Project 2 again!

Project 2

Photoshop turned all of the flares yellow and red, but i kinda like it.

Mark Bannerman

Mark Bannerman is an award winning 3D visual artist who lives in Scotland. His portfolio shows 3D rendered drawings with a humanistic feel. His images appear to be dreamlike and quirky. They tend to have the same aesthetic feel as the children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. Mark Bannerman has claimed to be a perfectionist, which can be seen by the technical confidence, inspirational subtlety, and stunning concept in his works. 

The meanings that can be derived from Bannerman's work is that of fantasy and imagination. For example, his above work, Flying Fish, takes the name of the animal, the flying fish, and transplants it literally to a fish flying a plane. It also tends to oscillate from a three dimensional image popping out at you to an image that sinks back into the page. The fish and plane are quite realistically drawn as if they are flying out of the page towards the viewer, and the waves of the ocean are in the same style as Eric Carle, made up of layers and layers of paper overlapped to give a sense of depth. 

  Some critiques of Bannerman's work would be that the colors of the sky and land tend to be composed of the same image and blend together in some images. This could be part of what Bannerman is going for in his images, but it tends to detract from my interpretation of each image. His use of a crisp foreground and a blurred background help to create the surrealistic effect, giving the image the fantasy land feel.

Art Debate

During art week 2.0, there was an art debate in the style of a great throw down. The focus of the main tag-team debate was the theme: "Should there be limits to art?" Those in the yes camp were Billy and Lisa, those who were a part of the no front were Joe and Colby. This debate encouraged in philosophical thinking about art, what it is, and what it means.

The main event was the elimination round. In this event, each speaker was given only two minutes to discuss the question for the round and a very official applause-o-meter was used to judge who was knocked out for that round.

The first round question was, "Who has been the most impactful artist/ piece of art in the last decade?" Billy was the lucky number one and took the stance that the Obama hope poster was the most impactful piece. It became populated by social networks and was sold in DC. Recently it was bought by a poster gallery. This piece impacted the 2008 election immensely, making te vote less about race. Lisa chose James Terrell for his reshapping of the earth. He reshaped the earth and heavens in view of the human mind. It is a timeless piece of work. Colby took the stand and chose Stephen Colbert. He argued that Colbert created  art that is political. He is capable of insinuating in the enemies clothes, and his comedy can be appreciated by both political sides by the absurdity of what he does. "Art should shed light on on something that you thought you knew." Joe determined that Chris O'Phealy's art mendona. It was a dark skinned image of the Virgin Mary, made with elephant dung and erotic images from men's magazines. It was rejected as obscene and made people defend public funding for Art. It spoke to local cultural images and challenged traditional European views.

The next question was, "can art be diverted from politics and can art be for art's sake?" Billy took the side no because even not taking a position on an issue is reaffirming the status quo. Even if the artist did not want a political view, it always did. Art is a dialogue about a view of objects. Joe took the stance at drawing a line at seeing everything as political at sensory image and pleasure. A visceral response is universal and not political, because it doesn't move through language. It enters through smell, sound, and taste.  Colby took the approach of asking a different question, "Does society deserve art? Does an artist deserve a society to respect it?" He believes that art needs to be embedded in society. That it sends mixed messages. Liberal living with nonliberal.

The final round was the question, "What is the role of intention in creating art?" Joe said that intention is an important way in understanding the work of art. Art is in a dialouge in the world once you put it out there. It depends on those who encountered it. Colby said that intention determines the context of the art. He gave the example of Jackson Pollack, a post WWII artist who did intentional acts based off of unintentionality. Once let out into nature, he could see patterns. Connecting accidents in studio to accidents in nature.

I took away from this debate that the artist's intention of their art and their meaning behind it is almost inconsequential. The public's perception of art is what defines it through history.

Artist talk - Mirta Kupferminc

Mirta Kupferminc is an artist who's life has been indirectly affected by the Holocaust. Her mother and father were both survivors and in her talk she focused on tatoos as ornamental vs. tatoos in the Holocaust. She feels that in both ways tatoos give that person an identity that they can forever relate to. She described herself to our class as a digital artist, but many of the works she was showing us were videos and a few pictures, which in this day and age could mean that they were photoshopped and made digitally.

She tried to reinact the Holocaust in a way through one of her exhibits. A tatoo artist was there to give henna tatoos to any who wanted one, except he would only give numbers to those wearing red. Those who were wearing red soon came to realize that they were in a different group than the rest of the patrons and they had something to identify each other with. The number's gave them an identity, just as the survivors of the Holocaust have come together to have an identity via their number.

Mirta always uses her mother's number in her works because she was too young to remember what her father's number was and would not like to make up a number or worse yet steal a survivor's number. This keeps her artwork real and more touching. The audience can relate to the fact that this was an actual victim of the Holocaust's number.

The picture of her mother sitting on the chair with wings and the rock star sitting in the same wingged chair help to show the difference between tatoos as ornamental and tatoos given in the Holocaust. Your eye is not immediately drawn to her mother's tatoo, but your eye is drawn to the man's many tatoos. His posture helps you to realize that he has gotten all of these tatoos purposefully, whereas heer mother's posture indicates that she might not have wanted to get her tatoo on purpose.

The video she showed was called "The Skin of Memories". This video compared the pain of tatooin with that of embroidery, a skill which Mirta's mother enjoys to practice and has passed on to her. She said in the talk of how she is interested in objects because she uses every other media and wants to involve physical objects into her work. The video started off with a needle pricking at a latex skin. It later peirced the skin and made embroidery. During the video, the viewer could feel the pain of getting stuck by the needle. It then changed to embroidery very close up, and one could feel the pain of the needle going through the fabric.

Mirta Kupferminc is an artist who dabbles in all forms of art and her works are stunningly powerful.

Christopher Haines

Chris Haines is an artist who's favorite styles of art to combine are 3D, photography, and painting. His artwork is incredible and has an immense amount of detail put into it. Chris stated in an interview with Psdtuts+ that he is fascinated with how humans think and live, and that is why they tend to be the subject material for his art. He also began to use digital media in high school, where he discovered Photoshop his junior year. He then studied graphic design for two years in High School and two years in a diploma course. He enjoys both being taught and the self teaching method. Teachers bring their years of experience to the table, and being self taught helps you to learn how to combine various tools.

Chris created this artwork, entitled "Zen", for the latest Desktopography wallpaper pack. I believe that Chris is showing humans connection to nature in this work. Many corals make up the face in the image, but the holes in the face show how we are incompletely connected to nature. Man continually distances himself from nature by cutting down forests and building grand cities. This work shows total immersion of man into the world of life living in the sea.

Critiques of "Zen" could be the fact that some of the fish look too animated. They appear to be glowing in the water, and the fish that are where the rest of the image is in focus are not in focus. Other than this, there is honestly nothing I can say to critique his images. They are quite wonderous and i look forward to the next work of his.