Funding for Developing Artists

Recently I did a search for grants and funds available to artists. I specifically was searching for me, so some are catered towards film/video, dance, performance, installation art, and cultural studies. However, these programs could be for any artist in any field. It is vital to humanity that those who envision life through creative eyes strive to impact the world and people.

• NYFA.org – Complete source for artist funding and grants. Excellent and up to date!

• Guggenheim Fellowship for the Development of artists/scholars in assisting them to engage in research development. Deadline – Oct. 1. www.gf.org. or contact: fellowships@gf.org.

• Asian Cultural Council, www.asianculturalcouncil.org, 437 Madison Avenue, 37th floor, NY, NY 10022, contact acc@accny.org for more information and eligiblity

• Fulbright Awards in NZ. Deadline – Oct. 1? - www.fulbright.org.nz.
Contact Adam Broder – abroder@cies.iie.org or Mamiko Hada – mhada@cies.iie.org about eligibility/project.

• Puffin Foundation – Grants for emerging artists. Encourages out-of-the-mainstream visual artists, performing artists, and authors. www.puffinfoundation.org Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for packet for 2007 awards. Send to Puffin Foundation Ltd., 20 East Oakdene Ave, Teaneck, NJ 07666-4111. Awards $1,000-$2,500.

• Rockefellar MultiArts Foundation www.rocfound.org, deadline – Feb. 2007. Guidelines at www.mapfund.org. Max Award - $50,000.

• Dance Theater Workshop, Digital Fellowship Program. Helping artist merge dance and technology. www.dtw.org.
Also, Internships: Production assistant for technical crew (Video performances) Stipend $280, and also in Artists Services. Send resume or cover letter to Dance Theater Workshop, Attn: Internship Coordinator, 219 West 19th St., NY, NY 10011.

• Dance Film Association, www.dancefilmsassn.org, provides Post-Production funding.

• Princess Grace Awards for aspiring young artist. - www.pgfusa.com

• NYSCA General list of Grant Opportunities for Artists - www.nysca.org
NYSCA, strategic opportunity strategies – benefits artist’s work development - Contact David Terry for more
information on eligibility – dterry@nyfa.org

• Experimental Television Center, offers residency programs and $1500 grant for artist’s projects www.experimentaltvcenter.org

Also offers a MEDIA ARTS TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FUND – deadline July 1, Oct.1.

• Echoing Green Fellowship, offers two years of $30,000 per year to help artist professionals start up or enhance non-profit organization in the arts. http://www.echoinggreen.org

Mixing It Up

When we think of a video installation or cinema in contemporary arts today we often think of grandioso projections on a large scale. We become focused on the large images and forget about the in between part of the process and production--the machine. Many video artists take images and project them onto walls making the image larger, taking over a space. Do images have to be large to ensure that they will be the main focus? Few artists have tried projection on a small scale; however, I came across an artist from Canada who has done some unique work working with the idea of the projector a.k.a the illusory machine, and his approach with scale, surfaces, and the photograph.

Wyn Geleynse’s uses antique projectors as a part of his installation. Geleynse’s intimate scale of projection invites the viewers to look at his work with close examination. In reviewing the book, Wyn Geleynse: Four Filmworks, which is a retrospection of his exhibition at the art gallery of Windsor in 1990, I became delighted to have fell upon such a wonderful and different artist. In the Geleynse book, curator Grant Arnold writes, “His work maintains a clear sense of attachment to the process of production. The material substance of film and the mechanics of projection are incorporated in each installation and are linked directly to the image itself.”

Geleynse's fascination with the process and mechanics of the projector dates back to societies' historical fascination with the illusion such as the Lumiere brother’s first films, the phantasmagoria, or magic lantern. Geleynse works has a sort of anti-discipline approach towards contemporary arts exemplifying the traditions of the 19th century. “The fetishization of photographs of nostalgic and sentimental value is explored with a critical, questioning sensibility. Paradoxically Geleynse's film installation pays homage to the rosy appeal of vintage nostalgia.” said Mercer Union, a Centre for Contemporary Visual Art, on his film installation in 1986.

