Wk15-Artist Conversation-

Artist: Nancy Young

Exhibition: As the Crow Flies

Media: paper, ink, transparencies, litho stone

Gallery: Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery

Website: none

Instagram: none

Nancy Young is a very busy individual. Besides being busy completing her BFA in Printmaking at CSULB. She is also a programmer at City of Orange. Nancy stated that one of the reasons that it took her so long to finish her degree was due to some personal problems which she actually opened up about. She overcame those obstacles and did not let them hold her back. Having a positive impact on her life.

Young’s art work was very interesting. In consists of printmaking techniques such as lithography and a photo-polymer plate. In some of her pieces she was actually able to carve crows into what seemed like metal plates. Those plates seem rough to the touch, as opposed to the ink pieces which seemed very soft to the touch. Making her art both smooth and sharp.

Young wanted to be unique with her art. She also had a specific plan to follow. Like a bird eventually leaves its nest, Young wanted to travel to different workshops and create a piece at each workshop. She used all these landscapes as inspiration which she described as everyone having a different perspective of. Traveling and making a new work at each location was a very unique, just as she expected it to be.

Overall, Young’s work was very personal to her. Which makes it have meaning and for her to share that with everyone at the gallery was special. My favorite pieces were definitely the metal plates. Her ability to perfectly carve a crow onto a metal plate fascinated me. Not to undermine her prints, which were also fascinating. Every obstacle she overcame led her to make her beautiful art.

Wk 15-Student Conversation- Morgan Moore

This Thursday I met Morgan Moore. He is a second year at CSULB studying Business Marketing. He is from Santa Monica but lives in Long Beach. He chose CSULB because of the distance away from home. It is not too far yet not too close. His favorite thing about Long Beach is all the similarities it has with Santa Monica as well as the diversity in Long Beach. His least favorite thing is the professors. He has experienced more bad professors than good professors in his two years at Long Beach State. He doesn’t know where he wants to be in 5 years but definitely doing some ad campaign work. Marketing is more behind the scenes work, where as ad campaign is the opposite. Which is what he plans on doing someday.

Wk 14-Sketching in the Garden

Representational Photos:

Abstract Photos:

Representational Sketches:

Abstract Sketches:

This Thursday was actually the first time I have visited the Japanese Garden on campus. I have been a student at CSULB for 3 years so that is a bit surprising. I was surprised at all the detail the garden had and how big it was. It does not look that big from the outside. I tried taking pictures to capture as much of the area as I could. People walking, the water moving due to the fishes and so on. My sketches on the other hand, are not as great as the pictures but I tried to show there is fishes and ducks in the garden as well. Overall, I really enjoyed this activity. It was a very relaxing way to start my day.

Wk13-Art Experience-Art Care Package

This week we have the opportunity relive our previous pen pal experience with someone in our class. The first and only time I had a pen pal I was in elementary school so there was no smartphones nor snapchat. In a way snapchat has facilitated the way people send each other packages. A pen pal package usually included a post card and a letter. Through snapchat one can send a picture and write a brief message. That is where the similarities stop.

A pen pal package or in this case and art care package can be described as an ephemera. Like snapchats, an ephemera is described as something that is short lived or temporary. Something you send in a care package is only temporary. For example one can send snacks, a post card or even money. All those things are short lived. Although the person sending the care package might think his package is precious, the receiving person might think other wise or vice versa.

Although a care package and a snapchat have some similarities there is an added feeling of excitement when one receives a package through the mail. The amount of time it takes to receive something through traditional mail adds anticipation that an instant snapchat lacks.

It all goes back to individual perspective. Everyone perceives the world around them differently. One may see a wood chair while the person next to them sees a piece of art. One may see a care package as just a package being delivered to them while someone else may see the care package as an act of love.

My package includes a business card from my job, a capitalism article, a baby’s sock, Chipotle coupon and a mini bow tie.

Wk13-Artist Conversation-Nick Bamford

Artist: Nick Bamford

Exhibition: Untitled

Media: Cement, Wood, Shopping cart

Gallery: CSULB Gatov Galery East

Website: N/A

Instagram: @nickbamf4d

Nick is an undergrad student in Ceramics program of the Art degree in CSULB. He is graduating after this semester (Spring 2016) but he plans to go to graduate school after. Although he knows he is going to graduate school, he does not know where yet and when. He says he plans on waiting a year after graduating and in the mean time work on his art. His family did not really appreciate art as a whole but that is what he liked so he went for it. His favorite piece is the one with a shopping cart (pictured below).

Nick uses a variety of neon lights combined with a dark room to make his art pop. Some parts of his art has more lighting than others while some benefits from the shadows and leaking light. He explains his work to be very personal coming from different context and making the pieces whole. Nick says he was not “inspired” to do his exhibit in the dark, it just really happened.

