Finished!

Or almost anyways... just a few touch-ups to go!

Rabbitface

Finally, I've begun a self-portrait:
This time the oil paints have been acting differently, drying WAY faster than normal. I gesso-ed with a rabbit-skin glue mixture this time.... too much absorption.

Mural

I began my first mural today in my mother's bathroom! We've had this space in the tiles for a very long time (originally to be filled in with a tile-collage-mural type thing..... it just never happened). I've been using a piece by Alfons Mucha (Topaz) as reference:

And finished!

Figure

FINALLY we had the model come in! As we were drawing her though.... she got super dizzy, near fainting and was throwing up. Not so pleasant. Idyllwild has bad luck with models

In replacement of the unfortunate model, I had a friend pose for me: 

Gouache on Beetle

I painted a beetle today! I've been told people write entire novels on grains of rice... so why not a bug? Honestly, applying gouache to a deceased beetle the size of your thumb is VERY unnerving. But after finishing this, I thought, "Let's do another!" I found a significantly smaller one in the bathroom, a quarter the size of my pinkie fingernail. I was about to paint on it.... when its foot started twitching around! Oof! The reaction was not my most graceful. Luckily, it was on its way out, and is now quite dead. Take two! 

Underglaze Designs

Painted/under glazed my figure! Now waiting to clear glaze it, so it's shiny and doesn't disintegrate outside.

 Blurry Headshot :)

   

Sadly the leg decided to completely detach. Ugh. 

Almost Finished!

Glazed the backround for this one, now finished AND signed! Ooo.

 Started to put in the wallpaper for this one, still needs a bit of work.... this nose! So difficult. 

(This photo is a little blurry)

Series Starter

Started a new series! Hurrah! It will be a triplet, and in all of them, the figures will be somehow blending into a wallpaper backround. I started with the figures this week: 

(This photo's a little blurry)

Still  a bit to do (and a whole third piece)... but hey! 

Sunday Sketch

Experimenting a bit with Gouche, pencils and chalk: (almost successful) 

And another, not quite as finished:

Feminism and Art

(For all the writing I have not done: my research paper on Feminism and Art)

Men and women have both been creating art as long as the human species has existed. The techniques and tools of selected crafts have evolved alongside our population, exponentially improving the quality of one’s work. Showcasing of these, however, has never been quite equal between the sexes. Men have primarily proceeded to run and be exhibited for centuries, undermining the work of females. Generic art history books could almost all be re-titled “The History of White Male Art”. (Käthe Kollwitz, Guerrilla Girl) Thus was born feminist art. Feminist art can be simply defined as art by women expressing the status of gender inequality. (Tate Collection) 

For a long time, women’s status in Western society have been as mothers, caregivers

and housewives. Husbands generally worked long days to bring home money for their families.  In 1707, French-born Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston became the United States’s first female working portrait artist in Charlestown. Wife of Reverend Gideon Johnston and mother, Henrietta continuously helped financially supplement her family by her commissions. Arriving to Massachusetts, Reverend Johnson became Rector of the St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and often received late pay of his salary. In one of his letters he writes:  “were it not for the assistance of my wife gives by drawing of pictures…I should not be able to live.” (Martha R. Severens)

Later, in the 1945, the famous splatter-painter Jackson Pollock married fellow artist Lee Krasner. Recognized as Mrs. Jackson Pollock, Krasner began taking lessons with Hans Hofmann. Hofmann, so “intrigued” by Krasner’s work, told her, “This is so good that you would not know it was done by a woman.” (Broude, Garrard) Patriarchal dominance in the west at the time undervalued women as artists, labeling them as incapable. 

Mexican “surrealist” painter Frida Kahlo and wife of muralist Diego Rivera, for many years traveled internationally for exhibition and commission of her husband. Frida was ignored as an artist herself, on these trips, and was continuously referred to as Mrs. Rivera. Slowly accumulating representation in selected galleries, Frida strived to become financially independent of Diego through sales of her paintings. Unlike many female artists, by early 1940, Frida’s reputation as an artist was booming and her paintings were exhibited in Paris, New York, San Francisco and Mexico. (Mike Brooks) Nearly fifty years after her death in 1954, Frida Kahlo is considered the first artist to display the “interior reality of a women’s life” narrating the truths of disablement, rejection, miscarriage, suffering, homosexuality, revolution, subversion and devotion. (Germaine Greer)

 

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait: The Broken Column 1944

 Many women artists took on the wife-of role, supporting their artist husband who

soon would become better known than herself, until the Feminist Art Movement came up to par in the late 1960s. Women have now become particularly interested in their difference from men and what makes their art unique. Even in the 20th century, painted images of flowers and landscaped are perceived as "womanish" and are deemed illegitimate. (Jeannie Shubitz) Products of the Feminist Art Movement, however addressed patriarchal dominance, discrimination and sexual objectification in representation of genitalia, birth, menstruation, rape, et cetera. For centuries art was produced aesthetically appealing, appropriate for décor, and these subjects were new and shocking to society.

