Terri Saulin @ Tiger Strikes Asteroid, April 1, 2011

Artist Statements and Images

MELANIE PAWLOWSKI:

Craft as Art has long been debated throughout history when really “art strives to express; craft strives for excellence. Good art has good craft. Good craft is artistic. Within every craft there exists artists. Within every artist there is craft.” I myself am a crafter by nature who has taken her crafts to an artist level. The particular skills needed to work with glass, wood and metal are crafting skills, but my final pieces of artwork are conceptualized thought out ideas expressed through glass, wood and metal.
Fused glass is the main medium I work in and the main focus of my artwork. Metal and wood are intertwined with glass to enhance the visual experience when viewing the work and to enhance the natural feeling fused glass creates. The process of breaking, reassembling, and melting the glass is what draws my artist creativity to work in glass. The simplicity of clear and black glass allows no distraction from color and allows the light to reflect off the glass creating its own appealing visual element.
As for the subject matter of my artwork it is very minimalistic. I take landscapes, such as tree lines or cityscapes, and break the images down to the lines that suggest their forms. Then I build the lines suggesting a form in glass and melt the glass together. When using wood or metal with glass I again use shapes and lines to suggest form and movement. With clear glass being transparent one naturally wants to place objects behind the glass. This is where a lot of the wood and metal come in. When viewing wood and metal through fused glass the image can be fuzzy because the fused glass picks up the texture of the shelf when being fired, and this to me enhances the natural elements of metal and wood. When viewing an object through glass the object swells creating the illusion that it is magnified.
I treat the lines of my glass like Piet Mondrian would paint his lines on a canvas, considering the elements and principles of art when formulating artist ideas. Form, line, shape, texture, balance, movement, rhythm… they are all present at one time or another, helping me express my concepts.
All of my artwork is deprived from personal experiences. Weather it be the skyline I see every morning during my commute, or tree lines from scenes of my favorite movie, or timelines of my life, my work is about how I see the world. The forms and shapes of my life are taking in by my eye and processed in my brain. Then these forms and shapes are reconfigured into suggestive lines mainly translated through fused glass.
At the end of the day I am a teacher who teaches her passion of craft and art. I learn skills that can be translated into my student’s curriculum. I practice these skills to expand my knowledge of the medium, which enables me to be a better teacher. Within my exploration I create and investigate my own concept and ideas to create artwork. “Craft is what I do all day, art is what I have at the end of it.”

CHERISE SISTRUNK:

Art has become a window to my soul. It has given me the opportunity to confront past and experiences of my childhood, for the very first time. Stepping back into my past, has given me both the closure and the clarity I need as an adult. I’ve come to terms with the obliteration of my innocence. I understand and accept my failed attempts at coping with it. Today I’m revitalized because I’ve persevered and continue to persevere through it. Through my personal exploration I’ve realized that my artistic expression is the optimal outlet. I’ve rediscovered myself as an artist, and more importantly as a person.
I am interested in carrying on this idea of self-discovery and apply it in a broader perspective. The true origin of who I am as a human being and female of African origin doesn’t begin with me. Just as I’ve evolved as a person, I want to gain a better understanding of how African Americans have evolved as a people. The struggles that those before me went through not only paved the way for people like myself, but also were paramount to the foundation of the country we live in. In my work I will research and investigate the history of circumstances that contributed to the development of my family, my ancestors and my culture.

LAUREN OVERSTREET:

I am often inspired by art that is hand made and process oriented. I create works of art that involve the hand making of multiples. Transitioning from piece to piece things change and the piece itself is not an exact copy of the last work. I spend time making my art I familiarize myself with every phase of my art. The process of my art is very important, the making of an image or the building of a sculpture becomes methodical and a ritual. My sculptures of koi fish are one of a kind works that are hand built. Creating multiple sculptures of the same image gives me the opportunity to invent complex arrangements for these sculptures. The scale of my art is as important my sculptures are often the size that is small enough to be held in both hands. Creating a self-portrait drawing I choose to depict the figure larger than life. I make large-scale drawings that are depictions of my self that address the viewer and display a sense of confidence. My drawings are made the same as my sculptures with a process that is slow and allows me to appreciate the finished product.

