Therefore, I'm not exactly fond of too much out there. I don't really dislike specific artists (generally they've done SOMETHING I somewhat appreciate). For artists I like, I've always been influenced by my sister (she's into digital art), my friends (more the sketching, character development, and comic creation), and other artists I've stumbled onto over the internet. In particular, I've always liked Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. Her watercolors (something I've never really tried) bring out so much color, yet it is subtle and wonderful. Her use of traditional stories for some of her pieces I've also found highly interesting as I've always enjoyed history.

On my piece in specific, I just wanted to capture some things that make me who I am. Sketching has been in my life since elementary school, so I wanted to involve my scribbling in margins take on life (can't take notes in class without some little drawing scrawling up the side). I also wanted to include my oil painting method - so I tried to make my face painterly. My painting topics also effected my choice of images to place on the wall (ie the castle with green-lit smoke). I have recently started on pieces that have vivid colors off setting black. Haunting has been the descriptor other have given them, but I prefer to see it as what the eye actually sees...before it is dulled by perception and destroyed by grey. I cropped my face in the way I did, simply because I hate having my picture taken. I'd rather had my pictures on display with me hiding in a corner as I have extreme phobia of public interaction *shudder*

(very short response for in-class assignment~)

Victoria Lynn Turke: It didn’t matter anymore.
I thought they were all quite interesting (Turke’s set of silver gelatin prints), but I thought this one in particular stood out. The thin flower and the barely visible words just clicked. The fragility of the last petal created the hopelessness of the piece. I was simple to get the point as many of us share the experience of plucking a flower and playing the “X loves me, X loves me not� game. The artist was also rather sneaky with her faint words, forcing the viewer to come closer t her works to try to read them (or the text panel provided below).

Drew Peterson: BlueFooted Booby.
I guess I liked the chaos in the piece, yet it was very exact at the same time. The color choice was also ver pleasant, with the golden yellows and baby blues. Also appealing from both far and near as the multiple layers and images blurred together become defined, precise, prints closer up. I barely understand the technique behind sreenprinting, bt such small details seem like they’d be hard to maintain when adding laer on layer. He and David Dobb (his pieces were complex dotted lines on large canvas) seem to enjoy tedious work, personally I think I’d beat my brains out first~

Pierre Huyghe: A Journey That Wasn’t: 2006
Of all the pieces on display at the Walker, I definitely enjoyed this one the greatest (in fact many of the others simply earned my disdain). At first I had reservation about the pitch-black, narrow entrance to the viewing area with the creepy music playing, but curiosity won out. I ended up watching all 24 plus minutes of it out of a resounding need to see what could possibly come next in this certainly odd viewing experience. The misted orchestra almost had a quality of Disney’s Fantasia to it as the lights lit the vague players in time with the disjointed (but strangely intriguing) music. Shifting back and forth between the players and the stadium lights with the city in the background gave a delightfully fantastical air to something we view as a nitty-gritty reality. The sudden change the artic came as a bit of a shock (I’d thought it had switched to a different art piece!) but worked itself together with the coordination of the ever-blaring lights and the ever-blaring notes. It felt like they were going to signal aliens, but how it was cut almost seemed like the little albino penguin was somehow being drawn by these strange intrusive lights and people. At times it seemed like a penguin’s documentary of the aliens that visited his shore. The artist truly created a pocket in reality, a peculiar fiction, with its lack of resolution leaving a variety of paths for the viewer to consider when leaving. Was the penguin calling out to the boat? Was that just an angle trick? Where does this combination of wetlands and city exist? What do the lights mean? Who understands this jilting clash of music and lights? All these questions and no answers but the one’s our imaginations can concoct to fill the blanks.

Sigmar Polke: Mrs. Autumn and her Two Daughters: 1991
First of all, its massive size was enough to instantly bring attention to it from across the gallery room. Then it drew me close with these tiny little (what I first believed to be imperfections on the canvas) snowflake protrusions. It was interesting to see the reactions of the synthetic fabric’s reaction to the watery acrylics smeared across its surface. What I found most perplexing was that the work of a German artist almost had a tang of Chinese nature paintings. Drawing attention with the black print of Mrs. Autumn and her daughters spreading what appeared to be snowflakes. These women have a highly European appearance to them, but the softness of the imagery in the background, to me, spoke to a more Asian landscape in watercolor (sans color). The dim black paint builds a rounded mountaintop and as it recedes into the top right corner it is almost as mist is obscuring more of the range from being seen. The interactions between the white swath and the black also create a frozen waterfall, to my mind at least, and the yet unfrozen river that spans the bottom of the piece. Perhaps I’m just seeing things, but the soft interplay between the materials is what makes this piece work, bringing something natural to that which is synthetic.

And personally? Most of the Walker could rot for all I care. The most pleasant thing about that place is the free outside area, especially at this time of the year. Sculptures framed by the natural splendor of golden autumn leaves? The Standing Glass Fish glittering clear and sharp in the glow of an overcast day? Canadian geese going about their lives in the pond surrounding the Spoonbridge and Cherry? Not much exists that’s better than that. The more I think about it, the two pieces I picked out of the gallery involved nature, no surprise though. Nature is inspiration. Simple as that.

MCAD works also, too me, seemed only describable as meh. Nothing terribly impressive, the student works on display did not speak to me in any way whatsoever. The building was certain amusing though, very open.

In regards to Qingsong, it is amazing just how much he thinks about it. Reading his statements on the overview of his pieces are quite intriguing. As having little to none, and highly incorrect, information concerning China, reading his thoughts on the matter is very enlightening. The sense of questioning what a person should do, can do, can be, what comes next, how to survive today, etc is so prevalent it almost boggles the viewer. I definitely feel that he has progressed as an artist, after paging through the years of his art. I enjoyed the "Past, Present and Future" piece(s) he created. His present people needed a bit more silver on them, but future and past almost tricked me. That in its self is interesting, that the people of the present are easiest to pick out as people, the people of the past have historical connection to us (and a twinge of pinkish fleshy undercolor to alert of to their humanity), but the people of the future are wrought almost perfectly as we think of the distant possibility that we have no connection to. http://www.wangqingsong.com/html/wqsbio.htm