What I love about his work is the small scale and the translucent dimensionality, but also for the bridge between photographic and cinematic qualities. The way in which he projects his imagery is magical and fascinating. Geleynse projects his images through tiny glass blocks, small vintage picture frames on a shelf which sits on a wall, or through a tiny glass house, with a ghost-like illusion of a woman paddling the back of man sitting on a chair. These are just a few examples. You would have to see more picturees and see his work in person to fully appreciate the scope of his talents. To physically interact with the audience his displays are set up so the viewer has turn go through the process of switching on the clanking old film projectors. Although his fascination is scientifically-based in regards to his interest about the mechanics of the machine and light, his work also transends a introspection of himself through old films of his child hood, or found footage that reminds him of a memory he once had. The beautiful displays of his installations provide a magical experience, which is open to engagement for the viewer.

Gelyense recently had a 25-year retrospective called, A Man Trying to Explain His Pictures, at Museum London, Ontario, Canada this past year. Review by Matt McIntyre.

Otherworldliness

Several thesis presentations brought up the topic about video projection and installation in a gallery space. After this graduate review I began to rethink my approach with the structuring of my exhibition. Video Installation can create this sort of sense of "otherworldines" by changing the way people see and experience a particular space. Experimental video projection and installation on a wide-range of surfaces is an ever-changing field as with all technology. In the past few years the interest in technology, innovation, and art of video projection has become increasingly popular. With technology, there’s a possibility to create an environment that changes a space into a global experience. Communicating cinematic ideas and images may become stronger through experimental approaches of manipulating light angles and dimensional space. Diana Thater who has worked extensively in large-scale video installation. She has an interesting take on the idea of video installation.

“It seems to me that the deliberate point of installation as a form is that it is neither sculpture nor architecture but something half-way in between. It is an art, as Robert Morris said (in his essay “The Present Tense of Space”) of “presentness” that allows viewers to be conscious of the now. I’m not interested in what currently passes for “video installation”—just projected images, which, it should be noted, are cinematic and not spatial. I try to make work that exists in the space between sculpture and architecture... In Knots + Surfaces, as in Delphine, I wanted to change the shape of the room via the images. In both works I did it through a move often made by architects, which is to twist the architectural grid on its axis.” -Diana Thater interview

The internet has an endless list of technology issues with video projectors and examples of artist’s work in video installation. Thinking about scale is another issue, which I have not yet found material showing artists working with installation on a small scale. Nor did I find lots of discussions on video projection through glass or multiple layers. However, this might be of interest to some because its looks to me after sifting through Google that most artists have gone large with projection and kept small images within the box, the tv monitor. Projection on a small scale is a topic to explore further.

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In New Zealand, a gentleman found a direct route to accessing your creativity and innermost expressions, this man is Len Lye. Lye's art-making theory remains an evocative approach in today’s contemporary art world. What I fear is that this mode of thinking is slowly dying due to our current cultures need to consistently act logically. Len Lye is well known for his kinetic sculptures, experimental hand-drawn films (a.k.a “direct” films), and abstract paintings. The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is home to a collection and archive of Lye’s work, spanning more than 60 years.

The science, art, and philosophy of Len Lye begins with his theory about the “old” and “new” brain. A method he used to by-pass cognitive cultural filter of rationalizations and interpretations by doodling. (Yes, doodlling!) The gift of a child's imagination can be established with training by anyone, which Lye found as way to “retrieve and portray images from realms beyond the capacity of the individual.” By passing the new brain’s censoring of interpretations can allow your old brain to activate your lucid thoughts of subconscious memories, experiences and personal feelings directly through the pencil hand onto paper.

Lye delved further into finding intuitive knowledge by relating to primitive and tribal art as well as identifying with nature. Much of his paintings and films can be related to primitive drawings of forms and shapes because of Lye’s ties with tribal cultures of New Zealand and Australia. He saw these people very in touch with there own bodies, “whose artistic ‘distortions’ were a way of expressing body feelings and other deep insights.” Lye’s hand-drawn films were frequently associated with dancing, where the “lines sway to music, not symbolizing a dancer directly but creating the kinetic feeling that we can we can associate with body movement.” Thus, making art is about finding a visual way to show the feeling or moment of something just like the primitive cultures had done centuries ago.