Nick’s art work looks drastically different from any other exhibit this semester. One of the many things that set him apart is his lack of overhead lighting and including neon lights within his work. The lights combined with the dark room make certain parts of his work pop. Now, his work contained many different components which seemed like they did not belong together. For example, one piece had a skull while another piece included a shopping cart. This explains how Nick said he was not inspired by much but just did his art.

In conclusion I really enjoyed Nick’s gallery. It was very different and it set him apart from every other gallery I have gone to this semester. The reason I say this was the neon lights, the way he incorporated the neon lights with his work really caught my eye and made me stick around and analyze it further. My favorite piece was the one with the shopping cart as well.

Wk13-Classmate Conversation-Valerie Laslo

This week I met Valerie, she is a third year at CSULB studying Criminal Justice. She switched her major from Marine Biology. She is a Long Beach local and plans to move to Montana this summer for an internship in Criminal Justice. When she graduates she wants to be a “Pine Cone Cop” as they are called in other states. We have a lot of similarities for down time activities. For example, we both love to be outdoors. We love to go hiking, skiing and pretty much anything out doors. Besides that, we both love eating burritos at La Taqueria on 4th street. Meeting Valerie this week was pretty cool, I look forward to seeing her around campus.

Wk12-Artist Conversation-Jennifer Chen

Artist: Jennifer Chen

Exhibition: SUCCESSION

Media: Print making, Digital print

Gallery: CSULB Gatov Galery West

Website: N/A

Instagram: N/A

Jennifer was not always an art major. Before art, she was an undergraduate biology student. She changed her major to art due to the fact that she wanted to grow in a different way. She is doing this gallery as a requirement for her degree in Fine Arts. Which she will be receiving her Masters in. After receiving her masters, she will teach art 270 during fall 2016.

Jennifer uses screen making and digital prints paired with Google’s public mapping service to depict recent urban changes in her art. With this tool, one can see any landscape with an “aerial” perspective as well as looking at them some time in the past. Some of the aerials views are not always up to date, so something one may see in person may not show up in the google tool. Jennifer describes these as “broad land relics” which show lots of human intervention. One can easily visualize this through her art, as some highways are seen cutting through trees and green land.

With all these changes being made to an ecosystem, either natural or artificial, Jennifer believes the ecosystem will always find a new state of equilibrium. She also believes in the ability of nature and the ecosystem being able to tell the earths history. Trees can live for hundreds of years and ecosystems such as forest can sustain themselves for millions of years. To her, that is an important part of how Earth tells its story. Not one spot in the ecosystem is the same, all telling a different story.

Jennifer’s work was very appealing to me. She cleverly used Google’s mapping service and added her own personal artistic touch to it. She has a very interesting take on the ecosystems and she uses her creativity to help the Earth tell its story. It was interesting seeing these different places through an aerial view as she depicted them.

 

Wk12-Studen Conversation-Bez Middleton

This Thursday I got to meet Bez Middleton. He is a second year Criminal Justice student originally from Huntington Park.We had a couple things in common, for example our favorite type of music is rap and if we could be able to take something off our bucket list tomorrow, it would be sky diving. His plans for this summer are to play basketball and hopefully take a trip to Panama. His favorite food is Italian food and his favorite basketball team is the OKC Thunder. We talked about our family and I thought the fact that his dad was a boxer when he was younger was pretty cool. Besides basketball and hanging out with friends, he is a good drawer but he does not like to draw. It was nice meeting Bez, hopefully we can talk more next week.

Wk11-Art Experience-Turning Pages

This week we had the pleasure to meet Marta Troya. Her recent life story is very impressive with all the traveling and the places she lives in away form home. She had an interesting art experience planned out for us. It included grabbing an over sized children’s book from the second floor of the library and reading it as a big group on the first floor of the library. The first floor of the library does not look like it belongs in a library so for people to read books there they should stand out. The other part of the experience was going to the book store and exploring the different areas of the store and interact with them.

A way to document an experience like this one is by someone not involved taking pictures. The person not involved should take pictures of not only the people involved but of the surrounding people to document their reactions as well. The style of pictures does not really matter as much as the amount. A variety of pictures have to be taken to document the many reactions form people. For example, during our experience, many people were very surprised by the amount of people reading books in the area in which we were reading them.

Being able to take pictures in the bookstore versus not being able to take pictures in the library only affects the way we can express our experience. By being able to take our own pictures, we were able to capture what we were seeing or feeling, rather than reeling on the pictures someone not involved took. Those pictures may not exactly capture the experience through our eyes.

Overall it was very interesting taking part in the activity because I have never really thought of challenging these areas and doing something drastically different. Someone mentioned it gave a flash mob feeling, I agree. I would probably take part in another social activity like this in the future.