Artist Statement

 

 

 

An artist statement that I think is well written and helps the viewer have a better understanding of the artwork is one written by Mike Kelley. I believe what makes Kelley's statement successful is that he explains in depth what influences his art. He writes which principles of design he incorporates in his work and why, what the driving force is behind all of his works, and what his work is technically about. Kelley also informs viewers of the media choices of his pieces and tries to clarify things he has said that might cause confusion or misunderstanding. Each sentence gives better insight into the decisions Kelley made with his art and what his works is trying to communicate.

Information provided by:

"Artist Statement." Mike Kelley. Artspan, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Transformation

Object: Honeycomb cereal

List 1

• Yellow
• Hexagonal
• Crunchy
• Brittle
• Somewhat symmetrical
• Monochromatic
• 3D
• Geometric

List 2

• Breakfast
• Food
• Cereal
• If you eat it at different times during the day, it can be considered lunch or dinner

Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson has an avid fascination for the human body, which shows in a variety of ways in his works.

Hawkinson creates his pieces using electrical hardwire, plastic sheeting, cardboard, and even his own hair and fingernail pairings. A lot of his works also involve complex machinery that are integral to the execution and function of his pieces.

 

 

Hawkinson has a deep interest in music. In fact, he once thought he would make instruments for a living. Although he chose to be an artist, his love of music did not fade, often becoming key components to his music playing pieces. Hawkinson's works also explore the concepts of life, death and time.

Hawkinson's works are mostly wondrous machines (sometimes monumental in size) he has built that create a sometimes interactive experience for viewers to enjoy. A common subject matter that is used in his art is himself. He experiments in different ways to represent himself, which turns out not looking like himself at all.

Even though Hawkinson may appear often in his own work, he states that his art is not about who he is but about who we all are. It is about the experiences we have and how that relates to the world around us.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Tim Hawkinson." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

Skeleton/Skin Artist Statement

I found this assignment somewhat of a challenge since I don't do a lot of 3-D or non-representational art. For the armature, I used galvanized steel because I heard it was easy to work with. I didn't really take into consideration line variation when making the skeleton since the skin was going to conceal the armature. The skin is made out of Paper Mache. I felt Paper Mache was the best route for this assignment than the other choices I had in mind since I already have some experience with it. I then used interior paint to give the project a more finished look.

Mary Heilmann

 

No painting is just a painting to Mary Heilmann. Each one has a story behind it and a reason for existing.

Paint is Heilmann's main medium of choice, but she also works with ceramics and makes furniture.

 

 

Heilmann gets the ideas for her works from past memories, her imagination, music, dreams, and colors. She also expresses that the "most important thing about art is communicating something like a conversation through the work". Heilmann tries to facilitate this kind of communication among her viewers by placing furniture she made around her works so that viewers can sit down and talk about them.

Her paintings are definitely abstract in nature. They are also very geometric due to her repeated use of squares in her pieces. The canvases Heilmann constructs also add to the geometric quality of her paintings as she combines two or more canvases together to make Tetras style shapes. Heilmann's very saturated paintings also have a sense of space to them as some squares recede in the background while other shapes are front and center in the picture plane.

A lot of time and effort seems to go into Heilmann's works and how they are presented. It is because of this dedication that her pieces really pop and are conversation worthy. 

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Mary Heilmann." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

Arturo Herrera

 

Arturo Herrera has stated, "the longer you work a thing, the more possibilities you have of creating something". Based on the numerous pieces Herrera has made, it's safe to say he has worked quite enough.

The media Herrera mostly employs are paper and paint.

 

 

What Herrera likes to explore in his work are the concepts of memories and recollection. He achieves this successfully in pieces where he collages pages from coloring books of cherished childhood movies. When it comes to his collages, it is all about fragmenting and cutting up paper and placing it in a way that give it a different meaning than it once had.

A lot of Herrera's works are composed of collages. He uses not only paper he found but also his own paintings in his pieces. Juxtaposition is also a major part of Herrera's work as he takes certain images and cuts and pastes them in a way that makes them unrecognizable or into something else.

