My Art

For our next class, we are supposed to show some of our own are pieces.  So here are a couple pieces I have done recently.

This was a piece commenting on Mondrian's paintings.  Media: Acrylic.

Media: Aquatint

Media: Linoleum cut  Size: 30x44

Craft vs. Art

It's tough to answer the questions of "what is craft?" and "what is fine art?", because in the past century, many peolpe have tried to challenge the meaning of art by making jsut about anything into art.

When I first think of the "craft", I think about crocheting, knitting, embroidery, beadwork.  but there are definitely some embroidery pieces that I would consider art.  My grandma used to embroidery and crochet beautiful works of art.  She did 3-d embroidery pillows where the flower petals actually stuck out from the cloth.  In fact, she would actually get mad if you sat or laid your head on the pillows, because they were for looking at.

So maybe craft is the process of making fine art.  Craft is more for things you can use, such as making pillow cases; whereas, fine art must only be looked at.  Craft is the beginning stages of art.  When we were kids finger painting or stringing cheerios to make a necklace-- we were just doing crafts.  But if you take those crafts further, put more meaning behind the pieces, then it becomes fine art.

Public Intervention Art

After a lecture about various examples of public intervention art, Professor Wendy Red Star instructed us to create one intervention during class plus three more interventions of our own based on the artists' works that were shown.


Library Intervention:  Walking Bookshelf

The first part to our Public Intervention Art project was to go to the library and do some type of intervention there.  I got quite a few awesome looks while posing as a sculpture.

1st Intervention:  General seating

This piece was influenced by Erwin Wurm's 1 minute sculptures.  In a couple of his photos, Wurm had people do odd poses on chairs.  Chairs are used to sit on, but as in one piece the man is doing a headstand while "sitting" in a chair.  I did the sculpture outside, because it is more public and you don't normally find a wingback chair outside.  I photographed this piece in front of my neighbor's garage.  And while I was posing, my neighbor came home.  I had to move the chair, so she could drive in.  I tried to explain that it was for an art project, but all I got in return were grunts and weird looks.  Haha!!!

2nd Intervention:  Smiling Grocer

The grocery store is filled with smiling faces on the packaging and advertisements of products.

So I decided to make smiling faces out of the products.  This intervention was based on Gabriel Orozco's photos.  Orozco went to various grocery stores and placed unrelated items together.  His photos have a uneasy feeling to them.  As in Cats & Watermelon, the cat food and watermelon shown together is very unappetizing.  So by making the food products into smiley faces, I tried to create a more appeasing photo (even when I used pickle jars, hot sauce, chocolate chips, and a pie crust).

3rd Intervention:  Twins

For my final intervention, I based it off the Janfamily's photos.  In their photos, Janfamily has people who are physically connected either by having two girls' hair braided together, or two coats buttoned together, etc.  So I decided to glue two shirts and pants together, so instead of two people connected together, it's one body with two heads (and four feet).

Blueprints!

This assignment is a continuation of the childhood home project.  We were asked to draw blue prints of the childhood homes we chose.  This assignment mimics the works of Mark Bennett, who drew blueprints of the houses of famous TV shows and movies, such as the Bates Motel and the Jetson's futuristic house.

Main Floor with the garage, kitchen, dining room and living room.

Close up of the Main floor.

Since the basement was unfinished (still had concrete floors, etc.), I didn't go down there very often, so I don't remember much of the basement, besides the old computer and old printer and huge wingback chair.

The upstairs, where the bedrooms and bathrooms were.

Childhood Home Project!!!

This assignment was to build a model of our childhood home out of cardboard or other cheap material.

I chose cardboard and hot glue.  Woo!!

The childhood home that I chose, was the one I lived in from when I was 1 and a half until I was 8.  It had 3 levels: basement, main floor, and upper floor.  The upper floor was above the garage and you only had to go up half a flight of stars to get to it.

Because of the top windows and the vaulted ceilings of the house, it was rough figuring out the dimensions and angels of the roof.  I constructed the front of the house first.