An incredible influence to the art world was artist, educator and author, Judy Chicago. Chicago pioneered a new type of teaching instruction to help art students find their individual voices. Judy Chicago remembers for a woman to openly express her own content in the late sixties, early seventies as "extremely dangerous, it was tantamount to risking one's modest reputation". "[Women were] faced with these attitudes, like you can't be a woman and an artist too, the idea that there was no such thing as female content, that woman didn't have different point of view.  What does that do to a young woman who is raised in an environment of visual form that comes out a male's experience?" (Judy Chicago) Chicago set up the first feminist art program focusing on women students at the California State  University. Later Chicago brought her program to the California Institute of the Arts, collaboratively creating the first female-centered art installation, Woman House. (Judy Chicago Educator) Each women involved in the Womenhouse installation was given a room or space in a seventeen-room abandoned building in Hollywood that was soon to be demolished, to create some sort of consciousness-raising exhibit. The first night of the opening was only available for women, later receiving general audiences. Judy Chicago changed the female station in the art world, exhibiting her solo and collaborative work in many galleries and museums.

Another group that surfaced in skepticism of the art industry was the Guerrilla Girls. Originally commencing in New York in 1985, when several women noticed the small number of female artists on display in "An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. The Guerrilla Girls are particularly known for their peculiar costume of fishnets, short skirts and gorilla masks. They refer to each other by name of famous deceased women artists, executing their fine and performance art humorously. Their well known piece speaks of the walls women face as artists:

 

Women have frequently been portrayed as objects of admiration rather than intellectual subjects. In 1989 the Guerrilla Girls released a poster posing the question: "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" stating that less than 5% of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female." Sixteen years later, they did a recount, assuming things had improved. Numbers decreased however, in 2005 only 3% of the artists in the modern art sections were women and 83% of the nudes were female. (Guerrilla Girls)

 

In contrast, photographer Rion Sabean recently revealed “Men-Ups”, featuring masculine men posing in theme to the classic pin-up girls. Sabean says, "My works focus on gender and sexuality, wherein I attempt to bring light to the scrutiny and judgments of society through the use of exaggerated story-telling." Many billboards and commercials use female sex appeal for advertisement regularly and this series ridicules how a pose can be acceptable and provocative for one sex, but not the other. (Emma Gray)

 

 Also, in 2011, SOMArts held the show “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”, switching the stature of what art critic John Berger observed, "Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” In this show, men are provocatively exposed and objectified. Many pieces in the show are satirical and men are portrayed similarly to classical portraits with luscious smooth skin, select curves and indifferent expressions. (Platts, Georgia)

 

Currently nationwide (2004-2007), 52% of professional trained artists and art historians are female, yet 98% of art the National Gallery of Art showcases has been created by males. (Klebesadel, Helen) In 2011, sixty percent of all the School of Visual Art graduates were female (SVA Annual), yet only twenty-three percent of solo exhibitions in New York feature women.  (Martin, Courtney E.) Such ratios of successful art industry participants seem much too uneven.

Though present women’s’ circumstances in the art industry is less than sufficient, much has progressed. ”The art world has changed forever in terms of its representation of women. The sheer amount of attention toward women artists is worth noting and it is where we need to be at this moment. The attitude toward feminist art has really changed and ten years from now we will not be having this conversation in the exact same way,” says Catherine Morris, third director and curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The art world will evidently change as it has over its existence. Looking back at prehistoric cave painting in comparison to now, exponential growth is clear and suggests the future equality of female artists. 

