The Little Things

Each semester I take students on a field trip to shoot photos at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington. As you can imagine I've been there quite a few times. As a result it can become difficult to find inspiration, feeling like I've seen it all before. However, one thing I often find interesting about a "landscape" is the residue of human activity left on a place. Last spring I noticed something that was interesting and fun – a little bit of a game. I've seen this before with chairs that have been placed or left in conspicuous places. But this time it was the cups.

Review: Christopher Saucedo's "Red Cross Blankets"

Christopher Saucedo's talk in the Cochenour Gallery.
His work is on view until November 29.

On November 8, 2013, the latest exhibit at Georgetown College’s Cochenour gallery opened with an art talk by sculptor Christopher Saucedo and his show Red Cross Blankets. The show primarily consists of unorthodox self-portraits composed of mixed mediums. The images used are related to the artist’s measure in fluid volume through familiar liquid containers such as soda cans, coffee mugs, milk cartons, gallon jugs, shot glass, and other glasses. According to the artist, he was inspired the aftermath in his homes in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in New York following Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when water remained in various containers from the flood water.

Saucedo is known as a sculptor and three-dimensional images, yet this show seemed to be made up mainly of two-dimensional works including two embroidered Red Cross blankets, three wooden canvases that have been branded with images of Saucedo’s container as well as ‘puzzle’ like piece with the container images broken up and rearranged, and a wooden and aluminum mobile that would remind one of a wind chime. These works prove that Saucedo is capable of breaking the rules in the area of traditional portraiture by presenting a different kind of visual representation of an individual.

In the traditional sense, one expects a portrait to be a realistic image to mimic the likeness of the subject and their features. This means it is an image meant to recreate life. However Saucedo takes this idea of a self-portrait being a visual presentation and puts a conceptual spin on it. He represents himself through empirical measure by fluid volume and the containers that hold the amount that equal his mass. So it places Saucedo’s representations on a grander scale through an intellectual perspective and yet a simpler scale through the common images used in his self-depiction.

Overall, it was good talk as Saucedo was very encouraging for questions and comments and the group was able to a good discussion of his works and the sentiment behind them. Also it was interesting to see an artist known for working mainly with 3-D pieces to execute somewhat 2-D works very well. Though on another note, I feel that the show could have been renamed to fit the titles of the works, like Fluid Volume Series instead on Red Cross Blankets, as the blankets only made up two of the pieces present in the show.

--Rebecca Siever, art history major, class of 2014

The Top Six in Art

Vanity Fair December 2013 issue

Vanity Fair polled 100 art-world insiders—mainly artists, professors of art, and curators—to name whom they consider to be the six most important living artists. Dealers and gallerists were not consulted, as they have vested (financial) interests in the livelihood of artists. The project intends to illustrate a moment in time —  What's interesting right now? And, why? Who were the top vote getters? 

VF asked 100 people which means there could have been 600 votes all told. But only 54 returned their ballots. The top vote-getter, Richter, received only 24 votes. Ellsworth Kelly received 10 votes. What does this mean for taste? for teaching? for making? 

The Most-Voted-for Artists

Gerhard Richter: 24 votes
Jasper Johns: 20 votes
Richard Serra: 19 votes
Bruce Nauman: 17 votes
Cindy Sherman: 12 votes
Ellsworth Kelly: 10 votes

Richard Serra's installation in Bilbao

In modern art we have talked about artists who break the rules. And that discussion has included the names of four of these six artists, with conversations yet to come.  Who would you include in your list of the Top Six?

Field Trip: GSCM

On Wednesday, my Foundations 112 students and I walked up town to the Georgetown & Scott County Museum. We were welcomed by Mr. Rice, former teacher and photographer at Paintsville H.S., who is now the Director of the Museum.

For those of you who have not visited before, or if it's been a while since you have visited, please take the time to walk uptown and take in their exhibits. The Museum focuses on the history of this region with its permanent displays and, also, has temporary installations. One of these exhibits focuses on quilts, with some amazing examples from the Gaines house in Georgetown as well as contemporary works. The other temporary display focuses on the Civil War and features a reconstruction, in miniature, of the Orphan Brigade of Kentucky who fought at the Battle of Chickamauga.

Students looking for a FDN 112 course in the spring, consider taking my FDN 112 Engaging Objects. Come learn about objects, artifacts, and works of art first-hand:)

Brendan
Dr Decker & Jordan
Joyce
Takecia and Victoria

OPENING TODAY!

Opening today in the Cochenour Gallery at Noon is Christopher Saucedo's Red Cross Blankets. 
This exhibition will be open from November 8th - November 29th; however, I encourage each of you to stop by and chat with Mr. Saucedo. Double bonus is that not only do you get to hear an amazing artist talk about his work but you can receive NEXUS credit. TRIPLE bonus, I made pumpkin hummus, and it's goooood!

