Wk 12-Artist OTW- Mahsa Soroudi

Learning about Mahsa Soroudi from an interview with herself was a great way to learn about her life. She could actually tell her story and show how it comes out in her art.

I checked out her website, it’s very simplistic but a clean setup. She seemed to be the least popular artist that we have studied but it is cool seeing an artist who is up and coming. The 7500 art project is a really interesting concept.I like how she says the project won’t be changed to cater to the western population. Her project is about life in her hometown, from artists who grew up there and it shouldn’t be changed to appease the western audience. It would take away from the authenticity.

Her plantshow photography was breathtaking, she has a great touch for getting beautiful images of nature.I couldn’t get a hold of the picture to upload here, but the image Mountain Lake is stunning. She seems to capture pure nature and the images are so clear. She mentions that the exhibit is a call to nature’s cadence and I noticed I payed more attention to the nature as I went through my day after seeing her images.

Extra Credit Survey

Favorite Activities:

Plaster casting- I loved doing this as my first activity because it was intimidating but when you actually do it, it’s not too bad. Especially from someone who would say he is awful at art, seeing this made me worry some at first. However when I did it it was easy to do and easy to blog about

Museum Visit- I loved this because I enjoy going to museums plus it’s a cool way for us to just appreciate art instead of producing it ourselves

Automatic drawing- I liked Automatic drawing because of how weird it was. It wasn’t intimidating or difficult, which made it manageable with how weird of a concept it was. It ended up being a really cool experience and I think you should definitely keep it as an activity.

Least Favorite:

Instagram- I felt that the instagram activity felt off and disjointed. I didn’t get the feel or sense of the art 110 community by all posting u Der the hashtag. Mostly felt like a random assortment of people’s lives

Art care package- This assignment was interesting but overall not something I truly enjoyed. It was cool brainstorming what I would give but setting it up and taking a picture seemed like a bland ending to it. Not saying this activity was bad but just less interesting than the others

Slack

At first I was so frustrated with slack, wordpress and the whole online class format, but after a week I got the hang of it. After that I loved it and I thought it was a great way to run this class. The discussions were easy to run, I wish you could respond to comments as a thread but that’s a minor gripe. I mostly used slack off of a tablet and it worked out well on that platform as well as my phone and laptop.

Art activity, Art Talk

I really enjoyed most of the art activity and art talks. They were consistently interesting and I appreciated the flow chart used in the art talks. Super cool and clean set up. The last few artist OTW talks didn’t have many examples of their art in the video. I know we are supposed to research their work throughout the week, but showing more examples to reference what you are saying during the video would be helpful.

Overall a great class and I’m so glad I took it! It expanded my appreciation for art and I was proud of what I ended up completing in the activities.

Wk 12- Activity- Eportfolio

I hadn’t Googled myself in awhile but I was not surprised by what I found. Mostly it was unrelated to me, with a lot of options coming up for Krishna Bhakta, not Krishan. Also, since Krishna is a god in Indian culture, there are a lot of pictures of him instead. This result was both good and bad. Good because the first result wasn’t a Facebook or other social media site, but bad because it is hard to market myself.

I went ahead and made a seperate word press as my business one. I want to be a become a physical therapist, and while I still have to go to graduate school, starting a website now to market myself was a good idea. I put info about myself, my education and extra curricular activities. I want to update it more and more as I go a long, unfortunately there is not too much I can do before going to grad school.

As I grow and move further in the field I want to use the site as a foundation and be able to customize and personalize it more and more. Currently, it looks more like a LinkedIn but as I grow as a PT I want to grow it into a website that possible patients could look up and hopefully come to me for their therapy. So while it is 4 years away at a minimum before I can practice, this was a great assignment to get the ball rolling on marketing myself.

Business wordpress: https://krishanbhakta.wordpress.com

Wk 11- Artist OTW- Vanessa Blaylock

Vanessa Blaylock is an artist that creates quite a stir. Her art is mostly based in virtual reality through the creation of avatars. The idea of art solely existing in VR is a concept that many cannot grasp and she takes it even further by creating movements through these avatars online. Because of people’s reluctance to consider what she does as art, she does not seem to get much press or recognition. I tried to research her further online and she does not even have a Wikipedia page of her own. I saw her work through her blog and website and believe what she does is art. Being able to create an avatar from scratch is similar to making a beat for a song. It is mostly done online and is a creative idea which started from scratch. However, I believe she wants to take us to another dimension with her art for us to see how her art interacts in its own world. That is where I start to question it, because I believe the art should someway connect back to RL. For example a video game avatar is played by people in RL, therefore people will be more likely to appreciate the art. However if she creates  movement in VR, then where is the connection to RL? Without that connection I believe she has put a hard ceiling on where she can go as an artist.

