Chelsey Johnson
Event Write Up
Drawing and Illustrating
13 May 2008

MIA: Researching Scrolls

At the MIA there are seemingly thousands of scrolls documenting nearly 900 years of the Japanese tradition of poetry. Muraski Sikibu was a poet around 900 AD, and with display of hanging scrolls, folding screens, sculpture, lacquers, textiles, and ceramics the collection at the MIA was more than enough to research her art and way of life.
A technique that was used by artists at court was the pictorial device of fukinuki yatai, or "blown-away roofs." In this technique artists would draw houses and rooms without roofs to allow viewers to peer into the private apartments of the novel's protagonists. I used this when designing my portrait of Muraski. The view is at just the right angle to view one room and then another.
Other styles and approaches that were inspired from the exhibit were the use of paper and cloth, as well as the use of calligraphy. A paper resembling Asian print cloth was used to frame the scroll sumi ink paper, and the calligraphy was used in a more graphic way to portray the actual thoughts of Murasaki.

Chelsey Johnson
Event Write Up
Drawing and Illustrating
13 May 2008

The Lost Empire: Russian Color Photo Rendering

The current exhibit at the Russian Art Museum focuses not only on the Russian traditions that were lost to revolution, but the amazing technology that reconstructed black and white photos that had been completely destroyed not only to their old glory but reconstructed with color.
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, the original photographer, wanted to plant seeds of unity and nationalism in the young minds of Russia by means of a photographic survey of the Russian Empire. This won the support of Tsar Nicholas II, and he granted Prokudin-Gorskii access to several restricted areas within Russia and enjoyed the support and he traveled the country in a specially equipped railroad car that was provided by the Ministry of Transportation. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, he completed photographic surveys of eleven regions.
By 1918 The Tsar and his family had been assonated and the photos were destroyed along with them. All that remained were the glass plates that served as negatives for Prokundin-Gorskii’s photos. From these, with the help of digichromatography, an amazing collection of colored photographs was created.
An interesting style can be seen throughout these photos. Often times one can hardly believe that they were one black and white because they are so perfect and life-like. Then, one will come across a picture of a crowd of people and notice one of them is intentionally smeared and over saturated. Since Most of the photos are rural areas of Russia the pastoral scene was common in this exhibit, though it offered a twist very now and then when the smoke swirling out of a chimney shone in a brilliant rainbow of colors.
This mix of rural and technology becomes an interesting motif throughout the exhibit and holds a new angle to approach photographic and graphic arts.

CHRIS JOHANSON AND JO JACKSON

This artist lecture that I attended was held at the Walker Art Center. Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson (who is a girl, by the way) are a married couple, which is good, because they are probably the only two people that can actually stand to listen to the other talk. They are from San Francisco, which probably has something to do with why they talk so slow and have to really think everything out before they can communicate it. But, nonetheless, they do collaborative work together. They both worked separately as artists and then found each other and decided it would be great to work together. Before they collaborated, Chris J had done some colorful large-scale installations, which I happen to like much more than their collaborative work. He describes these installations of his as 3-D paintings or paintings that have exploded.
Anyways, their collaborative work is reminiscent of graffiti art and there outlook on art is very similar to graffiti as well. They believe art should be public and they seemed very anti-structural and anti-high end art. They had a much more hippy-ish outlook on what they created and how they created it, that they thought it felt good to just share their work with whomever.
Their overall demeanor was very west coast. Very laid back, they thought everything should be in unity, good vibes, free energy, and peaceful. The art that they create and the pieces they chose to show were all centralized around those issues, good vibes, peace, unity, etc. They often explained to the audience that it feels good to them to look at what they make. They like it because it gives them a good feeling….yup.
Their inspiration for becoming artists is actually pretty interesting. They met each other in San Francisco, at Adobe Books. Adobe Books is their favorite bookstore because of how accepting it is to all types of people, namely “Freaks�. So there was one particular man/freak that prided himself on waking up early in the mornings to feed the birds in this particular park, and to feed the rats and cockroaches in the streets. This man was there inspiration, because he was so serious about doing this routine everyday, at the same time. And that sort of devotion to something like that made them want to be artists, I guess.
Overall, the lecture was interesting and awkward. Their work wasn’t all that particularly interesting to me, but the way they went about life was something new for me to witness and try to listen to. So it was ok.

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MIA: Researching Scrolls

At the MIA there are seemingly thousands of scrolls documenting nearly 900 years of the Japanese tradition of poetry. Muraski Sikibu was a poet around 900 AD, and with display of hanging scrolls, folding screens, sculpture, lacquers, textiles, and ceramics the collection at the MIA was more than enough to research her art and way of life.
A technique that was used by artists at court was the pictorial device of fukinuki yatai, or "blown-away roofs." In this technique artists would draw houses and rooms without roofs to allow viewers to peer into the private apartments of the novel's protagonists. I used this when designing my portrait of Muraski. The view is at just the right angle to view one room and then another.
Other styles and approaches that were inspired from the exhibit were the use of paper and cloth, as well as the use of calligraphy. A paper resembling Asian print cloth was used to frame the scroll sumi ink paper, and the calligraphy was used in a more graphic way to portray the actual thoughts of Murasaki.