Project 1: Desire and Aversion

Aversion to clutter

Broken and morphing drawing tools litter the surface. They block the human below from breaking through the surface to breathe. The squiggles and networks of lines are anxious thoughts that struggle to filter through ideas and to connect important ones. Heavy billows of hair sway aimlessly: this is a moment of surrender, complacent suffocation. Thinking, and just living in general, is so much effort. It is so much nicer to just do nothing and watch everything float by. This is a trap of the overdramatic mind. There is really nothing to stress about, but every little difficulty mounts to paralyzing panic.  Despondency sets in and, until enough anger or hope is gathered, the mind and body slumps about in ridiculously irrational and annoying complaint. Anger seems to be the most effective inspiration, when it is violent enough to break through the self. The anger must be stronger than the comfort of complacency, however. In the guise of exceptional insight into the nonsensicalness of life, apathy is a most comfortably self-righteous occupation.

update for 26 Jan. 2016

Feedback used: Chose the more natural color palette and tried to integrate the objects more. It is now a more submerging and slowly suffocating kind of clutter. 

Extra Credit Response to Faculty Exhibition at the University Gallery

At first glance this series of four images by Richard Heipp appear to be photographs. They look like medical documentation of a man being electrocuted. Is this some kind of cruel treatment of mental illness? The man appears to be in great agony. How can an artist simply frame some old photographs and call it his art- there must be a reason. Wait........... this is a drawing!? Staring closely at these images for several minutes, one searches for evidence of the artist's hand, which must be there. There are faint pencil outlines- reassuring. The title says these are a documentation of research about human facial expressions. Wikipedia  tells me that the research was published in 1862 and was maybe the first photographic documentation of the human emotions. The photograph was considered a true reflection of reality. It was interesting to know too, that Duchenne chose to experiment extensively on this particular subject because he had an anesthetic condition of the face which caused him not to feel the pain. These images trigger a number of associations, including that of methods of scientific progressthe, abuse of individuals for the sake of knowledge and aesthetics, and the way we really need to be careful of what we assume based off a first impression of an image. The question of associations with photographs vs handmade images is also major here. The fact that these are drawings generally makes the viewer slow down and look at them longer, allowing for the possibility of deeper thinking and questioning.

Project 1- Desire. Process Post 2

Project 1: Desire. Part 1. In-process post #1

experimental scans

object scans

texture scans

in class still life 14 Jan 2016

hw 14 Jan 2016

All 3 desires are different aspects of the same desire for a worthwhile existence.

- Innate or socialized? It is more so a product of circumstances, but maybe natural/culturally reinforced tendencies for hyper-introspection.
- Necessary or expendable? Intense? When in the overwhelming control of existential anxiety, one usually believes it to be necessary, true and insightful. Everyone else that wants to live is simply being too shallow. It comes in variable waves of  grave intensity, desperation, apathy, and great positive inspiration and energy.
- Common to many people? Yes, at some point in a lifetime. But it is "traditionally" more acceptable to be common for "artists."

in class 12 Jan 2016

Hw Project 1 Ideas:

-desire to do nothing. to escape. comfort.
-desire for willpower, discipline? to focus, to clear the clutter..inner  stability
-desire for profoundness/originality. aversion to pretensciousness, inescapability of it

 

in class 7 January 2016

Existential Anxieties

As I am perpetually grappling with my own overwhelming existential anxieties and cognitive dissonance, I embark on an introspective case study to seek generalizations of the human experience in order to build a foundation for empathy. This mixed-media painting expresses the abstract existential questioning induced by contemplations of the bleak relentless Russian winter landscape and the 20th century history associated with it.