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I felt like this post should be in red. Some kind of festive bold color to celebrate the progress of me, and my fellow student artists & designers this semester in LD I.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliaguettler/
Here the link to my flickr in which my work has been organized into four basic catagories of the semester Manekin, Gesture Drawings, Long Drawings & Shell Drawing Homework.
The semester has been an extremely productive one, and I walked into this class not having taken a drawing class since Drawing II my sophomore year of college. Figurative drawing is worlds away, and in my opinion way more helpful in figuring out the rendering of form. One of the things I feel like I was most successful at working on this semester was taking a step back from my tendency to generalize things and really LOOK at people, at hands, at feet-at things I didn't take the time to pour my drawing soul into before. Something as simple and beautiful as a Tortoise shell is something I would have completely overlooked before, but now I see the intricate details that are worth recording on paper. I feel very empowered by the anatomy lessons I learned this semester. Building Allen up from nothing has been something that has been tricky for me, but something I really had to take the time to master. I had to sit down and look over images of muscles-of the human anatomy, and I feel really proud of how far I came from not knowing what the hell to do with the clay on the manekin.
The gesture drawings were something else I felt empowered on. I really had no clue what I was doing there at first. With classical long drawing poses, I felt like it was a language I inheritly understood. The gesture drawings were something else entirely. After awhile though I could see the sacrem, I could see the lungs, I could see the tibia steading the leg, and the knee caps flexing. This was a new language I had to learn. The gesture drawings I uploaded look so simple, yet they are so intricate in the fact that you have to know the placement of the organs in the body to understand, to truly be able to draw gesture drawings.
Anyways, here are some images of how Allen turned out- as well as my final shell drawing in which I wasn't as happy as the second, but I tried to really grasp the texture of the shell-I'm going to be sad to see this go...I can't wait to take LD II!
I am currently sitting in my studio, thinking a lot about what I want to create and show on Friday for the Advanced Sculpture show. I thought I would work out a lot of what I am thinking in the form of my blog. So you guys, thanks for listening to my ramblings. Small talk wise-it's f**king cold out! oh my gosh. Did I move to Hoth? I don't remember things being this bad last year, but obviously after 22 years in the midwest I have really selective memory. Speaking of memory, that is something I have been trying to dig up what to convey about this subject matter. My fears: I feel like every young artist tries to deal with this subject matter at some time, and I myself have delved into the subject matter coming up with only bits and pieces.
An artist I have been looking at a lot is Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. I'm looking over art now and they describe foerester as someone who "tests various vocabularies of the imagination and memory." That is something that really intrigues me. The idea of crawling into people's memories, and more importantly i guess their imaginations.
"I want to transform the viewer into a detective, generate a seeking spirit for a research for a curiosity for other stories unless it is one's own: to stress the importance of all kinds of narratives as self-languages, and the values of clues or vocabularies."- this is a quote from Ms.Foerester, and I completely understand and hope to emulate such a reaction in a viewer someday.
I have been experimenting with this kind of language, thinking about would reach the viewer, produce a strong narrative that the viewer can use their imagination to fill in the blank, maybe that blank will be nostolgia, or whimsy--
if you want to see the result of my ramblings please come to the advanced sculpture "We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful." show Friday at 7pm in room 120.
Here is my shell drawing: I hope everyone survived the blizzard this weekend. I have spent a lot of time over the weekend working on building the muscles in my mannequin. I am almost done! So many little intricate muscles....
A tuesday blogpost...coming to you live from the life drawing room. Today in class we critiqued our shells. I will post my shell drawing w/india ink-we have one more to complete but I am quite pleased by it. I was very impressed with Alisha's and Annie's as well as well as Matt's! I took good notes for improving my next shell drawing and I am rather excited. Annie used this amazing remedy of teas, and the brillance of the color of the tea was something that surprised me quite a bit. I like to be surprised. Today was a very relaxed day in class. Amy gave a brief lecture on hands, and we drew each others. I worked on Alisha's hands for awhile. I am going to try to do a few other studies as hands are something I feel my figurative work is weak on.
So...it's approaching. The end of the semester. I cannot believe it. My mannequin muscles are something I should update you all on--here's how it's going: not so hot. I will be updating on Thursday for a special edition post on the muscles. STAY TUNED (and oh so excited.) Allen needs to look really good for finals.
In Baroque Art, I am collaborating with my fellow artist Missy Hoch in recreating some famous paintings and works of art in Baroque art, and putting a contemporary spin on them. Here I am as the girl with the pearl earring by Vermeer:
I am pleased with it. I will also post some photographs of Missy as Artemesia Gentileschi. I think this portrait turned out as we wanted it to. It captures the feeling of the original painting, but with a contemporary feeling. What do you guys think? Does it translate?
I also am hard at work sorting out my work I am doing for the advanced Sculpture show "We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful." It will be on December 17th, and will also provide any students who are thinking about signing up for sculpture II next semester (you should!) the opportunity to check out our new studio space. So mark that on your calenders as well. It's the same night as the senior shows so I think we will all be able to wander around check out some awesome work, and pat ourselves on the back for making it through another semester.
I will be posting more this week. If you have read this I applaud you!
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.
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 th
at 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!
