Week 4: We Call Them Artists

Ann Hamilton’s installation art dealing with borders, the space in between, of art and the written word and how they act as conduits to bring into focus this so called “edge” is fascinating. Not only does she push us out of our comfort zone and out of many of our pre-conceived notions of art, she, quite metaphorically, pushes us to the edge. It’s all bout how we establish borders in the literal sense, and also how we establish them figuratively,  “working at the edge, but living psychically in the middle.” It's about how we're engaging the place in between for both the artist and the viewer. In one of her pieces, black silk organza curtains hang freely and organically, enabling and engaging the viewer with the concept  of borders and un-containment. In her work, it is the viewer who crosses the threshold and it is the viewer who gives meaning and breathes life into the installation. The installation is transformed day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute because the audience is constantly changing; what they take away from it becomes what it is in that moment, a kind of social space where the viewers decide for themselves how this installation, this “making” of art is important, and why the “making” has the effect that it does, and in what context the viewers put themselves and the art in order to benefit from it. 

The impermanence of these art installations is what I find most crucial to the viewers engagement with, and the artists success of, the art pieces. This impermanence makes visible something seemingly invisible, something that’s present in a certain space or location, but only for a short period of time. It has no visual representation in the society, thus the installations give the hidden, the invisible, the un-contained, a voice through art. I found especially that in “ghost: a border act” there was no specific narrative, but instead there's an open-endedness, with no sense of closure, so that the viewer can narrate and engage with the it however they want.  The most intriguing concept of Hamilton’s work is the paradox of  the “laying out” and the “erasure” in the same moment, in terms of the un-containment of the work and of letting the work be defined in its own time and its own place. Hamilton is not containing the work, naming it, labeling it as this or that, but letting it take on any and all meaning that it is able to in a space, or at a certain time, so that the viewers get the most out of it and so that the piece gets the most out of itself. I also appreciated Hamilton's point about the unconscious, of what we look like when we truly become engrossed or engaged with what we are doing, seeing, or making- that place where you’re vulnerable yet, at the same time there is an implicit sense of strength for being able to put yourself or your art on display- that's what's beautiful. 
 

The Pinhole cameras were also quite interesting. To the have the mouth become the eye for the camera hole (how insanely brilliant!), she noted that the mouth is very much like the shape of the eye, so that its a transference of an experience. It's the notion that what you experience and how the picture would turn out has a lot to do with the space that the camera occupies; that when the camera pinhole occupies the mouth, the space is transformed, and thus the experience that you have is transformed and takes on a completely different meaning, even though the piece/object (in this case, a camera) has retained all of its parts, and functions relatively the same. That is to say, in a broader sense, that a piece can be transformed tremendously, and even become exponentially more powerful, when the space or location that it was once in, changes. That space and location play a major role in how we view an art installation, and how we view the world in certain (or all!) moments.

In the “Untitled (Body Object Series)” Hamilton interacts with everyday objects, as Sara Rabinowitz does with her use of fibers and making of textiles. The objects as “developing” a body, or the body as having “grown” an object, is a very interesting and intriguing concept. In a sense, I think that’s what Hamilton’s work is really about, that kind of spatial, time, and body-presence or consciousness with an object; that an object can insert itself into our lives with this presence that can be felt, or that we can inhabit the border, the edge, the in-betweeness of on object, simultaneously feeling its presence while it feeds off of ours. We are able to interpret these pieces, such as the photograph of a woman with a woven basket situated on top of her torso as a head, as a way of re-interpreting the narrative of the original photograph, giving it a new meaning and language that has been created through the integration and fusion of everyday objects or textiles. Also, the idea of the age of the body as having significance is mentioned; that the body of a child with a basket on their head can be interpreted as playful, while the same image of an adult aged basket-head can be interpreted as someone who feels isolated. For me, that’s a deep and insightful observation, because the context of the original photo not only changes when the integration of the basket is introduced, but the context also changes when the age-time-spatial thing is considered. I also really enjoyed the “tropos” piece because of the sense of transcendence it brought to the space: “the piece referred to the larger social history of the neighborhood, uncovering forgotten narratives of labor and material.” I think this another one of the main goals of Hamilton’s work, to be able to dwell comfortably and consciously in the gap of language and art, in the gap of the natural world (i.e. horse hair) and the “commerce and letters” world (i.e. the burning pages of the book). That the juxtaposition of the space and time, language and art, historical events past and present, are not only juxtaposed, but that they also simultaneously dwell in one another. 

