Even though I have lived in New York for almost four years now, I had never been to the Guggenheim. I was not sure what to expect. The first thing that surprised me was the architecture: what an ingenious idea to spiral through worlds of art.
This colors and textures of this piece really stood out to me. Gold leaf is an extremely delicate material. When manipulated like this and combined with fabric and glue, it feels sharp and sturdy.
This piece reminded me of a song map. The varying lengths of pieces of paper could represent note duration. The large, dark blobs could be a low rumble that gets louder the larger the blob gets. It seems so simple and not what I would have called a collage a month ago.
I was originally drawn to this piece because it looks like a gun. I thought the small explosions of color represented the pain, fear, and adrenaline that comes from weapons.
These are some pieces that I felt a connection to that did not get mentioned in my Guggenheim paper. In clockwise motion starting in the upper left hand corner: Houses in Paris by Juan Gris, Game No. 2 by Herbert Ferber, Dancers in Green and Yellow by Edgar Degas, Lion Hunt by Vasily Kandinsky, and Caitlin and I by Zanele Muholi.
I find this series of paintings really pleasing and calming to look at. I am fascinated by the amount of color the artist was able to get in the middle panel. This painting reminds me of memories. The dark background represents a feeling of sadness while the colorful panels are memories that brought happiness at some point.
Both of these paintings show very different representations of movement in music. The painting to the left has free, loose squiggles that possibly represent melody. It feels like a never ending dance. The painting on the right uses lines and dashes to create an organized map of a song. The colors are primary, so maybe the song is simple well organized.
When given this assignment, I knew immediately I wanted to represent “The Flesh Failures/Let the Sun Shine” from Hair the musical. Every time I listen to the song, the voices strike emotion. All of the voices have their own individual timbres that they use to portray their own longing. The voices stretch and pulse sometimes in one unison melody, sometimes textured with interesting harmonies and instrument background. In the following pieces, some of my focuses are light, heart beat, warmth, silence, and freedom.
I began the above painting with a particular section in mind. Towards the end of the song, the accompaniment drops out and leaves the voices to sing a homophonic chorus of “Let the sun shine; let the sun shine in’ that keeps repeating. After a couple of rotations, a solo voice soars over the chorus. As she sings, you can feel the pulse, or heart beat, underneath supporting her. I started this piece by creating circles that started bright golden yellow and faded into darkness. I originally wanted the circles to blend into each other more evenly, but using water seemed to make large white spots appear, so I left the circles to be more separate. The white footprints represent the soloist’s voice leading the chorus moving the voices from dark to light and back through the dark.
For this piece, I used the colors I found in my yellow paint to naturally add some shading. I used a dry brush to paint across the paper and kept brushing the paint even when it had dried creating a crayon-like texture. For this piece, I wanted to focus on light shining through the other colors, even when they got muddy. I continued to lightly dry brush layers of colors randomly throughout the paper. Most of the colors were mixed to look more earthy; I wanted to avoid bright primary colors and show some warmth. The texture here represents the pull of the voices. I picture them stretching their sound, the colors showing the different timbres.
I made the next two paintings with the idea of silence in mind. On some scrap paper I experimented with drawing different objects that represented silence to me. Some ideas that came up were rope, chain, and stone. Using the same yellow from the base of the previous painting, I created a solid background. I layered the paint so the natural texture was not obvious to the eye; I wanted a smooth surface. I then mixed black, red, and blue to create a dark muddy color to create the chains. They are intertwined to represent the many ways people are silenced and the chain reaction that silence has. After adding the chains, the painting seemed too clean. I added water to the painting to streak the background with the silence. The singers are trying to break the silence, so I did not want to chains to be fully intact.
Unlike the previous paintings, this includes metallic and primary colors. I began this piece with a base of gold and yellow and let the dry overnight. Next, I added random lines of varying un-mixed paints. Then using a dry brush, I dusted silver paint over the whole painting. When you focus on the cloudy silver on top, the blue and green lines pop out to you. When you focus on the gold shining through, the red and purple lines also shine through. When listening to the song, different elements are highlighted depending on which element your ear focuses on.
The last painting in my series was the most un to create. Like the last painting, this one uses metallics and primary colors. I purposefully avoided using mixed paints. Any mixing naturally occurred through layering on the paper and my hand. I wanted to use my hands to create this piece because of the earthy, raw feeling the music portrays. I wanted my hands to directly create the art. Looking back, I wish I had asked others to collaborate and add their own hand prints. I with a layer of yellow handprints and then layered various other colors on top of the background. After adding the other handprints, I didn’t feel like the light was showing through enough. I filled in some of the white space with yellow to make it appear as if it was shining through. The handprints represent the various components that make up the song. Sometimes the elements are obvious, like the magenta hand print in the bottom right corner. Sometimes the elements blend together like the gold in the middle right of the painting. Sometimes the elements help highlight other elements, but they all work together to create a composed piece.
My idea for a painting lesson was inspired by the artist Melissa McCracken. She has a neurological condition called chromesthesia which causes her to see colors in relation to music. As part of our instrument unit, students will already have chosen an instrument to research how it is made, musicians who have played that instrument, and found a piece of music featuring that instrument. Students will be asked to choose or make a color that best represents the timbre of that instrument. For example, the flute sounds happy and light so I might choose the color yellow. Each student will get their own piece of paper to start blending different mixtures of their color to match different timbres. When the flute plays it’s lower tones it is dull and open, so that yellow might be pale, but the higher notes might be a deeper egg yolk yellow. Materials needed are: paint, paper, music, tables, brushes, and mixing plates.
