It’s strictly for the birds . . .

Why is that whenever I see birds perched and waiting I have to stop and stare.  I have always been envious of birds and the life they have.  They can be sweet or menacing, graceful or clumsy and their song can be beautiful or shrill.  I was out driving home from work when I saw these fellows perched almost perfectly spaced apart.  They are always there on this electrical post and always observing life from a viewpoint that many of us rarely see.  It got me to thinking of this phrase, “for the birds” and I wondered what it actually meant.

Some say that “for the birds” means that it is worthless while others use it as a nice way to say someone is crazy or living in a dream world. I prefer the second since the world birds live in is surreal compared to our own.  So if anyone asks you, “Who is this Alicia person, anyways?” Please tell them,

“That girl? She’s for the birds.”

It’s been too long . . .

Starting this semester I promised myself that I would continue to blog, but like most promises I couldn’t quite keep it.  However, I will start this week! As my first post back, let me fill you in on what I’ve been working on:

With Digital Photography

– I have been carrying my camera everywhere with me and have gotten some nice images. My most successful have been while I’ve been in my car (don’t worry, I was sitting in traffic or at a red light when I took almost all of them . . ; ).  I will be uploading my “Life in a Car” series tomorrow.

Here are some of my older photos that I took while I was in New York this past Christmas:

With Installation/Sculpture

– I have one sculpture installation at Pont-Aven’s School of Contemporary Art in France in their Mail Art exhibition.  Here is an image of the sculpture:

I love using mixed media in my work and this sculpture was no exception.  During my Illustration class this semester I was working with two objects for an assignment and one of those objects was a light bulb.  While working and staring at the light bulb for over a couple of weeks, I started to become really interested in how they work and in how they are built.  With this fascination constantly playing with my mind, I chose to use the light bulb in this exhibit.

The cartoons are famous for illustrating an idea through the imagery of the light bulb and I thought what if the light bulb actually held your great thought or any thought inside your head.  Before that thought leaves your mind it must germinate somewhere . . . . So I created a place for it to grow and mature.  Within this light bulb I was thinking about mail art and my recent transition back to America from France.  Using an American stamp and a French stamp I wound my thought and added more texture and text.  I took out the filament of the light bulb and placed my thought there.  Then I reinserted the glass mount and filament into the bulb and sealed it.  I have to tell you, the best part was disecting the light bulb.  If you ever want to know how to do this, ask me and I’ll help you.

I haven’t lost my fascination with light bulbs and I am continuing to take them apart! I want to start working on another project with the light bulb, but we’ll see if my crazy life will let me get some  of my art in!

– I am continuing to work on my books, but I will be starting a new one, hopefully tomorrow.  I want to build a book out of Plexiglas: the covers, the pages – everything except the binding! I think that I will dry point etch images into the “pages” so that as you “read” the book you will be able to look at the image on that specific page while also looking at the whole image created by the pages being stacked on top of each other.  I’m really excited about this book!!! Unfortunately, it is also near the end of the semester and assignments are breaking down my door! I really miss the studio and time that I had in France. . . . . .

I will continue to keep you all posted and I’m really sorry for my absence! So let us continue onto the battlefield of art itself!

The Quest

Here is the link to watch my video. I plan on continuing to work on it and make some changes.  If the weather permits, I will try to make a new version before I leave Pont-Aven.

http://vimeo.com/8057143

Final Project Proposal for The Quest

I have created a stop motion animation that revolves around a story.  A message trapped inside a bottle frees itself in order to fulfill its own ambitions.

Coupled with a part of Claude Debussy’s Ballade, this short video is a poem unto itself.  Using over a thousand images, I wanted this stop-motion animation to have a broken quality to emphasize the paper boats fragility.  It’s journey follows a path over obstacles and open land.  It is the quest of the little boat and the story’s climax that I want to focus on in this work.  I want this video to have a surreal and dreamlike quality with this paper boat traveling through reality.

