Seeing, Forgetting, and Remembering

"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."
-Audrey Hepburn.

      Back a few months ago I went to The Portland Museum of Art with my drawing II class. We went there to look at the magnificent paintings by the talented Rackstraw Downes. After spending an ago or so observing the images and sketching them we were able to go out on our own and check out the rest of the museum. Now haven taken many art classes at SMCC, Iv been the museum a number of times. So walking through is like retracing your steps, I just breezed through glancing a pieces that I had seen in previous semesters. Making my way to the very top floor I came upon an exhibition called "The Lay of the Land: A Celebration of Art Acquired by the Friends of the Collection". In this collection there were two pieces that stuck out to me, mainly because I am taking a printmaking class (the there one that this blog is for). They were by Holly Meade, entitled Harvesting the Kennebec and Yarding Four-Foot Wood.



Holly Meade



Holly Meade has been printing from woodblocks for the past 7 years. She is an illustrator for children's books. Her first was in 1992 and she has done 30 since. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received her BFA in painting.



Working on Seven Crows



Yarding Four-Foot Wood

Harvesting the Kennebec

       From time to time in my life I have seen images that at that moment mean nothing to me, that is however until I see them somewheres else, normally on something that is familiar to me. When I first saw the prints by Holly at the museum I thought that they were pretty awesome, but that was it. Then I thought it might be neat to share on here what I had seen, so I started googling images by Holly that's when i stumbled across an image of a rooster. I knew that I had seen it somewhere... on a t-shirt that I own. Last fall when I was at The Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine i had my mom pick me up one. So I dug through my clothes and sure enough there it was and her signature was there too. I know its just something small but I found it to be neat.

So I guess I'm learning that pretty much everything you see or learn is going to come in handy some day, whether its finding out that you own a shirt with an image by an artist that you never knew about or solving some crazy mathematical formula (which I wont be doing anytime soon), its all important.

Holly Meade

http://www.reachroadgallery.com/index.htm

"The Lay of the Land: A Celebration of Art Acquired by the Friends of the Collection".

http://www.portlandmuseum.org/Content/5384.shtml

Fifth Assignment

 Spray paint, metallics, shocking pink and Day-Glo colors are just a few words that were used to describe Keltie Ferris' images. Falling back on 80's retro she creates over sized pieces on 80 Inch canvases using burst of yellow, pink, and blue spray paint.

The article briefly talks about how they wish that this theme wouldn't come back, that it would be left in the 80's. Personally i like the bright abstract paintings, they remind me of city lights, just beckoning you to come in. In a country that seems to always be falling apart i think a little color can't hurt.



       

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/keltie-ferris/

http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2010/05B3



Third Assignment

My artist of choice is Alex Pardee.

Alex is inspired by the images that he grew up with horror movies, Tails from the Crypt comics, graffiti and gangster rap.
 In his early teens he was severely depressed and became hospitalized, as an escape he indulged himself in art.
I think that Alex is just expressing the inner demons that he has to deal with day after day. His images remind me of something that i would of thought was under my bed as a child but a lot brighter in color. He creates these gruesome, morbid, and completely out there images but paints them with bright colors. I think its a way for him to cope with those demons by making them seem less threatening, because i mean who could take a monster seriously when their pink?
these are some websites of interviews with Alex:
http://www.scccampusnews.com/2.4169/alex-pardee-creates-some-sick-art-1.519544
http://thefourohfive.com/articles/142
Video interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKSsom7P7W8

The Hug

Cover of The Used album

Eat Wound

Everyone's Doing it.... no pun intended

Blog, blog, blog. . .
  all I hear about is how people are blogging. Blogging about where they went on vacation, what their favorite food is, what they did that day, or the worst school assignments.
 Creating a blog wasn't on my list of things to do this year but a class that I am currently taking requires it.


 So here I am, tossed into the unknown, left to manage this damn thing alone. I'll figure it out though, I'm sure of it, I mean hell if my grandmother can do it I can do it.


Anyways to wrap this up, this will consists mainly of class assignment but I'm going to try and have some fun with this =)