Judy Ledgerwood

Judy Ledgerwood really enjoys making her works site specific. She believes it makes her pieces that much stronger when everything is accounted for in the space which her art is housed in. 

The medium Ledgerwood mostly works with is paint. 

The architecture of a space has a major influence on the execution of Ledgerwood's paintings. Many things are taken into consideration before she starts a piece. The natural and artificial lighting is noted and addressed in her works as well as how people will enter the room where her painting is in. The internal architecture of a place also dictates when Ledgerwood's paintings start and stop. 

Ledgerwood's pieces are flat and simple in nature. Bright, vivid colors are used that give new meaning to her paintings based on their placement in her works. There's also a repetition of different patterns in some of her works that are based off of recurring shapes in the buildings that display her art. 

When it comes to Ledgerwood's paintings, it can be hard to remember that they are paintings due to the fact that they are applied directly on the wall. That's why she let's the paint drip and be more transparent in some places than in others. It is through these imperfections that her pieces can than be read as paintings.

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

Katie O'Hagan

Although Katie O'Hagan has had no formal training in art, she is still able to create these beautiful paintings. In fact, painting was at first just a hobby O'Hagan picked up. The majority if not all of O'Hagan's pieces are done with oil paints. 

In the beginning, O'Hagan mainly painted portraiture of other people. However, when she hit a rather rough patch in her life, O'Hagan realized how important and crucial her art was for her. This realization directed her art down a more personal route as she tried to depict how she felt during that time and other times as well. 

O'Hagan's representative paintings are extremely realistic. Her pieces could definitely fall under photorealism. At first, O'Hagan's works appear to be photographs until looked at more closely. A range of colors are used in her paintings as well, but they are toned down in a way that gives her pieces a spooky quality to them. The subject matter O'Hagan mainly depicts are people in portrait style, whether it be herself or others. 

O'Hagan does not have a set way of creating her paintings. When she has a clear image of what she wants to do, O'Hagan does whatever she has to do to get that image on canvas.

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

Jonathan Meese

It is Jonathan Meese's goal for "art to rule the world." He tries to make this vision into reality through his oil paintings and his modified sculptures of random objects. 

All of Meese's art is about furthering the ideology of the dictatorship of art. To Meese, the dictatorship of art is that everyone does everything with complete and total passion. So according to this way of thinking, any task could be considered art, such as eating, sleeping, or even brushing your teeth. The act of playing is also an integral part to Meese's works. He believes that playing is the most radical thing you can do and often times films himself playing with his sculptures. 

Meese's non-representative paintings are fairly large in size. They're about as tall as a person and are made up of many different colors. He applies thick layers of paint to his works, giving it a raised, impasto surface. The majority of the sculptures Meese's creates are different objects juxtaposed together, in effect giving these objects a whole other meaning. 

According to Meese, if you're not willing to take your art too far, you should just pack up and go home. Based on his works, Meese can stay right where he is and continue his work.

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

David Wilson

An essential item that David Wilson always keeps in his pocket is a piece of paper. Wilson describes drawing as a "carry-it-with-you practice" and uses that piece of paper to record the places he has been that will eventually influence the works of art he'll create. 

The media Wilson mainly employs are watercolors, ink, and graphite. 

All of Wilson's pieces are really about being outside. As he's out and about, he'll take note of places that interest him and creates works about those places. Wilson also likes places where you "feel like a pioneer" and want to explore every inch of the space. His art is also about sharing with the viewer the different experiences he had on his outdoor excursions. 

Wilson's works are extremely large, but they didn't start off that way. He'll revisit a place several times and draw his subject in sections. Wilson will then combine all those sections together which sometimes result in pieces that are 18 feet tall. The subject matter Wilson depicts are mostly landscapes that are made up of lines of varying widths and lengths. 

Wilson believes you can never know a place too well. There's always something new to discover, and he tries to make people more aware of this through his art.

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

Mark Dion

According to Mark Dion, "some artists paint, some sculpt, some take photographs, and I shop, that's what I do." With this skill set, Dion comprises most of his pieces with the objects he buys. 

Dion's works are really about the things that make it up. He feels that the purpose of his art is the same as the purpose of a museum in that you learn about stuff through things. History also plays a part in Dion's pieces. Certain historical events influence what objects he's going to use and how to display those objects. 

Repetition is a major component in Dion's art. In his pieces, he'll group some of the same objects together or an entire piece could be made up of the same object. In essence, all his works are about acquiring objects and finding different ways to arrange and display those objects. Dion's pieces also have a curious, almost alive quality to them. The way he constructs certain rooms makes it appear as if someone is living in them and will be back at any minute. 

