4-11-10 Artist Blog, Christopher Reiger

Christopher Reiger

"My work is principally concerned with contemporary man's mutable conception of Nature." As a child, "I anthropomorphized animals and cast them as key players in an epic production of which I was a part... As I matured, however, my childhood love of nature evolved into a fascination with biology and ethology, an intellectual ontogenesis like that impelled by the European Enlightenment."

"Incidentally, we've realized that the divide between the imagination and reason is unnatural: We learn an increasing number of facts about Nature, we understand ourselves to be apart from it, and our experience of it is therefore less complete."

"My artwork is born of this apparent opposition. The paintings are celebratory hybrids of myth, natural history, and science; the world they picture stretches between the tidy "truth" and the messy question. They depict a world in flux, a Nature imploding and dissolving. But this dissolution is also an opening of the senses, the seepage of magic and mystery into the picture. The drawings are poetic vignettes that explore the same ideas and questions."

The above are the highlights of Christopher Reiger's artist statement. http://www.christopherreiger.com/statement.html


Synesthesia #1, 2008

This was the first piece of Reiger's that I first stumbled upon at http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/seeing_antlers_feeling_dendrites/. The article explains the fascinating condition of Synesthesia and how art can give the masses a glance into its world of meaning.


Didelphis Virginiana (Virginia's Double Womb), 2006


Canis Lupis (Dog wolf), 2006

In his 2006 work, Reiger combines drawing, scientific classification, and words in his drawings.

4-7-10 Idea Post

Biology

-A natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.

-The term was introduced independently by Karl Friedrich Burdach, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck between 1800 and 1802 AD. It is inspired by the Greek word bios (life) and the suffix logia (study of).

Above is a diagram created by Ernst Haeckel called The Tree of Life
wikipedia.com

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Recently I have been thinking more about my collections of animal assortments (if you will), inspired by the work on the very top floor of the Anderson Gallery. I was jealous of the bug collection(s) and wonder if the person/people collected or ordered the bugs. The preservation and presentation wasn't top notch, but was impressive overall.

Collections (particularly of animals) and their presentation are art within themselves, but they are not appreciated in the same way 'art labeled' works are- they're given museum quality appreciation. I'm not sure why I have such an interest in this quality, but I can guess.

The Naturalist Center (Leesburg, VA) is only down the street from where I grew up in Northern Virginia. It is the biggest interactive collection of natural history objects I have ever encountered. They have over 36,000 hands-on collection objects including skeletons, furs, animal preservations, bugs, shells, etc. They are a branch of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

One day I aspire to have a fraction of this type of collection and display within my own house.



^^The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Va^^

4-5-10 Artist Post, ROA

ROA

ROA is a street artist also known as the Gent Zoo Keeper and the King of Doel Jungle who hand paints large black and white murals of animals: rats, pigs, rabbits, and cows (from what I can find). He often targets decaying urban areas, which began with the outlying abandoned buildings and warehouses in the outskirts of Ghent, Belgium (home town). He replicates animals found in the area and seeks to embody their amazing ability to adapt to urban environments and become scavengers in order to survive.

ROA's artwork went global when he ventured to urban New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris to paint his often depicted cross-sectioned animals and city scavengers.

A majority of ROA's work shows a transformation, whether it be through his painting of the animal or emphasized in the environment.

A piece that hung in the Gallerie Itinerrance in Paris earlier this year

[From the same gallery as above] The metal pieces in this artwork are on hinges that allow the viewer to alter the work seeing two sides of the animal (interior neuro-structure vs epidermal layer).

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location: In this piece, the yellow door flips open to show a complete rabbit (instead of a skeletal head) as well

ROA's website has very little information and I'm not sure whether the photographs are taken by himself or by fans. Understandably, he wishes to remain anonymous.

http://www.roaweb.org/

4-1-10 Idea Post

More thoughts on the domestication of animals:

At what point during anthropomorphism or domestication do animals lost their identity? When (if) do they stop being animals and become humanized beings or objects?

