DURATION: 5-10 MINUTES (presentations will be strictly timed)
Present the work of a contemporary artist working with environmental themes and materials.
You must present images and/or video to illustrate the work of the artist. Describe three of the artist’s works in detail (or ONE major project), from past works to more recent projects.
Discuss the themes, ideas, and media at play in the works, and the artist’s unique methods of producing and presenting artworks. Select works that specifically deal with themes from nature and the environment, weather/climate, or other relevant topics.
All of the works should be presented as a concise post on the course blog. Use images and embedded videos as needed. You may cut and paste descriptive segments, but this must be indicated and sources should be linked/credited.
Presentations will be evaluated for:
Evidence of intensive research, depth of engagement
Understanding of ideas, artistic strategies and external contexts at play in the work
THE WIND/THE WEATHER/THE WATER: Collaborative book project- see ongoing deadlines in schedule. Students will post works and images on the themes on blog page – throughout the term.
“The Sorted Books project began in 1993, and it has has taken place on many different sites over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized book collections. The process is the same in every case: I sort through a collection of books, pull particular titles, and eventually group the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, often shown on the shelves of the library they came from. Taken as a whole, the clusters are a cross-section of that library’s holdings that reflect that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies. They sometimes also function as a portrait of the particular book owner. The Sorted Books project is an ongoing project which I add to almost each year, and there there are hundreds of images in the ongoing archive to date.”
Pictured above: What is Art? C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 1996/2008The series Sorting Shark from the Sorted Books project Pictured above: A Day at the Beach C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001
The series Kansas Cut-Up from the Sorted Books project Pictured above: Only Yesterday C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2014
Dave Dyment:
ONE BILLION YEARS [PAST AND FUTURE], 2012 A collection of books pertaining to the past and future, arranged chronologically from One Billion Years Ago to The Next Billion Years.
Nina Katchadourian discusses a new Sorted Books project in William S Burroughs’ library.
What are some of the strategies Katchadourian, Dyment and Park used to select and order books in their final works? What were their decisions based on, and how do the final compositions expand the meaning of each individual book, or come together to have a new and surprising meaning about the library, the family, about language and books, or about anything else?
Book Stacks Assignment:
Make 3 of your own Sorted Books stacks – use your own personal library or visit another personal or public library.
Consider using books to create new images, suprising compositions in language, and forms out of a stack of books. You might respond to words, colours, images, forms, and more in your stacks. Line things up with intention, and illuminate your stacks to take high quality images.
Be respectful of library patrons and staff when collecting books and taking photographs, and return books to trolleys/follow rules please.
Create a composition, with as many books as you may need, and photograph it. Look for concise messages, play with words and concepts with what is at hand. Consider other features of the books – scale, material, colours, and context in the library in your stacks. Avoid clichés and easy statements – be open to accidents and funny surprises, experiment with different titles in relation to one another in different ways. Your stack might be a portrait of a person, a quippy commentary about a historical moment, an ironic collision of surprising titles… be prepared to talk about your choices and how they might be readable to a wider audience.
Include THREE FINAL images, a short description of your stacks, and your process of creating the compositions on your blog page.
I wanted to produce a selection of business cards to “search” for my parents. My intent was to provide other outside individuals with the odd experience of adoption. I personally am detached from the topic and wanted to present this through a cold and impersonal business card. I wanted to balance this with an image of myself as a baby and signed every card with my signature to humanize the idea of adoption. Below I have added the images I was able to produce. After the piece was finalized, I realized I was not quite emotionally ready to release the product out in the real world but I am holding on to the cards for future projects.
Nature Videos
During the exploration period of the Arboretum, Ana, Kenzie and I came across a large swamp and we knew that we wanted to do something with the swamp. During this time we also took a number of videos on our phone exploring different concepts. My final idea that I landed on was walking in the swamp and calling a friend. It was a fun challenge because the swamp was very unpredictable, once you stepped in you began to sink so I thought that it made an enjoyable product. I was hoping that the audio would have picked up better unfortunately I didn’t think to use a proper mic or anything so I ended up getting a lot of white noise in the background and my voice is a bit quiet.
Here are a few videos that we took on our phones when we explored the Arboretum. The first video we came across a great entanglement of trees and I was curious what it would be like if someone stood in the middle sort of “blending” in with nature. The second video was more of a fun play on the runway, we found a really nice clearing among a field of tall grass.
Nina Katchadourian
Nina is an interdisciplinary artist, this includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and much more. She was born in California in 1968 then ent on to graduate Brown University with a double Bachelors of Arts. Then she received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California.
