swyrhll

[swyrhll]

Besties 4 Ever??

Ceramic, Wood, and Metal Beads with found wire

Parson's Center On Site Installation

#3dart #3d art #ceramic sculpture #sculpture

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Pure?? Water?!? Pure... Water.

Watercolor on Paper

18" by 20" Each

#2dart #2d art #watercolor #painting

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Heathen; It

Screenprint and Lino Cut combo print

18" by 12"

#2dart #2d art #screenprinting #linocut #linoprint

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D.A.R.E. to get Lung Cancer

Pastel on Colored Paper Poster Series; Installed in Sherzer Hall

48" by 36"

#2dart #2d art #pastel art

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Aw, Shoot

Handbuilt Ceramic Sculpture with Found Shotgun Shells

24" by 12" by 12"

#3dart #3d art #ceramic art #ceramic sculpture

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Essence of Effervescence

Ink Screenprint

18" by 24" Each

#2dart #2d art #screenprinting

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Mother, FucKN, and Yarnussy

Acrylic Yarn Tapestry & Fiber Sculpture

#3dart #3d art #fiber sculpture #fiber art #tapestry

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Reedy's Dementia

Gouache on Paper

10" by 12" each

#2dart #2d art #gouache #painting

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One to Give: Fuck, Shit & Damn Editions

Acrylic Yarn Tapestries

Roughly 12" by 24" Each

#3d art #fiber art #tapestry #3dart

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Proj 4

3 Ideas:

My first Idea is dealing with the idea of sensory overload as a place. Potentially creating a small space that can be stepped into. It would have blaring lights, headlight, lots of noise like passing traffic and loud music. Just the most bothersome four square feet of space you’ve ever stepped into. I function very well on sensory overload, it turns on a sort of creative switch in brain that I can’t get to any other way. So to create a space either for me to revisit or for others to step into and experience what really gets me going creatively might be interesting.

Another idea might be dealing with my own body as a place. I’d love to take a colored piece of acrylic and trace the outline of my torso on it. I would include some contour lines for my breasts, nipples, belly button and fat roles. I would either laser cut into it or screen print this on there; but I’d also put a poem on top of it talking about the struggles of being in a body that presents contrary to your gender identity and a little bit about what that struggle is like. An alternate way to think of it is being in a place (your body) that you aren’t actually welcome in. 

Intent Statement: For this piece I’ll be cutting the silhouette of my torso out of a piece of acrylic. On this piece of acrylic I’ll be laser cutting contour lines of my breasts, nipples and fat rolls. I’ll also be laser etching a poem into the surface of the piece of acrylic. Another option would be to screen print the poem on the piece of acrylic  It’ll be there to serve as a deeper look as to what it’s like to be trapped in your own body. It’s a hard feeling, when your body doesn’t feel like it’s your own, that you don’t belong in it. This place that you’ve existed for forever and your mind decides that it’s no good anymore, that it doesn’t want to be there anymore. It’s like your conscious is no longer welcome in your body anymore.

It’s a series of negative sensations so difficult to describe. It’s a wavering line advancing on a graph. Time is the x axis and dysphoria to euphoria is the y axis. You can only hope the line rises as time goes on. It’s on odd pain, being trapped in a body you feel doesn’t belong to you. When it feels so natural to take your shirt off and let your chest be bare but you don’t have the type of chest that society wants to see bare.

[swyrhll]

Proj 3

Post Critique: I want to use this imagery again but in a different way. I feel like it definitely could have been even more powerful and more successful if I had integrated more, brighter colors into it. Maybe if I had gone full Warhol and played with different bright colors for the different runs. I also want to incorporate some text along with this imagery the next time I use it. For instance the other day my mother told that I should’ve clarified that I was administering testosterone to myself via self injection. She said she would’ve thought I was potentially doing hard drugs if she had found a biohazard sharps bin full of needles. A response I thought of that I said to myself in my head but most certainly not outloud was “yes, mom, i’m such a responsible heroin addict that i purchased myself a fucking medical grade sharps bin”. It’s a bit long-winded but I think there’s some comedy in that. I’d love to use this imagery again and pair that phrase with it.

