Wk10-Artist Conversation-Helen Werner Cox

Artist: Helen Werner

Exhibition: Silent Scream

Media: Oils, Pastels, Prints

Gallery: Max L. Gatov Gallery West

Instagram: N/A

Website: http://www.helenwernercox.com/

Helen is currently in her last semester at CSULB as a Graduate student. She was born and raised in New York near Cornell University. She started her studying art at Boston University School of Fine Arts. She used her knowledge to teach others and she went on to eventually teach for about 30 years. She taught high school and middle school and after 13 years of teaching in Boston, she moved to Long Beach to continue teaching middle school students. When shes not making art pieces, she enjoys gardening and reading.

Helen uses many different types of media. Ranging from pastel drawings to screen prints. All of her art pieces in Silent Scream depict some sort of animal, mainly horses. At first glance they look like regular animals but once one takes time to analyze her work, one can notice that the animals are from carousels. The picture of the mainly blue carousel below did not come from her imagination, she sat on that carousel for 4 hours painting it. Her favorite carousel is the brownish one pictured below. (next to her).

The reason Helen gave for using so many carousels, antique carousels, was she believes adults are like carousels. She uses the antique carousel to express her feelings of society going around in circles. Although in her eyes society is going around in circles, there is still some beauty in it, as she depicts it as something old and beautiful.

In conclusion, I loved her idea of using carousels to depict society as a whole going in circles. The fact that all of the carousels in her pieces are real and not a result of her imagination show me how dedicated she is to her art. She is willing to sit on a carousels for hours on end to get the perfect representation of her views on life.

Wk10-Classmate Conversation-Erick Diaz

This week I met Erick Diaz. After talking for a bit and realizing he had one of the best lasts names out there, I found out we had a couple things in common. We both love cars and spots. He is a second year business marketing student from Bellflower. After graduating from Long Beach State, Erick wants to work for a big company in the business department and eventually start his own company. In his time off from school he likes to drive his car, play sports or hang out with his fraternity Delta Chi.

Wk10-Art Experience-Instagram

This week our art experience involved something the majority of students already use. The task was to post 4 different pictures on our daily activities on Thursday and distinguish them using our very own #ART110S16 hashtag. Our “Group Portrait” when viewing the hashtag showed a variety of pictures in different settings. Many of the first pictures at the bottom of the portrait were on campus either in the CSULB Art Galleries or elsewhere on campus. As the day progressed, the pictures posted showed many different settings. Showing how different everyone’s lives are after class. There was no apparent connection between the pictures other than the majority seemed to be in the Long Beach area. Below are a couple of the pictures I took.

Wk9-Artist Conversation-Susanna Ali

Artist: Susanna Ali

Exhibition:

Media: Copper, Metals

Gallery: Gatov Gallery East

Instagram: N/A

Website: N/A

Susanna Ali is a metals major at CSULB. Her inspiration towards art comes from her father since she was a kid. She started out using Photoshop but eventually moved to hands on art instead of being behind a screen. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her boyfriend, cooking, reading or playing with her cats.

Susanna uses metals for her art because to her it is very practical. She explained how her art pieces start out as an idea then move on to a concept sketch. After that she makes a model and finally moves to copper. One can easily tell there was a lot of planning to her pieces because of her intricate and unique designs. One of the pictures below shows a very creative necklace which is made up of many chain links. The other picture is of a wavy spoon figure.

She mentioned the environment as being one of her major inspirations and one can notice that through her pieces. Many of them which look like everyday objects with her personal artistic twist. One of the reasons she gravitated towards metals was the challenging aspect of it. To her, not everyone could make art pieces using metals as opposed to drawing or painting. This definitely shows in her art because some of her newer pieces seem more complex than her older ones.

Susanna seemed like a person who loves to challenge herself and try her best. I respect that and it definitely shows in her art. I am an engineering major so when I think of metals I think of computer components or mechanical components. Susanna takes metals and makes pretty amazing pieces of art with them.

Wk9-Student Conversation-Greg

This week I met Greg. He is a second year marketing major form the Bay area. We have a couple things in common. For example we both lived in the Parkside dorms and we now live in the same apartment complex. Besides school, he spends his time working or playing basketball. His favorite basketball team is the Bulls. Some random facts about Greg are he plays the piano, loves Italian food, favorite rapper is Jay-Z and he prefers chucks over vans.

Enzo

Enzo’s mother was a peasant and his father was a high class Scientologist. Tragedy struck on Enzo’s birth as his mother died giving him life. His father, Chewy, resented Enzo for that. Feeling hated, Enzo ran away to live in the Moonbase Alpha at the age of 9. He made a living as a mechanic. He quickly rose through the mechanic ranks as he had nothing but his mechanical interests. Naturally, Enzo made an Ironman suit with his skills. No one believed the myth of the man in the iron suit until one day, his suit was stolen. Enzo took to his fellow moonbase citizens for subtle ideas on making a better suit so he could fight his thief to regain his old suit.

Ava sold him some pretty strong powers.

Frizallina Pizzalini showed him the power of food.

Aurora showed him how to keep powers more secret.

Wk8-Art Experience-Automatic Drawing

For this weeks art experience we had to create an automatic drawing. I got my roommate to help me with this. At first we could not stop laughing because we did not know what to do. At first it seemed like we were just going in circles but it did not feel like we were going in circles. We had our eyes closed so we could not see what we were drawing.

Once we thought our drawing was finished we opened our eyes. We laughed at it because it seemed like it was just a bunch of scribbles. The longer we looked at it we found some shapes. I thought I saw a whale or fish on the bottom right corner, while my roommate thought he saw a huge star in the middle. This was a fun experiment because we each saw something different in our drawing.

Wk8-Artist Conversation-Bri Joy

Artist: Bri Joy

Exhibition: Merged

Media: Screen Printing

Gallery: Gatov Gallery East

Instagram: @bri.joy

Website: N/A

Bri is transfer student from OCC. She is now a soon to be graduate from the CSULB Print Making Department. The reason she does not have a website right now is because when she graduates and goes “live” she wants to be “present”. If she had a website, people may ask it her art is for sale and she would not like to say no to them. She is too busy with work, school and art at the moment. Her hobbies are influenced by her small hometown. Some of them are yoga, surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, hiking and other sports.

Her work features organic lines and no color. Her gallery was portraying her interest in the marriage of “organic and digital systems”. One of the reasons she used black and white in her work was to create a complex visual. Many of her pieces seem like a long continuous line, never breaking to create her art pieces.

Bri mentioned she was from a small town of about 1000 people. She described it as a very wilderness-ie area. She now lives in Long Beach, a very different place from where she grew up. She took this opportunity to use the gallery as her “template” and show her interpretation of the merging of her past and her present. Her work is positive to convey emotion.

Overall I enjoyed Bri’s art. I have never heard or seen screen print art and I thought what Bri could do with that was amazing. I also thought it was interesting how she could create such a variety of shapes and pieces using only black and white. Which makes sense because she mentioned she works with concept vs. color.

Wk8-Classmate Conversation-Carlos Cucufate

This week I met Carlos. After talking for a bit and getting to know him better, I found out we have a lot of thins in common. Carlos and I both love soccer. Although we support different teams, we agreed some players are better than others. For example, one of our favorite players is Paul Pogba. Carlos is a first year student who commutes to school from Inglewood. He says he is enjoying his first year of college but cannot say the same about the daily commute. I look forward to talking about soccer with Carlos in the future, maybe even catch a Champions League match with him.