The first piece I looked at which fascinated me was “Survive the Savage Sea” which was based on the story of Dougal Robertson. He was sailing with his family in 1972 when the boat was attacked by a pod of killer whales. The family only had 2 minutes to grab all of their belongings and jump into a lifeboat before their boat went down. They all survived 38 days on the ocean against 20ft waves, circling sharks, thirst and starvation. Nina came across the riveting story of “Survive the Savage Sea” at the age of 7 and has consistently read the novel throughout her life. To convey the story Nina starts with the whale and its full scale stretching across the gallery depicted in a painted cutout. She made sure that the size and everything was accurate, collaborating with marine biologists and even sent the whale cutout to Robertson. and then on the ground is an outline of the dinghy that is the approximate size of the one the Robertson’s survived on. She also provides drawings of how the family slept on the dinghy, essentially were like human sardines. Dougal Robertson recalls hunting sea creatures for sustenance and delves into further description of the experience. He remembers the fights with his parents, the hunger but also the beauty of the wide sky. This prompted Nina to create wire sculptures of the creatures they caught: sea turtles, dorado and flying fish. They float against the blue of the gallery and are reminiscent of a skeleton and a memory. She commits the show to knowledge teaching people how to survive at sea but the ultimate focus is on human empathy. When Nina was interviewed she states “The Robertson story bears resemblance to how we’ve all been living this year, isolated from each other in our own little shipwrecks. But it’s also about the incredible invention, resourcefulness and creativity they bring to their predicament. They have an optimism I find striking – they just keep at it.” I
Another piece I adored was Natural Cross Dressing. She was inspired by caterpillar eating a birch tree outside of her window and she thought that these wiggly creatures would make perfect moustaches. She discusses the difficulties of getting the bugs to remain in one spot on her face so she used honey on her upper lip to keep them from wandering. She wanted to get the point across that in society crossdressing is seen as unnatural so she uses completely natural materials to crossdress.
She has so many fascinating pieces and I thoroughly enjoyed looking more into the works that she does. Nina approaches art in such a creative and playful way that is inspiring.
Week 2, Walk in the Arboretum
The circular things that I found.
Some weedy photos and plants that I found interesting either in appearance or location
Here are my photos of the sky
And then finally here are photos of others taking their photos
Week 1, Book Stacking
Here is my revised book stacking photos. I attempted to keep it simple and create a question and answer.
Initially before the library trip I was thinking largely of creating maps and imagery through the spines of the books, however once arriving at the library I realized the large number of books necessary to produce the images I wanted. I really struggled coming up with ideas for this project so I thought I would turn to Nina Katchadourian’s artworks and I came to really appreciate the simplicity of her works as well as her quick quippy sentences. To incorporate weather, I did some research by watching one of the documentaries and learned of the consequences that climate change is having on the environment. In some ways this reminded me of the Icarus complex, it feels as though we are heading too close to the sun and as the saying goes “don’t fly too close to the sun or you’ll get burned.” My second photo was in similar spirit to the first. I always found it interesting how there are so many rich billionaires that are flying out into space and there has been so much research done on what other planets are inhabitable rather than putting more resources into saving our planet. So I wanted to attempt to create a short sentence surrounding space travel.
For the third photo I was inspired by art history. I am currently taking an art history course and as I was perusing the library I came across a huge section of William Turner books and I thought of looking through the art history section for other artists that had notable landscape paintings and then I organized them in order of movement. It was interesting looking at the selection of books that the library had and it was a test of memory for myself trying to remember the order of the art movements. I appreciated the process of this because the end result became a colourful artwork. I also opened to books and the spines laid out on each other created sculptural shapes.
I ended up doing one more experiment. As I was looking at my own bookshelf for inspiration I became very interested in how people organize their personal library. So I went around to my friends and family members and requested photos of any bookshelves around their house. I believe that it is telling of a person and their life as to where they put their books and what books that they own.
A few weeks ago, while giving a tour of the U of G campus, I ended up getting lost in the library. As I searched for the exit, I ended up in the basement of the library – a place I always found myself too nervous to enter previously. I wandered the space and curiously approached the bookshelves. The basement is home to lots of government publications and periodicals with topics ranging from natural resources to psychological journals to food consumption. I found this collection extremely interesting due to the richness of its history, as well as the feeling of loneliness that accompanied it. The sign-out cards hint that most of this collection of literature has not been touched in years – decades even. For these reasons, I chose to isolate the basement of the library as my first focus for the bookstack assignment.