Then added the back.

Paint time!  I used acrylics and sharpie for the wood details above the garage.

It was a pretty cool assignment.  While working on constructing the house, I thought about a lot of memories that I wouldn't have thought about otherwise.  

Also, putting the house outside in Dunway park was a really neat experience, because I got to see my model in an environment similar to where my house actually was.  This also sparked some more cool memories about the yard and neighborhood.

House on 545 E Center St.

For our first project in Making and Meaning, we were assigned to interview someone about our childhood home.  I interviewed my mom, Anne Stark, on January 8, 2011.

Camila Stark:  How did you find our house on 545 E Center St.?

Anne Stark:  I was looking around at houses in Logan, and I drove by this one. I liked it from the outside, and I wanted to see more. Dad and I asked our realtor to show it to us.

CS:  Why did you pick that house over any others?

AS:  There are several reasons here. First of all, it was in our price range. Secondly, there were two things in particular that I was looking for in our first house to buy:  1) having a distinct style (I didn’t care what kind of style, but I didn’t want a ho-hum ranch house), and 2) being close to downtown so that I could walk to the library with you guys.

CS:  How much did you buy the house for? 

AS:  We bought it for $69,000.

CS:  What is your first memory of living in that house?

AS:  Honestly, it was laying in bed the first night, listening to the street noise (which your dad had warned me about) and thinking, did we do the right thing? But in the morning, it was all okay for me. Not so much for your dad, but he sure gave it a college try (meaning he tried really hard to like it for my sake.)

CS:  Did you enjoy living in there?

AS:  Yes, very much. It was a great house for having little kids.

CS:  What was your favorite thing or memory of the house?

AS:  A few things come to mind. 1) Coming home from the hospital with new-born Will. You and Nate were so excited, and Mimi was there, too, to help with everything. 2) Will moving a rocking horse so that he could climb up into the loft. 3) The kitchen with the new white tile that dad and I put in. I loved that kitchen. 4) You and Cassidy painting on easels in the backyard and playing in the homemade puppet theatre that I made. 5) Nate and Vestre playing the cello and violin in the living room. 6) Dad being able to reach across the entire livingroom with his armspan. 7) Being able to vacuum the whole house from one plug. 8) Walking downtown with you and Will in the wagon and Nate on his bike (going to the People Place for borrowed toys or the library for books). 9) Walking to the skating rink at Central Park.

CS:  What was your least favorite thing or memory about the house?

AS:  Lying in bed late at night and listening to the cars drive by. Thinking about how your dad hated the noise of those cars.

CS:  So it was a good place to raise children? Why? 

AS:  YES. The memories that I mentioned before, as well as:  the loft, the walks and the canal were great for you guys. I had to watch you and Will very closely because of the canal, but I never minded it.

CS:  What was one memorable moment (good or bad) you had with one of the neighbors?

AS:  There were a couple of really funny memories with neighbors. 1) You, Nate, John and April finding the duck and chick in the canal. Those pets disappeared, but buying more ducks and raising them for three years was so much fun. It was hard to let them go. Nate could get them to eat out of his hand. One year the ducks didn’t fly away when it started to get cold, so we had to take them to First Dam, Nate had to lure them into a cardboard box with food. He was so sad after he did that because those ducks really trusted him. He felt he had betrayed their trust. 2) When I tied a bow around our neighbor’s tree so they wouldn’t cut it down. (They ended up cutting it anyway).  3) When we put our house up for sale, and we came home to find several of our Vietnamese neighbors swinging on the swing set. They told me that when we sold the house they were going to reclaim their property on our side of the canal. However, it never was their property—they just thought it was for all the time that we lived there.

CS:  Why did you decide to move out of the house?

AS:  Your dad wanted some land. He wanted some peace and quiet. Funny, huh, given the problems that we’ve had here? Fortunately, these problems have died down quite a bit. Sometimes I wonder, though, is it just us??