S. Natasha Mercado
Art Event Write Ups
ART308
Artist Talk 1
On January 28th I attended two of the talks given by two photographers in Boyden Gallery. Robert Knoth, a contemporary photographer gained recognition through some of his major works influenced by global conflicts. In his work, specifically during his travels to Russia and Fukushima, he focused mainly on social, political and economic issues. He traveled to Russia and based his work off the radioactive activity and portrayed the stories of those strongly affected by these waves, the waters, land, and food around them. People often would get cancer, affected with retardation, brain tumor or kidney and other organ issues. He photographed the stories of these people and how their lives were changed forever. People in Russia lived their lives as usual bathing in the rivers and continued to consume the daily produce. The community officers never told them to stop or that it was dangerous. Once family stated that they were used like guinea pigs, as a test group. Later Knoth took his trip to Fukushima, Japan where the small traditional community lived long time in farms but around 15 thousand people were later moved to the cities. He mentioned that there was a lot of uncertainty in society. Knoth mentioned that it was his first trip to Fukushima and, as an autonomous photographer, travel there for a second time alongside “Green peace” an organization concentrated on environmental work.
Although we use different mediums of art and express our concerns differently I am interested in the global aspect of Robert Knoth’s work specifically looking at political and social issues. Robert knoth looks into historical and present events, how they tie communities together, and how these events, such as radioactive nuclear energy, affect people in different societies based on their economic and geographic standards. Whereas Knoth takes photographs to document the lives of the affected people within these radioactive societies I concentrate on making multimedia work that almost always targets a specific social structure whether it is gender inequality or civil injustices my work seems to continuously portray a sense of action or societal change. I am not a photographer and so I found it very unique and special to see artists like Robert Knoth use their artistic skills to depict the realities of such catastrophes and make it available to the public eye. To bring so much expression, depth, and feeling to a single photograph that captures the uttering sadness or tense feeling of a specific individual or a group of people is such an immense talent and takes great skills, patience, and understanding.
Artist Talk 2
On February 17th I got the pleasure of hearing Heather Layton talk about her work with her husband and other collaborations that had a huge impact all around the world. I sincerely thought she was a very caring, open-minded, and intelligent person. I personally loved her talk and thought it was amazing how she traveled to all of these places around the world and worked with so many people including those in different fields. Heather has huge interests in global issues and got very involved in different issues abroad that helped her arrange community projects as well as international projects that aimed at bringing the world together. She started her talk with stating that she was born to strong democratic and republican parents whom were always very outspoken. From her “Suburban Homicide” project where she tested the limits of murders in within certain geographic to her 59 days of independence project Heather moved from national to international projects within her search for investigation and adventures abroad. She arranged an International Apology Project and then flew off to Nagaland where she met very kind and welcoming people although it was named one of the few places never to visit by any tourist. Then she created her 59 days of Independence where freedom was the main concept. In this project Layton worked with groups all over the globe. Each separate country had to celebrate another country’s independence day and then post it on the website and this became a cycle where various people would try to make foods of other countries or celebrate through another opposite tradition to show their appreciation.
Heather Layton takes the role of the director and designs work that need the help of other groups of people or others that work within a different field, such as politics or social media, in order to make her large/massive projects possible. She collaborates with national institutions in order to have a larger impact on other countries and in order to do this she must also have connections abroad. Unlike Heather, I do not necessarily collaborate with people in other fields or institutions in order to create my art, instead I ask the help of my community to act as the participant of my work in order for it to function. For example for my SMP I created a community based project where created a place where the public could interact with each other and my work and then become the role of the artist to create their own art. I needed the participant to take part in my work in order for it to work as a whole whereas Heather challenges other communities or appreciate or communicate with communities abroad who have a completely different culture.
Out of all of the talks I have been to in previous years Heather’s artist talk and work has captured my attention the most. I never knew art could be so broad and need the collaboration of other non-artistic fields in order to have an impact. The term of traditional art seems to be no more especially now within contemporary realms. The artist is no longer the single creator of his work but instead becomes part of a collaboration of the work which then belongs to everyone who put effort into making the piece/project not one single person.
Artist Talk 3
After having the chance to meet with contemporary photographer Robert Knoth I also had the opportunity to go to Gabriela Bulisova’s artist talk a few weeks later. Gabriela gave a talk on the topic of massive incarceration, specifically its effect on individuals and society. To date, Gabriela added, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and this is mainly due to the raising rate of war and crime. She talked about this organization called Harplace DC which typically helped women who left prison integrate back into society, into their normal daily lives.