This artist drew me in because of her interest in multiple mediums. She works with abstract paintings, ceramics, and furniture. The piece to the left is called Go Ask Alice. The squares of color remind me of a large field with different sections of plants. Each square has its own unique texture; the brush strokes seem out of control and unfocused, but the lines dividing the squares are very neat and clean. The melting colors at the top of the pieces are intriguing. It looks like paint was poured on or brushed on very thick and then left to drip. They really contrast the neat squares and cause interest and distress. https://art21.org/artist/mary-heilmann/
Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray likes to paint on canvas in a way that makes you feel like the paintings are more than just one-dimensional. This piece, called The Lowdown, is an example of an oil painting on canvas and wood. There are a lot of interesting images presented here. I see faces, lips, golf clubs, tear drops, pencils, skates, towels, flags, watermelon, snakes, and probably many more things. The very clear window and the square shape of the structure makes me wonder if it is some kind of broken, falling apart house. A combination of negative space and shadowing makes the objects jump off the page. It doesn’t feel like looking at a painting. It feels more like looking at a broken doll house from above. https://art21.org/artist/elizabeth-murray/
Our painting exploration began with multiple stations throughout the room focusing on various ways to create using paints, brushes, and large pieces of paper. I began at the color mixing station. I created a color I titled “Going to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches” using yellow, red, and white. The peach-like color made me think of a silly song with those same lyrics. It was interesting to experiment with different effects. How fast could I move my brush? What happened when I flicked the brush? What if I manipulated the brush using my wrist and not my whole arm? What if I add water? What if I paint using a dry and not a wet brush?
My favorite experiment was dropping the brush onto the page. At this point, we were the last group to experiment at this station and I was not sure I had any original ideas so I dropped my paint brush onto the page. It had a double bounce effect that was really interesting. The first bounce is thick and dark in color, but the second bounces are lighter and often smaller. There was a small amount of local splatter that also occurred, but the brush was not big enough or there wasn’t enough paint to splatter paint very far.
This exploration was really beautiful to me. The spontaneity of the movement feels like excitement.I found the use of charcoal on black paper so interesting. The charcoal, which can appear kind of dull on white paper, is a rich deep black color on this black paper.I love these monkeys, especially the one on the black piece of paper. It looks like it has character, it’s not just a thing.
I found this drawing to be the most interesting. First, the shading and gradient he was able to get through blending the background gives it a lot of depth and makes it feel like the shiny metal of the step ladder. The lines are so precisely and patiently drawn. The splats of ink seem at first like they might be mistakes, but the longer I look, the more I wonder if they were purposefully placed there. Unlike the other drawings, this artist took direct inspiration from an object in the room but surprised us with the perspective.
My drawing explorations really inspired me to focus on how fast or slow I was moving my drawing utensil. In this drawing lesson, students will listen to three pieces of music with contrasting tempos: adagio (slow), andante (walking pace), and presto (fast). While listening to the music, students will match the speed of their drawing to the tempo of the music. Materials needed will be paper, crayons, and music.
M.K. Čiurlionis – Live Kinetic painting to “The Sea” (Jura)
Like a lot of the other activities, drawing the monkey felt like a large overwhelming task. I have learned that I am a very concrete thinker and that has translated to my art. While drawing the monkey, I kept getting frustrated that it did not look exactly like exactly like it. I didn’t want to have to focus on perspective, so I decided to draw the monkey from the side. This allowed me to focus on the different shapes I saw in the figure. It was difficult drawing the legs and I found I had some trouble with the proportions. I also tried to incorporate some shading to match what I saw on the subject. Next I drew the monkey’s face. I wanted to give a close-up look at his face and play with the idea of using a dark utensil on black paper. The face was originally all drawn in black, but I brought in white chalk to help define the different parts of the face. The middle of the face was slow shading of the chalk on it’s side while the rest of the shading are quick, thin lines on the edge of the utensil. The last drawing was a quick drawing of the monkey’s legs, the area and perspective I wanted to originally avoid. For this very quick drawing, I focused on shapes and proportions and used a different, chalk-like material.
These drawing explorations focused on a few new materials and concepts. I had not used the clear plastic material to draw on and wanted to experiment using to different canvases to convey my thought. Without the plastic, it is a non-descript profile, but with the plastic, it starts to come alive. I used oil pastels on the plastic. They were smooth and easy to create textures and lines. The other exploration used watercolor pencils. I wanted to experiment with these new pencils and water. After putting water on the colorful spots, I let it drip. I then tried to print the image onto a blank piece of white paper. Not a lot of the color transferred. I had to keep adding water and keep pressing down the paper to get a very dull layer of color on the paper.
I chose this drawing artist because of the drawing shown on the left. It is untitled and is described as a “wall drawing”. I was drawn to this piece because of the delicate a quick strokes that help define the space and shape. It doesn’t seem to be one particular object; it could be waves, a bush, a grand feather, a head dress, a splash. In the more shaded areas, I start to see other shapes and objects. They all look like they are in motion. I wonder what the artist’s inspiration was. Did she use some kind of ink and a dry brush like I did, or is it more controlled utensil? The artists appears to be interested in taking away as well as adding to drawings. Is that how they got the blending and shading to happen? https://art21.org/artist/julie-mehretu/
Lenore Tawney
I found this artist really intriguing. Tawney is known for her drawings on graph paper using ink and her drawings in air using linen. The piece to the right is called Blue Circle. The combination of lines create depth. The thin lines also create texture; they have transformed the surface to look like fabric. It reminds me of a dreamcatcher. The lines are so independent they look like they are strings woven together. http://lenoretawney.org/lenore-tawney/
process and structure 