Lye saw our relation with nature as a way of "descending to a level at which the distinction between nature and one’s self seems to disappear and freer interchange can take place.” Thus, I think of the phrase to be "in touch with nature" means to be in touch with one’s self. Lye saw that an Aboriginal clan shared a common myth about the beginnings of life. As we strive to find inspiration through art, I feel that this desire is to find a sense of our origins, our roots.

It was an experimental film animator who directed me towards Len Lye. His approach towards art-making has strengthened my own insights with using film and video.

*Quoted material in reference to the book at Visual Studies Workshop, Len Lye: A Personal Mythology.

*See interview of Len Lye on "composing motion, just as musicians compose sound."

The Show Must Go On

ImageMovmentSound 2006 Festival
Visual Studies Workshop
April 22, 2006

Collaboration is a tough thing. How do you work with someone collectively with out having one person take control of the wheel? ImageMovementSound is a collaboration of artists working to join these three words together. I was excited to be involved with a group of people who were all interested in putting powerful sounds with dance and performance, and mixing it with video and film. Last night, IMS put on a show at the Visual Studies Workshop. With this festival show, IMS brought in a solid crowd of 175 plus people, earning some needed exposure for VSW's facilities and venues. VSW needs to more happenings like this, more life breathing through our school's art community.

However, being the host for IMS at VSW was an exhaustive task—16 hours straight. They could not find anything they needed and were appalled by the lack of equipment and cleanliness such as our backstage and lighting system. It reinforced to me how brainwashed one behaves when everything is provided to you in perfect condition and in place--lack of problem solving skills. In addition, VSW's crazy door security became another sticky situation to solve too. Having a show in the front and a random performance/installation in the back seemed slightly backwards. But I was willing to go with the whole fluxus thing. All in all, the show must go on, and it did. For in the end it all worked out.

As an overall assessment I was not pleased with the results of the show's direction. It might have something to do with the fact that the filmmakers, technical and animation people mostly came from mainly the same program--RIT. I felt that each performance of the festival show was very homogenous, everything was the same with not much variety and way too long! You can only take so much abstract art in one sitting. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out after awhile. The videographers and animators got lost in manipulating stunning imagery and forgot about the purpose or meaning. And meaning is so important! The dancers know that! Honestly, they should put the camera in a dancer's hand and they would intuitively know exactly what to do with it. The best piece was the “Excess” performance. For the dancers knew how to build a story up through conceptualism and abstract movements. Their interaction with multiple chairs created a spontaneous dynamic. The composed sound element, by Abby Arresty, of women's low-anal voice repetitively complaining about how much stuff she had added a great undertone to the whole piece. The video imagery behind the dancers added a soft background to the performance, but remained a minor detail to the dancers' roles.


Video stills from "A Woman Hanging On"


For the most part the performance "A Woman Hanging On," held my emotional attention and curiosity. The beginning elements of the video imagery behind them were too stagnant and uncoordinated with the dramatic elements of the performances. The introduction of the video graphic was too literal and too basic as a backdrop, no synergy between the performer and the media. However, the video finale with the shirts hanging on the clothesline blowing in the wind began to blend with the dynamics of the singer’s despair and depression. The media and the performance slowly started working together, becoming synchronized. The clothes fell to the ground just as the singer’s heart fell.

There is so much to sift through, and that could be one of the problems. ImageMovementSound is experimental, but then its not. They have created a bubble, a show to make these interdisciplinary performances. But restrictions with time, the weight of who is behind it and in it, and the lack of cohesive vision hurts the idea behind the show. A cohesive vision does not mean having all visions the same just visions that create great synergy and dynamics. Each year IMS is bound to have a few flops but the idea of the show still proves to be worthy of attention because of the tiny steps its taking into the realm of interdisciplinary arts.

Video in a Painterly Way

Painting with video. Rotoscoping has recently become popular again since the metaphysical movie debuted, Waking Life. The movie is about the concept of when we are awake are we really sleeping, and when we are dreaming are we really awake. The movie follows a young man's journey into the philosophical abyss, meeting and conversating with dozen's of corky characters along the way. Waking Life's imagery is extremely lucid. The movie is composed with simple low-budget dv camera's and an animation software program called rotoscoping. The producers took the scenes they shot with hand-held camera's and completely transfigured the scenes into a painterly look. More than 30 Illustrative artists were assigned characters and scenes, and given the opportunity to use free creative and intuitive reign; resulting in visual variety. They took each video frame of the movie and tediously, creatively added layers on top of the video sketches, creating surreal video paintings. This formed our reality in a painted, animated way.