Gabriela focused specifically on the minority population within the female group mainly because their cases were often overlooked. Some women spend most of their life time in prison for petty crimes or because their misleading accusations. Women spend their lives behind bars without seeing their children grow up and rarely get a chance to go home. When they are allowed to head home they often don’t know how to integrate back into society because they have been out of it for so long. Technology progresses, their kids grow up, and their lives are changed forever. Gabriela states that 10% of people in the U.S. have a criminal record and that some get to return home and half of them are able to integrate to society. The other half usually ends up going back to prison. This is due to the lack of facilities and education in jail where the institution teaches them nothing about how to better themselves and become part of society. It’s not that these people aren’t ready to go back to society or aren’t good people it’s the fact that they have no idea how to integrate into society safely and securely.
Gabriela talks about the Time Zone project and then goes of to discuss about and introduce Lashonia, a black woman who spent 19 years in jail and was accused of being mentally unstable. Lashonia spends the rest of the talk to talk about her experiences in jail, about the Time Zone project and what we can do to help. She spent most of her years in prison due to the fact that as a young girl she was always a rebel and because of her strong father figure never wanted to seem weak and so she defended herself physically against others. She didn’t want anything big out of life when she was younger and got pregnant at an early age. After her pregnancy she went to jail where she spent most of her years while rarely seeing her child. As the years went by, her daughter grew into a teenager with the absence of a mother. Although Lashonia took two courses in jail she stated that they didn’t help her into getting back into society. They were simple courses that were not so much related to actual classes in school but she chose to take them anyways to further consider an education.
Gabriela’s work is very mesmerizing as she captures images and moments very clearly with a lot of feeling and depth. I specifically enjoyed her simple photos where you saw a frame of Lashonia staring blankly out her bedroom window. Although we use different mediums and have different conceptual goals I find that Gabriela and I are most similar in that we focus on social issues and change. I haven’t made any work regarding minorities or women but I consider anything that conflicts with civil and human rights in society very important. I want to promote change and display a different way for looking at the socially constructed structures similar to what Gabriela does in this specific project with women in jail and the corrupt aspects of the jailing system. I believe she is a huge inspiration and someone I will definitely continue to follow in the future.
Artist Talk 4
The last artist talk I attended this semester was by artist Lynn Tomlinson. Her talk seemed like a full biography of her life and career accomplishments and although it was interesting it got a little overwhelming at points. Lynn is a very talented artist who has worked with various mediums of that including sculpture, painting, digital, etc. She basically considers herself a multimedia artist. She started a small film scrubbing on physically and used a color copy machine to get digital images for when she used to work for Sesame Street. She made small films and stop in motion animated scripts that became quite popular overtime. She made an MTV animated logo that became quite popular after a while. Her first film was about a fly and a sick girl titled “Fly Buzz Once I Die”. Lynn stated she specifically use her own voice to make the little girl’s voice because her recent voice actors just couldn’t do what she was asking or looking for.
Later down and after having kids Lynn started working with clay and making sculptures where she would use a variety of colors that made her works look very lively. After spending a while working towards a limited or restricting audience such as children or the young public she decided she wanted something different and to reach out to a larger audience. She then started making small “puppetry” shows for “oil spill” and theater mediums. She would use her voice for the main characters most of the time and used a very wide palette of bright colors. She would use the clay to slowly draw out small scenes on top of glass, record each movement, and then make small films out of it. These turned out to be quite beautiful but took a lot of time to make. She would “paint” or draw with the clay-like soft material and add in or subtract color for each changing movement or scene. I found her work to be very beautiful and different to other digital works I have seen before. The audience could see the artist’s hands in her work even on screen, which I thought was a neat trait to her work. I do not make a lot of digital art myself so I admire others who spend a lot of dedicated time to complete digital films and using their hands to create their works.
I found it interesting how Lynn started off small from making test films to trying new materials. She sets a good example for future artists especially digitally influenced ones. I really liked her choice of bright colors to capture the viewer’s eye and although we have very different conceptual ideas and the purpose behind our works vary I do think she is an inspiration. Lynn is a very successful artist who started from the bottom and slowly raised herself up the latter by challenging herself. Like Lynn, I currently consider myself a multimedia artist. I started from the flat surface with drawing and painting and then challenged myself to use other materials in order to grow artistically and conceptually.
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