Farm Lab

When I went to Farm Lab a while back it was very confusing to me.  I got some of the concepts of how the creator wanted to save natural resources and reuse and recycle them, but some things were just WTF?

This was on the wall behind the not a cornfield display.  I'm not sure what to make of it but it could mean that no matter how many people join the green movement, there is always going to be someone pouring concrete down over a natural place.

I heard the latest project they were doing was supplying "agbins" to skid row in downtown L.A. as a way to bring the community together to plant something in a flower bed, or vegetable garden.

 This was a picture I took of the not a cornfield and I thought it was pretty cool that there was this much empty space where people were growing things so close to the L.A. skyscrapers.

Module 3 Artist Research

Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in the late 60's.  He moved to Idaho with his dad at age six and would visit his mother who lived in New York City where he was first introduced to the world of art.  Since he had a background of sports from high school he intermingled this with art for his many controversial works.  He makes sculptures and is a Filmmaker best known for his "Cremaster" films starting with cycle four in the 1990's and ending with "Cremaster 3" in 2002.  This films are known for being odd, brutal, and all around obscene.  He more recently has been dipping his hand into photography and he holds nothing back while making his "models" appear dis formed or in animalistic poses.

www.dailymotion.com/.../x14bpo_matthew-barney  This clip shows part of "Cremaster 3"

His work to me is very different.   He has an obscure point of view when it comes to his work I think that is what makes it so out of the ordinary.  Some of work when he disfigures the faces of his models reminds me of Picasso but at the same time he has sort of a darker side which reminds me of old horror movies.  He has talent I think it just takes the right kind of eye to enjoy it.


Some Facts:
He has won the Hugo Boss Prize, the Skowhegan Medal, James D. Phelan Award in Video, Europa 2000, Glen Dimplex Artists Award, and the Keiser Ring Award
  He pays reference in his films to Johnny D. Brest's dark Photo-Novel Vladracul

Donatello Versace

This is Donatello Versace.  She is an Italian fashion designer that is known around the world for her beautiful and unique creations.  She is currently the vice president of the company since her brother died tragically she was basically left the company.  She has made it fun and edgy and definitely put her own spin on things.

This is the label of the brand, and this brand is famous for dressing some of the most famous movie stars around the world, as well as socialites and well, wealthy people.

These are a few of the designs that are being shown this year.

My Earth Work

Since my artist I researched was a performance artist i decided to try one of the other ways this group of artist expresses their selves.  I decided to try my hand at Earthwork.  Even though I wasn't using great landmasses or didn't have much work with, I think I made my backyard look a little better.  I did this project with my mom and brothers.                                        

This was the spot before my family and I started our project.  Even though the back of our fence looked o.k. the planter beneath it needed some work.So we first moved the red and white bushes/vines over to another side of the  backyard, and it opened up a big space that we definitely enjoyed working with.  We had a couple ideas of what kind of plants we wanted to grow there, and how we we're going to place it so it looked different and would develop nicely.  We also decided it was time to plant a couple vegetables because it was a very long time since we had a vegetable garden because of having three dogs.  That was another problem we had to think of a way to keep the dogs from getting into, and messing up the new garden we were going to plant.

This was the final product that I worked on while my mom and brothers worked on a second box just to the right of this one.  I decided to plant smaller plants and flowers and I picked to try and grow tomatoes and cucumbers.  It was actually a fun kind of freeing experience planting a new flower or vegetable that would some day grow into a bigger garden if I decided to keep going with new ideas for my "box".

This was a close up of what I planted, and I do admit it was more of a challenge than I thought to sit there and think of what kind of combination of things would look the best together.

Nancy Popp

Nancy Popp is a performance artist who uses her projects to investigate the body, mind and it's identities in relation to landscape and background.  Most of her work has been in the U.S., she is probably most known for climbing a street pole in front of the Santa Monica Pier.  You can definitely see how she uses comparisons of how small  we really are in the realm of things on this earth.

Here Nancy is shown Climbing a pole on the corner of a street with a huge McDonald's across the street.  Not all her work is climbing poles but she does use her self in most of her works of art because body image is a very strong tool in my opinion.

Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft is a performance artist that usually uses live nude models, mostly female, to bring her controversial ideas to life.  She was born in Italy and now resides in New York.  She has made a mark for her self all around the world with her artwork.

This work was called still death, shown in Venice in 1997 at the Guggenheim museum.
More recently she has taken a more theatrical approach if that is possible, with less nudity and some including food as well as military men in uniform.

Jamie Isenstein

This is the artist herself, Jamie Isenstein.  She has works all over the world including L.A., N.Y. Germany, Liverpool, and many other countries.

Jamie Isenstein is a performance artist, who likes to look at inanimate objects for countless hours and try to absorb what the object might be saying.  She has made a work of art by making herself into a wingback armchair that really caught my eye that is shown above.  She actually sat like this for about 4 hours for an exhibit, then when she would want to take a break she would but the will return sign with the clock on it for humor.  She used this sign in another art piece as well.

This piece is call Magic Fingers.  Just like in Armchair she held her position of her hands for a few hours in a sort of pointing upward way, then when she got tired she but the will return and 10:00 sign.  I would find both these works of performance art very hard, because it is very tedious to stay in one position for me for thirty mins let alone hours.  I also liked how she positioned her hand like it was pointing upward in a graceful manner.

This piece was quite confusing to me so I was wondering if anyone had anything to say about it or had any comments to help me understand it.   This piece is called Infinite Disco Soft-Shoe.

This work of art is named Empire of Fire, and it is displayed in Tate, Liverpool.  Once again you can find the artist in her work.   In this case just her arm coming out of the end of the hose.

http://www.billmaynes.com/video2.html