Yves Klein & Turtles

So i feel this blog post is most appropriate if written in the CLOSEST (yves klein would cry) color to YK bleu available on blogger. I am sitting in my studio kind of thinking about what the next 14 days will be like. Hectic. Let's go back to last Tuesday, rewind. On Tuesday we had our semester field trip for Life Drawing to the Walker & then for nice drawing session at the Bell Museum. The Walker is always a pleasure for a contemporary art geek like me. The main exhibit was "With the Void Full Powers" by french neo-dada artist Yves Klein. I have seen his work many times in textbooks and on the Internet, but there was something so incredibly beautiful about seeing his Yves Klein Blue in person. It was breathtaking. And I know a lot of people would be skeptical of such a thing. "Just blue on a canvas? I could do that." Ah yes, but you didn't. As soon as even the most skeptical person of contemporary art sees the blue, I am sure they would find themselves mesmerized. Aside from just the blue on canvas, his most famous work, the imprints of women's bodies rolled across the canvas in his yves klein blue was fascinating to see in person. My roommate actually had done something similar for Sculpture I last semester in which I had to lay naked in covered in Vaseline and press myself up against plexiglass leaving an imprint. The shape made was the same, the beautiful butterfly silhouette. It was interesting ti view this piece after being part of that. Alisha and I were captivated and surprised by Klein's fire work. Gorgeous. It evoked feelings of passion, but subtlety. There was also a really impactful show by Alec Soth called From Here to There-- Alec Soth's America, showcasing photographs of the ever surprising, sometimes scary--contemporary American landscape.


We ventured over to the Bell Museum, which I didn't quite know what to expect. Taxidermy kind of freaks me out a lot, I have also been hearing whisperings of the Museum closing due to lack of funding. After visiting I surely hope this is not the case. Although my opinions of taxidermy did not change, their bone collection was impressive to say the least. I ended up in the "bone room" while Alisha drew a whale pelvis, Annie found a bea utiful horse-show crab (dead) to draw. The tortoises (living) immediately caught my eye. I will post soon, the drawing I drew of my beloved Turtle. I also touched a snake, something I really would have never done had someone not been holding it and acting like it was pretty tame. Overall it was a really good experience. I will be posting a series of my tortoise drawings later in the day. I became very fond of him.

Inside My Studio & Other Mullings

For the past week I have been working on a few things in the sculpture studio quite readily. The photograph to the left is the product of a lot of my research culminating into a piece. Titled "All That Glitters..." I dove into investigating the fragility of human life, our obsession with the celebrity and the transformation of the individual. The phrase "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" has been around for centuries, William Shakesphere actually coined the term himself for his play The Twelfth Night. The only exception was that Shakesphere used the word "glistens" instead of glitters. (Glitter was not a word in old english)This interested me greatly as this phase has been around for hundreds of years, yet there is something in our human nature that does not heed the advice. I took essentially an old frame (a frame by the way would not have been my first choice, as I do find them literal and I can see people's problem with the usage of them) Anyways, I took this frame that at one point was something precious. Did it hold artwork? A portrait? Someone's family photo? It's detoriated value had made it found its way to me, where I turned the old frame into else by covering it up with the morose black glitter. An exercise I think speaks volumes of how we act in our society when it comes to aging, commercialism, etc.

I think it is a good starting point for where I am headed with my work. Here is a look inside my studio right now. As you can see you, a little peak at what is inspiring me and the direction of my work! As for life drawing I am particularly excited for our field trip tomorrow, there is a Yves Kline show at the Walker I have been looking forward to seeing. I cannot wait to blog about it since I am a complete and total art history nerd. We started experimenting with india ink wash with our shells and I am so excited to start the project. I really enjoyed how it turned out, and really feel like the medium is going to showcase the shell quite nicely. Below is one of my first drafts of it, my shell has a lot of pinks and oranges in it and I think I am going to experiment with blackberry tea tones, I saw some of the examples in the student work and I was smitten instantly!

Feet, Chicago, Whirlwind...

So I will be blogging more! I hope you all can keep up with me. This past week has been crazy (I was in Chicago this past weekend in in St. Paul the next moving my boyfriend into his new apartment in the middle of a blizzard), and I am very frustrated with the snow… which has been kind of ruining my life and all of my plans right now but whatever. Onwards to life drawing, tonight I am going to be re-doing my thighs—recently Alisha and I acquired access to Visual Body, which is fascinating to me, and very helpful. Seeing the actual muscles from a non-Zoologik point of view (sorry zoologik, but your books confuse me—and I would like if they were in color, thanks love Julia.) What kind of fascinates me the most about this process is that we as artists are on the same website as students in med school, studying the same anatomy. I wish Visual Body was open to everyone, because honestly, it is an amazing website. My thighs though I did through visual body, which confused me a little because I was working alone and not with Alisha and Annie (as we usually do with our mannekins) Alisha will have to help me tonight, redo some of my thighs, and then it’s onwards to the legs. A small source of irritation (seems like this blog post is fairly negative, apologies to whoever reads this I am just ranting) there is no more clay left of my color in the life drawing room. I am a nitpicky person and really want to make Allen (my mannequin) look as real as possible. I don’t want him suddenly to have blue legs! Penco does not have any oil based clay, so I will have to find some SOMEWHERE in the art building. There’s rumors there’s some to spare in the ceramics lab.

Our lecture this past week was all to do with feet. I will be uploading some pictures up of K’s feet that we spent about an hour drawing. I have never ever given that much thought to feet before, as they are often forgotten in the human form I feel like, as well has hands, but they as essential to getting the figure to look remotely accurate. The bone structure of the feet was really fascinating. In my spare time, I google imaged some pictures of the foot structure. I have never thought in detail how intricate the bone work is within the foot. I have been interested in reflexology as a pseudoscience for awhile so this lecture paired nicely with my interest. Here are some lovely drawings of K’s feet as well as some charts from the internet incase anyone is interested like I am. (probably not, but there’s bound to be some freaks out there like me.)

Mid Semester Review

My Flickr Account, a link to my life drawing work

I can't even begin to describe how much I have learned in life drawing this semester about the human form but I will try. I knew this class would benefit me ever since Amy came into my Painting I class to do a short lecture about the skull, since we were working on portraiture. In that short time I remember realizing I had learned more about the human form, and thought more about it than perhaps I ever had. Figure drawing and painting has always been my favorite. Being able to capture flesh, movement, bone structure and having it translate is something I have always aspired to grasp. As the semester has progressed, I have chizzled away at the perceptions I had of human forms-which were merely outline drawing-and replaced those perceptions with solid evidence of what is there. I have replaced the outline with lungs, with a bone structure, with a pelvis & sacrem.

This element of science and partnering if with the live drawing aspect has helped me look at the human figure with a whole new set of eyes. Of course, I have had problems that I have been trying to correct. My first problem as I stated above was viewing the human body as an outline, drawing lightly I realized was incredibly important for translating that outline into 3D drawing. Something I still need to tackle is my contour line drawing, as it was something i worked incredibly hard on but felt it was something I was not happy with. I know in my next drawing I need to limit my lines, go in one direction, draw on an axis, and just like with the human form-LEARN TO SEE IT FROM a 3D PERSPECTIVE-not an outline!