Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

Shape is one of the six elements of art which is, in many ways, often defined by the other elements – line, space, color, texture, composition.  In its most basic form, shape is “the particular physical form or appearance of something; an arrangement that is formed by joining lines together in a particular way or by the line or lines around its outer edge” (Cambridge Dictionary Online).  Shape has height and width, thus existing in the two dimensional realm whereas form has height, width, and depth – existing in the three dimensional realm.  Shapes are usually categorized as being geometric – manmade, mathematical origin or organic – found in nature, typically asymmetrical.  Repeated shapes create patterns.

While isometric means to have equality of measure, an isometric drawing challenges the visual in terms of space, volume, and surface area by eliminating the distortion of typical perspective drawing.  Isometric drawing paper (as seen below) doesn’t contain horizontal lines.  It has a grid of triangles running vertically and diagonally.  In normal perspective drawings, all lines converge towards the vanishing point; however, in isometric drawings that is not the case.  They are supposed to show as much detail as possible because the lines do not converge.  Isometry is employed to visually depict objects of three-dimensions in two-dimensions.  Artists such as MC Escher explore principals of isometry and isometric drawing.

The artists’s book is understood as “almost always self-conscious about the structure and meaning of the book as a form…ultimately, an artist’s book has to have some conviction, some soul, some reason to be and to be a book in order to succeed” (DruckerThe Century of Artists’ Books).  In its initial production, between the 1890s and 1900s, the artists’s books appealed to society as collector items.  Two Parisian art dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, created the livre d’artiste “deluxe edition book” which involved a collaboration not only between artists, but between artist and typographer, designer, printer, poet, and dealer.  Ultimately, the artists’s book createshybrid forms of media which “circulate around the concept that art is primarily about ideas and secondarily about aesthetics” (Drucker). (see  http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/artbooks/browse_books.php  for a library of artists’ books…)

-Amanda Jordan

Dave Muller, “Jake’s Top Ten (Nostalgia),” 2003.

After viewing the works in The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, one that particularly struck me was Dave Muller’s “Jake’s Top Ten (Nostalgia).” [seen below with the black background] Despite its two-dimensionality, this acrylic piece transmits the physical characteristics and feelings of records in a way that speaks to the senses, as if it occupies three dimensions.  The general aesthetics of the work evoke sensations of nostalgia and remembrance through the faded colors, torn and tattered edges, and loose posture of the records.  This piece can even transmit sounds to the viewer – it’s as if one can hear the scratchy music of turntable in the background.  The magnitude of “Jake’s Top Ten (Nostalgia)” demands that the viewer stop and consider this piece; the records are represented on such a scale that they cannot be overlooked.  In this manner, Muller brings attention back to the record itself – forcing the viewer to reconsider this musical phenomena that was once at demand in the music world.  These notions extend to Muller’s other works as well – sensations of nostalgia and remembrance are transmitted while he calls attention to the biography of the record, its past, present, and future.

-Amanda Jordan

Amanda Jordan

http://laartmachine.com/mearone.php

http://www.baurmanngallery.com/

http://www.mearone.com/gallery/

Mear One & Drawing Machine

Mear One is an LA based artist whose thirty-three piece series “Sketches of Babylon” encompasses aspects that I consider to be machine like just as last week’s production of my own ‘drawing machine.’  Mear is extrapolating from the larger idea of the urban landscape in the same manner a machine has a common goal of production and assembles its parts to attain the goal or creation of the product.  Mear’s series brings together various visual aspects to transmit a “future-past of urban decay from decadence and power as well as a future-future that is both ominous and beautiful,” as the L.A. ArtMachine comments on the installation of the works.  The artist, Mear One, becomes the ‘drawing machine’ in the most literal sense as the sole creator and producer of the works; however, the visual works he produces are machine-like in and of themselves.  They assemble and organize in order to achieve a goal – the transmission of Mear One’s thoughts.

In terms of Mear One’s “Sketches of Babylon” and my own ‘drawing machine’ productions, there is common ground in terms of subject matter being machine-like.  Mear One depicts urban landscapes, often including representations of robotic human figures, cars, cameras, and the ever present, greatly detailed skyscraper edifices – all aspects that assemble to generate the mechanism of everyday city life.  The urban skyline appears distorted while employing the use of warm yellow and orange tones.  With this, my own productions also employ the use of specific tones; furthermore, they represent letters and words – both integral parts of written language which itself is a highly mechanical entity.  On a few of the pieces in “Sketches of Babylon” Mear One chooses to frame the works with text as well, creating a more literal similarity between my productions and those of Mear One since both employ the use of text.

As concluded after completing my own productions, Mear One’s “Sketches of Babylon” can also be seen as representations of machine like structures-literally and figuratively-in addition to being produced mechanically as well.

During the critiques, the group with Pedro had an interesting discussion about the possibility of reformulating the IVP#1 after feedback and comments were received…this lead to an interesting point: whether it be one week, two weeks, one month, two months, or at the very end of the semester – if we choose to rework a project, disregarding the length of time thereafter, we will be a different person holding a slightly different perspective given to everything we learn and observe day to day.  With this is mind, through my readings I thought the below quote would be appropriate since through reworking a project, or simply in the creation and completion of a new project we are reworking ourselves – (I hope this is the right place to post haha)

“Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist’s work. The meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation. Art is the laboratory for making new men.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978), American art critic, author. Discovering the Present, part 4, chapter 24, 1973.

Amanda Jordan IVP #1

The Mechanics of Written Language: A Visual Representation

Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. -HERBERT SPENCER, The Philosophy of Style

As Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘machine’ in its noun form as being, “an assemblage of parts that transmits forces, motion, and energy, one to another in a predetermined manner,” the written language becomes a machine. In English, its parts are comprised of letters, symbols, punctuation which organize to form words, only to create sentences and phrases, to then forge a message to be communicated from one individual to another. With this, chose to visually depict the mechanics of the written English language; that is to say, fundamental letters (vowels e, i, and o) that organize with other vowels and consonants to produce words and then achieve the goal of the written language. Not only is this a representation of a machine, but the mode of production of these works can be described as somewhat mechanic as well. It follows:

1. Using a dictionary of English language, tear out pages from a specific letter from which you want to build. Apply these pages to the canvas with the desired substance.

2. Using the specific beginning letter shared by all the words on the canvas, make a stencil or cut out of the letter. Trace this over the canvas.

3. Choose a primary or secondary color to paint the letters, though varying tint and/or shade.

4. Choose a separate color which lies beside first chosen color on the color wheel in which to mix/overlap with first color.

Final product: A mechanically produced representation of a letter – a fundamental part of language – while language in itself is a machine or device of communication. The works are both literally and figuratively “an assemblage of parts that transmits forces…in a predetermined manner” (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary).