Sculpture

Benjamin

First project in this semester's sculpture class.

Below are some pre-fire shots with and without ears. 

Wow, this semester has been a dream and a nightmare. Taking 18 hours has been a goodbye to comfort, but sculpture class has been a highlight. The above work took too many weeks to dry, fire, glaze, and fire again. How I wish I had a kiln myself so I might work with clay more often! Exhilarating is the feeling of seeing a work transformed by time, fire, and most powerfully, my hands.In slightly less than two weeks, the game of school will be over for 2017. I look forward to the pause but feel slightly anxious about it too. Activity gives a certain adrenaline rush that keeps me going. Rest is understatedly important. Tis the season for all-nighters. Zombies can occasionally be seen walking around campus. Thankfully, I have not been forced into that midnight option yet. (I might still, since I am currently writing this post to procrastinate an ecology term paper.) I love school but dread deadlines. -M

 
In 

Order

I'm writing this in a coffee shop nearby school. Folksy music is blending with the murmur of voices in the background. Beans roasting make the air feel caffeinated. Every once in awhile, I will see a familiar face walk in and say hello. Right now, the world feels right. Ordered. I feel present and loving it.

Life hasn't always been that way. Most of my awkward and crazy adolescent years have been spent hating some part of my life. I've hated the way people treat each other, the things people believe about themselves, and the hopelessness found at the end of all humanity's efforts to get things to work. I've struggled to unveil the pattern, order, meaning of it all. I've been stuck in an ever-looping existential crisis. Adolescence for me was waking up from a dream and realizing the dream was better than what I woke up to. Life was all wrong for me. It was heavy, disturbing, and hopeless.

This year has been characterized by kicking down the door and entering adulthood. My attitude toward life has changed. Part of maturing is realizing that I am meant to do something with the few years I walk the earth. It's liberating to see the things I've learned, skills I have, and passions zooming around inside of me position me to help others have hope too. That is real beauty.

I've been working on a bug collection for my ecology class, pictured above. Bugs are creatures I've often overlooked. This class has taught me to see the small things. When walking through the gardens at school, I'm impressed about the orange flowers drawing the butterflies. I think about how cicadas project their noises onto other bushes to mask their location. I also ponder the agility of the dragonflies that make them so hard to catch with my little net. There is beauty in all things if we care to look. To overlook the small things is to miss something much more monumental. Everything has a place, an order, and that order is good.

Artistic Timing

I spend most of my time on the shores of tables, exploring the depths of human intelligence and trying to glean as much as I can from what I find. My days as a student have resumed. After a summer of quiet contemplation on the Swedish countryside, I am ready to face the frights of the semester with a level head. A little, but important, thing I learned this summer is about timing. In the west, we are so concerned with scheduling everything in our days. In the east, time is more of a fluid concept, and things eventually fall together in some kind of natural order. Many times, I scold myself for being too slow or thinking too deeply about something. Fast or slow, which is more true to the natural order of things? The way I, personally, should live? As a scientist, punctuality is an asset. As an artist, I try to provide space for my emotions. These two ways of thinking rule these very different areas of study, and I see the clear divide while I come from my art history class to ecology class. 

Time is linear, but humans are not. People are like ghosts. They live long after they are dead - if only in someone's memory. My memories are not linear. My current experience steers the organization of my memories. That is probably why having a long lunch with an old friend makes all the years of silence melt away like ice on a warm day. Time is not linear in our heads. It's hard for me to conform to the scheduling nonsense while I acknowledge its usefulness. At least in the west, I think artists are the best at living in accordance to their nature. Being an artist is not a glamorous path. Being an artist takes making a real decision, because eating is a must. I don't know if I can call myself an artist, but I do make art. Other priorities such as studying, projects, and traveling get in the way of artmaking, but once I come back to it I feel like time has no meaning. I am just floating along on a thought cloud. 