My process started with finding an area that would be suitable for photos, while also not bothering any students who may be working in the space. After I found a spot to set up, I browsed several shelves of text and picked out titles that I thought sounded interesting. I found it much easier to work with books that had short titles compared to longer titles, so as I returned to the shelves to pick out more books I tried to focus on titles one to three words long.
For the weather component, I found titles that were organized based on season. I find it interesting how seasons and weather are a telling sign of the passage of time, yet also highlight the cyclical nature of time itself. Even the university uses seasons to express the passage of time from one semester to another, while also bringing to light the cyclical nature of a school setting.
The equipment that I used to take my photos included a DSLR camera borrowed from the university, as well as a ringlight that I brought from home. It was fun to play around with the camera settings and lighting, and I think in the end I got several usable photos. I am not very experienced with photography, but as I started to get used to the camera settings I found that my images came out much better than I anticipated. There is certainly a huge learning curve when it comes to using a DSLR in comparison to a simple point-and-shoot camera, but the payoff is very evident.
Stack #1 – Wordplay/Poetry
lighting and exposure was a challenge early on
My first book stack was an attempt at a rhyming poem (?). I chose these books from a large stack of titles I gathered, and just sort of rearranged them until the stack felt readable. I like how the colours ended up being on the cool side, with the exception of the word EVIDENCE. I do find the small text makes this composition difficult to read without zooming in, though.
Stack #2 – Framing
Playing around with lighting and framing
For this composition, I wanted to play around with the lighting and framing to see how these aspects play into or complement a bookstack. How does dramatic lighting communicate the stack when compared to normal lighting? Then, using other books on either side of the stack I attempted to create the illusion of a naturally occurring bookstack – merely found that way on a library shelf. It was fun to play around with these aspects of my photos, but less fun to move all the books around.
Stack #3 – Mood/Atmosphere/Lighting
How does lighting affect mood?
The title ‘My City Was Gone’ was too haunting in this lonely library basement for me to not pick up. I was trying to avoid a cliche reference to the pandemic and was worried that this stack would read as corny. However, my classmates showed a positive reaction when I presented the images in class, and now I really like them and think they are my most successful shots. I experimented with the lighting and ended up with some very dramatic shots. I am really thankful that I brought lighting because I do not think that my library bookstacks would have been as successful without it.
Library/Camera Comparison – Personal Bookshelf
Stack A – What’s in a Name
This stack is only composed of titles that include a character’s name. Read from top to bottom, the first letter of each name spells out F-A-K-E, as all of these characters are fictitious.
Stack B – Wordplay
This composition was made with the intention of communicating the ‘last words’ as an individual’s final performance.
Stack C – Forecast Pattern
This final composition was made taking inspiration from weather forecast patterns. Using blue/grey book covers to communicate cloudy weather and orange/red book covers to communicate sunny weather, I illustrated a 5-day weather forecast pattern. This was compared to the crochet forecast blankets that have been made by artisans. The titles in this stack are not meant to be important, however, this intention can get lost if a viewer does not already know the meaning behind the stack. In my reshoot, I took this into consideration and made some adjustments to how this stack was shot.
Re-shoot with DSLR
After I was left unsatisfied with the photos of my personal books, I signed out a DSLR and got to work reshooting these stacks.
What’s in a Name
Famous Last Words
Weather Patterns
While I love the quality of the DSLR photos, I do find them to be a little bit yellow. I think with some editing this could be fixed. I used different positioning and angles for the last bookstack to bring attention away from the titles and focused on the colours. I think this change solved the issue that my first attempt at this stack faced.
Most Successful Shots
Walk in the Arboretum
During the walk in the Arboretum, I really wanted to challenge myself to take high-quality images with my phone camera. I had tried to use the app ProShot for the bookstacks assignment but opted for a DSLR when my photos constantly came out blurry and overexposed. I dedicated this outing to learning how to overcome and correct the issues I was facing, and just hoped that I would come out with something to show for it.
Diane teaching us about weeds
Round Things
Sky
The sky just before it started to rain.
Weeds
White balance – cloudy vs sunny settings
Taking photos of weeds was my favourite part of the walk. I ended up losing the group fairly quickly as I got distracted taking photos of all the weeds and plants around. I think this experience helped me a lot to experiment with the manual phone camera app and proved to myself that I can take high-quality images just using my phone camera. (Although I do still think DSLRs are irreplaceable to an extent.)
