Artist Presentation Response: Sophie Knee

Sophie describes her work as being informed by things she sees in her everyday life. She will see a form she likes, snap a picture to remember it, and then use that picture to inspire her work. She says "I make art about the things around me" she doesn't have some long bullshit philosophy or the idea that her inspiration is from something really profound and I really enjoy that about her work. It is very down to earth and concrete. She works in viscosity monotypes to produce multiple colors in, one printing, she describes the way she creates the work as an intersection of printmaking and painting. I really enjoy the subjects of her work, most of them are animals, and most of those are cats, which really fit well with my own work for this project. Her focus on the shape of the animal is also very important to me and it was inspiring to see someone using it in a different way.

Project Process: First Draft Artist Statement 1/29/16

This work is a collection of photographs taken over the coarse of a year of a colony of alley cats. I hope to portray their life as accurately as possible and to bring light to the lives of all feral cats. The reality that they are all individuals, and that they want the same things we do: food, security, and affection.

My hope is to change the idea of what an alley cat is. There is a stereotype of a mangy scrappy animal that is oftentimes mean or vicious. An ugly scavenger, or almost a pest, likes city rats, or pigeons. There is a huge misconception that feral cats are diseased, sick, and should be scared away or put down to reduce the cat population. The cats in this book are the exact opposite of these stereotypes. These cats are friendly to their human neighbors, and actually help prevent disease, by keeping the rodent population in check.

            A major influence on my work was the book Abandoned America: The Age of Consequence by Matthew Christopher. It is a photo book highlighting the decaying places in America, and it has been a huge aesthetic influence on my work for this book. My setting is an abandoned house and I have drawn many parallels between his work and mine. I find the pealing paint and rusting metal offsets the softness of the cats very poignantly, speaking on how like their house they have been forgotten.

Another influence was Ernie: A Photographers Memoir by Tony Mendoza.  The idea of photographing a cat, in a thousand different ways, showing the humor and the seriousness in the life of an animal, and in that way, revealing those aspects in ourselves really spoke to me.  

Denny Griffith artist talk response

Denny described his work as coming to a head in the last year to create his encaustic on panel work. He describes his work in a way that makes it seem to have a life of its own, that it wants things, it grows. All his works are so vibrant even though much of the work is pastel, and so happy, even though he was very sick. All his words he used to describe his artwork are so positive and light, he asserts that he didn't want these to be about dying, that they are about living. All these works are about fun, and happiness, and life and to me that is very telling about Denny and his personality. 

Peter Schjeldahl Lecture Reflection

Peter Schjeldahl had the unique position of speaking at an art school as an art critic. He is an art critic for the New Yorker and has worked as an art critic there since 1998. Schjeldahl said he believes that his writing, and all art, is supposed to enhance life just a little between the cradle and the grave. His talk was a little all over the place, but so much of it was also very profound. Something he said about his profession was that "art criticism should be an ongoing open discussion of our aesthetic experience". I had never thought about art criticism that way before and I don't think I will be able to think of it the same way again. Another thing that struck me was when he said that art doesn't cure cancer, it doesn't really change anything, it just makes life a little more bearable; that maybe you see a piece of art that moves you and you think "maybe I'll go on living another day". There was so much inspiration, and good material in this talk that I couldn't write it all down, his view of art was wonderful and I feel very privileged I got to hear him speak about it. I hope that I can one day say anything half as profound as everything in this talk.

This blog will hi-light the process of creating and publishing a photo book for my honors capstone.