Wired Magazine recently wrote about a new movie coming out called A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves, which has taken rotoscoping to a new level. I am looking forward to seeing this new movie's surreal sci-fi pallette.

Lodela

“The soul leaves the body. Drawn by intense light, the spirit discovers its twin self, its feminine side...its guide in the beyond. Inspired by the myths of the afterlife, this allegorical dance piece illuminates the soul's quest by exploring movement and the human body in new and astonishing ways. An evocation of the origins of the world. A hymn to the beauty of the human form. A celebration of movement. A metaphor for life and death. Film without words.”
- National Film Board of Canada

Last year, I saw this film by director Philippe Baylaucq which changed the direction of my own film and video work. Philippe filmed dancers interacting with each on opposites sides of the moon. At some points the man and woman felt each other presence, eventually the woman crossed over to the man’s side. Thus the dance began as they ran around the moon. The director’s innovative use and play with negative and positive light (light and dark) to convey the dramas between relationships (yin and yang) successfully used literal visual compositions to symbolize the unknown. Also, his experimentation with using a head camera to convey a point of view perspective of his character’s created a whole new perspective, increasing the drama of this film.

Ana Mendieta

An artist which has truly inspired me is Ana Mendieta. When I first started learning about her and what she did, I was amazed by her passion to be within something. For we all have that yearning to belong, don’t we? Ana Mendieta is no longer here on earth physically but her work and spirit still remains alive and growing. Her mysterious life ending, her strong voice on identity, feminine issues, and her Latin American upbringing made her work unlike any other artists working in the experimental mediums of film, video, performance and photography in the 1970s. Ana was trying to get within earth.

“My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my silueta in nature keeps (make) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature.”- Ana Mendieta

By documenting this with photography or super-8 film, she creates poignant, primitive and spiritual acts of life and death that will last forever. She would mold woman body forms with mud or sand in water (Siluetas); lay dead nude with flowers growing from her naked body in an old Mexican ruin; pour mud, grass, and sticks all over her body and blend herself into the background of a tree (Tree of Life); paint the wall with her arms, hands, and body in blood (Body Tracks); or burn with fire a human form (Alma/Soul). Her materials used will eventually return to nature.

Read two articles with diverging perspectives on Ana after being "moved" by seeing her work at the Hirshorn Museum (although, I don't like Blake Gopnik’s brass attitude!). Article 1 by Blake Gospnik and Article 2 by Michael O'Sullivan.

Stadium of Self

Photo by Kate Raudenbush of New York, NY.

"On your initial approach, the Stadium of the Self suggests a venue of intense competition, judgment, fear, defeat, and triumph. As you venture around the onyx-walled structure, you discover the eighth wall missing. In its place, an elevated pathway of gold slices through to the structure's center and reveals an intimate chamber constructed of a dizzying vortex of luminous gold mirror. Seventy gold mirrored stadium steps encircle you with reflected light. The interior of this Coliseum holds only one individual participant in its center, and when looking into the stands for approval or judgment you are faced with an audience of one, simultaneously multiplied seventy times: the seventy panels of gold mirror are angled to reflect us back to ourselves, our own ego. In this Stadium of the Self it is only ourselves that we answer to."
--Funded Installations at Burning Man, 2005

Someday I too will go to Burning Man…

Not Just Your Average Movies...

“The Mystical Movie Guide is your comprehensive and savvy guide to films that have metaphysically interesting and/or emotionally profound supernatural, psychological, and spiritual themes. In practice, this means a lot of movies about dreams, ghosts, altered states, psychotherapy, parallel worlds, time travel, alien visitors, mystical experiences, religious founders, mythical heros, and other cool stuff like that…when you realize that this is where many of the most uncompromising and engaging artistic visions are waiting to be found, you too may develop a fondness, or at least a tolerance, for the independent and b-movie genres.” --Mystical Movie Guide

I think this website is extremely helpful and informative. Its loaded with experimental and imaginative topics. Many topics about states of self and identity.