Works Cited:

 Brooks, Mike, Frida Kahlo Fans, Complete Biography, (viewed March 1, 2012)

 Broude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D., Power of Feminist Art, Harry N. Abrams (September 1, 1996)

 Chicago, Judy, On Being a Woman Artist video, SFMOMA Release Date: October 2000, (viewed March 11, 2012)

 Chicago, Judy Educator, Woodman, Donald, judychicago.com, (viewed March 8, 2012) 

Forsyth Alexander, ed. “Henrietta Johnston: Who Greatly helped…by drawing pictures.” Winston-Salem, N.C.: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 1991, (web. viewed March 8, 2012)

Guerrilla Girls, guerrillagirls.com webpage, poster index 1989, 1990, 2005, (viewed March 2, 2012)

 Gray, Emma, 'Men-Ups': Rion Sabean's Gender-Bending Photos, Huffington Post (October 6, 2011), (viewed March 11, 2012)

 Greer, Germaine, Patron Saint of Lipstick and Lavender Feminism, Tate Collection

Shubitz, Jeannie, Women, Art and Gender: A History, NMWA, (1998), (viewed March 11, 2012)

 Klebesadel, Helen, The Feminist Art Movement, Who Does She Think She Is? documentary, (August 24, 2012), (viewed March 11, 2012)

 Kollwitz, Käthe, Guerrilla Girls

 Martin, Courtney E., Why smart women still don’t make it up the career ladder,  Christian Science Monitor, Opinion: (May 24, 2011), (viewed March 8, 2012)

 Middleton, Margaret Simons. Henrietta Johnston of Charles Town, South Carolina: America’s First Pastellist. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, (1966), (viewed March 2, 2012)

Platts, Georgia, Ms Magazine blog, Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze, (October 8, 2011), (viewed March 11, 2012)

Severens, Martha R.,  Johnston, Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering (ca. 1674-1729), (viewed March 8, 2012)

Severens, Martha R. “Who was Henrietta Johnston?” The Magazine Antiques. (November 1995): 704-709, (viewed March 8, 2012)

SVA Annual 2011, Student Demographics, Graduate Enrollment Statistics: Percentage Female, (viewed March 12, 2012)

 Tate Collection, Glossary: Feminist Art, (viewed March 5, 2012)

 Weil, Harry J. "Great women artists: a conversation with Catherine Morris."Afterimage July-Aug. 2010: 14+. Student Resources in Context. (viewed March 1, 2012)

 Feww!

Firing

My incredibly heavy, 32 inch-tall ceramic figure came out of the kiln today [almost] entirely intact! Luckily, the giant crack (that is hidden under the right hand) can be manage-ably fixed. Next I must glaze it. What a task. 

Dave McKean

Ever since I was eight, I've had a fascination with the works of Dave McKean. He's done much collaboration with (also, my favorite writer) Neil Gaiman in books and films. I'm sure I've watched Mirrormask a good 25 times during the last eight years.... I'd love to meet this man in person one day.







 

Brothers Quay

As recommended by Ray Caesar, I have been watching multiple short films by the Brothers Quay. Here is a little clip-y montage of various films, complete with a little peppy soundtrack.

Ray Caesar

The creepy eerie graphics of Ray Caeser: the Englishman born a dog, who learned to draw by doodling upside down on his stomach with pen. No actual paintbrushes involved.

Menacing Mothers

Lately many of my art teachers have been assigning prompts either in a collaborated way, or about something that "matters to you". For instance, in painting, I'm supposed to be designing an image that deals with some sort of problem that you feel needs to be addressed. Mine was originally inspired by the "We Can Do It!" poster from the '40s. Using a classic painting of a woman holding flowers with her young daughter at her side for reference, I replaced the bundle of flowers with a hammer as a sort of feminist statement. Unfortunately, as I was working on it yesterday, many people began interpreting the image as domestic violence....

Oops. 

 I will continue to work with the piece. Perhaps I can make the hammer a little less menacing by, well, actually painting it in. 

Puppetry

I've recently developed a particular liking to puppets, the making of puppets and the history of puppets. There are numerous kinds of puppets, but marionettes and GIANT political ones from Bread and Puppet are the most intriguing.



The about is a still from the film Across the Universe. A man who had apprenticed with the Bread and Puppet theatre designed them.











The above are some pieces from Bread and Puppet Theatre






Here is a snapshot of the English Mr. Punch and his puppeteer, from the Punch and Judy show. The production is very much British humour, in a sense that people get bashed over the head with sticks and receive visits from the Devil.

Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean collaborated to publish a very dark satirically fun picture book of The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. In this version Mr. Punch manages to outsmart (and kill) just about everyone he meets.








....Much more scary.

And last but not least, some lovely vintage marionettes: