Albrecht Durer

On Wednesday I got to go see an exhibition of Albrecht Durer’s etchings and woodcuts in the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Not only is his work fascinating and inspiring to look at, but the exhibition was very relevant to the work I have been doing in my drawing class, with figure drawings, as well as my history class that has recently covered renaissance art. The vast detail that he was capable of achieving with etching is incredible to see in person, and also the way he purposely exaggerated certain parts of the body makes me think about figure drawing differently. I made a sketch while in the museum, and it was interesting to study his technique of hatching and crosshatching to create dimension in the figures. Overall, I would recommend this exhibition to everyone. It’s only four dollars for groups.

This is the drawing I made in the exhibit.
I did my best to imitate his style of figure drawing.

Possible Artists for Opposites Project

I narrowed my options for the “Opposites” project down to three pieces.

I picked Charles Ray’s “Yes”, Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, or something by Antony Gormley

Thinking about pieces for this project has been very difficult for me. The idea of opposites when assigned to a work of art, I think, is kind of arbitrary. Is the opposite of a two dimensional piece really a three dimensional piece? Or white the opposite of black? Not really. :/

Despite my confusions, I think this project is going to be a fun challenge. I look forward to seeing what we all come up with.

Our Performance

What a hectic couple of days! I thought we would never get that yarn up but the work was SO worth the payoff. In retrospect I am really glad we made a lot of the choices we did. The yarn looked great from across the courtyard and from above. I know we got some attention as well with all of those TV’s. The extension cords and the double projectors were also very effective, especially at night. All the people I talked to who saw us were really impressed. I think we should all be proud.
Yes we had our ups and downs with making choices about times and some stress about making other decisions but I think it was a really good experience. I learned a lot about what kind of work goes into a public art performance and I think we all learned a lot about each other. I really look forward to spending the rest of the semester with you guys.


The Yarn!!!


From Above

My Personal Space

My personal space on campus is the MLK fountain in front of the Marshall Center. The first time I sat there was before I was even a student at USF. I was here for a tour of the campus with my dad during my senior year of high school and in the middle of the tour I had an emotional breakdown. We were sitting on the benches near the fountain and I started to cry. I was overwhelmed about going to college and scared to leave my family and friends. I couldn’t picture myself here at USF. This is kind of a sad memory, but it has made that place very special to me as I have grown to live and love my years at USF. My freshman year I did one of my first photography projects there and first realized my love for art. I also spent time there with my current boyfriend, Adam, over the summer on one of our first dates. We jumped in the fountain for a swim and then laid out in the sun to dry. I still always remember that day with my dad, and how sad I was and scared. If only I had known how rich my life would become at USF.

So, to advertise our performance, I first thought it would be a good idea to take my box head to my personal space and use it (and myself) as the advertisement. However, I had second thoughts about giving our idea away that easily and decided to hand out flyers myself instead. Most people seemed friendly and interested, but of course there are always those few who turn them down.

Leslie Shows' Artist Lecture

At first glance Leslie’s work looks like simple landscape compositions, but they are made up of intricate collages with great detail. The pieces are relatively large in scale, but in order to get a full appreciation of the work they have to be viewed up close. Even the digital close up images she had to show were nothing compared to what I am sure the work looks like in person. I thought it was particularly interesting that she played with using multiple representation of the same thing in a single piece. For example, in one piece she used graph paper to represent salt crystals, and also used real salt water painted on the piece that started to crystallize. She also played with text in some of her pieces, which has always been a debate for me in my own work. In one piece she had segments of dust that were blowing through the air and one of the scraps she used actually had the word “dust” on it. Sometimes I am drawn to the idea of words in a piece but I think at times using legible text can make a piece less interesting. However, for Leslie, her work already has such depth from the elaborately detailed collages that the text adds another layer of interest and is not immediately noticeable. Overall, hearing Leslie talk about her work was an inspiring experience. She is such a young artist and has found a way, through her somewhat surreal subject matter and her mixed media method, to bring viewers into her own imaginary world.

Body Worlds

Last night I had the chance to go to the Mosi and see the BodyWorlds exhibit, and I thought the experience was worthy of blogging. I don’t know if you guys got to see the Bodies exhibit when it was here a few years ago but I missed it then and this was my first visit. It was absolutely incredible. All of the organs and full bodies in the exhibit are real people that have undergone the process of plastination after their death. In a nut shell plastination is a very in depth process of replacing all of the fluids in the body with a polymer. The actual body tissues can then be eaten away by chemicals and a plastic version of the exact shapes of the tissues are left perfectly intact. Slightly weird at first to look at, the bodies are SO REAL looking!! Even the eye lashes are just as they were on the real person’s face. Seeing each and every vain within the body and the exact position of the heart as it rests inside the chest is an inspiring experience. You should all go check it out of you have not already. It may even be a good place to sit with a sketchbook.

Central Patio of FAH

Space as Movement


Before my research of the central patio if the FAH building, I stepped back and observed the FAH building as a whole and it very much influenced my interpretations of our patio. The building is for the most part broken up into three different sections. I refer to them as the art side, the administration section, and the music side, and there are two central patios; the one we are analyzing and another one in the music section of the building. I noticed that these two patios are visually very much the same in size and layout, but are occupied in very different ways. In fact, the other patio seems to be occupied by students significantly more than our patio is, and it is a place for students to collaborate on projects, eat lunch between classes, and socialize. I think this has to do with the uses we have given “our” patio (vs. that the music students have given theirs) and the different needs for space the art students have. The variation in occupancy between these two seemingly identical spaces interested me the most in my preliminary observations of the space, so I choose to analyze the central patio space of the FAH building using the Space as Movement approach.
I have always been fascinated with public spaces and how people move about them. The way people move through a space directly corresponds to the character of that space, and the use people assign it. The FAH patio is used by art students mostly as a space to display artwork (like the big murals that are sometimes up at either end) or as a space for instillations of artwork. It is a large space that doesn’t seem to get large amounts of student traffic, so it could be a desirable location for a larger more intrusive instillation of work. It is also sometimes used for art supply sales or ceramic sales. Circulation of the space is minimal. When students get out of class they usually follow the walk way around the patio rather than cutting through it. However, the pillars that surround the space make it feel intimate and somewhat closed while also giving full visibility of the space from every angle, even above. This could positively affect the work because it would allow something large, that perhaps filled the whole space, to be seen from every angle. Also, on a smaller scale, the pill in the center of the patio could serve as platform for a smaller piece, or even an interactive one. Because it would be placed on the platform, the piece would feel more featured (if that was the desired effect.) Also, an interactive piece would be accessible that way form all sides. Through the daytime the occupancy of the space doesn’t change too much. Occasionally there is a person or two sitting at the tables or on the benches, and the most traffic, which is generally just a few people, is between classes. When the sun goes down, I would assume there would be even less movement because the darkness discourages out door leisure, and most students and teachers leave USF to go home for the night.
I think an interesting way to utilize this space would be with something that alters the normal use of the space, and the normal movement and circulation of people around the space.