Dion does not create art that fits into popular culture. In Dion's own words: "The job of an artist is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention." Based off the pieces he has made, I believe Dion has done his job.

"Mark Dion." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

Andrea Zittel

When Andrea Zittel makes her art, it doesn't stop at what she's creating, but also affects the way she lives her life as well. 

Some of the media Zittel works with include wood, glass, tiles, and yarn. 

Many of Zittel's works are influenced by human needs. Whether it be physical needs (like eating or sleeping) or psychological needs (like the need for order). Zittel's work is also about values and how people view these values. She likes to explore with her art how some values result in the opposite of what they're trying to achieve. 

Zittel's works are very geometric in nature. She likes to create these portable living spaces that are comprised of many square shapes. A lot of her pieces also seep in her day-to-day life. This has resulted in pieces like when Zittel crocheted a dress and wore that dress exclusively for a season. This piece also reflected on the unacceptability that society poses on wearing the same thing on two or more consecutive days and how restrictive it actually is to wear something different every day. 

The way Zittel creates art is her way of seeing the world. Although this makes her art more personal, she still wants her art to communicate to the viewers experiences that they have lived through.

Information provided by:

"Andrea Zittel." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Muybridge: Nam June Paik

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/aroundthemall/2009/07/celebrate-the-fourth-of-july-at-the-american-art-museum/

When video technology was still relatively new, Nam June Paik was able to reshape its purpose to fit his artistic ambitions. Paik’s interests lied in performance, and he believed video could enhance the “expressive capacity and conceptual power” of performance. He would put televisions in odd places (like outdoors in the grass) or arrange them to form different shapes (like a robot). Various videos would be playing on these televisions, sometimes making no sense in the context in which they were being played. This is so in his piece where a television playing some kind of fish tank video was placed inside a shirt.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/58054282667739025/

Paik has also done pieces where instead of a television playing a video, he used lasers to project moving images. These projections were displayed on different surfaces, such as water, scrims, and sculptures that were filled with smoke. Paik was really the forerunner in turning video into an art medium. Through his innovative works, Paik made people view videos and television in a whole new way.

http://www.tikabasamuzik.com/nam-june-paik#.U1Xq701OXIU

Information provided by:

http://www.paikstudios.com/#intro



Muybridge: Alexander Calder

http://www.teachingstars.com/2012/07/19/adventures-in-art-alexander-calder/

Although Alexander Calder was originally not interested in art, Calder ended up being a highly esteemed artist and father of a medium still widely used today. Calder wanted his art to be about fun and the joy of making the work of art itself. He thought this fun and joy would be best communicated if his pieces moved. At first, Calder tried putting motors on his works, but the movement this created did not sit well with him. He wanted his pieces to move in a more natural and fluid way, so he got rid of the motors and instead strung up his pieces so that the wind would move his works for him. That was when the mobile (a term coined by Marcel Duchamp) was created.

http://galeri.uludagsozluk.com/r/alexander-calder-162374/

With his newly invented mobile, Calder liked to portray abstract shapes that focused on color and form. Since Calder already had experience working with wire early on in his art career, most of his mobiles were made out of wire and aluminum that he painted over. Calder’s mobiles were also inspired by the surrealist and modernist painters he was interested in at the time. Even though Calder’s mobile creation is now mostly used for infants, it should never be forgotten that mobiles were first and foremost an art form.

http://kaylovesvintage.blogspot.com/2012/04/alexander-calder.html

Information provided by:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/alexander-calder/about-the-artist/78/



Muybridge: Gregory Barsamian

http://www.loreleipepi.com/studioWR.html

Gregory Barsamian is first and foremost a sculptor, but the added element of time he puts in his sculptures make them so much more. With the help of an armature that spins and a strobe light, Barsamian makes his immobile, multiple clay sculptures appear to be one animated sculptural piece. A lot of Barsamian’s works are about the mind and consciousness, and he believes that the time element in his works have a story-like quality to them that makes his works more relatable to people.

http://highlike.org/gregory-barsamian-2/

Barsamian’s pieces are representative and have a surreal feel to them. This is due to the impossible, dream-like situations he portrays and his depictions of isolated body parts (like hands or heads) instead of the whole body. As said before, to make his works, Barsamian has to make quite a few of the same sculptures but in different poses, kind of like how a cartoonist has to make the same drawing over and over again in different poses as well for an animation. In this respect, Barsamian’s pieces are very comparable to a flipbook and can even be considered as a sculptural flipbook.

