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I was very surprised by all the information that he told us. Daniel went in depth with every piece that he showed and really wanted the audience to understand where he came from and what he was trying to tell through the use of image and text. One line that I specifically remember is him saying that the pieces he is doing in the Middle East are portraits to attach a more humane image to the prisoners than what the media has already.
I also liked how he started out his lecture with a background of where he is from and who he pulls inspiration from the past. In some of the images, he said that one line becomes the icon for the whole piece. He sees each piece for what it is. He talked to each of the people that he has painted and feels that they are not just people who were in prison, they have longer lives. Lives outside of the prison walls and the way that the media has portrayed them.

When I went to the Daniel Heyman lecture. I wasnt sure what to expect. I have never seen his work, or even heard of him. So when he began to show and talk about his work I was surprised. His take on what he did was different from what I have seen. He was working on creating prints and paintings of Iraq civilians that were taken and tortured thinking that they were terrorists. His idea to show people and have there own words written next too there portrait was unique because it told us what they said not what someone said about them. It was inspiring to see an artist take such a inspiring approach to tell the stories of these Iraq men. Also to see his overall process to get where he is now, was intriguing. Because everyone has there own unique way of developing an idea.

Posted by: Brian Hochman | September 23, 2008 09:12 PM

As I entered Daniel Haymens lecture I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I only saw the handouts and flyers around school of his piece with the text and figure painting. Daniel was definately a neat artist to listen to. He was kind of a new and exciting young man who had obviously visited many diverse and interesting people and knew how to shed some real light on their stories. He dealt mostly with the Iraq war and torture against the people there who the U.S. thought were terrorists. He would meet with them and first off draw a portrait of them and scribble words, sentences, quotes, and so on in a handwritten script all over the page, usually around the figure. He would arrange the text in ways that would play with positive and negative space and also play off the story and mood of the interviews with each of his subjects. What I liked most of all was his dedication to his subject matter because his art was entirely centered around relationships with all sorts of new and peculiar people.

Posted by: Chris Boesche | September 24, 2008 08:09 PM

I went to a talk given by an artist and print maker Daniel Haymen. He did paintings and prints about the prisoners in Iraq from Abu Ghraib. It was very interesting to here his story about the prisoners. The story I had herd, on the news, about the controversy over the pictures that had been taken there, were a little different from his. Daniel was able to tell a story through his paintings that show the torture and suffering that regular Iraqi citizens went through because of the war. His paintings show an Iraqi prisoner and text of his story of torture around his painted image. It is amazing to see an artist like Daniel Heyman document what happened and show the atrocities of war.

I didn’t really understand what Daniel Heyman’s work was about until I listened to him talk about it on Tuesday. It sometimes takes some knowledge of the story behind the work before you are able to consider a piece of art. He made his work while sitting in on conferences between lawyers and ex-Abu Ghraib prisoners. Daniel drew portraits of the former prisoners and also quoted them in his pictures all while listening to the conference. This struck me as an in the moment approach to making his work, because he made it all within a short time frame and didn’t to my knowledge rework it afterwards. Another thing that was a little more personal and not necessarily apparent in the art was that he said he made them to show the faces of the men in something besides the pictures, so they can be known as people and not just as the prisoners from the photos. Having traveled to Iraq and meeting the prisoners had an effect on him and is apparent in his work. Listening to Daniel Heyman speak about his work was illuminating and gave me a different impression of what his art was about.

I went to the Daniel Heymen lecture this week and was very impressed by his work. He was very interested in War and did many different prints and paintings pertaining to the subject. My favorite images were the ones he did of Iraqi prisoners with text explaining what they went through when imprisoned. I looked at them at first and just thought they were just portraits of people. But reading the text around it gave the portrait so much more power. Some told the stories of these people being tortured for crimes they had nothing to do with. They made me feel sympathetic for the victim in the portrait and also aggression toward the Americans who did the torturing. It makes me sad that we are supposed to be helping these people but instead there are some of our own soldiers doing terrible things to them.

I attended the Daniel Heyman lecture and reception this last week. His work was a huge eye opener for me personally. I honestly had no idea how inhumane people were being treated. The images of the war torture going on in other parts of the world were extremely mind blowing. I found it really interesting that he would choose printmaking as his primary medium. He said that it allows him to work quickly and make multiples of the same image. One of the stories and pieces that really touched me was about a man, who was entertaining his family for their religious ceremony in his home. Two of his sons went across the street to buy soda and candy and a bomb went off killing both of them. Americans then came and arrested them because they thought his family, were the ones that had set off the bomb. Then man went on to say that when he was captive they (American soldiers) placed a bag over his head, and then stripped him of his clothes and continued to beat him. I truly have a lot of respect for Mr. Heyman. I am not sure I could honestly do what he has done. Listening to these people’s stories or making art of what happened to them. I felt a lot of sympathy for the victims, and also anger towards the people doing all of this. I wish they knew what they were doing. I am defiantly glad I attended this lecture it really gives me a new view on what is going on in our world. I wish more people could experience his art/journey, maybe they would feel differently about the war.

Seeing all of Daniel Heyman's work was inspiring. Not only does he often deal with tough subject matter from the media, but he does so with such creative finesse. What struck me most, was the major body of work he did about Abu Grahib and the tortures that went on there. Previous to the lecture, I was not fully aware of the crimes that went on in the Iraqui prisons - which goes to show that art has not only the power to inspire but inform. His work was emotional and content-rich, and was all executed brilliantly. I especially enjoyed his series of portraits & his use of color and line quality.

I did Not attend the Daniel Heyman lecture last week. Due to a confliction with an impending deadline, but because I am generally interested in his work, I have done some research, looking at his other works, and reviewing the Abu Ghraib series.

What seems to be a common theme among blog posts is that no one had put much thought into the subject prior to the lecture. I feel that we are all barraged with so much news, so many bad stories of suffering, death and cruelty, that we become jaded and just shrug it off.
For some reason, it took an artist to finally put some emotion behind these stories so that their audience can relate and actually listen to all the information that they probably have already heard.
The problem with this is that there are so few who will even ever hear of Daniel Heyman. The reason we were given the opportunity to attend this lecture was through a university. A higher education and a venue that does not address the majority of even the U.S. population.
I feel this shouldn't only be posted in a gallery, or lectured at in universities, but something of this intensity should be on billboards, in magazines, written on the side of a bus, or penned into a bench.

Sometimes I feel like the art community gets too caught up in being the art community, wasting our gifts and knowledge of visual communication on each-other by limiting their media and language to ones that only apply to us, the educated individual. Failing to include the un-educated, the ones that might not have woken up from their inability to feel connected to stories of war, suffering, poverty, and death, those who need it the most.