Cai Guo-Qiang’s methodology and work is not easily defined or contained; instead, it’s wide open. He says that if he were able to contain it, it’d be “somewhere on a shelf.” I thought this was brilliant, and relates back to Hamilton’s whole idea about the contained versus the un-contained, and how the un-contained is able to transcend space and time, is open to different narratives and interpretations, and is free. The idea, as Guo-Qiang so eloquently puts it, that “maybe not everything has to be resolved with a finite answer” is the beauty of it un-containment. That the work is not contained and fixed in one place or time, but that it’s fluid and chaotic and transcends all that we can see, so as to bring into focus all that remains un-seen. His views are inherently rooted in his Chinese background, in that the Chinese way of thinking that has influenced his life and his work and lends itself to the expansion of such ideas and concepts: “sometimes you can allow uncertainties to exist within the same space and situation.” I found that Guo-Qiang’s work is definitely more on the technical side of things, in terms of astro-physics and mathematics and working/painting with gunpowder, but that these technical aspects do not dissolve or discredit the power of his work. On the contrary, we can see his work as a process rooted in biology and nature, while at the same time taking origins from a more philosophically curious, or intrinsically intangible world. Guo-Qiang says: “these play back and forth: the material, your idea, and what you’re working on. It’s actually quite a biological process, it’s very visceral.” In the Tiger Room, the response of the viewer is strong and immediate, not from the actual image itself but from what the tiger represents: pain. And the pain is felt in the viewers, not in the tigers on display, because the tigers aren’t alive, living and breathing; the viewers are, and thus, they’re the recipients of the pain felt. It’s all about how we, as viewers, are involved in the moments.

Guo-Qiang says that the boat piece “Reflection” is a direct result of him wanting to start from scratch in a new place, creating something from a space where he initially had nothing: “I wanted to begin a dialogue with the local people. I wanted to have a dialogue with the earth and the universe and the cosmos here. So the idea was to start with nothing, begin very local and reach for something much grander in scale.” His idea reiterates what Hamilton was all about- that everything begins with the people “here and now”- that the dialogue between the people and the universe isn’t stagnant, but that it's constantly in motion, changing, transforming, alive. Overall, I found Gui-Qoang’s work brilliant and invigorating because he was able to incorporate both space and time elements, as well as biological and intangible elements to create pieces truly unique and expressive of his Chinese roots. 

Sara Rabinowitz was a true pleasure to listen to. What I got from her presentation was that the commonality of everyday fibers, textiles, objects, what have you, is what makes this kind of art relatable, but at the same time it makes the art alienated or isolated, in the sense that the textiles and fabrics used in a lot of her pieces, and of other artists pieces working with fibers, are so common in our daily lives, often over-looked and under-appreciated, taking such pieces or objects and inserting them into a different context is challenging. The collaborative piece from Anne Wilson's exhibition, "Wind-Up", which I stumbled upon on her website (and which Rabinowitz herself participated in), is relatable to the concepts of space and time, between that which is visible- the weaving of the fiber around a giant contraption- and that which is un-seen- the performance of the labor, and the greater, more profound historical context behind it. In the same way that Guo-Qiang and Hamilton use their pieces to explore the relationship between what is seen and what is not seen, so do Rabinowitz and other artists that she mentioned. They live and work and engage with this “in-betweeness”, creating pieces that tell a story or reveal a truth about a space, place, or time that, one that’s not visible, or one that perhaps has been forgotten. Yet at the same time, this conceptualization and construction of pieces is open and un-contained, leaving sufficient room for the viewer to contextualize and interpret the piece for themselves.

To bring all of this full circle, I think that, while there are a lot of differences in terms of craft and material, the concepts, ideas, and intentions behind all the works discussed here are very similar. With Hamilton, Guo-Qiang, Rabinowitz, and others, it's about how you engage in your world, how you "step into our own agency" in the world, how they take their gifts as artists, as a conceptual thinker, as a knitter, whatever, and use that to show people what's at stake, what's going on in the world, their world, our world, what's invisible, what's been forgotten, what's tangible, what remains un-seen, the magical moments, the vulnerable moments, and what can't been seen with the eyes, but only felt, and how all of these things are one in the same. I think Cai Guo-Qiang sums it up quite perfectly when he says: “So it’s easy for us to depict things of this physical world, of the way we live now, but it’s very difficult to depict things that are not seen but have a profound effect on us.” And the people who are able to depict these things, these things not seen, but felt, with such profound impact, we call them artists. 

*About the images: A play on the 'Knitting Nancy' game of childhood, this architectural installation uses everyday yarn to bridge the gap and celebrate "interwoven" cultures in London, evoking a sense of fun and playfulness, but also promoting the viewer to engage in the seen- the Knitting Nancy- and un-seen- the broader historical context of it all.

Source:

Giant Knitting Nancy- Daily Tonic

Week 3: The Closer I Look, The Stranger It All Becomes

Michael Salter finds “comfort in discomfort” and our consumerist and visual culture does not. We are constantly engulfed with the latest and greatest, the overwhelming amount of visual “junk” that serves no other purpose than to look pretty, or to denote your “status" in our culture. When Salter speaks about his departure from the materialistic and consumerist driven job he once held in his days as an icon designer for name-brand surfing clothing, to his arrival as an artist completely infatuated with discomfort and concise form,  we sense that he’s at peace now, with what he does, with what he makes, and with who he is. He seems unwavering in his own truths, and is deeply rooted in his consciousness and efforts to make art the way he needs to make it. As a self-proclaimed “obsessive observer” he challenges us to be aware of how we see things, how we assign meaning to logos, brands, or icons that represent something important to our culture, whether it’s a symbol of “status” (as Salter mentions his high-top converses and their “low” status) or a representation of some other emotion or feeling through a culturally constructed icon.

 

The main thing I took away from Salter is that  what you think is a direct product of what your brain is consuming everyday; photographs, ads, commercials, graffiti on the side of a bus, it all affects us negatively or positively, depending on the social and cultural construction of all the visual junk. He has this way of seeking the truth in his art pieces through simplicity and confusion. His images are so simple and concise stylistically, yet they bring this mass wave of confusion, multiple meanings and discomfort when we see them. And his ability to do so is brilliant, because I don’t know about you, but when I think about something being uncomfortable and confusing, I think of something super complex and complicated, full of details and other garbage that makes it hard to wrap my mind around what’s going on. But, with Salter’s work, he gives me a seemingly simple image in terms of aesthetics, and once we encounter it we are immediately taken for a ride: What does this mean? How am I supposed to feel about this? Why is this simple icon making me so uncomfortable? How can I make this uncomfortable feeling stop? Why do I want to stop feeling uncomfortable?!?! I found myself asking all of these same questions when I first saw his hand-in-the-mouth icon. When he showed us the icon of the tongue sticking out with a fork in it, I got really uncomfortable, yet I couldn’t look away. I kept imagining that the icon was me, that that was my tongue, that it would hurt a lot, that my tongue was now starting to hurt because my mind couldn’t get this image of  a sharp metal fork piercing my precious tongue like it was a piece of meat at the dinner table. How disgusting and uncomfortable and insanely brilliant all at once. I couldn’t look away. I wanted more!

Okay, so as if I wasn’t uncomfortable before, the animation of the body fluids really put my discomfort level over the edge. “Is it even possible for me to feel this uncomfortable? Why would anyone ever want to feel this uncomfortable? Is it even healthy? Will my brain implode? Should I be worried?” These were all the thoughts running through my head. And then, with the seeming flip of the switch, I discovered my answer: discomfort means you’re growing. So I watched that bodily fluids video, with every drop, ker-plunk, or fluidly spray, whole-heartedley convinced I was in the process of growing, and expanding on my notions of visual culture, discomfort, chaos, simplicity, and what they all meant together. And what I found was that I, indeed, was growing. I was expanding on all these ideas that had once held such, limited, un-challenging, and unsatisfying ideas of culture, art, and life. I’ve never felt so nauseated, intrigued, overwhelmed, and confused at the same time. But I’ve never felt so satisfied.

When Salter presented us with his styro-foam robots it was a sealed deal: this guy is brilliant in every sense of the word, and uses literal garbage to create something so beautiful, honest, and yet completely overwhelming all at the same time. I think it was at the Rice Gallery where Salter constructed one of his insane robots out of styro-foam, but instead of it standing 30 feet tall, as others had in the past, this one was crouched in the room, sitting on the floor with its knees bent. I thought this was a wonderful representation of what Salter was all about: taking some symbol or icon (in this case, the giant standing robots) and changing the form ever so slightly, so that an icon that you knew was still recognizable but in its new environment [the robot] takes on a different meaning. What were once intimidating, overwhelmingly large styro-foam structures standing tall in large spaces, had now been transformed into a more approachable, accessible, even gentle-looking robot. The impact and the meaning changed in an instant for me when I saw it. To what exactly the impact and meaning is to me, I’m still fairly uncertain. But I think that’s okay. And I actually think that’s the point of all of Salter’s work. To not get it, to not understand its meaning in its entirety, to have the “WTF?!?” moment, and to recognize that it has had an impact on you, whatever that may be, and to embrace the impact and discomfort that it possesses.

