Reading reports were due today...... I know obviously we have to do some readings for this class, I just sometimes find it really hard to get through the ones that we have to read. Oh well! At least there are not too many, I think there are even less than last semester, possibly.

Through all of last semester, and probably what will be all of this semester, we have seen Canada represented in SO many different ways. I am not really sure why historians and politicians, and all types of people keep trying to pin point one specific identity, or phrase, or image, to being "Canadian". There isn't a single one!

This is Canada, but its only a small part of it...

We talked a bit about the history of NSCAD. Sooo obviously I started looking into artists who studied there.....

Hangama Amiri "Shahara"Series 2012

Hangama Amiri graduated with a BFA but is originally from Afghanistan. She paints these amazing paintings that are sort of familiar of childhood but are also abstract in the way that Dali painted his dreams as his saw them or how the earth could be represented as a 2D object.

 

Hangama Amiri "The wind-up dolls of Kabul" Series 2011

Siobhan Gallagher graduated with an interdisiplinary BDes and now works in NYC with the Penguin Group, so thats pretty cool! She designs alot of book covers now, and other works for publishing. These are some covers she designed, all for the same book, but targeted for different demographics;

I always thought it would be pretty cool to design for books, because you would probably get to read the books and also keep them, and I am kind of a dork. Also I one hundred percent judge books by their covers, and am not ashamed of it.

First entry for second semester! We looked at a lot of amazing artists today, as usual, but the one that struck me the most was Murray Favro and his version of Van Gogh's bedroom. SO COOL. I always think it is crazy when artists are able to do things like this, it would take so much work and planning in order to have everything line up properly and look realistic. Meanwhile I get bored of my artwork after 15 minutes...

Murray Favro "Van Gogh's Room" 1974

I have a good friend who is majoring in Computer Science and I have spent the last 3 years trying to convince her that she should use that knowledge to create those amazing building projectors that these works remind me of. The ones that transform entire, huge buildings into something completly different and exciting, but just for a few minutes or an evening, such as this one in China..

We also talked a bit about how Alex Colville had originally planned to study medicine at Dalhousie, and it is crazy to think how different not just his life would have been, but how different MTA might be if he hadn't come here. I have to wonder how drastically my life choices have effected my future- its a scary thought. I had never planned on studying art history, I was originally in International Relations in my first semester at MTA, and after that I was planning to transfer to film school, but instead chose to try art history and I guess I fell a bit in love with it. How is that going to effect my future? I know a International Relations degree and an Art History degree are definitly very different, and the doors I will later be able to open will not be the same. I think I did, but I hope that my choice was right and that things turn out even half as well as they did for Alex Colville!
I have had a copy of Colville's "To Prince Edward Island" hanging in my cottage for as long as I can remember, but I never knew anything about it except that the following binoculars creeped me out as a child, until I came accross the country and took art history at MTA. Maybe its fate? If you believe in that stuff.

Alex Colville "To Prince Edward Island"