ARTIST ASSIGNMENT
JENNY KENDLER
b. 1980, New York City
Jenny Kendler is an ecological artist and activist who is credited with work that focuses on climate change and biodiversity loss. She is passionate about otherness and the de-centring of humans in a more-than-human world – a common theme in the work she produces. Kendler tends to make sculptural representations of thought-provoking ecological subject matter using materials that are reclaimed and repurposed. She has also used organic mediums like bones and fossilized genetic material of endangered species in her work and prompts discussion surrounding extinction and what we currently stand to lose.
Amber Archive (2018-ongoing)
Amber Archive is a project that started in 2018 and is still in progress. The piece is composed of amber nodules that contain a piece of genetic material (fur, leaf, bone, scale, feather, insect wing) of a species that is currently endangered. The piece acts as an analog genetic time capsule that will preserve the DNA of a species for millennia, and outlast cryobanks that rely on energy.
Forget Me Not (2020)
Forget Me Not is a piece that uses a decorated vintage boombox inspired by “Sailor’s Valentines” – elaborate mosaics made using colourful seashells, a popular gift from those returning from sea voyages in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Think of me, when far away” and “forget me not” were popular messages. Kendler’s Forget Me Not is her love letter to the sea as it slowly acidifies due to climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. The boombox plays a tape labelled “soothing ocean sounds” in which the sound of ocean acidification can be heard. Really being played is the sound of the artist’s baby teeth as they dissolve in acid.
1985 moratorium on commercial whaling was finally enacted, but only 5% of humpbacks remained
populations since recovering, but other threats such as commercial shipping noise, fossil fuel seismic exploration and military sonar
Humpback’s unique sonic culture and future survival of species are jeopardized by the acoustic pollution of our oceans.
bells clappers are Miocene Epoch fossilized ear bones: tympanic bullae from an ancient species of rorqual whale related to modern humpbacks
the part of the ear which once received sound, now creates a new fragile resonance, a mournful echo, a ghost knell-suggesting a message from these long extinct whales to today’s endangered whales
Conus textile is a species of marine snail with a beautiful patterned shell known as the Textile Cone or Cloth of Gold Cone
they are infact predatory, venomous mollusks with toxins deadly to huans
collage of digital images of the shell’s patterns to create a textile
presented atop a burial mound of sand, likeness of a shroud
whose death are we to lament? – the patterns of Conus textile recall cellular automata
Conway’s Game of Life or Wolfram’s Rule 30
computational models said to prove that complex design and intelligent organization can arise in the absence of a “designer”
Heirloom (in private collection)
Hackberries
amorphous hydrated silicon oxide – technically a precious gemstone opal
seeds also contain high concentration of carbon-14, making them useful for archeological radiocarbon dating – a valuable technology used by archeologists and paleobotanists to date prehistoric sites – which may be endangered due to the ancient carbon released into the atmosphere where we burn fossil fuels
fear in science community that radiocarbon dating will no longer be viable as early as 2030 – yet another infrequently mentioned threat of climate change
Mending Wall (2021-2024)
collaborative project with the public, Kendler and the Field Museum’s Pandemic Collections Team, with support from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)
drawing on the American vernacular form of the stone wall – Mending Wall offers a space to honor our collective grief – and share individual hopes and fears in the moment of intersecting crises
global pandemic, gun violence epidemic, the worsening climate crisis, and interrelated struggle for racial justice
piece inspired by Robert Frost’s classic poem, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels and the artist’s childhood visit to the Wailing Wall
25 ft fragment of dry-stacked stone wall made of reclaimed Chicago cobble stone
surrounding wall is natural area of perennial plants and organic stone seating to provide space for contemplation and appreciation of the natural world
wall as something that keeps us apart, as well as how we the people can constitute form, building city stone by stone
public invited to leave a message from this moment of crisis to be archived by the Pandemic Collections team at the Field Museum
Public events held in the space, including guided meditations, dance performances, poetry readings and mending workshops
When it came to creating my artist multiple I had some trouble, first my ideas didn’t feel complete or always unfinished; and then I nearly broke my hand. In the end I was able to create a multiple that makes myself and others laugh. It plays on how most students get simple pieces of paper to show our degree. I was able to with one hand make these ribbons, I made 5 in total! Holographic vinyl on a satin ribbon with a metal grommet and then an orange tie! The ribbon is a mock on track and field ribbons and it says “ I went to art school and all I got was this ribbon”
Environmental Videos
Nikki x Rach Videos
Working as a group brought forth ideas that I personally wouldn’t have thought of. I enjoyed working with someone, someone who was able to bounce ideas off each other and expand on them. We came up with three video ideas, 2 were completed together and 1 separately. The first two are called tree-iage and call birds not girls. The final video we did was about tarot reading within nature and not to a person. We created different-length videos and when we combined them they worked well but upon showing the class we sought we will try them separately and possibly together later down the road once reshot and edited. The one video I did was with a tree, I wouldn’t put it past 50 years at most though I do think it’s a younger tree and we wouldn’t be able to tell unless counting the rings within the tree. The video is called earthly connection and saw I do a tarot card pull and have a connection to the tree I explain to it what each card means and the possible outcomes that I see come from the pull.