What IS an animal? How does our culture define animalia?

Animals are a major group of mostly multicellular eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. All animals are also heterotrophs, meaning they must ingest other organisms for sustenance.

The word "animal" comes from the Latine word animal meaning 'with soul.' In everyday colloquial usage, the word usually refers to non-human animals. Frequently only closer relatives of humans such as vertebrates or mammals are meant in colloquial use. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the Kingdom Animalia including humans.

wikipedia.org

I would suspect most people think of wild animals when they hear the word 'animal.' We use 'animal' as an adjective pertaining to the physical, sensual, or carnal nature of humans rather than our spiritual or intellectual nature. At one point, all animals were 'wild' or undomesticated. At what point do we stop referring to an animal as 'wild'? Is a caged lion or tiger still wild?
Remember: Domestication is a process of selection in which animals or plants become accustomed to human provision/control.

In conclusion:

At what point did the goose cease being a migratory majestic that signaled the change of seasons and begin to play the role of community pond accessory whose fecal matter covers grass to the point of non-enjoyment?

Human ignorance sound familiar?

Anderson Gallery

I entered three pieces to the Anderson Gallery Student show, two of which got in. =) Stoked!


Both are images from the fall semester of senior portfolio (2009).

3-30-10: Individual Meeting with Tom

This meeting was primarily a discussion of recent images. I showed the following:


We agreed this image is a little flat.


This was the image I re-shot from the midterm critique. Over spring break my wide angle lens broke so I have been using my fixed 50mm. The quality of glass isn't as nice as the other and it also makes shooting wider angle shots in small rooms VERY frustrating. I wasn't able to include both the top of the door frame and the air vent in the bottom corner- thus emphasizing the confusing scale discussed during the earlier critique. I would like to re-shoot this again, but would have to borrow a wide angle lens from someone. Tom and I agreed this image is important and strong, so a re-shoot is very important.



The bottom of these two images: Tom suggested I use a different animal because I already have two images using animals with antlers. He suggested the bunny in the top image. He also suggested playing with the scale of the rabbit in the image to relate it to the above image of the small door, arm chair, and human-dressed bunnies. This is something I will consider, but I'm not terribly excited about photoshop. All of my images thus far have been void of photoshop except for color correction and some spot cleaning.


Image without flash


Image with flash

Which do you think is stronger and why? What do you think of the tag on the right-most fur? Is it distracting? How do you interpret it? Include it? Photoshop it out?

Input on other images is always appreciated.

3-29-10 Artist Post, Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan

While this artist may seem to relate more to my earlier work at VCU, he is still relevant to my new work and interests.

His series The Message from Gyre was shot at Midway Atoll, a tiny beach near the middle of the North Pacific, and portrays the negative effects of pollution on the albatross population. He photographs deteriorating albatross chicks who have died from eating toxic waste. While the dead birds' stomach contents seem exaggerated, they aren't. Every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from their toxic diet of human waste and starvation.

He explains:
"To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful."

"My hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake."





The Message from Gyre, 2009

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

3-24-10 Idea Post

Photography vs Human Vision


I re-read a chapter in Proust was a Neuroscientist (Jonah Lehrer) this weekend while I was waiting for my flat tire to get changed, only this time I took notes.

Chapter 5 on Paul Cezanne: The Process of Sight touches on the development of photography and its effect on the painting world. "How could the human hand compete with the photon?" (pg 99). While the era of painting came to an end with the invention and availability of the photograph, not all artists believed in its ability to depict realism.

