Ashley Long - Solo Together Exhibit

Bethany Taylor 

American, born 1969 

Runoff Verdure 

2014 

                    Bethany Taylor's Runoff Verdure uses fiber to create images of animals, all connected to one another and to the center photo tapestry of a wooded space in Florida. The concept was to draw attention to the increase in poison run off in Florida's waters and surrounding ecosystems, harming its wild life and our own fresh water. Upon first inspection, I definitely saw the way in which all of the animals of the ecosystem were connected with one another, in this sense, with thin strands of fiber, reflecting the way they were all connected through the ecosystem. I really admire the technique and patience it must have taken to create a decent likeness to each of these animals and then connecting them afterwards.

Celeste Roberge 

American, born 1951 

Ocean Floors II 

2010 

                    Celeste Roberge's Ocean Floors II reflects the radiation found in all metals by displaying a variety of pots and pans that each have a bright yellow or red center, similar to that of hot iron. The colors of radiation shown in these pots and pans are not usually visible, so this display shows something that usually goes unnoticed. This piece was also dedicated to the artist's parents, as they are "reflected in the thin layer of…gold and copper leaf that overlays the elemental iron and radiates through time and space". I initially thought this piece would have something to do with the actual function of the appliances and possibly gender roles and intertwining that with the toxicity of radiation. My first assessment appears to be wrong, and after reading the artist's statement, the piece seemed to have a sweet kind of reference to the artist's parents being as precious as the metal used and their memory radiating through time and space. 

project 4

the vimeo was taken down. so i will be dropping off the other forms to watch the video

Language has always been one of the hardest aspects for me to learn. I have failed at creating an interesting work due to my lack of confidence in the language or I have been unable to understand a class. As one gets to know me they understand that a very interesting characteristic of mine is my use of any language. By text or spoken, I have always make languages mistakes. Every since a young age I have always had to repeat myself, since I tend to have messy thoughts and messy speaking.

For this project I wanted to create the confusion I tend to have when speaking.  I choose a Dr. Seuss story, which contains a great amount of play on wording and repetition.  With this story, which is already a poem and therefore, with a lot of word play, I created a project in which I used my normal and confusing play on word to create a confusion with the audience. I seat in front of the class and create this feeling of a book reading. However, as I read they will hear I am using a confusing grammar.  This is much like when I was a child and I was not able to use the right words or turn the right words in a sentence.  In almost every sentence I created confusion by mixing normal language with my new grammar. I turned worlds around as well as sentences around.  In addition,  I introduced the actual scanned pages of the book. The viewer is then able to compare what I am saying to what the book is intended too say. Therefore, there will be confusion, but there will be an understanding of what is happening.

https://vimeo.com/114375242

Leanne Sheth - Project 4 - Preformance

Leanne Sheth

12-10-14

Reciting Percy Bryce Shelley’s Mont Blanc

In this performance piece, I challenged myself by reciting Percy Bryce Shelley’s, Mont Blanc. Shelley was a naturalist 19th century poet, meaning he challenged the constructs of society and religion while holding a deep appreciation for nature and the free spirit of man. Written in 1817, this poem captures the beauty of nature, specifically of Mont Blanc in France. He admires the nooks and cranies, and marvels at the hidden secrets of the mountain. He ends the poem stating how humanity can never hope to understand the secrets of the universe, since our existence is so temporary in comparison to the mountains. I first read this poem about three years ago, and it has largely shaped my outlook and opinions on life. Much like Shelley, I feel that humanity has not even scratched the surface of the meaning of existence, and we should not live as though we know the answer. 

Lately, I have adopted a more nihilistic stance of thinking, slowly questioning the meaning of humanity as a whole, more specifically, the lack thereof. Language is no more than meaningless noise, which only holds context in society, and our thoughts and opinions will not affect the flow of the universe. I decided to combine these two contrasting schools of thought in my performance piece by reciting Mont Blanc, which celebrates the unknown beauty of the world, and then ending the poem by speaking in a steady stream of gibberish, symbolizing a nihilistic view of the world. Lofty opinions, while they may hold some meaning in our society, are essentially the same as speaking in tongues, or sprouting nonsense. My throat will be making the same sounds, and I will be mentally reading the poem throughout the entire piece. The only thing that will change will be my gradual transition from speaking in English to nonsense.