Artist Statement:
Before Hurricane Katrina I was playing in our New Orleans backyard with my school-aged children in giant barrels full of water. We calculated each of our displaced volumes by carefully re-filling over-spilled barrels with gallon, quart and cup containers or water. I remember the kids tallying our ‘fluid volume’ on their playhouse chalkboard; we knew how many gallons, and quarts and cups each of us were. We compared results and laughed and stayed cool in the hot Louisiana summer. I measured in at just less than 29 gallons and my 8 and 9-year old children, who repeated the refreshing but non-exact experiment over and over again, were less than 10 gallons apiece. We all knew the empirical measure of gallons, quarts and cups and we had a personal relationship to each. I made sculpture about it and even a comic strip diagram of the experiment.

The August 2005 flood that followed Hurricane Katrina consumed most of New Orleans including my neighborhood, home and studio. When we were allowed back into the city to assess the damage I pried open the water-swollen door to my home and found the residue of a beautiful underwater kingdom of exotic and colorful mold; odor aside my living room looked like an ancient lake bed. Most memorably was a sturdy curio cabinet full of an assortment of seldom-used wine glasses and brandy snifters. Although the floodwaters had gently receded each of these glasses remained full of Katrina water to the tip-top brim. I carefully poured off the water into a big 5-gallon water bottle. I still have that sealed container of Katrina.

To make a long story a little shorter and to jump forward seven years to 2012 and another Hurricane, this time in Rockaway Beach, New York, my home and studio flooded again. Perhaps foolishly but with a real desire to witness it all first hand I didn’t evacuate like we did for before. As my now grown up son and I were shuffling books and drawings upstairs in waist-high water with flashlights in our teeth to light the dark path I realized we were back in that barrel of water and that the experiment continues. A few days later the Red Cross gave us nicely wrapped emergency blankets, which I saved for this project.

All of that said I hope the title of this exhibition: Red Cross Blankets as well as my repeated imagery of “fluid volume” containers, makes better sense for the viewer. I remain preoccupied with the empirical measurement of cups, pints, quarts and gallons as I prefer water in small controllable containers.

 

Senior Thesis: A (Final) Weekly Update

A lot of people mentioned they wanted to see the shoes out of the display, here they are! 

Hey everyone,

I have gained so much insight from completing my senior thesis body of work. It all feels a little surreal now that I am done. Things that I plan to work on within the next week or so is photographing some of my 3D pieces for my portfolio, making a couple pairs of shoes for some interested buyers, and working on some freelance work for a local small graphic design shop, and of course applying to lots of jobs. 

Thanks for all your support!

(For those who may be interested in going into graphic design, take a look at some very cut and dry yet extremely helpful advice from graphic designer Tim Garner.)

Its already November! can you believe it? A month from now everyone will be preparing for final exams..ahh! 

Anyways! This post might be my last post for the semester (sad face) so I thought I would talk about something fun, graphic design! Now that senior thesis is over and I am no longer teaching art lessons each week, I have been thinking about working on some graphic design projects. Sometimes I have a hard time getting started on projects, and now I am at the point where I want to further develop my graphic design skills. I was doing a little research and I stumbled into a site that had a list titled "7 Ways to Fine Tune Your Graphic Design Skills" and the tips were actually very helpful, so I thought I would share. 

7 Ways to Fine Tune Your Graphic Design Skills

Enjoy the first week of November! Its almost Thanksgiving (: 

Shelby 

Ann Hamilton at DAAP

NOV 20th 5pm. Make sure to mark your calendars. Ann Hamilton is speaking at DAAP in Cincinnati open to the public and free of charge. Ann Hamliton and her work was one of the reasons I chose to pursue work art. She is a great speaker. Just ask any of the folks from the performace and Installation class a couple of years back. As funny as it is my mother was the one that cut an article about her work at the venice biennale in 1999. I was a sophomore in College and was blown away her use of material and how simple yet profound her interactions are. The work "myein"can be seen HERE. Still to this day she is one of my inspirations.
 Anyhow she is going to talk about her work "The event of a Thread" as well as some other projects in the works. The top short video shares the visuals of the work. The bottom exclusive from ART21 has her talking briefly about it. It will be a wonderful occasion.

Oral History: fall recordings have been posted

It's that time of year—as we edge toward semester's end and the holidays, students in the Curatorial Studies course prepare to listen to someone important to them. That is, they complete an oral history project. This project mirrors, on a smaller scale, the National Day of Listening and the Story Corps project. 

This past Friday was our class's day of listening (and we will continue on Monday). In addition to hearing a variety of stories from the individuals that the students elected to spend time with, we marked a transition in moving from curating objects, writing wall text and online texts for historical markers, and digging in the dirt to curating non-objects—that is, digital files. 

If you click the link here, you'll be connected to our viral voices page, the home of our oral histories. In the 2013 edition, you'll be able to listen to conversations between students in our class and the following: an alternative hip hop artist from Lexington; a retired Lieutenant Colonel and psychiatrist; the youngest daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher; a Carlisle County couple who share their stories with a kettle of apple butter on the stove; a retired Sergeant Major who played ball against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; a Kentucky restauranteur-turned-engineer; and a Dry Ridge couple who live on and tend a farm.