A Delightful Film Animator, Joanna Priestly

Voices (1985,USA,Short 4mins) Animation, Experimental

"Animator Joanna Priestly introduces herself in her own animation. She could use her art to entertain or distort, to draw funny pictures or talk in funny voices. But she'd most like to speak with us on the nature of her fears, which she's been thinking about. If we see our world fearfully, then we create our fears more every day. This is the film that debuted the magic of a uniquely feminine artist to the world, after she enrolled in Cal Arts to revitalize a life-long interest in animation. Joanna's style is gentle and playful but never childish, and some transformations can be downright scary. After the success of "Voices", Joanna vowed to make films til the day she dies, and her signature hand-drawn flashcard style has evolved to include stop-motion and Flash animation software." -- Mystical Movie Guide

She recently released a two disc anthology of her work. Read more on Priestley and her 17 film animations (Yikes!). --Animation World Magazine

See Priestley's Website

Palindrome

"...Once, say 10,000 years ago, performances were considerably more interactive than they are today. In part, because of the cheap availability of recording, transmission and reproduction technologies, interactivity has all but vanished from the performing arts. Dancers almost never work with musicans any more. And, generally speaking, that which occurs on stage has become fixed and utterly repeatable. Music is almost always recorded, and the role of the audience has been reduced to watching quietly and then clapping at the end..." (http://www.palindrome.de/ Go to link: 5 SECRETS, link: WHY, and read "Why do we bother?")

This is an excerpt from a short but sweet article about where Interactivity, performance and installation is today. It also talks about human need to perform & communicate (many works are on topic of Body, Identity & Intuitive movement).

Please have fun & surf through this website. Go to link: Samples, link: Installations, Emily/Shlamp. I like this outdoors installations interaction with people and urban space. It shows alot about our behavior towards others, and or objects we "think" we can't hurt. Are her feelings hurt, have we physically hurt her? (But... i know... its all supposed to be fun and games.)

Non-Organic with Organic?

boy(1995)a film by Rosemary Lee and Peter Anderson, Performer Tom Evans

Non-organic with the organic? How can you make these cohesively mix well together without appearing unbalanced? What I am talking about is electronic media, and the expressionistic queen, dance. In the last five to seven years, since the onset of the digital technology boom, dance is finding its way into an exciting new medium for media guru's to delve into and vice versa. Both mediums--moving image, music, and dance all transpire to express drama, human emotion (whether evoking audience emotions or in the performance), and life stories.

Dance is a way of speaking. Dance performances or just freestyle dancing is one way to know each other. Dance helps identify who you are. Dancing with others is way to experience details with one another. Its one of the most intimate ways to be with someone. At the heart of Native American culture is dance such as Pow Wow and/or spirit dancers. The Aborigines use improvisational and trance dance to express dreams they’ve had.

The interdisciplinary company, Troika Ranch has become widely known and popular for its innovative ways of combining dance, live performance, and multimedia. What they have not done thus far is find a way to integrate, mesh, blend, and balance dance and media together. Last year, I went to a show they held at SUNY Brockport. The performance was about male and female relationships, male-male relationships, female-female relationships, human duplication, and self-expression. They mixed real-time images of the dancers with their own developed software program they called Isadora. During the performance, I spent half of the time trying to observe the real-time video images and couldn’t appreciate the dance, and the other half, involved in the movements of the dancers yet the giant images in the background kept distracting me, pulling me away from the dancers. I left feeling very discombobulated between the mediums.

Dance performances captured in choreographed films currently seem to be doing a decent job of balancing the two. As interdisciplinary mediums work together more, it will all depend on the key ingredient--balance.