Scout McCloud and the concept of an icon and the confusion and complexities surrounding it all took a lot for my brain to wrap around it all. What I really got out of McCloud’s cartoon is that symbols and icons are so much more abstract and complex than we even realize, and yet they are considered so “normal” in our culture.  The “These are not separate moments” icon on page 26 blew my mind. But they are separate! At least that’s what my mind tells me, because his hat is on and then it’s off. How can those not be separate? The icons of science, language, and communication blew my mind as well. I’ve never, ever thought about letters as icons. Letters as language? Sure, you bet. But letters as icons? Never! How insanely simple yet completely uncomfortable it makes me feel when I think about the words I’m writing write now are actually are symbols or icons of their own, and yet I have no idea what the icons really mean. I just know that they go together to form a word, and then a sentence, and then, ultimately, an essay. I don’t know how or why they really go together, but they do. The idea of non-pictorial and pictorial images and fixed versus fluid meanings also intrigued me, as I’d never thought about symbols and icons in that way. McCloud says that an “M” or a peace sign will more or less always represent what it stands for, regardless of the shape/form it takes, because it is inherently an “M” or peace sign. The meaning is fixed. It won’t change. But pictorial images, such as drawing a face (as represented on page 28) can have a multitude of different meanings and representations depending on how it is drawn. I find it fascinating that until this point in my life, I’d never given much thought to this notion, and I’d never given much thought to how much symbols and icons are embedded so deeply into our every day lives that they become so normal and accepted, without challenge or confusion.

Chris Coleman provokes us. He owes us something! We want to know more! We want the bunny to take off his bunny suit and actually be the owner of the house hopping around in his backyard. We want the grass in the front yard to suddenly grow really tall and then engulf the house so it turns into one big ball of weeds. And then we want to Weed-Monster to overtake the neighborhood, leaving the nearby police station to save the day with a weed-whacker. We just want something! Anything! Same goes for the “Collusion” video. Three uncomfortable minutes of watching smoke billow in and out of a rooftop pipe. In and out. Out and in. In. Out. Back in. For three whole minutes. We want something to happen in his videos, but nothing does. Or does it? As seemingly “boring” videos in disguise, I think the thing to take away from it is this: Why do we feel an inherent need/entitlement to see something happen in his videos? Why can’t we just watch the video with no expectations of what’s to come? Why are we constantly waiting for something “better” or more exciting, the latest and greatest, if you will, to come along? Because we are so culturally conditioned to feel this way. We are bombarded with videos, television shows,  and ever-evolving technology that tells us faster is better, more is better, more is exciting and worthwhile, more, more, more. And the reality we face in Coleman’s videos is that there’s nothing going on. We can’t accept that someone would “waste” five minutes of our time with some dorky, dull, downright boring video. But why do we think it is it boring? And why do we think it isn’t  worth our time? Because it’s uncomfortable to sit through five minutes of watching an animated tree ruffle in the wind, and a little bunny or bird scoot by every now and again, that’s why. Because, as a culture, we don’t know how to embrace the discomfort, and we sure as hell don’t really know how to be alone for five minutes watching some video without a smidge of interaction from the other side of the screen. We have this need to be constantly stimulated with our environment and we engross ourselves in the latest technologies so that we don’t have to ask the tough questions, so that we don’t have to interact and think and do the work for ourselves. We want things to come easy to us. We want it handed to us on a silver platter, wrapped up neatly in an aesthetically pleasing package with no room for  confusion or discomfort. Through all this, what I mean to say is that Coleman’s works, especially the “My House is Not My House” series, challenges our notions of what it means to really be uncomfortable, and to be aware and fully conscious that you are doing so.