In the end, Herrera's goal is not just to make something that is visually pleasing, but to also make something that could be thought about in a deeper way.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Arturo Herrera." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

 

Jeff Koons

No one is probably more controversial in the world of art than Jeff Koons. Since he doesn't actually make his pieces with his own hands, can he actually be considered the artist?

A variety of media is used for Koons' works, such as paint, metals, wood and plants.

 

 

The notion of power seems to be prevalent in Koons' works, whether it's to give a sense of power to the viewers or Koons himself. Art history has also influenced the outcome of many of his works. For those who have an eye for it, viewers can detect which art movements his pieces conform to.

Kitsch objects are definitely a dominant subject matter in Koons' pieces. He takes these iconic everyday objects and makes them monumental in size. It's ironic how these objects he depicts would be relatively inexpensive and mundane in real life but are outrageously expensive and put on a kind of pedestal when Koons recreates them. The materials Koons uses also gives new meaning to the kitsch objects he constructs. Many of the kitsch objects he portrays are fragile and light in real life. Yet, since he remakes these objects out of metal, they have a heaviness and indestructible quality that they wouldn't normally possess.

Whether someone sees Koons as an artist or not depends on the person. Even though he has a whole team of people making his art for him, he is the one making up the ideas. And sometimes, in art, the idea is what really matters.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Jeff Koons." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

Trenton Doyle Hancock

 

Instead of painting traditional subject matter, Trenton Doyle Hancock takes the opportunity to relate an ongoing story in his works.

Through drawings, prints, and collages, Hancock weaves the tale of his mystical characters.

 

 

Most, if not all, of Hancock's pieces are about the Mounds, the made-up half-plant half-animal creatures he invented. Hancock's works depict the different components of the lives of the Mounds, such as their birth, dreams, death, and afterlife. His pieces are also influenced by the Biblical stories he heard as a child, often incorporating them some way into the lives of the Mounds.

Some of Hancock's works appear abstract in form, and the artist himself expressed how Abstract Expressionism has influenced him and his art. Although the backgrounds of some of his works are abstract in nature, his characters, on the other hand, are not. The characters themselves are not realistic, but you can definitely tell that they are some kind of creature or another. Viewers can clearly perceive a story unfolding in Hancock's pieces as well. You can tell that the works are not depicting some detached scene, but a chapter that correlates to the pieces before it.

Hancock takes every opportunity he can to develop the Mounds, whether that's through color, languages, or patterns. It is because of this active seeking to further his work that makes Hancock's art so intriguing.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Trenton Doyle Hancock." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014

Ann Hamilton

 

A lot of people work with what they know. This also rings true for Ann Hamilton. Hamilton grew up doing textile art, and this skill has leaked over into her career as an artist.

Materials such as textiles, fabric, organic material, and objects are among the media Hamilton uses to create her art. Words could also be considered part of this list since she sees words as materials to make art with as well.

 

 

Hamilton is very interested in both the spoken and written language and the relationship between each other. She melds this interest in some of her works by incorporating words, visuals of writings, and audio components. Hamilton's pieces are also heavily influenced by the senses, often switching what one sense is supposed to do with another in her art. It is also important to Hamilton how her works interact with the senses of her viewers.

Some of the Hamilton's pieces have an airy feel to them due to the natural way the fabrics she uses look and behave. The way Hamilton's works are presented also give a nostalgic factor to them, as if you were watching a home video or looking at personal snapshots.

Hamilton has expressed how she wants to make the invisible visible in a way that can be experienced. Through her works, I believe Hamilton has accomplished this.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Ann Hamilton." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

Ellen Gallagher

 

Ellen Gallagher's family trade was carpentry. Ultimately, Gallagher became an artist, but the skills she learned as a carpenter helped her progress in her career.

Gallagher works with a variety of media, including paint, advertisements from magazines, penmanship paper, and found materials.

 

 

A lot of people say Gallagher's works are about race, but she wants people to look deeper than that in her pieces. Gallagher sees her work as being about identity. No matter how she alters the people in the advertisements, they are still them. The artist Agnes Martin and the writings of Gertrude Stein have also had an influence on Gallagher's pieces.