It was thought by many (and still is for that matter) that the human eye acts just like the lens of a camera: collecting and processing millions of light particles to be translated into a visual plane for brain comprehension. In fact, the brain and imagination play an unexpected and even more vital role in visual perception. "If the mind did not impose itself on the eye, then our vision would be full of voids. For example, because there are no light sensitive cones where the optic nerve connects to the retina, we each have a literal blind spot in the center of the visual field. But we are blind to our own blind spot: our brain unfailingly registers a seamless world." (pg 117)

With the realization that "the mind makes the world, just as a painter makes a painting," Paul Cezanne invented modernist art and was a major player in post-impressionism (pg 113). "I tried to copy nature," Cezanne confessed, "but I couldn't. I searched, turned, looked at it from every direction, but in vain" (pg 104).

Cezanne sought to paint the world as our eyes interpret it, one carefully contemplated brush stroke at a time. He abandoned pointillism and began painting entire images in patches and strokes he called les taches and les touches. His paintings also began to incorporate large blank areas of canvas he called nonfinito. Many viewed his paintings as incomplete without realizing that he had dissected our vision well before his time. He left it up to the viewer's eyes and mind to complete his paintings.

"The mind is not a camera. As Cezanne understood, seeing is imagining." (pg 118)
Mon Sainte-Victoire seen from Lauves, 1904-1905

"Modern neuroscientific studies of the visual cortex have confirmed the intuitions of Cezanne... visual experience transcends visual sensations. Cezanne's mountain arose from the empty canvas because the brain, in a brazen attempt to make sense of the painting, filled in its details." (pg 117).

Foliage, 1895-1900

I strongly recommend this book to EVERYONE. Not only does it have this great chapter on Paul Cezanne, it also has chapters on Marcel Proust's The Method of Memory, Walt Whitman's The Substance of Feeling, Auguste Escoffier The Essence of Taste, Igor Stravinsky The Source of Music and more. You will appreciate the world in an entirely different way, I promise!

3-21-10 Artist Post, Tobias Gundorff Boesen & Kate MccGwire

Tobias Gundorff Boesen

I found this artist and his short film on notcot.org. It's a great site to look on for artists and inspiration.

The video below (Out of a Forest) speaks about the domestication of nature in several ways. The animals have been anthropomorphized and their home (the forest) has been domesticated by household furnishings and decorations. Man has disrupted the 'chain of life' as seen in the end of the video for nothing more than a cheap magic trick.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen.

Questions/thoughts I have been contemplating lately:

What are animals? How are they defined? At what point in man's domestication of nature do animals stop being animals? Are they always animals or do we take away a defining characteristic to claim it as our own? Why do we domesticate nature and animals?

Another artist I looked at recently is Kate MccGwire


Her methods of working seem familiar in the sense of my ever growing collection of animal remnants.

"I gather, collate, re-use, layer, peel, burn, reveal, locate, question, duplicate, play and photograph," is how she describes her work.

"Intrinsic to her method is the collecting and sorting of materials from hundreds of different sources over a period of months, even years. In turn, pieces evolve intuitively as if out of the subconscious, the language evocative rather than purely illustrative. As the work takes shape, a new, playful reality emerges, so that the object itself becomes a sort of prism, refracting the layers of meaning and cultural associations buried within, the quantity of materials used sometimes deliberately overwhelming, as if charged with a power and ambition beyond the reach they possess when seen in isolation."
(an excerpt from her artist statement)

http://www.katemccgwire.com/

Retch, 2007

Vex, 2008

Vice, 2009

Urge, 2009

Not only do I appreciate the materials MccGwire uses and her technique of gathering, but I find her choice of installation locations also very compelling. They suit another side of my art as well- the fashion-esque sharp lighting and moody environment.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Sanford Biggers 3-11-10

Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers was a member of the VCU faculty (sculpture department) whose work appears in the form of sculpture, graphic design, installations, video, music, and performance art. He is a voice for African American culture through pop culture, hip-hop, and dance that is often combined with his personal experiences through Buddhism. His work explores racial and cultural relations throughout history and how they continue to affect society today.

