Amy Youngs' Lecture--Lisa
I could only make it to Amy Youngs' lecture on Wednesday, so I didn't get a chance to compare her work to the work of other artists. Youngs' work is really interesting to me though; I love her concept of working with a combination of technological and organic materials and trying to get people to interact with nature in different ways. I was glad that she didn't seem to take herself too seriously, but I would have liked a slightly more serious and intellectual discussion of the ideas behind her work. It almost felt like she had geared her presentation to a younger group of students; maybe it was just nerves. The best discussion happened during the question and answer session.
She talked about the aspect of failure in her work, which I thought was sort of charming--my favorite example of this was the hermit crabs refusing to move into the "shells" she had created for them, and then the glass shell being too heavy and flipping the crab over. She also talked about sustainability in her work, and how sustainable it actually is, and problems that arise with that idea of sustainability based on where one lives. I was especially interested in the question about us controlling nature and nature controlling us, but she didn't seem to have much to say about that which surprised me. One of the things I found refreshing about her is that she doesn't jealously guard her originality; she wants people to make their own version of her pieces if they want to, and she is willing to talk about her process and all the things that went wrong along the way.
I really enjoyed seeing the videos of her work. One of my favorites was the piece with the worm couch; it was so great to see people interacting with it so enthusiastically. I also liked the cricket call piece because of its sense of humor. One of the ones I hadn't seen before was the piece where the weather dictated the way copper sculptures formed, and I thought it was a really interesting idea, plus the sculptures were beautiful. Overall I liked her presentation and her demeanor, I just wished she had gone a little further into the meaning of her work according to her.