The setting of this piece will be in a plain chair against a blank wall. The unassuming surroundings will make the space universal to all schools of thought, and could be considered a parody of the “man who walks into a room and opens a book to begin narrating a story” trope. The piece will be one long shot, trimmed only at the beginning and end to feature myself entering and leaving the frame. This piece is a documentation on my evolving ideology of the world, in addition to commentary on the entire concept of theorizing about the universe beyond ourselves. 

link: https://vimeo.com/114169847

Project 4 Link and Artist Statement

 LINK

 I met my boyfriend on the internet about four years ago, and our means of communication throughout the years has changed accordingly; from emails to texts to video chatting on Skype. The latter was a major turning point for our relationship, I believe. Although we had been dating for about a year before we were capable of that sort of interaction, we were limited simply to text and voice interactions. I was aware that physical reference and appearance was important in a relationship, but I didn’t fully comprehend it until I could finally see my boyfriend’s face for the first time, in person. There was something almost magical about it. I have a whole slew of new things to say about him. All of the wonderful physical traits and speaking mannerisms and body language that he has have become an important part of my image of him. He lives in California, and many times the distance between us is extremely disconcerting. It’s hard to have someone you are close to, and being limited to a detached form of communication the majority of the time. Even with the fantastic technology of being able to see and talk with someone in real time, it doesn’t change the fact that he goes away when I shut down my computer for the night.

            With this project, I wanted to share with viewers a sort of similar feeling that comes with being in a long distance relationship, both in the communication method, and the overall emotions that accompany the whole affair. I recorded a few snippets of the chat sessions I have with my boyfriend over Skype, and made it so it appears the viewer is the one having the conversation with the person on the other end. I recorded both myself, and him, and switch between the two perspectives intermittently. You cannot hear what anyone is saying, however, so there’s an air of ambiguity, and maybe a sort of discomfort to the fact that someone appears to be speaking to you, but you are unable to hear them. This parallels to quite a few of the emotions I feel regarding the distance between the two of us: there are many things we are incapable of doing the majority of the time.

            But the video is not silent. I recorded myself, and had my boyfriend record himself, monologuing about how we feel about our respective partner. The personal, and sometimes somber, words juxtapose themselves frequently against the rather jovial images of ourselves. In a way, it shows the complexities of our relationship, and how, in the end, we are happy with where we are and where we are going.

Project 4 Artist Statement. 12.10.2014

(A)PATHETIC, Project IV
Alyssa Dulay
*My file was also too large to post to Vimeo.

I feel that performance pieces are a perfect opportunity to convey ideas of introspection: the artist is putting themselves on the line and physically adhering themselves to the art.  It is my opinion that people are products of their upbringing, and I wanted to use this opportunity to comment on my personal experiences growing up trying to constantly appease different people. My mother has always been adamant about me constantly looking my best, regardless of the company. I was a harlot if I tried too hard, and I was a bum if I didn’t try hard enough.  In my other ear, my father insisted that I be the best at everything I attempted. Whether it was board games, my academics, or a race up the driveway, there was an inherent disappointment if I didn’t throw my heart and soul into everything I did. These, and other facets merge and conflict when it comes to my discovering my own identity.

This conflict is what I wanted to explore in my performance piece. There is an evident challenge in being a cutthroat competitor, while at the same time retaining a feminine composure. Therefore, I wanted to give my piece a more frustrated and animalistic resolve.  My performance takes place in a bathtub. I chose this setting because I felt that there was certain sense of intention when you climb into a bathtub clothed: it just doesn’t happen on accident. There is also a subconscious sense of cleansing from a bathtub, which is what I felt this piece would do for me. We find my character delicately seated on the floor of the tub, inquisitively examining a bouquet of flowers. One by one, she plucks off the delicate petals and watches them cascade to the floor. The audience watches as her resolve transforms from curious, to despaired, to frustrated, and then ultimately cracked in an assumed animalistic insanity. Along with the bouquet of flowers, my props include gold and a pinkish-red acrylic paint. I wanted to add a substance with a bit of viscosity to add some texture to the work, while adding some aesthetic contrast in color. The pinkish-red symbolizes not only feminism and the pressure to remain composed in adversity, but also the pain it causes to do so.

