Everyday Believed Abstractions

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Wallpaper sticks to walls

The paper for the wallpaper should arrive tomorrow or tuesday, so we should be ready to print on Wednesday. I will begin printing at 9:00am Wednesday for anyone ready at that time. We will be starting the next project that day as well and save the crit for the wallpaper until Monday.

Though we talked about the project in class I just wanted to reiterate some of the crucial details:

- 5 examples of wallpaper from a time period or of a style you find interesting and inspiring should be posted on your blog.

- a finished design that measures 24x72".

Simple enough, huh?

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

your wall your paper

"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

For some interesting information about the history of wallpaper you may want to look at wallpaperinstaller.com where among other interesting stuff you will learn that "the oldest existing example of flocked wallpaper comes from Worcester and was created in approximately 1680."

Wallpaper has been used by many contemporary artists as either part of an installation or as the art itself. Here are some examples of contemporary wallpaper:

John Baldessari, Mike Bidlo, Adam Cvijanovic, Drew Dominick, Nicole Eisenman, Viola Frey, General Idea, Robert Gober, Lonnie Graham, Rodney Graham, Richard Haas, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jenny Holzer, Jim Isermann, Peter Kogler, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Marti, Jane Masters, Michael Mercil, Takashi Murakami, Paul Noble, Jorge Pardo, Francesco Simeti, Kiki Smith, Will Stokes, Do-Ho Suh, Rosemarie Trockel, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman

And this is just from the RISD and the Fabric Workshop companion exhibitions in 2003 on Artists' Wallpaper you can read about them here and here. In my next post I will include links to images and the proper description for the project.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

My apartment was not pretty

I just came across this web art project while working on something... let me know what you think?

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/apartment/

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Links for my daring digital print students

Here are some links (in no particular order) you might find interesting, please feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments:

http://www.engadget.com/

though not an art site, this is the techie site for reviews and tech news

http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/

I pointed this out in class as a site that is loaded with great images of contemporary art

Modern Art Notes

For some insight on the workings of the art world

BLDG/BlOG

A blog of architecture and architectural ideas for architects and those people pre-occupied with the space we occupy

RomanBlog 2

Zoe Strauss

ICA Philadelphia

Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof

These are Philly blogs that you should check out

Philagrafika

This event runs from January-April 2010 and will spread across a million galleries and museums in Philly

Okay, expect more soon.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Living in public

This week's On The Media, a program on NPR (that's radio which is way-old-media) has a very interesting article on the new film We Live in Public that you should take twenty minutes to listen to, it will give you much to think about.

From the program's website:

The new film We Live in Public focuses on Josh Harris, whom the film calls “the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” The film offers a window into Harris’s psyche, and the impacts of living in a digital, recorded age. Director Ondi Timoner talks about this web entrepreneur’s fascination with privacy, and with recording life’s every moment -- including the most intimate -- 24/7.

Click here to visit the site where you can listen to the article online.

Friday, September 18, 2009

second project

Text as Art

Twitter me this…

As we know Twitter is this ridiculously popular social networking thing. 140 characters per message to express yourself to your friends, to update them on every small thing you do, every little tiny thing you do.

Well, artists have been effectively using short pieces of text for years to express an idea, to explore concepts, and to generally challenge people. I showed you a few examples in class the other day, but below is a much longer list of artists who have worked with text.

Your assignment, as you may recall, is to stick within the confines of Twitter’s 140 character count (and that includes spaces), but to create a work of art within those confines. Yes, you can combine an image with the text to create the artwork, you can repeat the text, you can do many things… as long as you have a conceptual reason for doing so.

I talked quite a bit about how artists view language, that language is this seemingly invisible thing that is turned visible by their acts. We will continue to explore the ideas of text-based art over the next few weeks. To begin with do some research yourself, look up the artists I have listed, go online and do some independent research, maybe go to the library. For Monday’s class I would like you to bring with you some ideas for discussion after our crit. Good luck, and check back at the blog for further updates.

Artists working with text:

El Lissitzky

Andy Warhol

Alexander Rodchenko

Kurt Schwitters

F.W. Marinetti

Rene Magritte

John Heartfield

Hannah Hoch

Ed Ruscha

Barbara Kruger

Sabrina Ward Harrison