Mandala of the Bodhisattva II was the one piece he showed during his lecture that I found interesting. He collaborated with other artists to build a 16x16 hand cut linoleum floor to be used in a dance competition. The design was inspired by the mandala and synchronized dancing. A mandala (meaning 'essence' or 'completion') is a diagram that has spiritual significance in Buddhism. The project continues to be displayed in museums with the very first dance scuff marks still visible. Conditions of opening up the dance floor to audiences in museums follows Mandala of the Bodhisattva II wherever it is installed.

Mandala of the Bodhisattva II, 2000

An example of a mandala

Unlike the other recent artist lectures I have attended, I found Bigger's lecture somewhat disappointing. I feel he jumped around between projects quickly and had little explanation for some. It left me feeling disconnected.

3-15-10 "Animalia" Center of Fine Art Photography Competition

I just submitted three images to The Center for Fine Art Photography's "Animalia" competition.

The show's theme:

Animals represent strength, agility, power, royalty, vulnerability and fertility. They serve as important symbols in popular culture, national identity, religion, ecology, mythology and art. The Center is looking for images that insightfully portray the diversity of the animal kingdom.

The Juror is Karen Irvine- the Curator and Manager of Publications of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago.

3-10-10 Idea Post

Domestication

Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selectino, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. A defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selections by humans.

Plants are domestication primarily for aesthetic enjoyment in and around the home (house plants, ornamentals), while others are domesticated for large-scale food production (crops). Likewise, animals domesticated for home companionship are called pets while those domesticated for food or work are called livestock or farm animals.

It is believed that the first attempt at domestication of both animals and plants were made in the Old World by peoples of the Mesolithic Period. The tribes that took part in hunting and gathering wild edible plants started to make attempts to domestication dogs, goats, and possibly sheep as early as 9000BC. It was not until the Neolithic Period that primitive agriculture appears as a form of social activity and domestication was well under way.

Some interesting dates/location of animal domestication:

Dog, 15000BC, East Asia/Africa
Sheep, 9-11000 BC, Southwest Asia
Pig, 9000 BC, Near East/China
Cow, 8000 BC, India/Middle East/Sub-Saharan Africa
Cat, 7500 BC, Cyprus/Near East
Chicken, 6000BC, India/Southeast Asia
Honey Bee, 4000BC, Vast domestication
Horse, 4000BC, Eurasian Steppes
Ferret, 1500 BC, Europe
Turkey, 500 BC, Mexico

Wikipedia.org

The domestication of animals (as seen in Still in Life) not only refers to the physical taming of animals, but also to the domestication of animal representations (2d,3d, oral) and byproducts (fur, teeth, bones, etc).



Early English 18th century coinage

3-7-10 Artist Post, Lauren Alyssa Howard

Lauren Alyssa Howard

Lauren Alyssa Howard was born in a Southeastern town in Alabama. This 'lower-middle working class' upbringing is reference for her mixed media involving identity, gender, and place.

There's a Special Place in Heaven... is an installation involving the "destructed memories of rural lower class" exploited through texture, color, and commentary on 'southern' gender roles. "By placing objects of the grotesque next to or inside small, decorated spaces, a discomforting tension is created that I explore through the use of drawing, painting, and sculpture."

There's a Special Place in Heaven..., 2009

Detail of There's a Special Place in Heaven...", 2009

Detail of There's a Special Place in Heaven...", 2009

She uses domestic props to imply time period, class, reality and memory. She also relies heavily on symbolism to communicate with her audience. The deer (male symbol) and sheep (female symbol) are used to "create an alternate world where masculine and feminine become both ambiguous as well as polar opposites, as humans interact with and even begin to become animals."

She uses a similar technique in her mixed media Deer Series.

Deer Series, 2009

3-4-10 Midterm Critique

Today's round of critiques was probably one of the best class critiques I had ever participated in. The energy in the room was high and everyone was presenting some really great work. I left feeling motivated and proud of where my project stands at this point.