Many of Gallagher's works are enormous in size. This is where her carpentry skills come in handy as she is the one who builds the structures for her canvases. The way she builds them gives her the ability to sit or stand on them, making it easier for her to work. Repetition is commonplace in Gallagher's pieces as is revision. Gallagher is also drawn to grids and so sometimes organizes her pieces this way. Gallagher may have come from a family of carpenters, but she has surely found her place in the world of art.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Ellen Gallagher." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

Walton Ford

 

Naturalist John James Audubon has a major influence on Walton Ford's works, though if Audubon would have appreciated the way he influenced Ford's pieces is another matter entirely.

Ford mainly works with watercolors applied to rather large canvases. In fact, it is his desire to make the largest watercolor paintings ever. He also does printmaking.

 

 

Many of Ford's paintings are in likeness of the paintings in Audubon's book The Birds of America, except that Ford's pieces have birds killing other birds. This was supposed to symbolize how Audubon ultimately killed many of the animals he tried to depict. Symbolism appears quite often in Ford's works as he tries to incorporate both natural history and politics in his pieces.

Ford's paintings are realistic in nature with bright, saturated colors. Animals are the predominant subject matter in most of his works. As said before, Ford's paintings are very similar to Audubon's. He even uses the same techniques as Audubon. Although very alike, Ford brings his own flare and taste to his works that make them distinctly his.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Walton Ford." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 15 Feb 2014.

John Feodorov

 

When John Feodorov creates art, he's not aiming to please viewers, but to make something that's provoking. He tries to do this through kitsch objects and his paintings.

 

 

What drives Feodorov's works is how America still represents Native Americans and how they are stereotyped. His works also explore the reverence and respect Native Americans have for animals and the polar opposite way America has portrayed animals in cartoon movies.

A lot of Feodorov's works feature kitschy objects and his attempt to make them spiritual. He does this by adding to his pieces ritual objects related to Native Americans. Feodorov's paintings are not realistic per se, and each one is different from the last. Subject matter varies a lot and some paintings employ many colors while some have hardly any. Line quality differs as well from painting to painting, with some lines reading as very messy and others not. Feodorov tries to get across various messages in both his paintings and his modified kitsch objects by adding spiritual gestures and items in non-spiritual settings, in a sense poking fun at spirituality itself. It is through this combination of contradictory subject matter that Feodorov can so effectively get his point across through his pieces.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"John Feodorov." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

Bricolage and Braconnage

 

The terms bricolage and braconnage may be similar in spelling, but they are not in meaning.

Bricolage means "do-it-yourself". It could also be considered as recycling. Bricolage in art can be seen as using leftover materials from one piece to make another. An example of this is when Tom Friedman completely erased a Playboy centerfold. Instead of overlooking or throwing away the eraser rubbings that accumulated from doing this piece, Friedman used them for another piece by arranging them in a pile.

 

 

Braconnage, on the other hand, means "poaching". A more friendly interpretation of braconnage is "borrowing". Artists can borrow ideas, conventions, and other notions from the past and present and incorporate it in their work. In another piece by Friedman, rings made out of tape were used to make a large circle in likeness of a rug. Friedman borrowed from "the placement and forms of the earlier works of art" so that it "registers as [a] cheap craft object and as a pseudominimalist or postminimalist floor piece". 

So although bricolage and braconnage may mean different things, they find common ground in that they both have a part to play in the world of art.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

Applin, Jo. "Bric-a-Brac: The Everyday Work of Tom Friedman." Art Journal 67.1 (2008): 68-81. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

Rackstraw Downes

 

Rackstraw Downes is interested in the concept of the wandering eye, how we see things in individual parts instead of as a whole. In a way, Downes captures this concept in the pieces he creates.

Downes mostly works with paint to make his large, panoramic pieces.

 

 

Landscape paintings make up the majority of his works. Downes depicts what's around him until he grows bored and finds another location that interests him. He paints multiple pieces of the same area, but at different times and in different positions. This makes it so that even though he has several paintings of the same location, each painting differs due to the unique conditions in which they were executed.

When painting these landscapes, Downes pays no heed to the rules of perspective and instead just paints what he sees. This makes some of his lines more curvilinear than lines an artist who follows the rules of perspective would paint. However, this difference is not due to amateurish techniques, but because of how our eyes naturally see. Through his panoramic pieces, Downes is able to transport viewers to the locations he's painted as they view his works not as a whole, but in equally important parts.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Rackstraw Downes." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

Michael Ray Charles

 

When it comes to Michael Ray Charles' art, a past is often brought up that many try to forget.

