experienced an autumn like this one. Everyone had said that upstate New York is beautiful in autumn, but i hadn't honestly thought i'd see anything like this. The leaves turn the most ridiculuous colours, from the average brown to illuminous pinks and oranges.

I'm not into modernist sculpture so i had plenty of time to collect amazing leaves and pictures of the scenery. That being said there were works that I thought pretty great, like this Daniel Buren piece. He had a few of these benches scattered around the place. I liked the way they interrupted the space with their uniform and regular lines.

I absolutely loved the piece by Menashe Kadishman. You approach it from the top of a hill, so you don't realise its scale or that one piece is suspended and attached to the other.






There was a memorial for Nam Jun Paik by his work as he died last year. I liked him and his work.


The highlight for me in terms of sculpture was the Louise Bourgeois collection in the museum, which we couldn't photograph. The stuff inside was better than her series of Spiders, but I do like these too. I remember seeing the one at the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern when they opened the Unilever series. I think i like her work because she's still so relevant considering she's 96yrs old and still lives in the village in the apartment she hasn't left for nearly 40yrs. All in all, an amazing day with a good group of people.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Art that i wish i'd made



Marcel Broodthaers "Femur de la femme francaise"

For Oli!

My first Judith Supine!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

16 Goats In A Tree

Deliciousness!!!!!!!

Oh Yeah

This is actually my favourite piece from the PS1 show, it was placed extremely close to the James Turrell room, which makes me think it's his, but then it doesn't structurally seem like him.

It's simply the smallest hole in the wall, allowing the smallest ray of light in. It's so beautiful and simple, some might say poetic yes George poetic.

PS1 Show Opening

So I went to PS1 today for the opening. It's strange because all the rooms are changed at the same time so there is so much to see. You're not allowed to take photos unless you're with the press, I sneakily took these.

Stuffed bear covered in yellow bird feathers, it was like an homage to big bird from sesame street.


This was my favourite piece of the entire show. Balloons and crates. One balloon is still in the process of being inflated, you could smell the latex of the balloons and feel the tension between the crates and the ballooon, where they gonna pop????



I also liked this piece a lot, it was just some blown glass. They're pretty simple shapes, but they were beautiful by the window, catching and reflecting the light. Simple is best.



Welded knives, there were about 20 of these, a field of welded flower knives. I just liked them because i kept thinking that i could do that in my welding class (i won't though).

Thursday, October 18, 2007

When Good People Make Bad Art

This was the very first project we were set in sculpture. It was a found object "self portrait" object. Now you all know that i haven't "made" a sculpture since wimbledon in 2005, and so i had tremendous amounts of difficulty plus we only had two weeks to do it, so there wasn't much time to explore the idea and really search out objects. I luckily found these old speakers two days before the crit and i tried to use elements i had been working with when i left Glasgow, soil and plants. Then i added the only books that i had in New York, they're mostly important books to me most of them have traveled with me from London to Glasgow, from Glasgow to London and then from London to New York.


I think it's a completely obvious and immature piece that says noting more than what is shown.

I wasn't committed to the piece or the idea and so didn't try too hard, i was a little disgruntled by it everything so was very flippant about it all.


Installation Participation

In early September Jen and I were invited to participate in a one day knitathon by Sheila Pepe. She is the deputy head of fine arts at Pratt, and she looks after the fine art exchange students.Well it was a SCORCHING day even though we were under cover it was blazing hot, so Jen and I only managed to stay for two hours. It was part of the culture festival in Battery park for the Drawing Centre. We knitted through an old minibus bus and around the bus. There were kids there learning to knit and crotchet and just generally joining in, if wasn't for the heat we would have sayed longer it was tres magnifique!





It was great fun, we

Man down!!!!!!

I don't have any idea who does these little men/robot types, i've seen loads in the east village and in SoHo and even saw one in Philadelphia, i think they're awesome! It's a very different way of mapping a terrain and it's so subtle, you have to pay attention to those things to notice them, people only noticed them because i was taking pictures of them.


Oldies But Goodies


I've had these images on my desktop for about three months, i was aiming on emailing them to Lily, maybe i did not sure but i love them. There's an artist who works with road markers but i can't remember him right now, i'll upload his stuff when i do.



Amazing!!!!!

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Jasper Johns: 3 Critical Ways to Make Good Art


1) Take something
2) Do something to it
3) Do something to it
"Many artists get to the second point and stop, that's why there's so much mediocre art out there".

Mr Arcadious said he thought art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." Once the ear has fully developed he hopes to get a microphone implanted as well.
Although I hate this, i understand what he's saying, art SHOULD be more than just things that live in a gallery etc...But this is the kind of sensationalist art that makes me angry and people wonder why society mocks artist? I'm not bothered by the grotesque nature of the work, but i do have a real love of the human body and tampering to this extent with it for none-medical purposes makes me angry.
That being said i'd really quite like to listen to the sound that gets recorded through the ear.

It's the image of the deceased Pope John Paul II in the fire, what a miracle!

Monday, October 15, 2007

The Junior Sculpture Class


Rachel, 4th year drawing major went to the Bauhaus on exchange last year, very funny


Laura, 3rd year sculpture major, quiet but makes good work.


Tim, one of my favourite people, he's hilarious and his favourite things are cockney rhyming slang and Monty Python.


Evan and Anne-Marie. I like Evan he steals things and he lives in the ghetto, actually he doesn't but its a pretty rough neighbourhood. Anne-Marie sounds like she's from somewhere down south, i appreciate her accent.


Giovanni and Jen of course. Gio's great, very funny and extremely talented.

ERROR!!!!!

Well i tried to upload stuff and now there's an error and they won't let me upload anything, so stay tuned....

So this is a blog...

Well all the cool kids have one now, thought i'd join the internetting fun. If i end up with more friends online than in real life i'll quit this thing i swear!!!