After reviewing the video tape of my personal critique, I was somewhat shocked at my frequent use of the word "like." It wasn't overkill, but it was enough to be distracting when I was listening for it. My posture was not so hot (it really never is) and my voice sounds nothing like it does in my own head. It's always strange seeing myself on camera and this was particularly awkward. I remember concentrating on looking calm and not fidgety, but I have a long way to go before I am public speaking material.

Jake had a great comment at the very beginning of crit (that I was too nervous to remember at the time) about my work being more humorous this semester in terms of my exploitation of anthropomorphism. I agree that these images have an increased juxtaposition relationship that strengthens them.

The class responded positively to my artist statement both in it's composure and its accurate reflection of the photos. We were in agreement on several touch-ups to one or two photos which I pointed out as being unfinished. This was the first critique in which the class was really able to clearly understand my images and I was able to concisely articulate my ideas. I am very proud of myself for this development and I'm psyched for the final crit in Paul's class.

Below is my artist statement and the images shown at critique today. I also showed images from last semester, but you can find those on a previous blog. They were also hanging in the Pollack hallway a week ago.

Still in Life

Still In Life has been inside me as long as I can remember- developing throughout my child and adulthood in a distant part of my mind. The setting and materials create scenes of stillness that are both realizations and comparisons of past and future. I use animals as self-representations to project myself into domestic landscapes in which I am forced to coexist with humanness and impermanence. This is a direct reflection of Western culture’s dependency on anthropomorphism as a source of maturation that has played and continues to play a vital role in my own development.

Influential Artists:

- Doug Aitken, Migration
- Alessandra Sanguinetti, On The Sixth Day
- Marian Drew, Still Lives
- Susan Worsham Some Fox Trails in Virginia

"My work has always been a metaphor for my own growing up, and the small deaths of childhood innocence that occur on the road to becoming an adult." -Susan Worsham

susanworshamphotography.com

3-3-10 Idea Post

I have been working on developing my artist statement for the midterm critique this Thursday. Below is my draft as of mid-semester along with influential artists and a quote that strongly relates to my concept.

Still in Life

Still In Life has been inside me as long as I can remember- developing throughout my child and adulthood in a distant part of my mind. The setting and materials create scenes of stillness that are both realizations and comparisons of past and future. I use animals as self-representations to project myself into domestic landscapes in which I am forced to coexist with humanness and impermanence. This is a direct reflection of Western culture’s dependency on anthropomorphism as a source of maturation that has played and continues to play a vital role in my own development.

Influential Artists:

- Doug Aitken, Migration
- Alessandra Sanguinetti, On The Sixth Day
- Marian Drew, Still Lives
- Susan Worsham Some Fox Trails in Virginia

"My work has always been a metaphor for my own growing up, and the small deaths of childhood innocence that occur on the road to becoming an adult." -Susan Worsham

susanworshamphotography.com

Below are images from Susan Worsham's Some Fox Trails in Virginia

Bronze Swans, 2008

Snakes on my Childhood Bed, 2008

2-28-10 Artist Post, Neil Pardington

Neil Pardington

Neil Pardington's "The Vault" series is based off the idea behind 'The Radcliffe Camera' building. In Latin, a 'camera' is a vaulted room or chamber, closely linked to the camera obscura and illumination chambers. Pardington views the camera as a miniature room within itself in "The Vault," particularly a "storehouse of ideas and images (or as Kodak would have it, memories)."

"In a somewhat reflexive manner, this series focuses on the places we store those things that are most precious to us, and conversely those very similar spaces we store the obsolete and unwanted."

Pardinton visited archives, libraries, banks, museums and art spaces to photograph spaces of storage that visually "shrink and gleam in their dark stores."

"There is a redolence of a different kind- the collected clture and history of those things we deem important enough to keep, and those we too easily discard. And in the end we may wonder which tells us more about ourselves."

Ornithology Store #2, 2006

Land and Marine Mammal Store #3, 2006

Land and Marine Mammal Store #5, 2006

Land and Marine Mammal Store #1, 2006

neilpardington.com