Saturday, June 4, 2011

FRIDAY ENTRY

Hearing the news that you're applying to teach here at UCSB, offering three courses: Spectacle Praxes, Beyond the Studio, and Artist as Activism, of all three I would suggest taking Art as Activism. In my opinion I believe that the basis of most art is activism or making art for the purpose of spreading ideologies or ideas about our society. In being an activist, the thought process or paradigm must be shown and in most cases reveals itself through artistic ways. Artists like the creator of Obey and Neckface are both artists that are activists and I believe that an entire quarter dedicated to the study of which would be fascinating and interesting to a wide majority of students. You should definitely do the class on Art as Activism; also you should let me know if you do because I would love to take that class. I think that the number one way the movements and events are spread and globalized is through art and art cause a reaction. With every piece of art, a message can be demonstrated and is easily observable in history; from popularizing presidential candidates to promoting social awareness of any movement, art has been a useful tool in activism and there's enough out there to make a class for sure.

WEDNESDAY FREE FORM

For this weeks free form, I managed to carve this skull from a plaster filled orange juice container.

THURSDAY CRIT

FAVORITE
Tea Party

My favorite personal space piece of this thursday was the project done by Kate in which she had a Tea Party with her doll friends and whoever else wanted to join in on the session. I think that she has a really good sense of humor and I could tell she had a blast eating PBJ's with her make believe friends. I really thought that the placement of her project made it successful as well because of how much foot traffic goes through the area surrounding the bike paths. Although the project was a little early in the morning to pull of a real afternoon tea party, I think the message still got through to the majority. As she was down to have a personal space to let her childhood memories flourish, I truly believe all students who checked out her project related to her story.



LEAST FAVORITE
Angel and Devil
My least favorite project of the day was the one about the Angel and Devil yelling at by passers by the book store. I get the idea they were going for with both sides of the human conscious giving conflicting ideas and wants, I didn't like the outfits they wore, I didn't like the location, and I didn't like at all what they had to say. It seemed to me that they were improvising as they went and had little preparation in making this piece as successful as it could have been.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

PERSONAL SPACE REFLECTION

WHO
My original idea was to dress myself up as the grim reaper and enter the UCSB campus with a message to tell as a comic relief to the stress that overcomes the majority of students in the dreadful week ten before finals week. My audience was primarily students, but also teachers, staff members like teacher assistants, and even some parents. As everything in art has a directed audience, people passing me during my piece had no idea what I was doing compared to the people of UCSB that reacted just as I had thought they would.

WHAT
For my piece, I decided to dress up like a zombie or skeleton figure and hold a sign out to by passers talking about the stress of school and what you could do to overcome such stress. As my grim reaper idea was a failure due to wardrobe malfunctions, I truly believe that the outfit I wore in replacement had just what I needed. For the two hours, I dressed in all black in the middle of the tunnel and held a cardboard sign with one message on each side in sharpie. On one side I wrote "IF WEEK TEN HAS YOU DOWN, SCREAM!" and on the other side I wrote "IF YOU FEEL LIKE A ZOMBIE SCREAM!" As most of the students feel the same way as I do, in reaction to the sign more than the majority of by passers let out a scream or yell to let go of some stress.

WHERE
 My personal space was done at the bike tunnel on the Pardall entrance to campus. I choose this spot because  when i first visited the campus, I had never seen such infrastructure in comparison to my boring community college in Los Angeles. I have always been a fan of echos and making a ruckus so when I had the chance to have as many people as I could scream in the tunnel like I do most days when I'm leaving campus, I was stoked. I think that the setting for this project in the tunnel was clever and extremely successful as students and others had no choice but to enter and walk past me to exit

WHEN
The only thing I was upset about was the timing of the project. As myself and many others have early classes, I believe that the campus is most crowded at noon or just before three so I probably didn't get the exposure I would have later in the evening.

WHY
I did this project to relieve stress on campus. If bypassers didn't join in and scream to relieve tensions of studying and graduating, they would come by and laugh or say a comment about how badly they want to scream as a zombie lurking around campus aimlessly to classes. I enjoyed the project and considered it very successful in terms of what I had my mind set on.