Transitional Periods- Quick Notes on my proposed BFA project

Loss and mortality are inevitable aspects of life beyond human escape. Life has a certain brevity to it, and some aspects of life have an even shorter brevity to them. For example, we spend a scant few years as a toddler and only slightly more in teenage rebellion and bliss. However, what I am concerned with is the brevity of formal education.

This summer I began to realize that I will no longer have the structure formal education has provided for me consistently for the past seventeen years of my life. This loss of structure and agenda that formal education provides requires me to learn a completely new structure to manage life.

To come to terms with the death of formal education in my life, I have been planning an installation for my BFA taking inspiration from the seventeenth century Dutch vanitas still-life painting tradition. In a vanitas, objects such as the skull, flower, fruit, and blown out candle come to symbolize the transience of life and its fleeting moments while pointing out the problems of earthly pleasures and other such vanities.

In addition to changes and losses to the structure of my personal life, the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) is also undergoing changes to its structure and losses as well. Recently, after a period of twelve years, David Deming resigned as president of the CIA. This loss has brought about a change in our president, who is now Grafton Nunes.

Another recent change is the switch from a five year program to a four year program at the CIA. This transition has required major and sometimes drastic changes to the structure of the curriculum. Examples of such problem areas include the notion of major day in the Visual Arts and Technologies Environment (VAT) and a re-organizing of classes that then must be taken by all VAT students of certain years.

Physical structures are also facing change and loss at the CIA. The Joseph McCullough Building (aka the Factory) has been renovated over the past year and a half. The plan for campus unification means a new building will be built right next to the Factory on Euclid Avenue. However, this new building means a loss of the George Gund Building on East Boulevard. The Gund Building is perfectly situated in University Circle, walking distance from the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), the Botanical Gardens, and the Natural History Museum. To lose this location is truly sad and beyond unfortunate for future and current students at the CIA.

I find many of these changes to be negative and feel as though they are terrible losses for future students. With this installation project I aim to offer a sort of memorial for said losses to students like myself, saying a good-bye to the CIA that we grew to come and love.

Inspiration: Monument to a Lost Glove

This is an installation work by the Russian born, American artist Ilya Kabakov. The work consists of a red plastic woman's glove on the floor surrounded by nine engraved metal music stands arranged in a semicircular fashion. Each stand is engraved with a poem written by fictional woman who have seen this red glove and been inspired by it. The work was created in 1996 in Lyon, France and later recreated as a public art piece on the corner of Broadway and 23rd Street in New York.

Ilya Kabakov's intent for the work was to resurrect the lost art of eulogy, sonnet, and epigraph once highly valued from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, before the rise of the iron age, the twentieth century. The rather ordinary red glove becomes an extremely loaded symbol of poetic values and form.

Special thanks to artist Sarah Kabot for directing me to this piece. Sarah Kabot is an Assistant Professor in Drawing and Foundation at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, OH.

Happenings in the Studio

Lately, the studio has become a research lab in addition to a production facility. The heavy amount of research and planning involved with my BFA project has lead to books and journals of notes rivaling paintings and sketches. In fact, most sketches are indeed there as studies for my BFA project and the ideas involved in said project. I feel quite pleased with the bounty of information I have gathered and have such excitement toward my BFA work.

One wall of the space has been devoted to watercolor sketches and other types of drawing and photography. These include sketches for research projects at Euclid Creek Reservation. The opposite wall has word maps that try connected two ideas of interest: vanitas still-life painting and small urban spaces.

Updated Artist Statement

The interaction of the viewer in a selected space defines my work. A selected space is the site of installation. How the viewer interacts with the space is a result of the space selected for installation and the objects selected to be installed in said space. Without the movement and recognition of movement of the viewer’s body in the selected space, the work is incomplete. The site of installation, the interaction of the viewer, and the realization of how the viewer moves in a space together form the holistic work of art.

The selected space dictates what object or objects are situated within to elicit interaction from the viewer. Additionally, the selected space also dictates how the viewer can interact through its architecture and cubic space. Space is the foundation to any of my works and the controlling factor of each of my works. Once a space is selected, the interaction and objects of interaction are able to follow.

The variation of selected spaces is open and vast. Why a space is selected and how it controls the piece is dependent on each particular space or the conditions of said space. One piece may examine loss and memento mori while another piece may discuss small urban spaces and public parks. The subject of the work stems from the actual selected space.

While the subject of the work may vary, the constant factor is the concept of the control that a space has over its objects and our interactions with them. To an extent, my work is formulaic: there is a selected space and things placed in the space to interact with. The outcome or subject of the formula changes when the space selected and objects of the space change. These changes allow the viewer to become aware of how their body and their movement are influenced by the space and environments around them.

*****The process of writing artist statements is one of flux for me. They tend to change often and get revisited often. However, this statement is the most flexible one I've written and can be applied to most if not all of the work I have produced in the past 1.5 to 2 years. Still, this statement will change with time but not as rapidly or as dramatically as before.

Progress, New Inspiration

These past two weeks have been a duration of note taking and researching small urban spaces and outdoor green areas in urban and suburban environments. Much has been learned and much inspiration gathered. I am now fully aware of what design elements are essential in crafting inviting small green spaces and public spaces that promote lingering and activity. This knowledge will be used as I progress in a series of "art-works" in the Euclid Creek Reservation of the Cleveland Metro-parks.

Also, I have recently been looking at the work of artist Richard Long.

Inspirations: Harmen de Hoop and Anish Kapoor

Lately, I have been really looking at and getting ideas for future pieces from two artists in particular. Both Anish Kapoor and Harmen de Hoop are heavily influencing me and my ideas for this upcoming semester. What draws me to both of the artists is the role and necessary participation of the audience.

Harmen de Hoop




Anish Kapoor

Currently Reading

The latest book in my library is The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. I am extremely excited for this newest addition to my personal library. I have only heard outstanding recommendations concerning this book and feel blessed to now have it in my collection.

Also, I recently finished reading through two books, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space and The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. I highly recommend Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube. It is a very informative, accessible, and critical text for any one interested in the gallery space and curative practices. However, The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art is not so highly recommended. Buskirk's overly complex writing results in a wordy mess. Her examples are thorough and well described, but the arguments are hard to follow at times. A mediocre read- slightly disappointed.