Announcements:
The exhibition was exhausting, but worth it. I wish it had been possible for some of you to have come. My husband's operation proved far more exhausting than I had anticipated, so I was really happy to have planned March 9 off. Hope you got lots done. Now it's time to sum up what we've covered and to be sure that you know what is expected of you, especially those I've missed because of doctors' orders.
I can't stay late tomorrow, the 15th, because I'm still exhausted. This is the first day I've been able to upload new issues for you, and I hear that I'm needed on transform_dom. Pat and I will come in the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but we'll leave at the correct time, assuming a lecture period of 1:00 to 2:15. That's because the traffic will be horrendous, and many of us have a long way to go. jeanne
Topic of the Week:
Collaborative Art Work for Public Space
The collaborative works that grew from my crazy insistence on printing (much easier to get copies that way) and Susan's repetition of it over the Internet meant that we now have great examples of collaborative work, even when we can't be face to face. Susan, you're the best colleague anyone ever had, and I have no idea how we manage this across half the country. At any rate, I had the energy this morning to face the computer and upload the print I made last Tuesday with Xavier of Gemini Gel. The Los Angeles Art Association made this possible by offering its artists the chance to work with Xavier at our gallery.
Last Tuesday was the last night of that printmaking workshop, and even though I had to get Arnold home the next day, I dutifully etched a copper plate in the hospital, on the nurses stand, on the edge of a chair, wherever. The lighting was terrible. I was worried and uncomfortable. But prints, especially for the last day of a workshop, must go on. So, forgive the parts you don't like, and play with the parts you do.
But first, I want to address the importance of public art works aimed at governance discourse. Obey the Giant - Street Art by Shepard Fairey. Click on the image to enter the site. Wander through the site for a general overview.
- Art of the Street Time Magazine, Photo Essays Online.
- The OBEY Manifesto Trying to bring us to awareness that we need to realize when we're being led by fairly simplistic advertising to define our needs and wants.
- Sticker Art
"I wanted stickers as badges of my culture. . . . Then my mom bought a copier for the business she ran out of our house. It was onä now I could copy graphics from the skate mags and my album covers onto Crack n Peel and make my own stickers.. . . " Fairey's story of how the Giant sticker came to be and to expand. This is like a modern version of Milgram's small-world problemin determining the social distance by which people in large social networks, like the United States, are connected. This is where the phrase "six degrees of separation" came from. read about it at Descri[tion of the Small World Project at Columbia University Press.
"Street art to me, what I’m getting at, is a tool of empowerment. You take stuff out there, people see it, and that way it’s not you work at a company, do a great bunch of work but then your boss takes credit for it. (Laughs) You know what I mean? You’re doing it and if you can figure out a way to leverage the exposure you get into something else it’s absolutely empowering and your message isn’t being watered down. It goes straight to the people the way you intend it. Also I really like the idea of the medium being the message itself and you are saying I have the right to express myself. Just because I’m not a corporation with a bunch of money to buy a billboard to shove in your face doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to put what I’m doing out there. It’s no less legitimate than a paid advertisement. To me one of the biggest problems with society is a lack of voice for people who don’t have money. Whether it’s just a pretty picture or it’s actually an overtly political thing I think it’s a great medium to kind of level the playing field whether you can be competing with corporations with street art and be poor. I did it."
From The Career Cookbook, one of Fairey's articles.
Now, how does all this fit into our community-building project? Simple. Shepard Fairey discovered he could reach people all over the world to make a name for himself as an artist in the areas that interested him, and use public street art access to sell his art. He did it. We need to sell some serious and terribly important sociological and political messages, and we need to get people to listen, the way he got people to buy the products on which he put his art. Also we want to be known, and to reach people. But it's social and political issues we want to make known. Issues about immigration, worker protections in minimum wages that can support a family, training and education, and retraining in today's fast-paced world, religious tolerance, racial tolerance, budget issues, like whether the rich should be made richer or we should all be able to afford the necessities of life, and who gets to make these decisions.
We've begun to turn out some nice art that attracts people. We can make boxes, and book marks, and cards, whatever, that we can then share with the community. But that approach would require that we make something for each person we talk to. Lots of time that most of us don't have. But stickers. Everybody is fascinated by stickers. How about creating our own and using our xyrox machine or a copier to make them sticke with repositionable glue. That means they'll come off readily, like a post-it! Whereas Fairey and his group can afford to offend those who dislike street art, we can't. Some of those people who might be offended are the very people we want to reach. Repositionable glue allows the sticker to be removed and reused, or to be trashed if someone needs to. We still win, because in trashing it, the person who engages with it is alerted to our message.
Again, unlike Fairey, our need is not to sell something. Our need is to disseminate knowledge. Important knowledge that each of us needs to be aware of if good governance and healthy, economically sustainable communities are to grow in response to our needs. Please read Fairey's manifesto and his Sticker Art, so that we can make an effort to reproduce a set of stickers next week. I would have given my eye-teeth to have had some at the American Society of Criminology meetings last week. People liked what they saw, loved that it was under a creative license that meant that they could use it, add to it, distribute it to others, free.
The last task I'll ask you to perform for this class is to get our stickers out there. So think hard. By next week we need to have some. Where do stickers come from? Playing with our own art.
love and peace, jeanne
Catalog for Fall 2006 Naked Space Exhibit
At the American Society of Criminology National Meetings in Los Angeles in November 2006.