Even if life is crazy. Even if I can't follow through with all my goals and be the person I want to be. Even if the road ahead is shrouded in mystery, I will continue to allow myself to think and feel. Art is a part of that. Everything happening in a linear fashion isn't important. Even if I leave my blog for about eight months, I am proud to accomplish the act of coming back. 

Ten Days of Sketching! (4/10)

My house has a lot of chairs. They probably outnumber people present--even during parties. My family has inherited collections of early twentieth century furniture, so the theme of my interior is coincidentally a postmodern blend of past and present. 

But chairs are useful things! Not only do they seat people, but are excellent for building forts and casting laundry upon. Some are decorative. Some are comfortable. The all purpose nature and individual character of chairs makes me think of people. Discovering yourself is just the step before committing to an occupation, role, etc. It is a crucial step. 

Before college, I tended to not care what people thought about me and my career goal of becoming a physician. I welcomed the challenge of it. Hard work was not new to me. But somewhere between high school graduation and now, I started caring more about what people thought. The onset was gradual and seemingly well intentioned by me, but it replaced my hope with doubt. I listened to people tell me what kind of chair I was. That I was a decorative living room chair only useful for being sat in. That may be what other people see, but their point of view is arbitrary if I am certain of what kind of chair I am. I'm stepping away from all comments about my degree and embracing what I know is true. I am a transportable camping chair, able to withstand the rain and dreary days. I'm in it for the long haul. In the end, I will achieve what I set out to do.

-M

Ten Days of Sketching! (3/10)

Everything left handed is harder! And I thought my control was pretty decent, but apparently not top notch. The sketch above was done only with my wobbly left hand. It may look like grade school art, but the process was painstaking. I knew the entire time where to put my lines, but I felt powerless. Making straight lines, such as the divider on my window, was terribly slow, like spelling a word in reverse. Even slowly, the the movement of the pulse in my hand can be seen in the squiggles. Often, I have to remind myself that the goal in all things is not perfection. My hand is slowly releasing its grip around that ideal. In the beautiful words of Paul Kalanithi, "You can't ever reach perfection. But you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."

-M 

Ten Days of Sketching! (2/10)

Humans. They are amazing. To think that within every person lies a torrent of facts, memories and feelings just waiting to gush out into an open, hungry world. But to expect someone to communicate things that deeply matter to them calls for a great amount of vulnerability.

Recently, I've been reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, a fantastic work written by a man awaiting death. Before departing to the next life, Kalanithi explores what it means to be alive and do stuff. Life is so vast in its scope that totality of humanity's combined experiences cannot shine light on the whole truth. The author was intensely honest concerning his search for existential answers in literature and neuroscience. Personally, having studied art and the sciences, I find all sizes of islands of truth in the areas of study. Kalanithi described it as every area of study/profession having a unique language which to interpret the world. So in doing things, life has meaning. Even on the threshold of death, Kalanithi was not idle and still strove to do what was valuable to him. 

It has always been important for me to believe that life has meaning. That my life has meaning. Without it, I might as well not be here. But through the discipline of science, I see that even on microscopic level, there is order. Through the discipline of art, I see that encapsulated beauty can have ability to stir minds. Being simply a product of reproduction, it would be far fetched to say that I am self-made. It would be even more far fetched to say that I create meaning for the things I discover around me. It is then doubtful that any existential meaning can be found within ourselves; it would have to be intrinsically there. I am hopeful that truth and meaning exist, because it simply makes the most sense and is the less depressing point of view. 

-M

Ten Days of Sketching! (1/10)

The course of the year has nearly run to completion!! 2016, where art thou? As I sit here pondering it, I hear the quiet hum of my essential oil diffuser and smell the sweet scent of the present. Time is such a fluid thing, made solid only by our memories, words, and pictures of time past. None of my momentos can do any particular memory justice, but at least they are enough to recall thoughts and prove it to have happened. That is the charm of sketching from life. 