The message that the boat is composed of is actually a poem by Mary Oliver.  I never intended the viewer to be able to read the poem, but the poem holds great importance to me.  Understanding the video doesn’t require that you need to know the poem, but it does add another dimension.  So here is Mary Oliver’s The Journey.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and  the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Looking Through the Puddle

With my final Digital Photography assignment I was working on a couple of ideas that didn’t end up panning out.  While back in Pont-Aven, I kept trying to find time to take pictures, but it was constantly raining.  So I ceremoniously stood up in my studio and decided that the rain was going to work with my photos instead of being a nuisance.

Trudging along in the rain while trying to not get my camera wet, get hit by cars or let the wind take off with my umbrella, I found my inspiration.  Earlier this semester I wrote about Italo Calvino’s excerpts from “Invisible Cities” and I was thinking about his excerpt “Cities & Eyes” that talks about the city of Valdrada which is reflected by the lake it borders.  The story of this city is wonderful, but for my purpose I adapted the tale.  Standing in the rain, holding on to my umbrella, I stared into the puddles at my feet and wondered “What if these puddles didn’t reflect what was around them, but revealed another city parallel to ours?”  I then stared to imagine how these puddles were windows to this “other world” and we can only get glimpses of this world when the puddles exist.

The next step was capturing this idea with my camera.  With the images below, I worked with a specific formula. I wanted the images to vary, but as a whole, I wanted this idea of two worlds existing simultaneously to also be present.  To do this I would include parts of the setting or objects from Pont-Aven alongside the images in the puddles.  These images are meant to be displayed in two groups of four images.  I will be displaying these groups horizontally with space separating the first group above from the second group below.

With some of these photos, I also played with how you looked into the puddle. Some of the photos are a little unsettling because the image is right-side-up, but the setting is upside-down.  I really enjoyed taking these photos and I’m going to continue this idea in other cities or try to push this concept further.  In the end, the rain can be a photographers friend!

Thoughts on Man Ray

 

While taking a detour trip to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin to see the exhibition on Surrealism, I found myself struck by all of the Surrealist portraits that Man Ray took.  The Neue Nationalgalerie had placed a selection of his photos along the wall before you entered the exhibit.  The legend of “Man Ray” as photographer was common knowledge to me, but I never knew the extent of his artwork.

While back in Pont Aven, I started to research Man Ray and who he photographed for portraits.  It seemed as if you were anyone important in the art world, Man Ray took your portrait.  The Dadaists Surrealists were a main portion of the photographs, but this is probably because Man Ray himself was a part of this group.  As I delved into his art works, I was blown away by all of the different mediums that he used and explored.

Man Ray’s resumé of art work includes painting, drawing, cinema and 3D objects (usually found objects).  When looking at his other works, I saw the influence of Surrealism as a more prominent factor throughout.  Man Ray dappled in all of these mediums and was successful in them as well.  Besides his photography, I really love his 3D objects and of his cinema, I have only seen “Le Retour A La Raison” (The Return To Reason) which I enjoyed.

His breadth in photography is nonetheless astounding.  Not only was he taking photos of the Dada and Surrealist artists, he was also taking photos of other influential people of that time: Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Bridget Bate Tichenor, Antonin Artaud and others posed for his camera.  Plus, Man Ray used photography to further his own Surrealist art.  Creating dream-like settings and surreal ideas, Man Ray used the camera as a medium rather than simply a tool to document.

Leading the way through this media, Man Ray created a new type of photography.  Without the use of the camera, Man Ray created photos by using light-sensitive paper, objects and a light source. This avant-garde technique of the photogram was coined “rayograph” by none other than Man Ray himself.  No one knows for sure how he made some of these rayographs, but here is a brief explanation on how to make photograms: In the dark room you would take light-sensitive paper and place any kind of object on top. Then you would turn on the lights and wherever the object blocked the light source from the paper would be white and whatever the light touched on the paper would be black.  In these simplified terms, the rayographs would seem to anyone who hasn’t seen them to be nothing special.  What Man Ray does with this seemingly simple technique is extraordinary.