This is one of her avatars and as you can see she puts great effort and detail to make them look as realistic as possible while still keeping the avatar feel

Wk 10-Artist OTW- Joseph Delappe

Joseph Delappe is one of the more interesting artists we have looked at in this class. He uses non traditional forms of media at times and is widely recognized for it. He is even featured in a book that examines the relationship between militarism in video games. His work in there is pretty unique but ultimately I’m not a big fan. Coming from someone who plays video games and is competitive, I would not want him ruining the experience by renaming his character to a real soilder who died in battle and then killing the character. I get what he is trying to do but everyone else is trying to play and enjoy the video game and he is ruining that experience.
After doing some research I saw that he is a current professor at UNR. Also, I learned about his salt marsh walk where he essentially recaptured how Ghandi walked during his protest but Delappe did it with a treadmill and cyber reality. After that I saw more how he I trying to use video games and the cyber world and connect it to real life. While many people view the two worlds as completely different spheres, he views it as one whole world and was talking to show that to everyone else

 

Wk 10-Activity- ACP

This week I prepared an ACP to send to my best friend back home. It contains a page that I colored out of a coloring book (a new hobby for me) a book I loved that I read recently and a BUILD pin. I told her how I have started occasionally coloring and she is really interested and said she would love to partake, so that it why I included the coloring. I included the book because I generally don’t read, so the fact I even read a book this summer is impressive. Also, I really loved the book and I felt she should experience it as well. I also included a piece of a junk mail because I always complain to her about how much junk mail we recieve. Finally I included a pin and name tag from my recent research poster presentation. All these little items seem carry a lot of weight and representation into my life. I am curious to see if these are well received because while I think the initial gift is cool and thoughtful, I assume she will lose interest and store it somewhere to remember every so often.

 

I would never think of an ACP as being similar to a snapchat. A snapchat is a quick form of communication that doesn’t have the thoughtfulness behind it. While a picture of a drawing or an item has the same intent, it carries a completely different experience than the tangible picture or item. A snapchat is a small fleeting moment into someone’s life that is often commercial and sent to many people. An ACP is generally personalized and more of a gift, making it more thoughtful than a simple picture

I think ephemera is a really cool concept and you can tell others who have an ephemeral item really care and think it is precious. However, as much as I would like to have the same effect, I don’t carry the same precious look to it. Maybe it’s because I have never really received an ephemeral item or anything like that, but while it would be thoughtful and nice in the moment it would probably end up forgotten in my room. If I gave my grandkids a Coachella bracelet they might think it’s cool, but they have no idea about my experience there. I could tell them but the bracelet still wouldn’t carry the same weight.

I believe there is a difference to art that is seen by many versus art only seen by a few. Especially if the art is only intended for a few. If you want broad commercial appeal than you generally can’t add the uniqueness and personal meaning that you can in art seen by a few. Also, if it is an ACP you can explain the meaning behind it and if they know you they can see why it would have that much meaning. But when it is large scale art it often leads to others interpreting your art.

I think you can show love with fast food or a take out meal but it is a situational thing versus being made with love. It can be delivered with love. For example, if someone brought me Chick-fil-A on a day I was down and sad then I would think it is extremely thoughtful and brought with love. However it is the act of bringing it that shows the love. When you prepare a meal and cook for someone then I believe you get the prepare the meal with love concept because you know they put in a lot of work.

 

Wk9-Activity- Food, Fashion and Follicles

 

I had no idea what to do for my art project of the week. I was in San Louis Obispo for the weekend and decided to make the pretty dumb decision of leaving my project up to doing it on Sunday. Saturday night I was in SLO with my best friends from back home and we had a few drinks and were hungry. Randomly someone grabbed cheese and someone said there is bread over there. I saw it was one of those circular bread loaves and randomly thought to those garlic cheese bread, buzz feed food videos I have seen all the time. So I start making this with my friend Zak and then realized this is my project! We were making cuisine we had never seen before that was pretty weird and for a crowd of people. It ended up turning out decent and the next morning we were really proud of what we did. The pictures even show the happiness of our audience.
Zak cut the bread into the cubed form while I made the garlic coating. I used garlic paste, Olive oil and a whole bunch of random seasoning items and mixed it all together. We put in guoda cheese and the glaze and then toasted it. I kept checking on it, added parmesean topping and wrapped the whole bread in foil and then toasted it. I almost forgot to take a picture of it at the end, I was too excited to eat it so a few bites were taken before the final picture.

 

 

Wk9- Artist OTW-Kat Von D and Guy Tang

Both of the artists this week are less of the traditional artists. Kat Von D and Guy Tang are body artists and it’s easy to see how people would be critical of this as true “art.” Traditional art is expected to be seen in gallery’s and represent something to the artist, and you as the consumer decide if you like it enough to admire, and possibly purchase it. However this kind of art is all about representing something to the consumer, and the artist job is to best make that representation come to life. Also, this type of art is constantly on a person and is part of their identity. Typical art you see in a gallery does not have that kind of power. It may be hanging in your home but less people are able to see it and be influenced by it.
Personally I do not have any tattoos, and get cheap haircuts, but I can definitely appreciate this art. I would love to get a tattoo at some point in my life and I would value seeking out the artist I best believe could bring my idea and concept to a design. That in itself may be harder than an artist drawing off their own inspiration, and for that reason I truly respect these 2 as artists.

Wk 8- Activity- Street Photography

Street Photography was great because it allowed me to see the street in a whole new light. These are streets I pass by all the time and it was cool to see the beauty in them. I enjoyed street photography and tried to get different environments in my images. I went for a stroll with two of my roommates and these are some of the best images I took on the walk

I used snapchat for this filter and used one of the available filters. I believe this color filter made the image look like a classic gas station stop. The sky was during sunset and I think the one car with the bright headlights is a natural attention grabber.

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I took this photo because it shows the distinct Long Beach streets with all the palm tress lining the roads.

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This picture is of family friends separating and leaving the house. I heard there goodbye’s and got the picture as they all were going back to where they needed to be.

 

I enjoyed this picture because of the tetris shape these card had to make to park. I also really enjoyed the tree and how it is wavy in its appearance. The shadow of the car is a nice focus and contrast to the sidewalk