Reading Response: It’s intriguing to me how the reading mentions the self portrait as one of the most integral aspects of identity in art. That representing one’s own physical form fundamentally expresses identity. But it doesn’t in most cases, in my opinion at least. A self portrait traditionally shows the artist’s face and body but your appearance can have very little to do with your identity. Or at least you can tell very little about someone’s entire identity by just looking at them.

It later talks about how artists may identify. How instead of just calling themselves artists they may specifically address themself as a black artist or a female artist or maybe in my case, a trans artist. It might imply that the former is more important than the latter or that all of your work is influenced by the group you inhabit or the identity you claim. Some may use this aspect of their identity to explore stereotypes within that identity or hardships in regards to being a part of that group or to provide a new perspective. It was also partially a political statement due to the nature and atmosphere of the time. 

Another aspect that the reading mentioned that I found really interesting but may disagree with is that no one is born with an identity. 

Research Journal:

Pre-project writing: Over the course of the last year, my identity has changed drastically. This past spring I came out as a trans man. It was really hard to be genuine with those around me about what I was feeling. It puts a lot of new struggles in front of me and gave me a lot of hurdles to jump over. Being trans is not easy and some days I wish I could just be comfortable in the body I was born in. This change has definitely influenced me as an artist and opened a lot of creative doors for me. When I think about my identity, I first think of myself as an artist. Then I think of how I’m an activist, I’m a member of the lgbt community, and I’m a trans man. There are other subcultures I fall into but those are the big ones that affect my daily life and how I view the world around me.

3 Project Ideas: I enjoy the idea of reducing my identity down to one thing. I want to take my identity or at least one aspect of my identity and reduce it down to one thing or one piece of imagery.

For my first idea I think I’d like to take my bottle of testosterone and design some prints using it as the primary source of imagery. In an Andy Warhol-esque fashion I might repeat the image over and over on top of itself until it becomes unclear or tile several images of the testosterone bottle together. I might make some large scale and I might make some actual size.

Another idea I’d love to play with is doing a detailed painting of drawing of myself as a baby verses a self portrait of myself now either overlaid on top of the baby picture of something along those lines.

Another idea might be a self portrait but to not render any facial expressions.

Project Statement: In this work I wanted to explore the idea of reducing my identity down to one single thing. The object I chose was my testosterone vial. Testosterone is such an important part of a trans man’s life if he chooses to take that route. Hormone replacement therapy for a trans person can be life saving. It can become one of many things. For me, I always look forward to shot day. Others get anxious and don’t enjoy self injections but understand that it’s necessary. It’s different for every trans person but either way it becomes a very integral part of our routines. The question I’m asking is: as time goes on, what happens to this ritual? Does it fade into weekly routine? Does it remain as exciting as it was at the beginning? Does a trans person decide to stop taking it because all possible changes have been made. Trans and queer individuals are often reduced down to stereotypes. Reducing someone’s identity down to stereotypes or assumptions or just one thing never works. Humans are far too complex for that.

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Proj 2

Post Critique: I appreciate a lot of the feedback I got from Mason. He talked a lot about control and the different ways it plays a part in my work. He spoke on how I don’t have any control in the work but I actually have all of it. I don’t have to get any of the writing that these individuals give back to me, I choose to. I also chose the people, the place the tattoo goes, how big or how small, or even how visible. He put a lot of focus on that and it got me thinking about how to further experiment with the theme of control.

Reading Response: This reading actually included one of my favorite ever works of art that made me think about so very much the first time I saw it. There’s an ambiguity to the way he speaks on things in the poem and of course he drops the ball at the very end and lets you know that all that terrible, unjust suffering was caused by an aspect of himself that he can’t control or change. If you don’t figure it out halfway through like I did, it hits you hard at the end. The ambiguous language gets you thinking and the graphic language makes you empathize with him and then when you find out he’s gay you either think he deserves it or think it’s terrible. I think a lot about language and how human’s use it. I also think about the potential permanence of words whether it be the lasting impact of what someone says to you or permanently tattooing someone else’s words on your skin. 