http://www.16miles.com/2010/07/tris-vonna-michell-art-of-noise-etc.html

Information provided by:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cmDcZY9Trc 



Eadweard Muybridge

At one point in Eadweard Muybridge’s life, Muybridge was involved in a pretty bad stage coach accident. His head sustained a lot of injuries which caused problems with his seeing, thinking, and personality. Neurologists today, upon looking at Muybridge’s medical records, believe these changes were due to damage to his frontal cortex. I’m really interested in the brain and what it can do, so this fact got me thinking of doing a piece about the brain, like a zoetrope of an MRI of a brain. Muybridge also did panoramic pieces, which I believe would give an interesting aspect to this project. Regarding to the bet of whether or not a horse had all four hooves off the ground when it galloped, I think it’s fascinating that Muybridge tried to shed light on a question that our eyes alone could not answer. So maybe a project that tried to answer a question only a camera can solve would be a good idea.

Information provided by:

http://www.biography.com/people/eadweard-muybridge-9419513#awesm=~oC85KtGcLlnU2X



Fred Wilson

Even though Fred Wilson is an artist, he doesn't really want to make art with his own hands anymore. Wilson states, "I get everything that satisfies my soul from bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way I want to see them." To make his pieces then, Wilson uses objects of different varieties and sometimes uses glass to make his own works. 

Wilson's installations are really inspired by the things around him. He is intrinsically curious about objects and their purpose and likes to juxtapose these objects to give them new meaning. Race issues are also a prominent theme in Wilson's work, such as when he made glass, black tears to represent the sadness he felt as a child when he was isolated because of his race. 

Wilson's pieces are three-dimensional in form and include a lot of repetition. This repetition is seen in the objects he uses, such as a piece made up of only rocks. Or if he accumulates a lot of the same kind of objects, he'll make a piece out of that too. Wilson's works are also heavily categorized with his objects grouped in a way that communicates the message he's trying to convey. 

Wilson makes art he wants to make, no matter what people say. In the words of Wilson himself, "when you start doing what you really, really believe in, that's when you do your best works."

Information provided by:

"Fred Wilson." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. 

Kara Walker

According to Kara Walker, her works of art are "two parts research and one part paranoid hysteria." 

At first, Walker would do paintings of Victorian style silhouettes. Now, those silhouettes have transferred  to the medium of paper. 

Walker's pieces have a lot to do with history. However, it would be wrong to say that her works are about the past in general. She explains that her art is about "a particular point in history and nothing else." Walker also explores the realm of what's real and what's not by depicting a real time in history but with fictional events occurring. 

Walker mostly uses her silhouette figures in her art. They are almost always all black and wall-sized. Walker's works also have a flatness to them. Not just because they are made out of paper, but because there is no depth or shadows to the solid color (or lack of color) figures. The use of physical light is also employed in Walker's pieces so that the viewers' shadows can mingle with her silhouettes. 

Although Walker's art is about the relation of race in America, she goes on to say that that is only a part of it. She states that her art is mostly how you, "make representations of your world given what you've been given."

Information provided by:

"Kara Walker." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Ursula von Rydingsvard

When Ursula von Rydingsvard constructs her sculptures, she never makes a drawing or model beforehand. Rydingsvard feels that by doing that kind of planning will limit her with what she can do with a piece. 

To make her works, Rydingsvard solely uses cedar wood due to its neutrality. She also uses graphite and chalk to treat the surface of the wood. 

The majority of Rydingsvard art has to do with the different kinds of landscapes. Sometimes, her pieces are influenced by the landscapes found in nature while other times psychological landscapes or landscapes found on the human body are used as inspiration. Rydingsvard is also interested in the idea of combining the man-made with nature into one harmonious union. 

Due to the medium Rydingsvard uses, all of her pieces have a tactile texture to them. The way the wood is cut is often done very jaggedly and gives the wood a rough texture. Rydingsvard also employs a lot of convex and concave forms in her ginormous sculptures. Her pieces are earthy in tone as well since she pretty much leaves the wood as it is without any added color. 

Rydingsvard explains how you shouldn't get too predictable. That you, "have to have surprises all over the place. If for nothing else than to just keep [your] head going, to keep [your] mind alive."

Information provided by:

"Ursula von Rydingsvard." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Richard Tuttle

According to Richard Tuttle, everything in life is drawing. Tuttle even considers his own sculptures as drawings. To make his "drawings" (and actual paintings), Tuttle uses media such as paper, rope, paint, string, cloth, wire, twigs, cardboard, bubble wrap, nails, Styrofoam, and plywood. 

