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"

"Canadianness is a more or less arbitrary way of understanding...artists who live full time in New York are still claimed as Canadian... How these artists relate to the Group of Seven? I don't care!"

Thank the peace that someone else thinks like this, let alone someone established and invited to speak to our class. Chris Downe was a really great speaker to have because he gave our class a different perspective on canadian art than what we have been getting. I understand and appreciate that we need to learn about the figureheads and the big names... but they aren' t the reason that I love art. Its those that don' t stick to the yellow brick road and do some really interesting things... Chris gave us a whole list of them (I got 23 names to look up and fall in love with that, for the most part, I had never heard before!). 

There is always the goal to paint something newer, something better, to create some new revolutionary style and have your name in the newsprints because really, who wants to "hitch up your car to a horse", wouldn't that be going backwards?

What about Art for Arts-sake?! What about just colour and emotion and representation of what you want to represent in a way you want to represent it. There don't have to be rules... isn't that the point?

Ben Reeves

Paul-Emile Borduas

Doug Kirton

Lucy Hogg

Sandra Meigs

Two of my favourite topics in class today - painting with a palette knife (Bourduas) and painting from your dreams.
We also discussed Refus Global... so on that note: Down with reason, make way for magic!

"The Spirit of Texas" Jennifer Morrison

It "...is not a style. It is the cry of a mind turning back on itself" 

- Antonin Artaud

"Burning Giraffe" Salvador Dali

"Conceptualizing dream imagery as a metaphorical narrative is analogous to understanding the underlying meaning of an abstract painting"

-Myron L. Gluckman

I've always had excessively vivid and, well, violent dreams. I'm not a disturbed person or anything like that at all, but almost every night I die in my sleep. I don't watch alot of creepy shows or play violent video games, I don't know if I really buy into the whole "influences of the social media" argument. Everybody thinks differently but one thing is always the same. We are all looking for something; love, money, happiness... I don't know. Maybe my dreams are trying to tell me that I want someone to take care of me and keep me safe. Or maybe I was a serial killer in a previous life and this is my pay back. Who knows. I'm sure that Freud would have some pretty interesting theories though. 

Susanna Shap

The 1930's were a period of transition in the arts - the artist begins to pay more attention to what's going on inside the work, and begins moving away from nationhood and geographically specific art to a more international art scene. In comes Avant-garde.
Aesthetic emotions and significant form become the talk of the proverbial town. Fauvist styles and sentiments had a strong impact on the art of the time.

"And Max, the kind of all wild things, 

was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all" 

- Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

While the fauvist brush stroke may not be continued through the style of the times, the sentiment persists. 

LL Fitzgerald "Pritchard's Fence" 1928

Fitzgerald moves away from the reclusive nature of the group of seven and instead includes scenes of homes and life in his images. However, there are almost entirely abandoned - lonely and cold.  Snow banks waiting to be plaid in and swings waiting to be swung. 

Eerie perfectness. 

Empty habituated landscape. 

Juxtaposition of natural fluidity against geometric houses. 

I've been focusing a lot in my classes lately on public art and its relationship with the community. I have to say though, I wasnt head over heels for some of the works that we looked at, Such as Emanuel Hahn who I find slightly rigid and seemingly trying to recreate classical arts instead of progressing forward. To me, just a bit boring.

There are way more interesting sculptures in Canada then that!

In Vancouver there has been a park that has in it 14 sculptures of Laughing Men, all with unique expressions. Whenever you see them people are hanging off of them or re-enacting the poses or climbing all over them, They get dressed up for holidays and events and are a really well-enjoyed part of the landscape.

My point is that Public art can be just a art of the landscape that nobody ever notices, or they can be interactive and enjoyed and really turn a neighbourhood into a community, even a destination. 

Art during war-time years is typically strongly restricted. The few areas where it is allowed to flourish are typically in promotional or documentary methods. It is during the interbellum where true creativity thrives. I started looking into interbellum art and came across something pretty unrelated but also really cool... Inmate art as promoted by Dr. Jean Lacassagne.

Lacassagne was a doctor who worried about the health and well-being of inmates and prostitutes.He was the son of a law doctor who made many visits to inmates in Lyon, his hometown, and became increasingly interested in tattoo's as an art form. A project through the site Art Without Bars sprung from Jean's work and documentation in this field.

There were restrictions placed on this project to make it more interesting to the inmates, but overall it was a great way to make them feel of better worth and also to encourage them creatively.