"Naked"

On Tuesday our class took a trip up to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  Now before I get into the art piece I choose to review for this week's blog entry I would like to mention how wonderful riding the bus was.  The joys of public transportation are so numerous.  I read HG Wells's 'Time Machine', napped, talked with friends and all the while the bus plugged on toward the cities.  The trip went so quickly and I didn't have to worry about where to park, directions, gas, traffic, any of it.  All I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride.  Why we are so concerned about spending our dollars on buses, trains, and trams I will never understand.  I only hope that this type of transportation will become more readily available in my lifetime.

Now on to the art!!

This image shows the feather covered animal hide looking material that surrounded Eiko and Koma's "Naked" exhibition art.  The sculpture was set against a corner of the gallery with the two exposed sides covered with this stiff, textured cloth.  Through the holes one could see into a dark room, yellow light illuminating two nude figures laying in the center on a bed of dark feathers.  On one side you could enter the room and sit along the edge of the tattered wall on a couple benches.  

From there you could watch the art slowly play out in front of you.  The floor on which the nest rested appeared to be covered in dirt.  From the ceiling, dim yellow stage lights illuminated the couple while bits of mangled black material shifted in the breeze just below the bulbs, upsetting the steady angle of the beams.  The silence in the room was broken only by the drip of water.  Scattered in the darkness, drops thudded against the packed dirt floor.  The space around the artists was so black it was hard to tell where the room ended.  With nothing else to draw your attention, your focus was ensnared by the people slowly shifting in front of you.

My goal was to sit in that room and see if I could work out the meaning of this piece.  I wrote notes and rolled over the various implications in my mind.  After I give you my thoughts I am going to read the brochure I picked up from the museum and see what the artists have to say about their piece.

I think the thing that captured me the most was the way the couple shifted in the nest.  Their movements were slow, lethargic, and restricted.  Much like how something moves when it is first born, or when it is moments from death. The actors shifted using their backs to move themselves instead of their arms, as if too weak to utilize them properly.  They were naked and the make-up made them look so pale.  Every hint of color was covered. 

I spent a long time wondering if they were meant to look really old or really young.  I finally decided that the sculpture is not addressing birth, but death.  The darkness makes them seem so alone, trapped in the feeble struggle of their final moments.  The feathers, not like the warm nest of an infant, but as if shed from the decaying body of a giant raptor, embraced the sick.  Perhaps the feathers were molted from the actors themselves.  And now, naked, dying and isolated, they wait for their final strength to leave them.  The woman stared at me while she arched her back and attempted to move toward me, but the exhaustion of such an effort only made her fall back to where she started.  Every movement was slow, so slow.  

I am not sure of the purpose of the burned wall coverings that looked like tanned hides.  Perhaps it was the disintegration of life.  Surrounding this scene was the smothering realization that all things will die and decay.  And while we can watch this happen, whether on the benches or through the holes in the wall, the couple are isolated in this moment.  When we die, we will be weak and alone, for this is one place no one can follow.

So these are my thoughts - now let's see what Eiko and Koma have to say:

Well it turns out the brochure is not super specific.  The beginning quote is "Linger, stay here with your eyes, and kinetically observe how our bodies move toward death." So death was on the right track, but I don't think the artists wished for me to get so specific.  They are more interested in the interacted played out between them and the viewer. " . . . Being seen and seeing is tender, ambiguous, and odd - it asks the viewer to observe details." Their art focuses more on the presence, physically and mentally, of the body.  So while the sculpture may have addressed the frailty of the body and its journey toward death, it was meant to bring awareness to everything the body is.  "We think the body offers radical questioning," stated the artists, " . . . not asking questions necessarily, but questioning as a state of being."

Water + Oil = Me + Ink

I have done little work with ink and on the rare occasions that we have interacted we have not been huge fans of one another . . . to put it nicely.  In all honesty, I strongly dislike this medium so you can imagine my dismay when I first learned that our final project would be done in India and colored ink.  I think it is the unpredictable nature of ink . . . that and the almost complete inability to fine tune it once it is down.  The ink is not meant to be refined or delicate in these drawings.  But sadly those are two things that I am rather fanatical about.

