A fully packed week for me with Halloween + weekend events in addition to class/field trip.  I’d say that I’ve fallen behind a bit in class this week with readings and project development.

READINGS + PODCASTS
I partially read Painting Today
Read PDFs and watched both podcasts

I remember that  Molly Zuckerman lecture but forgot about it.  I like the idea of painting on the floor and doing away with the easel.  I will try that.

The Chuck Close on Creativity PDF, Chuck Close’s quotes reminded me of my work ethic and creative process for the comic I’m doing.  Before school started I had a really solid work ethic for making it but then I was disrupted by a family vacation and I haven’t gotten back into it too hard since coming back to school.  The process for that comic began in Framing Your Work, where I conceived of the concept, process, and art form.  Then I spent two months writing and developing the story.  And then one week in August I was like, “NOW!!!!!!” and worked full time on the comic for 9 days straight.  It was great having that work ethic.  I’ve only completed 5 pages more since then though, so I’ll take a less intensive class for winter quarter so I can dedicate more time to that project.

Monday- Library, Paint From Imagination
In the library, I only picked 2 books.  One of them was about cartooning and contemporary art.  I didn’t know what theme and subject I actually wanted to work with that day.

Paint from imagination, I came out of that workshop with general ideas about dealing with color temperature.

Wednesday – Lectures
Artist Lecture Series – Susanna Bluhm, when she started talking about racism and cultural appropriation and her experiences and inner conflict with it, I was reminded of Dana Schutz who did that controversial painting of Emmett Till.   The way she aesthetically incorporated fake head-dress feathers into her work and talked about her white experiences/inner conflict with racism gave me similar vibes.

Thursday – Field Trip
Productive field trip overall.
From the first stop, I got good ideas for how to think about my project because the artist statements being so detailed and revealing.
Missed second stop on accident, but was happy that people noticed and took pictures for me!
Spent most of my time at the SAM.
At the various art galleries, I found art by an artist that used to go to Graphic Novel Union in the Specialist 300 gallery.  In the back of that gallery was Cold Cube Press, which recently printed a comic anthology that he was a part of.

I haven’t felt very responsive to Painting Today while doing required weekly readings, but when I’m scouring through it for paintings and ideas (for the project) it becomes a lot more interesting to read about and look up paintings that catch my eye.

Artists I thought were interesting this week:

Martin Kippenberger – I went through Death and Life chapter, and his paintings on page 300 caught my eye because the image showed a whole series instead of a single painting.  Tony Godfrey said that this guy’s influence came not from his technical skills or conceptual rigor but to his attitude that could be summed up in his slogan: ‘DO IT!”  Painting fearlessly whatever ideas he happened to have.  That’s how one should role in life!

Daniel Richter – Life and Death – this guy is my artist mentor now.  I decided that I wanted to work with empathy and energetic psychedelic ghost imagery for my project.

Fred Tomaselli – Life and Death – this guy is also my artist mentor.

Dana Schutz – Post Feminism – I thought her paintings were funny and then I saw that she was the one that did the Open Casket painting of Emmett Till.  smh