Here are 2 sites with two dance films I like.
Reines D Un Jour (Queens for the Day) http://www.dancecamerawest.org
The Boy by Rosemary Lee http://www.mdx.ac.uk/rescen/Rosemary_Lee/rlchoreo2.html
Okay, I will give you the site of Troika Ranch too... http://www.troikaranch.org/

An education, an evolution of the Self, a discovery of who you are and whats important to you, your Self, your Identity. This notion of Self (Note: this is capitalized because of its high importance). If you don't know yourself then how do you know how to be? Philosophers have juggled with the question of the Self such as John Locke and Friedrick Nietzche. Psychologist have lamented over the question of the Self--Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Religion is based on the Self--Jesus and Buddha. Scientist have questioned what is Self...And yes, even artists have questioned the idea of Self. Tapping into this deep, rich, bank of never-ending possiblities that is sometimes scary, is a juicy resource for making art. Its universal meaning can be accessible to a wider audience besides the "art community," and impact those who have forgotten what their selves are. However, finding the most natural approach while remaining reachable and affecting people is a tricky matter. How do you communicate these abstract and surreal notions about the discovery of the Self? These are questions I've asked myself. After being depressed for awhile about my work and why I do it. I began to think of what artists looked at themselves for ideas behind their art-making, and were able to transform their Self through their work.

1. Leonardo DaVinci
2. Rembrandt
3. Vincent Van Gogh
4. Francisco de Goya
5. Salvador Dali
6. Jackson Pollack
7. Maya Deren
8. Bill Viola
9. Frida Kahlo
10. Peter Sarkisian
11. Ana Mendieta
12.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's "Human Dramas"

The Present (2001)
"The principal theme of The Present is forgiveness, summarised in the closing statement of each of these five short stories: 'Give Yourself a Present; Forgive Yourself'. The work is loosely based on interviews Ahtila conducted with a number of women who had developed psychosis at some point in their lives."
-- http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/ahtila/about.htm

Eija-Lissa Ahtila, a Finnish artist, has been working on a way to visually articulate things that are often too hard for humans to talk about. Ahtila works with photography, film, video and installation.

"Ahtila has described her work as 'human dramas', fictional narratives that emerge from lengthy periods of research as well as from her own observations and experiences.... In recent work, the border between 'self' and 'other' is investigated as the viewer is invited to peer inside the minds of individuals caught in moments of psychological fragility."

To read about Eija-Lissa Ahtila photography work, check out, http://www.paolocurti.com/ahtila/ahtila.htm .

Mixing... DanceMediaSpaces

Under the Sun and through the Breeze, A Wind Chimer is Found (2005).
Still Image from video short, Sara Segerlin.

Mixing dance and media in new spaces is a rejuvenating way to approach expressions of human dramas in relation to self, space, and narrative through movement. Last semester, I took a course called Dance on Camera, taught by Betty Jenkins. In this class, I learned about this interdisplinary medium, and I experimented with filming dance movements in non-traditional spaces (e.g. not a stage). Dance is always about something whether its simply liberating your soul, communicating emotions or telling a story.

Every year the Dance Film Association has a well-known Dance on Camera festival. Check out this year's festival and read about the various narratives dance can unfold in all kinds of environments.
--http://www.dancefilmsassn.org/NewPages/festival%202006.html

Also, Image Movement Sound is a collaboration of artists from colleges all-around the Greater Rochester area to create innovative ways of communication and expression. On April 22, 2006 they will be having a show and an installation exhibit at the Visual Studies Workshop. This year wil be Image Movement Sounds' 10th Anniversary. -- www.imsfestival.org

New Zealand Artist: Rachel Rakena

http://www.inza.co.nz/RR_home.htm

Mihi Aroha, 2002
Rachel Rakena
In Mihi Aroha, email messages Rachael received after her mother's death run down the walls of the whare like tears…

Rachel Rakena mixes the influences of her cultural background, the natives of New Zealand—Maori, within her video art and installations. She taps into personal elements that affect her and of her understanding with the Maori culture. Rachel emphasizes on such things like lucid motions of water, swimming and dance, and the creation of “installation environments." She adds a sort of “freshness” to video art installations because of her strong inclination towards water and her connection with the Maori’s. She currently teaches in Maori Visual Art Studies at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.


Just as a side note…Does anyone remember the book the Island of the Blue Dolphins? Do you remember the movie Whale Rider? Both are beautiful stories and her work reminds me of them.

"Everyone is an Artist"

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room4.shtm
Beuys in Performance, "I Like America and America Likes Me," 1974.