Charles mainly works with paint, and delves into themes such as violence, reminiscence, and what is considered beautiful or ugly.

 

 

What most of Charles' paintings depict, though, are racial stereotypes, specifically for African Americans. Recurring images such as Sambo, Mammies, Blackface, and other iconic misrepresentations of that time appear quite often in his works.

Charles' pieces have an ad-like quality to them, as if they were meant to be in a magazine or as a poster. The colors used were loud and bright and the paintings themselves are very character centered. Charles' works are probably not unlike what you would find at the time these paintings were influenced by.

Although Charles' paintings are reminders of a time of great prejudice, he takes it as an opportunity to learn how these images came to be and to serve as a warning to not forget this time, but to never repeat it.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Michael Ray Charles." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.

Vija Celmins

 

According to Vija Celmins, she does not paint paintings, she builds them.

In her tool box, you would find charcoal, oil paints, and all the things you would need for printmaking.

 

 

Some of Celmins' paintings included things in her everyday life or pictures from the newspaper. She even went through a period where she would just paint objects with an on or off switch. Now her paintings mostly consist of seascapes, the sky, and the ground.

Celmins' paintings don't really have any meaning behind them, they are what they are. Celmins' works are almost photo-like in appearance. You have to look really hard to tell with some of her paintings that they are actually paintings. Her pieces consist mostly of a grayscale color scheme that give them a simple, pure, old-timey appearance.

Celmins' works may have no meaning, but her craftsmanship and subject matter is enough to generate its own meaning.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Vija Celmins." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.

Mark Bradford

 

If you can find it on the street, you can be sure it will be in one of Mark Bradford's pieces.

Through collage, Bradford uses materials such as advertisements, twine, billboard paper, end papers, maps, and music fragments to bring his works together.

 

 

The materials Bradford employs come from the area he lives in and from his personal life as well. It is because of this specific choice of media that Bradford is able to inject his own life and the life of the city in his pieces.

Bradford's works have a distinct urban feel to them, due to that many of his works are made up of things found in the city and are sometimes reflective of a map of Los Angeles. His pieces also exude a kind of personal-ness and vulnerability. Since Bradford uses objects related to his life, he leaves not only his work but his life open to judgment.

Bradford's pieces are a great example that the media used can transcend its function as something to make art with and become the work of art itself.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Mark Bradford." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.

Louise Bourgeois

 

"I am not what I am. I am what I do with my hands," stated Louise Bourgeois. If this is so, then we should be able to know who exactly Louise Bourgeois is through the many works she has created.

The tools of her trade were wood, rubber, bronze, and stone.

 

 

Bourgeois' childhood had a profound impact on her and she tried to capture that time in her life through her works. The roles in relationships, sexuality, and innocence were among some of the other themes that she tried to incorporate in her pieces.

Bourgeois' works emit a sense of sentimentality and intimacy. Through her use of surrealism, it feels almost like you're intruding on a private moment when you view Bourgeois' pieces. Hands are apparent in many of her works, portraying messages of care and helpfulness. All of Bourgeois' pieces seem to have a part of her in it, each one trying to communicate the life she lived.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Louise Bourgeois." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.

Lynda Benglis

 

According to Lynda Benglis, art is a statement. What that piece of art communicates depends on the artist and the materials that were used. The media Benglis works with include: latex, foam, metals, wax, glitter, gold leaf, lead, and polyurethane.

 

 

Sometimes, Benglis' pieces communicate representations of the human body while others get across the various cultures that make up our world. Others still show how gravitational forces can influence different interpretations in different viewers.

Benglis' works embody an ooziness and a sense of manipulated time. Some of her pieces appear as if she threw paint in the air and froze it. The shape Benglis' pieces take can be very organic and exemplify nature, but through the colors she uses, the piece then takes on a more toxic look. On the other hand, some of Benglis' other works that are also organic in shape and emulating of nature actually become a part of nature, coming full circle. What is similar in all of Benglis' works, though, is that they all have something to say.

 

 

Information provided by:

 

"Lynda Benglis." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.