TINA MATCZAK:

Society holds expectations of us to look a certain way and I want to try to change that thought. Beauty today consists of many things, such as a skinny waist, excellent posture, pearly white teeth, etc., and I do not want to have any of this in my work. I find people with imperfections to be beautiful. There is an elegant grace about a person who is confident in their skin and is not afraid to show its flaws. I emphasize this in my work because I wanted people to understand that everyone is beautiful in their own way.
The reason I chose to work on wood throughout many of my pieces is because of the fact that each ring within the grain represents a year that it was alive. The thought that it could have been alive before me is very appealing. Also working with many different varieties of wood lets me see the imperfections and beauty that it embodies through the cracks and textures that it has. This is the main reason behind why I choose to draw people with flaws. I find their imperfections to be beautiful. A person with wrinkles on their face is seen by the world as having a weakness. In this person, I see only beauty because I know that with age wisdom follows. This is why my art focuses on the “flaws” people have, rather then people who are considered "perfect."

Further Reading: By and About Artists

Hello All,
Here are some readings by and about artists.
Note the video above, #6, Kukuli Velarde.
Watching things like this can help sharpen your speaking skills for final presentations!
Warm regards,
Terri

Week 2 - By and About Artists:
1. Jack Thompson: The Well of Myth, Glen R. Brown, galley draft for Ceramics Art & Perception, 2008.
2. Julie Mehretu, Sheets, NYT, 2007.
3. Sketchbooks, Jed Perl, The New Republic, 2010
4. Poetic Theaters, Romantic Fevers, Holland Cotter, New York Times, 2007.
5. The Philosophy of Art; Interview with Arthur C. Danto, Natasha Degen, The Nation, 2005.
6. Studioscopic Episode 7: Kukuli Velarde
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6777574281882789675
Click here for more info about Kukuli.

Optional additional readings / video on the topic:
I Dream the Clothing Electric: Nick Cave, Finkel, NYT, 2009.
Heesung Lee - Interview, Dana Sunshine, TheArtBiz.com.
Gathered, Not Made: ABrief History of Appropriative Writing, Raphael Rubenstein, The American Poetry Review, 1999
Merce Cunnigham: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/01/arts/dance/20090803-merce-graphic.html
Elizabeth Murray, 66, Artist of Vivid Forms, Dies, Roberta Smith, New York Times, 2007.



For those of you interested in Richard Serra and hot lead!

- Art and Extravaganza:
1. Ray Johnson: ACollage in Which Life=Death=Art, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, 2002.
(Participate in Mail Art project w/ collector John Held: http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=4489)

2. Richard Serra: Rigging, (1980), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (T.D.C.), Ed., Stiles & Selz, 1996.

3. Kiki Smith, Queen of Arts, Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 2006

4. Jannis Kounellis: Structure and Sensibility, Interview with Willoughby Sharp (1972), Ed., Stiles & Selz, T.D.C., 1996.

5. Theory Talk with Aaron Levy, Slought Boss, Fallon & Rosof, theartblog, 2010
This article generated an interesting discussion amongst recent MCAD grads and friends.
The thread can be found HERE.

Optional additional readings / video on the topic:



Ron Nagle: http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=24284

Merce Cunningham: http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=4655

Eva Hesse, review, Mark Stevens , New York magazine, 2006.

Buona Serra, Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, 2007.

Bill Walton

Fleisher/Ollman is very pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures by the late artist Bill Walton. The exhibition will survey Walton's wall and floor works made from a spare vocabulary of basic materials and subtle interventions. These intimate investigations, undertaken during a career spanning more than 40 years, are culled from the artist's Estate and several have been loaned by collectors specifically for the exhibition.

Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, February 24 from 6-8pm. 

Bill Walton (1935-2010) was born in Camden, New Jersey and briefly studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago before moving to Philadelphia in 1964 where he was a commercial printmaker by trade and later an instructor at Moore College of Art and Design (1974-1990). Interested in the materials used for printmaking -- wood, lead, steel -- more than the finished product, Walton began to make sculptures after seeing an exhibition of sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had his first exhibition in 1971 and over his long career exhibited in galleries nationally and at a variety of institutions including the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.  His work is included in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale University Gallery and Wellesley College.

Post Drafts of Artist's Statements Here!

Hello All,
Please post the first drafts of your Artist Statements here.
I will add slide shows as I receive images.
Samples of student writings from last semester's Senior Class can be found here.