References:
Visual Sociology
- Collaborative Print from Race, Crime and Law
Variations added by jeanne for printmaking
Coloring and lines that suggest that maybe some of those incarcerated don't belong locked up. At one ASC convention a California warden agreed that half the inmates didn't really belong in his prison. Something to think about, hmm? Like maybe how labeling shapes our thinking interdependently?
This morning I colored the print that I made last Wednesday. Notice the differences.
This time I didn't use a single background color. Different sections have different colors. Of course, on the excuse that I was tired, I forgot to reverse some the print and had to correct for that. I turned an object I didn't recognize in your first drawing into a wine cup. I don't know how I managed that; it just seemed to happen. I added a toe-tag to the dead man? in the upper left corner, and left the other dead man lying in the street. I seem to have lost Race, Crime, Law, but I reckon you could add it if you'd like. I added extra lines to form triangles, hoping to indicate the complexity of the issues.
Which coloring set comes closest to expressing what you feel about criminal justice today? Could you color the print on Paint or some other program, or make a hard copy of the print and color it with whatever you can lay your hands on? Is there anything in here we could use as a sticker with a very brief, preferably one word, message? Do you know any middle school children with whom you could share the print image and ask them to color it as they see criminal justice today? Be sure to ask them what their coloring means to them. Does it seem to express the same feelings you have? Does it help you gain some insight into their perspective of the criminal justice system today?
- Working with Portraits
Remember the Portrait of my Husband I put up last week? No drawing, no realism, just paint. From the Etching of Arnold:
Well, having finished the above etching of one of your collaborative drawings, and not having the strength to face the next one at that point in the hospital, I decided to play at etching the portrait of Arnold.
Then I played at coloring it.
What similarities do you see? This is a colored rendition of the print. If I wanted to print it, I'd have to rework the copper plate, to reflect the changes I've added here, and I'd have to register it, or measure accurately to do it in color. But once I had the printer set up, I could make lots and lots of copies. Great prospect here for stickers.
Stories
- When Stories Emerge from Art Making
Why portraits? Well, if you can let go of worrying about the likeness, (after all you can pick up a camera for that), a portrait can focus on what you feel. Arnold wasn't even present most of the time I was etching the portrait above. I was using feelings and memories. As a matter of fact, Arnold, a second-generation American, is hardly a revolutionary, but shares many of my concerns for justice and fairness for all. His family was almost entirely lost in the Holocaust. When I finished this version of the portrait, I was amazed to see mixed somehow in with Arnold, my second husband, Robi, who was an immigrant. He actually was a revolutionary, escaped from Hungary when Hungary revolted from Russia, believing that the US would support them. After a time in an Austrian prison-camp, he immigrated to America.
A photograph could not have captured this feeling that I can barely articulate, that I have somehow captured my deepest understandings of two very different men. This portrait may never sell for Klimt's or Picasso's millions, but it has great meaning for me. I hope you have learned enough this semester to know that you, too, can create some kind of portrait, maybe like Alejandro's portrait of the flag, that will reflect your deepest feelings about the persons and focal things that count in your life. Trust me; they will become treasures. jeanne
- Portrait of Pat
Done mostly with triangles and the paint program from Windows. How do we know this is Pat? What does it say about Pat?
Well, from my perception, the elephant is one she wears often. It sparkles and welcomes like a big "hello." That elephant will always make me think of Pat. Her dress is a print. She often wears prints, though I would have done her in pinks and lavendars if I'd had any. My Corel program wouldn't give me any on this image. But blue and green will do. I built her right into the table in the front of the class with all our art materials on it. So I linked the image with an activity that I associate with Pat. And then I put her motto up on the background: Art Speaks.
Notice that even though I did not attempt a realistic portrait of Pat, you can tell it's her by the "attributes." The memory is made real, a kind of icon of happy times and memorable activities. Try it. You don't have to be "an artist" like Picasso or Klimt to do portraits you and your friends can cherish. Sometimes photographs capture the memory. But sometimes art gives you more latitude to capture the story.
Imagine that Mica wanted to say a special "thank you" to Pat. Could she and Pat collabortively do a portrait that would capture some of their relationship? Could Velda and Jason do one that would capture their friendship? Could Olga do one that would capture the Spanish flavor we're trying to develop? Try portraits. They're great memories.
P.S. You could use my Paint sketch and do your own portrait of Pat. The file is at http:// www.habermas.org/patportrait001.gif, but it's got only gray lines.
http:// www.habermas.org/patportrait001.gif
I played some more with reluctant software and got this.
http:// www.habermas.org/patportrait005.gif.
Now, that should inspire a story! Can you find the turtle? Of course, he's been mixed up with something else, but I'll bet it's a good story. Have fun! jeanne
I was looking at that black and white drawing. I see a turtle head on the left. A green turtle, of course, as green as the the Isle of yore. He's carting a pyramid on his back. However did he manage that? It must be as a symbol of all that man has achieved on the great African continent. And, why, that looks like Pat sitting in a director's chair, filming the story of all these happenings in history. Now, who would ever have thought that Pat would direct a great film on African history? See why you must do portraits? They set us free. Free to be. All we can be.
Maybe this portrait will be a memory you want to keep of this, your final year at CSUDH. Worried you'll forget names and faces?
http:// www.habermas.org/patportrait003.gif.
Feel free to play. See how I added a U curve, a couple of letters, and put her name in the center of the portrait. You may need to know a little bit about layering to do some of these additions, but let me know if you need help. By next semester I'll get up instructions. jeanne
A Range of Sources on Global Info
Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation - The Cato Institute (Libertarian)
BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
Individual copyrights by other authors may apply.
A Justice Site
jeannecurran@habermas.org