I did my research on my flower of choice, chrysanthemums, and they are said to represent, honesty, clarity, and intuition in Chinese culture. In Japanese culture, they are commonly used in funeral arrangements and represent truth and grief. My piece ultimately represents the classic “love me, love me not” plucking of flower petals. However, rather than a game of chance, my character looks at these flowers as “for every person that loves me, there is one that does not.” She struggles to come to terms with disappointing so many people, and these emotions transform her into a creature much more confident, apathetic, and independent. I titled this piece (A)PATHETIC because of the feminine obligation to constantly act with compassion towards others. Therefore, it would seem logical that a lack of emotion would be masculine or strong. To be taken seriously in business, one has to be either seen with a stoic clarity or seen as weak and clouded with emotion. In the end of my piece, I overcome all my conflicting emotions, compose myself, and presumably move forward.

Reference Links (x)(x)

Project 4 Becoming Pretty

• I couldn't upload to vimeo because it exceeded the limit of 500GB per week :(

Becoming Pretty

                For my performance art, I decided to disregard my discomfort with myself and take a huge step by filming a video with me as the focus. Normally, I could never even think about posing as a subject in a video because of my low self-confidence, especially in a performance piece where all eyes would be concentrated on me. Before, I could not tolerate performance art because I thought it was strange, not even considering it to be real art. Most pieces that I had seen of performance art was outlandish and eccentric, where I could not derive any meaning or concept from the act. After viewing Abramovic, I realized that once a person knows the concept or artist statement behind a piece, then the performance is not subjugated to negativity; the audience can fully appreciate the unique way of presenting an issue through performance. However, after watching The Artist is Present by Marina Abramovic, I was overwhelmed with the excitement of her performance and concepts. I was instantly ignited with enthusiasm for performance art and decided I wanted to break through my comfort zone and make a video focused on myself somehow. I created several ideas for project four, but finally chose to make a performance about societal beauty and makeup.

                My concept for the project talks about how important beauty and makeup is valued in society toward girls and women. I wanted to take this issue and ask my two younger girl cousins about their perception of beauty. Because of our ages, it would make an interesting conversation between a seven year old, fourteen year old, and 20 year old. During the interview, I asked both girls questions that included “who is the most beautiful person in the world?”, “do you have to wear a lot of makeup to be pretty?”, and “do men like women better with makeup on?”.  I wanted the interview to be natural, so I filmed it in a children’s play area at my grandparents’ house. I allowed my two younger male cousins, six and thirteen, to be included in the background of the interview because I believed it would be interesting to get their insert of answers. I did get a couple reactions from them but it mostly turned out to be background noises of them goofing off. As I was editing my performance, I realized how important this insignificant act was toward my project; I was asking the girls how to achieve beauty, when the gender who women do this for could care less.

                The second part was a performance of my seven year old cousin applying my makeup and me returning the action. Her idea of makeup wasn’t quite the thought process of an older woman’s concept because she wanted to turn me into a blue fairy. The makeup to her was a way of putting art on one’s face to play dress-up. However with my older cousin, she used makeup as a way to perfect her face and hide embarrassing blemishes. When it was my turn to doll my younger cousin up, she wanted to become a garden fairy. During my questioning of her in the interview and the makeup part, she was very unsure about my questions and how to answer them; she seemed like they were indifferent to the point of makeup. In her eyes, makeup is supposed to make one feel happy about themselves without the opinion of others deciding their beauty.

After finishing my project, I realized that this film wasn’t solely about me; it included personal thoughts and feelings from my cousins. This project, even though it included three young women, covers many similar opinions about beauty in general from many different women around the world. I did overcome a fear about drawing attention to myself. Ultimately, I discovered how, even at a young age, girls learn makeup can transform a face into something better than the original, whether it being just for fun or for presenting one’s self to the world.