There is a clarity and a peacefulness about both Salter and Coleman’s work. They seek to find peace and truth through their works despite the chaos and visual overload of our culture. They challenge us. They make us uncomfortable. They bring the conscious to the forefront, kind of yanking it through all the visual junk of our culture, and bringing us to a more simple and concise, and yet ultimately much more uncomfortable place.  “What does it meaaaaaaaannnnnn???” I kept coming back to this question throughout Salter’s presentation, Coleman’s videos, and McCloud’s abstract cartoon explanations. And the questions never got any easier to answer. However, what did get easier was the discomfort. I began to find ease in the uncomfortable. I began to accept that the discomfort is a beautiful thing. That the discomfort causes me to look at my visual world, in all its icon-laden and symbol-filled glory, with a closer eye and a clearer conscience. That’s not to things got any easier, because they certainly did not. Instead, dare I say it, I embraced, even relished in the fact that the images where strange. I had no idea how to react or respond to them, and that was okay.  Because I was conscious of what I was seeing, and certainly hopeful that maybe I’d find some ease in the discomfort and strangeness of it all. And I did.

I think Michael Salter said it best: “The closer I look, the stranger it all becomes.”

 



Icon Parody Source:
Funny Cool Stuff>> Logos Mania

Week 2: Fluidity

Laura Vandenburgh was briliant. Her ideas of drawing having an aesthetic element and a more functional element were brilliant. She seemed to suggest that drawing is not only beautiful sketches or doodles on the edges of a notebook, because it serves a more expansive purpose as well. What I got from Vandenburgh  was the incessant idea of the unconscious and the bigger picture; that art shouldn’t be viewed with a narrow eye or subjective manner. Instead, what I took from Vandenburgh was that art should encompass the bigger picture, the conscious and unconscious, the aesthetically appealing elements as well as the abstractly challenging concepts working together. That viewing art as a whole in this way is most conducive to getting the most out of it. Vandenburgh also seemed to express adamantly that anyone with a hand and a writing utensil can leave a mark. And that the mark, whatever it is and however it got there, is a product of your unconcious and concious working together to express some kind of inherent ideas, thoughts, or feelings that you have.

Margaret Kilgallen and her sentiments of “things that show the evidence of the human hand” had me feeling all giddy, nostalgic, and overwhelmed. Her craft of the handmade aesthetic and her notion of  art as beautiful because of its preserved aesthetics. Art 21 calls Margaret Kilgallen “straightforward yet stylized” and this description is quite fitting. She does work because of the possibilities it holds; maybe it will help someone else, maybe it will affect someone else in some profound way, maybe  it will mean nothing to the person and that will cause them to stop and reflect on why they got nothing out of it. But nevertheless, it’s rewarding to her, and it’s really what life and art are all about. The possibility, the connectivity and the authenticity that the art garners; the fact that art is handmade and authentic to the one person who made it, that it expresses the person’s craft as an artist and that the piece is specific to someone or something, an expression of a moment in time, and yet at the same time, that the piece has the potential to affect someone else. It seems Kilgallen’s art is focused around nurturing and maintaining these connections. For example, in the hand-painted train-yard photo, where Kilgallen takes an existing photo and hand paints another figure hugging the one in the photo, we see the power of not only the drawn-in figure, who seems to fit perfectly, but  with the word “WEED” scrawled on the hat, there is a sense of not only the handmade and authenticity, but also a sense of completion. That for Kilgallen, the photograph is now finally complete because it completes the bigger picture of her unconscious. With her large, expansive art pieces,  we encounter a straightforward style with tremendous impact. The huge walls with single words scrawled across them, as seen at the art installation at UCLA, or in “To Friend and Foe” with her giant figures of women, unique in style yet simplified and streamlined, or with her hand-painted train-yard art, all are representations of what Kilgallen exemplifies in her work: an honest and fluid portrayal of life through the human hand.

The concept that intrigued me the most in Art Theory For Beginners was the notion of “intrinsic qualities versus extrinsic qualities in art.” Bell’s formalism suggests the idea that “good” art should include all ideas within itself, so that the person viewing the art “gets it” and in turn doesn’t have to do any work or ask any hard questions,. This suggests that “representational art was bad because it focused on what was outside of the painting- what it represented” instead of being all wrapped up into one beautiful, aesthetically pleasing package, devoid of challenge and easily understood. I think Bell got it wrong. Way wrong. Because, art should be challenging, difficult, overwhelming, uncomfortable, uncertain, incredible, beautiful, ugly, simple, complicated, infinitely conceptual, or definitively aesthetic. It should be all and anything it can and wants to be. Suggesting that representational art was “bad” is to imply that all good ideas should be wrapped neatly and carefully up inside themselves, with no room for expanding on ideas, concepts, aesthetic qualities. When Bell says good art should include all ideas within itself, there are no possibilities, there is no future, there is no fluidity of ideas and emotions. It’s limited. And quite frankly, I think it’s boring. Instead, what we see with Margaret Kilgallen and Laura Vandenburgh is this brilliant practice of art, with ideas outside of themselves. Ideas that are not limited, that reverberate throughout their other works, and that focus on what is outside of the painting. How powerful is an art piece, object, or installation that makes you think outside of what you’re viewing. That pushes you and makes you uncomfortable, and that often times, warrants the “WTF?!” moment. That’s the good staff. 