Joseph Beuys once said "everyone is an artist." The more I read about Beuys, the more I am fascinated by his ability to create ACTION and his dabbles with a wide-range of art such as conceptual, environmental, politcial, performance, video, and sculptural. This man had some ignited enegry in him and he wasn't going to keep it quiet. He spread his love for art to all and revived what he felt has been lost in our world. He often talked about uniting the Western man with the Eastern man (the analytical man with the intuitive man).

What Beuys meant about everyone being an artist is that creativity is not just for artist, but for all. And that he teaches creative thinking to anyone, which will impact all facets of society and people. Thus his slogans were "Art=Captial" or "Creativity=Capital." If it were not for people like Beuys, I may have never considered making art nor would I have found my own calling in art.

Beuys founded the Free International University, after he was dismissed from another college for opening up the art program to any one who wanted to study. He focused on life values and the "creative interchange on the basis of equality between teachers and learners." (http://www.walkerart.org/archive/8/9C430DB110DED6686167.htm)

In 1982, Beuys started 7000 Oaks for the Documenta 7. Following his own philosophy that art serves a greater purpose than aesthetics, Beuys began to transform urban landscapes throughout Europe by adding trees to city landscapes. Even after his death (1986), his art-making project is still going on today.



1. A Biography About Joseph Beuy
http://www.walkerart.org/archive/A/A343C5E357CE790B6174.htm

2. Beuys Tree Planting Plans, 7000 Oaks
http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/7000.html

3. Beuys' Impact on Society and Earth Continues to Grow
http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/capp/artists/beuys.htm
http://www.dmcsoft.com/beuys/exh2.html
http://www.walkerart.org/archive/E/A24315825E9BEAE26130.htm
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewProduct?id=17180

Go With It

For the past week, I've been mulling over these last few articles we read for my Contemporary Studies' class, "Is Education Over-Killing Young Artists", and "Picasso Didn't Have an MFA." Both articles stressed similar points--don't fall into the habit of all talk and no action, or all theory and no play, no creativity, no passion. It’s easy to get caught up in learning new information and history. And yes, it does open up for lengthy art discussions of what people did and didn't do, and the theories behind the theories, and the metaphor behind the symbolism, and the precept behind the concept, and the unconsciousness behind the consciousness, and the refraction behind the reflection. But having these talks is a balance as well as contemplating through reading, journaling, or meditating will help bring new revelations to your work.

But when you get down to the core, the spirit of one's work, you get to be a part of the excitement and beauty of what art and art making is all about. The energy might be the missing element as to why people are speculating about the decline of young artists. How do we as humans, let alone artists, maintain and develop our selves and see through the thickness of popular culture, media mayheim, information and patterned lifestyles and mechanical movements.

Please don’t hold back yourself from the constraints of our times. Don’t be afraid if someone's already done that, don't be afraid if someone hasn't done that. One way or another, we are creating works that were influenced and inspired by others, We are creating works that were solely of our own accord and heart. What this means is that your work is your work. And that, my friend, is the magical part about being an artist and being apart of your art making process. The most important element in teaching art is to find your voice, to your own approach to intuitively, passionately, and maybe a little obsessively, delve into the craft of your choice and go with it.



The Kids Aren’t Alright: Is Over-Education Killing Young Artists by Aaron Rose.
http://www.paperrad.org/info/press/Aaron-Rose-LA-Weekly.html

Picasso Didn’t Have an MFA: Reflections on Art Teaching and the “New Academy” by John Seed. http://www.artsiteguide.com/march01/picassodidnt.html

So Ran the god and [Daphne],
one swift hope,
The other in terror, but he
ran more swiftly,
Borne on the wings of love,
gave her no rest,
Shadowed her shoulder,
breathed on her streaming hair
Her strength was gone, worn
out by the long effort
Of the long flight; she was
deathly pale, and seeing
The river of her father, cried
"O help me,
If there is any power in the
rivers,
Change and destroy the body
which has given
Too much delight!" And hardly
had she finished,
When her limbs grew numb
and heavy, her soft breasts
Were closed with delicate bark
her hair was leaves,
Her arms were branches, and
her speedy feet
Rooted and held, and her head
became a tree top,
Everything gone except her
grace, shining.

Ovid's "Metamorphoses," written in the late first century BC.

The Story of Apollo and Daphne

One of the Great Love Stories