For Christmas, I got a little Moleskine sketchbook. It has this aura of class and functionality. The cover is really soft (you can basically pet it) and the paper doesn't produce holes when erased on. All this said, I think it would be a fun challenge to do a sketch per day! Starting today and ending January seventh, ten days from now.

The little scene above was completed close to an hour ago. I'm slightly sick, hence the tissues. Since this is Christmas break after all, I've been sleeping a ton and reading just as much. Even with late mornings, days seem nicely long. I can't say that I'm ever bored. My mind is always busy planning something. 

-M

Semester Laid to Rest

Currently, I write this in my little Christmas den pictured above. The air is sweet, literally, with the sugar and flour of my day long endeavor of baking. My body is tired from not sitting down since getting up this morning. I'm also a little bit distracted by Netflix while writing this. All is well. 

So I'm back on the blog. I've spent a year avoiding artmaking, felt remorse about it, and took on a drawing class last semester. My professor was a master of critique and helped me hone my drawing skills a little more. The works above (minus the photograph) are samples of my work this fall 2016 semester. Most of them are unfinished. Some of them are renderings of my university. Others are of my friends. Some pieces are obviously better than others. 

Above the technical, my professor helped me think like an artist again. To see life in hue, form and shade. But beyond the seeming shallowness of art, there is depth, and it is due to the nature of lines to convey meaning. I think that my year without art was largely a year without voice. When it comes down to it, there is nothing glamourous about art making. It's actually work, like everything else in life. Satisfying as it is, it isn't easy. There are lots of abstract problems to solve. More than once have I been humbled in the face of "I don't know." My professor posed a resounding question which has verbalized my turmoil in regards to art and life.

"Why do you spend your lifeblood doing art?" 

 The question is valid. Art is hard. The answer is not so clear cut. Maybe it is simply that I'm hooked, and I cannot live without it. Artmaking is beautiful and can be honest. It is a voice without words that communicate across barriers in society and culture. But it doesn't speak to everyone -- only to those with an open mind. It that way, it is a secret code reserved for a few. Those few understand pain and joy, for they have felt it too. Different medias of art do it in different ways. Videos can cause an overwhelming wave of emotion immediately, books can explore all the aspects of that emotion, while drawings, sculptures and paintings memorialize that emotion. Making art, just like doing scientific experiments, is a way to make sense of and cope with being alive. This has been an extremely hard semester for me on a lot of fronts. Taking drawing was one good decision that helped me tough it out.

Next semester will be filled with biological, chemical, and behavioral science classes. What form my artmaking will take, I have yet to find out. 

-M

In Everything

"In Everything"

This blog has laid dormant a little too long. Last fall, I started college and have since then been swept up in all the machinations that come with being a Biology major. It's left little time for art making or much less being in the art-creating mode. I have let utility take the upper hand to beauty, and I'm trying my best to reverse that. 

What is pictured above is not something I have intentionally made. For Biology 112 Lab, the assignment was to collect bacteria from our environment. I took several samples from different places, but this one was from the air vent in my room. I let it grow in room temperature for about a week. Just as I grabbed all my petri dishes before darting off to lab, this one caught my attention. An eye had grown naturally in the perfect middle of the agar. What are the odds of such organization appearing in such a random sample? I take it as a sign that even the little things matter. God sees all and is present even in the stress of school. He is in everything. 

-M 

Miniscapes

 "Aerial View of Black Desert"

 "Maple Mountains"

 "Gold in the Garden"

"Catastrophe"

When I was around seven years old, I remember my grandmother handing me her drugstore disposable camera to document her sixtieth birthday. I remember her bragging on my eye for composition to many people after seeing the results. Before social media and computers were really a thing in my life, I actually did go through old photo albums pretty regularly. Personally, I think that was the hieght of photography. Several Christmases ago, I got a pretty nice digital camera that I obsessed over for a few years. Since then, I've had a falling out with photography, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps its the plethora of photos on the internet that have fallen prey to vanity, or the fair amount of uncreative photography I've seen that is so bad that it suffocates my own desire to create via camera. Whatever the reasons, my falling out has resulted in my photo stream being cluttered only with pictures of homework problems, powerpoint slides and professors' office hours. All this to say, my photography above is a little dated.