So basically, this just means that I am going to need to let that go.  UGH, ink just goes EVERYWHERE!! There is no controlling it.  It always bleeds into itself when you don't want it to.  And I am far too impatient for this medium.  I want it to dry instantly, but it doesn't and I know that, yet I seem surprised every time the black shadow crazes across the light blue highlight.

I need to practice for this.  Probably a lot.  I dislike practicing too.  Why am I so whiny this week?  My frustration is being released through a bitchy disposition. :)  I suppose this ink is only fair.  I have not had that much trouble drawing bodies up to this point so it is only practical that I am met with a challenge that makes me despair.  If the "Life" wasn't the difficulty than the "Drawing" will be.

You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out . . .

Eek!  I think I forgot a blog in here somewhere!  Whoopsy daisy.  But that actually works out because we talked about feet last week and I TOTALLY forgot to mention it.

I was really happy that the feet lecture finally happened because I am the typical amateur artist where every person just happens to be balancing on their ankles and all the models got their hands removed at the wrists in some freak accident!  To be honest, hands and feet terrify me. (Drawing them, that is, . . . not in general.)  They always come out looking out of proportion and like they are made of clay.  So finding out what goes on inside them was SO helpful.  Basically your little tootsies are connected to long, curved cylindrical bones called metatarsals.  And the interesting thing is that your two smallest toes metatarsals are connected to a different part of the foot than the ones for your other toes.  So thus a little space is created there and that is why that part of the foot appears to be at a different angle.  BINGO!

So after getting all the technical jargon, out model hopped up on the chair and we honed in on everything from the knee down.  I was so proud of mine!  This is leaps and bounds ahead of where I was before!  My feet look like feet and not pudding-filled latex gloves!

I am still a little scared of the hands, but this has given me a lot of confidence.  Maybe, like the feet, the hands are not as hard as they look!

Shell Contour: The Sequel

So Tuesday we had to turn in the second attempt at our shell contour drawings.  Compared to the first, this one excelled in some areas and regressed in others. It is always hard when you try something new because (although you usually learn a lot) it rarely turns out as nice as if you had just played it safe.  I tried to be more dramatic with my perspective and give the contour lines a more organic feel.  The bumps on the cone are still giving me a hard time and you can see my perspective is a little off.

I was still able to keep from drawing the outline though, but I dislike how messy it looks. The first drawing was so clean and my attempt at a more active, sketchy style slightly missed the mark.  Also, I need to work on letting go of some of the details and focus more on the general movement of the form.  I get so wrapped up in getting all the bumps that the intensity of the shells curves is lost and the resulting drawing looks flat.

Oh well, that is why we are doing four right?  Rarely does someone get things right the first time.  So this shell is in the middle somewhere.  I do not yet have a grasp on this contour business, but I hope by not playing it safe I may better achieve a drawing I can be proud of!

Halfway Point!

So far it has been an interesting first half of the semester.  There has been a fair mix of success and frustration.  I have felt some improvements since the first day of class. It is easier to see the rib cage and draw the human form with less rigidity.  My contours are also improving and my line is becoming more confident.  At the same time I have a hard time abandoning shading in my drawings and the pelvis is still hard for me to confidently position.  I am hoping this will improve.  I would also like to add more dynamic motion in my gesture drawings.  Hopefully by becoming more familiar with the layout of the body I will be able to sketch it down more quickly and with greater intensity.

You can go here to see the work I have created so far this semester.

Here is the drawing I am most proud of so far.  I love the pull of her curves and (minus the head) it feels like one of the most proportionally correct drawings I have done so far.  Sadly, our professor was not a fan.  No shading.  Ever.  So that bummed me out.  So I started over and this was what I came up with.  It was done in about 20 mins was drawn with (although I may hate to admit it) a bit of contempt.  This is one of the hard parts about life drawing.  It is not about drawing the figure.  It is about drawing what is inside them.