List the readings, video, podcast, art lecture. This week’s readings were Painting Today: still life, and Life and Death, and Thierry de Duve, Nahum Tevet: Works on Glass, and Amy Sillman’s On Color. We also had a video of Thierry de Duve at Evergreen Art Lecture series in 2015.
What did you learn from these texts? In Death and life, it talks about how painting about death can help us mourn and that beauty can help us with lose. pg 278. That there is a harmony and beauty in death and that today our fascination with death is in everything, our tv shows, books, art, and photography. In On Color, it talks about the root of the word color in Greek, pharmakon- which means color, drug, poison, remedy, talisman, cosmetic, and intoxicant. About how we are all obsessed with buying art supplies, artist I mean, and that we are like scientist who don’t wear the proper protection for experimenting. All together I got a sense that we are experimenting and experiencing art through our feelings and emotions and that it helps us cope with life.
List what we covered in practice this week. What did we do in studio workshop, what was the assignment? Practice this week was to draw and paint from observation, to reproduce paintings, to make stretcher bars and learn how to use a chop saw. We also worked on writing essays and working as a group.
What did you learn from practice? The painting and drawing from observation helped with perspective and getting a sense of the mass and shape of a object. Reproducing paintings was interesting, almost like a conversation with someone far away through cans on a string. The work in the wood-shop was fun and it’s nice to know that the shop is open for us to use.
Give a couple of examples of how they inform each other? I feel like the work in the wood-shop was like a new experience and a new experiment for us and it was pretty reflective of the readings. The work with the oil paints and using them for the first time was very interesting and the tactile experience of them was reflective of Amy Stillman’s view of them in On Color.
List and define in your own words, 5 important terms/concepts you learned this week.
Pathos-sadness, evoking of the feeling of sadness or pity
Tactility- texture, surface, feel
echos- a reflection of something, a memory, the past repeating
Authentic- real, original,
Forgery- a copy of that is identical but not the original
List 5 skills you learned this week.
how to use a chop saw, how to build a stretcher bar, how to paint with oils, how to glaze with oils, and how to write a ekphrastic essay.
What was new and exciting? I enjoyed painting with oils and working on that, and I also enjoyed working in the studio and discussing how we achieved things in our work.
Where did you put your best effort? What did you do that you feel good about? It could be a drawing or time management or participated in class discussion, etc. I feel like my best effort was either in using a saw for the first time and building stretcher bars, or in producing two reproductions that look alike the original but have a bit of conversation with the artist, because I have reproduced art before but never had a conversation with the artist or what the artwork was doing. I found it helpful to think about it like I was asking her what she did and like she was next to me talking to me about her memory of the place.
What do you need to work of for next week? Where do you need to focus your efforts? It could be getting reading done ahead of time, allowing for more time for studio homework, arriving to class on time, etc. I feel like I worked pretty well this week and I look forward to perfecting what I did and remembering to bring everything I need for class with me.
What you want to get out of next week? I look forward to the glazing replications and I hope I can narrow down my grammatical mistakes in my paper.
Two artist I’m looking into: Francesco Masnata numbers 53 and 54 in Painting today. and Gerhard Richter numbers 51 and 52 in painting today. I’m digging the colors and wispieness of the paintings on these pages.