sayings to live by or at least ponder for a second…

I love work that involves text, especially simple statements like these ones. I think work like this takes a lot of guts. When we put our work out there we’re essentially publishing our beliefs and views for all to see, however it isn’t quite so easy to read. These are all wood cuts too, which references old posters and signage. Nice…

Big Foot is cool

I can honestly say I wasn’t particularly feeling like going to see an artist talk after class a couple of weeks ago but as usual, I was glad I did. David Hoffos, an installation and video artist from Lethbridge came to speak on what seemed like a bad day, but then he seemed like someone who had a lot of bad days. His tone was very somber and melancholic, which could also describe the work he would later show. He began his talk speaking of his childhood and how he fell into a career of art after starting art school somewhat later than most. He felt alienated as a child and was later told he had anxiety issues and was not “retarded” as he was told growing up. He showed us a photograph of one his constructions he made as a child; it was a lot larger than any my brothers and I made when we were little and after seeing his more recent work, it looked like it could be the first out of a lifelong series from one body of work.
Hoffas was not a great speaker, his tone rarely changed and he there were a couple of fairly long awkward pauses; however, unlike most talks I’ve seen, I got a good sense of who he is, both an artist and as a person which helps me to understand his work. From a young age, Hoffos wanted to be work with film, but after many attempts, gave up on getting accepted into film school. From here he decided to apply to art school. In school he worked with found objects creating different three-dimensional environments. He attempted to give useless, discarded objects and new purpose. As a art student I found it interesting to hear him talk about his conceptual process as I’ve been thinking a lot of these two different ways of working, making your work to suit a concept or finding your concept in your work after. Hoffos prefers the latter. He feels that it is a more personal approach and perhaps, a way of working from your subconscious.
Hoffos showed us a large body of work and though his work was able to get a good sense of it through slides, I think it would leave such a large impression seeing it first hand. His work embraces large, sometimes end of the world-like topics such as “Catastrophe” which comprises almost every way of dying excluding health related causes. Although many of his pieces are similar to a film set and on the surface lack a personal feeling from the artist, I found that his more recent work which incorporates film projection, allows for a more intimate experience. His digital components also help to accentuate the creepy, fantasy feeling that his work already possesses. I found it interesting that although he uses film and digital media in his work, he doesn’t use new media like most artists doing work similar to his. However, as he stated, the older and less developed technology suits his work, which he happily slots in somewhere close to the Brady Bunch.
I found this to be one of those talks that added so much more to work that already has a lot to say. I appreciated that he let his quirky personality come through and that he was willing to share personal details that helped his audience get a better grasp of his practice and his art.

pure anagram fun

Check out this site called anagram genius or wordsmith if you’re a little geeky and think anagrams are fun (p.s. they are). ‘Flaunt or Mercy’ is an anagram of my name as is ‘Cornmeal Turfy’…yep, first one’s cooler.

sweet structures

These works by Isidro Blasco are made from photographs installed onto museum board. I like how it’s constructed from several images and the perspective is deliberately skewed. The act of building these images up from several pieces and letting the wood be a part of the piece mimics the actual construction and deconstruction of these structures.

the food gap

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This is a map I made which documents the food consumption of two subjects of  different generations. I was interested in the location of where the food came from and the distance the product travels to be consumed. Though the generation gap is somewhat of a side note I thought it might be interesting to see how different generations place value on buying locally. The distance the food travels reflects each subject’s awareness of the politcal and environmental implications of buying food from abroad.

vinyl project

This is a painting by Wendy Heldmann, an American painter. Most of her work surrounds themes of natural disasters and the environment. I appreciate the framing of her paintings; some of the disasters become abstracted from the event, whereas others are integrated into an environment and it becomes more about the tension between nature and the man-made. By looking at her work altogether as a posed to a singular painting it references how commonplace these disasters are.

You can check out her other paintings at http://www.wendyheldmann.com

footbag

This is a video of my friend Caroline playing footbag. I wasn’t really aware that footbag was considered a sport until I met her but there’s a pretty big footbag culture out there and after I saw this I understood why. There’s a few other vidoeo’s of her and other footbager’s on youtube right now so you can check out some of the others if you’re into this one.

an ode to vitamin B2

These little crochet’s made out of human hair (yep, you heard me) are so sweet. I’m all about craft as an art and vise versa. Just because we’re in hmmm… is it fifth wave feminism now, who knows…doesn’t mean we should abandon practices that were once specific only to (or required of) females. They apply to these readings I’ve been doing about ‘abjection’ which means something that was once a part of you but is no longer, something that exists in the space in between a subject and an object. In an art context it usually takes form in performance art using bodily fluids. This is a somewhat safer and less sticky example. Anyhoo you can check her work out at http://www.lauranormandin.com/