All without the use of the camera, Man ray created these often elaborate and artistic images.  This last image (one of my favorites) I believe is currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. When I leave from pont Aven, I will probably be spending most of my waking hours in this museum and I know a good part of those hours will be looking at this rayograph and any others they might have by Man Ray.

While researching his rayographs I badgered my fellow photography friends here at PASCA as to how he could have created some of these images.  I am still fully engrossed in this idea of how the light and the light-sensitive paper work with each other.  Talking with my friends, I’ve come to realize that the possibilities are endless.  The objects blocking the light source don’t always have to be touching the paper which will give this X-Ray effect.  Plus, depending on how thick the object is (or if it’s clear like a glass vase), you can create intricate designs and illusions.  I have not yet had the pleasure of creating my own photograms, but I hope to experiment soon!

A Little Video

So when I got back to Pont-Aven from Paris, it was windy and raining. I walked around saying that there was a tempest outside because that’s the term my host dad uses during this weather. I love this term and said it constantly to anyone who indulged me. During this time (it might have been around 10p.m.) it was raining so hard that I had to go over to the windows to watch the storm. There is this orange light fixture outside the studio that was casting an awesome glow inside and also casting the shadow of the rain on a nearby wall. As I took in this beautiful spectacle I thought, “What ould Barry do?” Instantaneously I knew, “Why take pictures of course!” So I started my photo shoot. What turned out were some pretty odd pictures of my shadows and the rain. Then, an epiphany. I was taking photos that blurred my motion and when I was running through the shots I decided to put them together into a small video and this is what happened:

http://vimeo.com/7687587

I think I want to add sound to this later, but I’m not sure what type of sound yet. Rain? Music? Combo of both? I’ll keep you all posted as to what becomes of this little dance!

I might also post some stills of that night, but I’m not sure. I don’t want the stills to undermine the video, but the stills are pretty interesting. What do you think?

Listening to Crows

Characters that I often focus on in my artwork are birds. Since I was little, birds have been a fascination and envy of mine. While in Paris, I was able to see some shenanigans that the crows by the Eiffel Tower got up to.

Crows are one of the most intelligent birds around, but they always get a bad wrap. While watching them, I started thinking about a story where these crows tried to live up to this idea of being evil omens and always up to no good, but failing miserably.  For instance, the head crow would be sitting on a bench glaring at the pedestrians across from him while the crow above is pulling things out of the trash.

“Stop it will you?! I can’t give a proper, ‘You are doomed for eternity’ glare with you banging through the trash!”

“What? I’m hungry. Oooh, potato chips! Want some?”

A silent blank one-eyed stare. “What kind are they?”

My love of graffiti . . .

I will and forever always love graffiti. Actually that is too vague. I love graffiti that takes the artists some time and thought into their work. In L.A. especially, I often just see letters scrawled on walls or overpasses. Any child can do it and the risk of being caught is minimal since it shouldn’t take that long to complete. Now those graffiti artists who put time and effort are risking more and creating better work. I admire them and love to document any graffiti that I see around me. Here are some works that I saw in Paris.

I think that this work might have been commissioned, but if it wasn’t than it is even more impressive.

In the pictures above, the graffiti wasn’t on the windows, but was being reflected since it was on the building across from those windows. When I saw this reflection, however, I had to take a shot.

Sights from Paris

While I was in Paris I was noticing all the different types of architecture and structures around me.  I have always been fascinated by how architecture is made to be aesthetically pleasing almost everywhere in Europe.  America can at times have buildings that are also aesthetically pleasing, but usually a building is just a building.

The photos above were taken in the crypts below the Pantheon in Paris.

This was one of the paths down from Sacré Coeur Basilica in  Montmartre. I loved this walk at night.

There are so many pictures of the Eiffel Tower that I was surprised to find myself taking such a cliché picture . . . sometimes you just can’t help yourself!

When I was wandering around the Latin Quarter I came across this Hotel and had to laugh! Then of course I had the song stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Darn you Eagles!