This reading makes me think a lot more about conveying things symbolically or ambiguously but I don’t like the idea of stepping away from the power of words. There’s something to be said about saying something without saying it and without using words at all but I’m not sure I will step away from that mode of thinking. 

Research Journal:

3 Project Ideas: you said i could skip these because I had already began this project independently

Research Journal: 

Xu Bing Book From the Sky (1987-91) 

This work is an installation that features large sheets of texts displayed on the walls as well as pages being displayed on a platform. There is also three long scrolls draped down from the ceiling. All of these scrolls have a fake language written on them. There is a vast amount of printed matter here but none of it means anything. It may be a commentary on words and how language may be meaningless. It was likely created by constructing a fake set of characters and stringing them together. The artist then printed it all out

Howardena Pindell, Video Drawings: Hockey, 1975

The piece features a still image from a hockey game with drawings overtop. The photo is of three hockey players; a goalie in front of the goal and one of his team mates skating behind the goal, and the third one is on the opposing team in the bottom right corner. The markings look like words and arrows. It reminds me of the types of drawings that would be in a playbook. What she’s actually thinking of is the movement on the screen and mapping that out directly onto the image. This is a work of a larger series. Most are of sporting events but the series quickly turned political. She began working with images of war and presidents so it became more of a political commentary than one about meticulous action like tracking the action of the movement on the screen. The process seems to be just using marker to draw on photos. 

Jenny Holzer, For Chicago, 2007

This work is a selection of truisms displayed on the floor using LED lights. She’s thinking a lot about displaying and conveying language in public spaces for her viewers. Her large-scale installations have included advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, and illuminated digital displays. Jenny Holzer does a lot with language and the way in which we digest it. She often calls out the viewer or makes you think about exact;y what you’re reading. I’m not sure what the ins and outs of this work is other than there being LED lights fixed to the ground. 

Lothar Baumgarten, Double Center Frog, Susquehanna Wall drawing from the Carbon series, 1989/1990

This work consists of text forming two squares with some other text within the squares and outside of them. All of the red text is upside down and this painting is an acrylic painting done directly on the wall in the gallery space. I’m not sure what the deeper meaning of the piece is or exactly what the text means. The piece is made by painting acrylic paint directly on the wall. 

Robert Rauschenberg, Dante's Inferno, 1964

Project Statement: This work is the permanent result of an artistic thought/performance experiment with control, choice, permanence, risk, tattooing and the financial side of the art world in mind. 

For this piece, I chose a vast number of participants. Many of those include close friends, artistic minds I admire and that inspire me, coworkers, family members and others. After being chosen, I approach the person and ask them if I can write something on them. If they agree; I write “You are Art” on them in pen or marker. Then they are to write words in response on my person. It can be the first thing that comes to mind, a profound thought, poetry, or something totally crude. It is completely up to the participant but it must be words. Whatever they write, I get it permanently tattooed onto my body in their exact handwriting. The words are not my choice but the placement is. I tend to surround the script tattoos with imagery related to those words. The experiment has been done a total of ten times so far but only four have been tattooed onto my skin.

I came up with this piece while thinking a lot about my first tattoo. I had wanted tattoos since I was in middle school. I had been an adult for three months already and I hadn’t gotten any. I took the choice out of my hands and put it in someone else’s. Another thought that comes to mind is the nature of how art functions as objects to be bought and sold. This piece cannot be bought or sold however. Like the nature of performance art, you can’t buy certain types of performance art pieces. However, this performance piece produces a tangible thing that cannot be bought or sold, either. Some art is only to be experienced, not bought or sold.

There are some spoken and unspoken rules about tattooing and getting tattooed. One general assumption is that the content you’re getting tattooed on your body is meaningful to you in some way. While this piece isn’t void of meaning and sentiment, it’s meaning only occurs after the response has been written. There is no planned meaning. To receive “You are Art as well.” From Jason Ferguson was absolutely heartwarming, and means a lot to me; but he just as easily could’ve picked something else. Another rule is that tattoos should not be spontaneous; they should be planned on thought on for long periods of time. This piece has a lot to do with spontaneity and doesn’t even require a long term plan on my part. The plan is in the mind of the writer and the only thing after that is where I chose to place the tattoo. It requires little thought. Tattoos are supposed to require a lot of thought. 

This piece also speaks a lot about control. I set this experiment in place to be out of my control and yet I control so much. I don’t choose what is permanently tattooed onto my body. I do get to control who participates in this, the fact that they’re providing me with words, I get to choose the placement of the tattoo. While a lot of this feels out of control, so much of it is within my control.

[swyrhll]

Proj 2: Pre-project writing

What forms of language interest you most? I prefer languages with characters unlike the English language, such as: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, etc.

How might you define a book? This is probably boring of me but a book is a piece of literature that either tells a story or educates you or entertains you. It can have pictures or it can be all text.

What type of information is found in a book? (narratives, data, pictures, maps, timelines, indexes) Depends on the kind of book you read.

What type of information do you want in your project? i want to tell a story in a roundabout way.

Imagine being someone else (a 7 year old with dreams of being a superhero, the president of a foreign country, your grandmother, a contemporary artist that intrigues you). Write a 10-sentence short story from your imagined persona’s perspective. Your short story can work as a narrative, a list, a database, a timeline, etc. I imagine I am Jeff Bezos. I am the CEO of Amazon, one of the richest people in the world. I sleep without trouble on my thousand dollar mattress in my second vacation home in Bora Bora, despite knowing I just cut the wages and benefits of my part time staff working in horrible conditions. I love to blatantly ignore climate change and sit comfortably in my wealth, despite knowing the money I have could easily pay for the world’s conversion to using green energy. The wealth I’ve built could end world hunger many times over. I have more money than I could ever use. Will I give any of it away? No.

[swyrhll]

Proj 1: Intent statement

For the first project, I will be documenting my process in learning how to make origami cranes. Every time I mess up, I have to start folding another one. After I learn how to consistently fold origami cranes, I’ll fold one every day until I forget to fold one and track my progress over time. I’ll use white paper during the learning process and then switch to colored paper once I can consistently fold the cranes.

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Research Journal: Proj 1

When I think about an artist who tackles time in an expert manner, I immediately think of Tehching Hsieh. Through a number of pieces he showed time’s effect on the body and mind in many harsh conditions. In  One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece), he stayed in a cage-like room for year and didn’t have any human contact. Another piece he did that lasted the duration of a year was  One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece) where he punched a time card every hour for a year. He is known for putting his body through things that could be considered as traumatic for a long duration of time. Another piece of note is  One Year Performance 1983-1984 (Rope Piece) where he tied himself to another artist, Linda Montano. They stayed tied together for a whole year. Hsieh has a unique view on time and how it effects the human body under intense conditions. It’s something to think about as I continue to develop my ideas further.

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1. Document the process of learning how to make paper cranes. Every time I mess up, I have to start folding a new one. After this, I will leave them outside, affix them places with tape, potentially. Then I’ll document how they fare a storm.

2. Cut off pieces of my aloe plant. I’ll document the rotting process of the piece of the plant. I’ll do this several times to varying degrees of rot. then suspend the pieces I cut off in jars with resin.

3. Obtain a Styrofoam cup. I’ll document the process of it breaking down in the environment. (It doesn’t break down, that’s the funny part.)

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Reading Response

Prior to reading this, one of the most prevalent examples of time in contemporary art for me was Tehching Hsieh and his body of work. I was familiar with his rope piece and other long pieces that dealt with time as the major theme. He seems to use it as the primary focus of what the pieces are about. I didn’t realize time could be presented in much subtler ways within artworks and that’s what this reading is helping to highlight for me. (Perhaps a bit daft of me, but my artistic brain is stuck in the contemporary.) Most artwork tends to just exist and not a lot of performance pieces truly grapple with the concept of time within the duration of the piece. 

A lot of individuals discussed in the text take the concept of time very differently than Tehching Hsieh. His pieces explore long durations of time and the human response to the creative conditions he placed upon himself and other willing participants. Another way to view time in art is through a cultural context. Some cultures may use it to detail cycles of life and death or the stars. In other ways it can be simple like capturing a moment in time or detailing a series of events. These will potentially give me a wider approach to dealing with the theme of time in my own work.