Mail Art: Don't chew food with your mouth open

My "mail art" piece consisted of a card that had several drawings of mouths in pencil on one side. The reverse side was bordered with a quote from little book on table manners advising why one shouldn't chew food with their mouth open. In the center of the quote was a collage of mouths cut out of magazine ads.

UTSA at Radius

Portrait of a Struggling Artist
1 min. Performance
Two artist bound at the wrist attempt to create portrait drawings of each other with ink and brush.

After all is done I think the show at Radius Cafe was a great success. It gave everyone equal opportunity to get their feet wet in a curated show as well as have some experience with performance. I personally am not comfortable being center stage in a packed room but the durations were kept to a minimal and for my performance it was just the right amount of time. Everyone did an awesome job and I'm proud to have been in this show with this group of people.

The Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights

La Monte Young
b. 1935 Idaho
1958 B.A. in Music at UCLA
Graduate Studies at U.C. Berkley

Marian Zazeela
b. 1940 New York
1960 B.A. in Painting at Bennington College

La Monte and Marian

Fluxus Compositions

The Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights
6 Harrison Street Dream House, New York 1987

Interviews

Dream House At Guggenheim Museum

BUY!!!

Landscape Piece

Renewed
Mixed Media: Acrylic paint, newspaper, leaves, tree branches and roots on plywood
2.5 ft x 3.5 ft

With the exception of the paint all materials in the piece were found objects in the environment. Newspaper clippings from the business section along with dead plant material were adhered to a weathered piece of plywood from an abandoned lot. Along with the construction of these materials are loose brushstrokes of abstracted forms that work as symbols of human relationship with the landscape. The idea to include found objects came from early Rauschenberg "Combines."

The concept behind this piece was to depict ways in which people leave their mark to claim and use land. The plywood and abstracted post and lintel form reference the use of natural materials to function as shelter from other natural elements. An abstracted flag in reds symbolize how societies claim territory over each other. Newspaper clippings from the business section refer to how natural resources lead to the trading of wealth and the plant material refers to how the land eventually reclaims everything through time.

Whose landscape?

Walking through downtown I couldn't help but notice sections of the city where nature would begin to reclaim its territory. A small shoot creeping out of cracks in the sidewalk, vines racing their way up light poles or droves of grass and weeds toppling over chain linked fences, these were all small battles taking place in the middle of the city. I kept thinking about how the city as a whole continues to grow and destroy in order to sustain itself and how similar this is to every other little "societies" in nature. Of course we work at a much larger scale but in hindsight we infest the landscape and destroy all in the way to make room for ourselves the same way termites will infect a home or mold will infect your loaf of bread. It is just the way things are, it's nature's little game that we have to participate in in order to survive.

Spiral Eyes

Spiral Eyes
Ebony Pencil on Paper
10"

This mandala exercise is a study in fluid line quality. Free flowing lines expand and contract into interwoven contours of organic forms.

The was not any subject or central idea in place at the start of this study. The tip of the pencil was just placed on the paper and set free to lay down anything that flowed out from the experience.

Singing in the Rain

First Mandala Study: 'Singing in the Rain'. I've never done one of these before so it was a nice new experience. Suggested to do the drawing as an exercises to get the creative juices flowing I just approached it by starting a gesture drawing, which is something I usually do in times when I need to get the juices going. All I remember is that on this particular morning it was raining pretty hard while I was walking to class. I remember walking in the rain listening to all the traffic and weather and other city sounds going on. All this was on my mind when I got to class so I started doodling a random gesture and the mandala turned into a window scene of my morning stroll.

Still Life

This still life is a carved drawing of a dresser into a wooden surface. The subject of the piece was chosen for the nostalgic air it carries for the artist. Having moved around through life the artist is only able to hold on to the objects that are necessary or useful to living. By leaving our mark on the things around us we attempt to solidify our place in the world.

Field Trip!

Today's class was awesome. We took a trip to local artist Franco Mondini-Ruiz's studio/home. He gave us some insightful perspective on art, life, and the business of the art world. I think as art students we at times forget about the business aspect of what we are getting into. We like to think it's as easy as doing what we love to do and people will pay us for it. In the end we are just creating a product that we wish someone to buy and so art making becomes a business no different than anything else. And what a business, Franco was very welcoming and extremely busy, but he was able to take time out of his busy schedule and show us that the best business to be in is one where you can be your own boss. And in the end it still is about doing what you love to do just working extremely hard at it, all the time.

Self Portrait

My approach to this self portrait was from the angle of the art making process itself as telling of the artist's character. Excluding Contemporary Studio all the studio courses I have this semester are based in new media so for this piece I wanted to use a medium and material that was more hands on. I really enjoy using charcoal because of it's flexibility, looseness, and painterly qualities. To me there is always a poetic element present in charcoal mark making and it is from here, the mark making, that I wanted to allow the individual to be realized.

For a self portrait I try not to think about or be influenced directly by any other artists works as I think it wouldn't be true to the essence of what a self portrait is. That said I feel that anything that affects us in anyway becomes a part of who we are and will come out in what we do indirectly.

Sketching from A-Z

First exercise for Contemporary Studio: life drawing, 26 sketches, 3x4" squares, an object for each letter of the alphabet. Finding objects within your environment to meet the criteria is not as easy as you think. Of course it's one of those things that's only hard to find when you need it most. Without a doubt an exercise like this reminds you how fundamental an art form drawing is and because so it can become one of the most neglected. Great art making is built from a solid foundation, and like any foundation once in place still requires you to come back to for maintenance.

The first few objects seemed to be the ones that got the most attention during the drawing process. As the search for more and more objects came along the sketches began to loosen up. Less time was spent with looking, thinking, analyzing and more time was just looking and drawing. Eventually some of the rust was shaken off and the creative juices started to flow reminding me of the importance to opening up to the process of making without thinking of the end product.