Tuttle has an interest in calligraphy and the written language. So he tries to transform this interest into the art form of sculpture. His works are also inspired by the sense of sight. In particular, Tuttle likes to explore what you cannot see in his art by kind of hiding it or covering it up with paint or some other material. 

The majority of Tuttle's work are three-dimensional and geometric in shape. His pieces are monochromatic when it comes to his sculptures, but as for his paintings, they are light and colorful. His paintings also differ in that they are organic in shape. However, one thing all of his pieces have in common is that they are all non-representative in nature. 

Tuttle believes that art is life. With this belief is the notion that art is capable of many things, and can make people's lives more than what they are.

Information provided by:

"Richard Tuttle." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze likes the idea of trying to make people slow down and actually look at something. Sze tries to make that idea into a reality through her works of art, which are made up of everyday objects such as lamps, shoes, house plants, rocks, fabric, and a whole lot more.

Sze's sculptural pieces and public works are often inspired by nature. In fact, some of her works serve a dual purpose as art and as animal habitats. Sze is also interested in how a space can be used and how spaces can be formed by her pieces. She wants her viewers to be able to walk into her works and experience art in a whole new way.
Sze focuses a lot on the different positive and negative spaces her art work can create. She also tries to make her pieces transition from exterior space (when you're looking at her work) into interior space (when you're in her works). Perspective plays a part in her pieces as well such as when she constructed a sculpture completely in one-point perspective.
Sze doesn't believe art is as interesting when it is obviously presented for everyone to see. That's why she kind of hides her art so that people would ask the question: "What is this?" Sze believes, in her own words, that the "most interesting art always has that question in it."

Information provided by:

"Sarah Sze." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Do-Ho Suh

When Do-Ho Suh encounters a problem, he likes to address it by making art. To make this art, Suh uses media such as paint, pen, fabric, and dog tags. 

What interests Suh a great deal is the concept of public and personal space. He explores this notion in his art by creating these tiny figures and placing them next to each other with the least amount of space between them as possible. Suh's pieces are also about the individual and how unique we all really are. His works delve into the collective as well and how our differences could be lost when being part of a mass group of people. 

Suh's representative art deals with a lot of repetition, such as his dog tag armor piece. This piece was constructed of a multitude of dog tags that even spread throughout the floor. The majority of Suh's works are also monochromatic with line defining certain shapes, like with is fabric houses. Light plays a factor as well in Suh's fabric houses. Due to the transparent material they're made of, the light give his houses a glowing quality. 

Being from a completely different country, Suh makes his art and depicts issues that are unique to where he used to live. It is his hope that his audience would see things in a new way because of his art.

Information provided by:

"Do-Ho Suh." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.

Jessica Stockholder

Jessica Stockholder states how her art is about pleasure. Whether making that art is pleasurable or not is another story entirely. 

To make her art, Stockholder employs a multitude of random objects, such as refrigerators, bowling balls, paper, newspaper, light bulbs, laundry baskets, and whole lot more which she sometimes paints over. 

The space which Stockholder's pieces will occupy really affects the execution of the piece itself. She likes to draw out the space and make a plan of the best way to situate her objects. Stockholder's works are also about systems and how things and thoughts are organized. 

Installation pieces make up a majority of Stockholder's art. Although her installations are made up of representative objects, they are arranged in non-representative, chaotic compositions. Stockholder will also paint the objects in her works with bright, saturated colors. These vibrant colors also leak into her two-dimensional collages, which are made up of geometric and organic shapes. 

What Stockholder tries to do with her art is offer a new way of seeing things. A new "world than the one that we experience as mundane."

Information provided by:

"Jessica Stockholder." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero wants her art to be understood, but not so easily that you only need a few seconds to know what's going on. 

Spero creates her art through the use of paper, paint, fabric, and metal. 

Many of Spero's pieces have to do with politics. A good portion of her works are about wars and the consequences of them. Spero's art is also a protest against inequality and abuse of all sorts. Her pieces are seen as feminist as well since she often depicts women and women's issues in her work. 

Spero's pieces range from small to big. At first, she would do smaller works to counter balance the bigger works men were doing during that time. However, she gradually shifted to bigger, longer works that circumnavigated an entire room. Spero's representative pieces also have a messy quality to them with either a lot of white space or one or two colors dominating the background. Repetition plays a part in Spero's art as well, with the same character appearing multiple times in a single piece. These and other characters are also clearly defined by line. 

When asked why she does art, Spero simply replies, "What isn't a reason for doing art?"  This response, in essence, should be the reply of every artist.

Information provided by:

"Nancy Spero." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.