"Miniscapes" was my AP art portfolio backup plan. I took a some of these shots a few summers ago in a forest in Sweden, and one ("Maple Mountains") at the Grand Canyon National Park. I like the concept of small things pretending to be great platforms for life. Dollhouses fascinated me as a kid and they still do. I have once been much quicker at seeing the details and appreciating the whole more. Observing the often overlooked gives me a fresh perspective on how I view things I see all the time. Really, that is the powerpunch of photography that many people have missed.

-M

Despite Apathy

"Affliction of Apathy"

The most disgusting thing is to see a life wasted -- a person working on something with such dispassionate style. When I see such people I want to despair. Conversely, people with a good sense of their purpose just radiate life in all they do. They are fires that cannot help but burn all that is in sight. Society seems to hold passion as a virtue essential for reaching "success." But culture preaches that a good life consists of being lazy and enjoying things like social media and Netflix. The mixed messages seem to have produced a generation that is able to do much but is willing to do little. So many people I've met simply don't care about things that will not give them any immediate reward. I've found it so easy to believe this, too. However, caring only about things that effect me is the loneliest and most disparaging worldview of them all. I always miss the good parts of life. Apathy is poison that kills purpose. It takes a strong heart to take the risk of being compassionate and spread the goodness of love in a world that is aching for it. 

"Affliction of Apathy" was made in response to this. The yellow frame around the baby-faced teens is hinting to the iconic National Geographic frame, by the way. I haven't liked collages much in the past, but I'm warming up to them. I'm pretty pleased with this one, maybe even more now, three months later.

-M

Faces of the City

Long ago, when I was in pre-school, we made a lot of crafts.  One I particularly remember was a silhouette portrait. My teacher illuminated the side of my face to cast a shadow on a black paper taped to the wall. After tracing my shadow, she cut out and pasted it on a colored sheet of paper (either red or green). One day, when all the parents were in class, everybody's silhouette portraits were hung together on the wall -- without names on them. It was then we discovered how alike we all looked. On the way home, I studied the portrait I had snagged, doubting that it was actually mine. Thus dissatisfied, I tried to make a genuine one by using an office lamp in my room but failing hopelessly because I could not trace my profile while simultaneously looking forward. The above portrait silhouettes were much easier the trace, thanks to my family members modeling for me.

I was assigned this project several months ago, but in the slew of school and summer and school again, it sadly hasn't moved much off the ground until mow. Pictured above are three of the four in the gang. The fourth is still on my easel. They are all quite large, each being 29.5"x23.5" and are made for the sole purpose of bringing color to an industrial-looking Laundromat, here in town. Painting buildings is a new favorite of mine. The combination of geometric shapes and color come together in perfect union, forming an image that triggers a feeling of familiarity in any human who has ever set eyes on a city. I see the city as an area of saturated human experience and therefore find it fascinating. Hopefully others will too and can see themselves or others in the silhouettes of these characters. 

-M

Happy Birthday Baby Brother

"Baby: Study"

Today is my brother's first birthday! He is the baby of the family, so naturally, he is doted on. This post is a tribute to him. 

Last spring, I used him as a model for one of my projects (pictured below) for AP Art. This project was one of the most detailed ones I have ever done. There is much story that can be found in this piece, and I think it mostly speaks for itself. It brings up the issue of teenage pregnancy and communicates in relation to my portfolio concentration, which was Modern Inconvenience. I think the more teen pregnancy has become normative, the more normative it has become for society to have disjointed families. This may be an obvious consequence, but young people seem to think they are immune to consequences. They ought to think.

"Children Having Children"

-M