 

Another interesting notion I encountered in ATFB was Danto’s perspective on art and art theory. He thought that Andy Warhols’ Brillo Boxes were the “representative of the end of art” in the sense that the “dominant orthodox trajectory of what art was thought to be” had collapsed.  The thing that resonates most with me in all of this is Danto’s idea of “institutional acceptance” as not being enough; that an art object should have to “earn its status” in the sense that art has to prove itself, in whatever capacity and whichever context, whether it’s in a gallery or on the side of a train, that art has to work for itself, and can’t rely solely on the institutionalization of itself to be considered art. 

As I understand it, at the same time Pop Art, Neo-Dadaism, and Minimalism were all crucial to the breaking of old institutionalized constructs of art and art theory, as was prevalant for decades before. As a broader spectrum of what art could be emerged, so too did the “dematerialization” of art objects. That’s to say, that this idea of dematerializing art was just a byway to the conceptualization of art: that in place of the materials, the craft, and the stroke as the crucial components and means by which to evaluate an art object, came a style of art where the concept of the work was the art. This conceptualization of art was more concerned with ideas, and less concerned with the objects used in an art piece, and was imperative in the progression of art as a display of the unconscious that can still be seen today. Just as Pop Art was not originally understood as it began in the 1950’s, so too was Kilgallen’s train-yard art not widely understood by her parents (and I’m sure, many others as well). I believe Kilgallen mentions something in one of her articles about her parents not understanding graffiti on the sides of buildings and trains, yet they don’t even stop to question print ads, television commercials, or any of the other “junk” being visually thrown at them on a daily basis. It’s interesting to note this comparison between visual ‘junk’ that our minds swift through on a daily basis, and how, depending on the medium it is being projected onto, we react differently, or rank one as “higher” form and the other as “lower”, such as graffiti.  

This idea is also discussed in ATFB, when they write: “There has always been a dialogue between mass culture and art, between the High and the Low.” I think this dialogue between differentiating the “good” and the “bad” or the “high and the “low” and the need to do so is a direct product of cultural constructions and cultural conditioning in terms of art; that is to say, that “high” art is/was often considered so because of the institution, and our tendencies as a society are to side with and trust in such institutional constructs, so of course most aren’t going to argue what is “good” art because some higher authority (i.e. a gallery) already said it was so. And on the flip side of that coin, “bad” art is considered so because of it’s exclusion from galleries and the stigmas attached to it.  

The other intriguing notion in Art Theory For Beginners is Heidegger’s concern with looking at art “less as objects, and more about arriving at truth.” This idea of arriving at truth can be seen in both Margaret Kilgalen’s work with train graffiti and her larger installations, and Laura Vandenburgh’s work with drawing as a means to access the unconscious. For Killagen the “evidence of the human hand” is obvious. Your hands don’t lie. Your hands reveal what kind of person you are, what kind of values you hold, what kind of truths you know to be true; your hands reveal your character in the sense that what you do with your hands, whether that be drawing, doodling, playing basketball, or helping an old lady walk across the street, all these actions reveal the truth. They give evidence as to what you stand for and who you are, what’s really important. And for Kilgalen, the evidence we see from her hand’s work is that she’s real. Honest. And that her work is never static. As for Laura Vandenburgh, the evidence of her human hand at work can be found in her ability to seam together the minute details with the larger, sweeping picture. She reveals her truths through her hand and her craft and her ideas and her expressions. 

Art shouldn’t be static. It should have a fluidity about it; there aren’t certain parameters that need to be filled, or that an artist has to prescribe to in order to make art and engage with an audience. It’s all encompassing and flexible and leaves room for the artist to reveal their truths, in their own time and in their own way. Simply putting thoughts, messages, drawings, doodles, whatever, on to a some sort of medium is enough. It is enough because through the hands, and ultimately, through the mind, truths are revealed.

This video by Ryan Woodward completely captures my heart, not only lyrically and stylistically, but also in the manner in which it was constructed- it’s an aesthetically pleasing mix of sketches and animation with great care for the handmade.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.