(all videos are linked in the paragraph and will open in a new tab!)
BOOK STACKING
This small project made me think about books in a different way than ever before. It had me wondering about the course or context that lead the University of Guelph Library to purchase these books. While working I saw some fellow students thinking out of the box and it sparked creativity within the little work bubble some of us created. I enjoyed this project because it lead to out-of-the-box thinking within titles or colours and so much more. At first, I was going to limit myself to one floor, but I am glad I didn’t; it opened me up too much more. I then carried a few books throughout the library and tried to carry over the different floors that I used most in my pieces of work.
The final three I chose to share are a mixture of levels 2,3,4 of the university library.
The first photo is of three books that look like they are falling and the covers are open, the book spines read; mind in nature, interpreting the universe, nothing so absurd.
The second photo is of a digital painting that could represent feuds. Below the digital painting, there is a photo of 2 books with titles aligned that say; the sun placed in the abyss, the feuds of the clans.
The final photo is a black and grey photo of 2 books with titles aligned. The books are authored by one person, Annie S Swan. The titles read; The Better part, Between the tides.
ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST PRESENTATION
Jason Logan — Make Ink
He is a Toronto-based artist, or as his website states a creative director and strategic graphic designer. He is known for several projects and companies. He has several books and is the founder of the Toronto Ink Company.
“I am convinced that creativity is a fierce weapon”
— StudioOlafurEliasson
Jason’s approach to design is summed up in two sentences that are stated on his website, “Good design thrives in the space between function and beauty. It completes, awakens, and engages the senses while helping to make sense of information.” He is a big believer that good design requires doing; that means making, doodling, imagining, and prototyping until things work out. And he is all about teamwork, he believes that good design cannot happen alone.
Because Jason has covered so many different artworks and other projects, I wanted to share some of the works before going into the big project that Jason has been working on for a while.
The big project that will be discussed is one of the books that Jason has published. The book is called Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking; it is 192 pages that are bound by a hardcover, and was printed in 2018. This book was used as a citizen science experiment to see and make eco-friendly, urban ink from street-harvested pigments.
In the book, Jason dives deep into the history of ink making and how to distill pigments from the natural world. We are able to learn to forage from materials such as ash/soot, rush, food, and even cigarette butts! After we are taught how to forage for the supplies to make the pigments, we then are taught how to mix, text, and transform all of the items you foraged into rich, vibrant inks; these inks are sensitive to both place and environment.
(I did not buy the full book, but I am tempted! I have found 2 articles on the library website that Jason has written to talk about natural pigment making!)
For this project, I started with the concepts of illustrated child books that built into the theme of weather. Slowly, I then went away from that idea and just thought of various ways to stack piles of books just so it would be pleasant to see, although forgetting the theme of weather in doing so. Afterward, I decided to incorporate the body with books themselves as we forget a structured material, such as a book, holds a humanized materialistic sensation even though a book is so mechanically made. I also thought about how a person’s body can depict the illustrations of the book through the weather itself, showing different seasons or adventures that reveal a consistent theme of weather. My whole process was a bit rethought after our library trip.
My ideas changed drastically and I leaned towards more minimalistic ideas, while still keeping a consistent theme that versus material and weather, which results in decay. Weather corrodes man-made material over time, such as a book, so the idea of corrosion “popped” in my head with the help of the artist Alexis Arnold who took basically “ruined” them by crystalizing their beauty with Borax. I decided to, overall, photoshoot playful pictures of books that are struggling to hold together to represent what weather can do to man-made material.
Alexis Arnold – Inspiration
Library PhotoShoot: Concept on Weather and Corrosion
The idea of Books and corrosion can be seen through old books struggling to hold together, with ripped edges, yellow pages, taped covers, weird stains, and lastly sinful holes. Here we can see the idea of books decaying through the natural cycle of man-made materials going back to it’s origin, the ground. Below, I also incorporated books that are held together by tape, showing the idea of plastic and decay.
Below is another playful concept on the notion of decay seen through such simple things as dust and dirt!
For the next below images, I tried to play with the idea of the blue sky with clouds during a more mucky evening, but I ended up changing the concept to a flock of birds using blue books rather than creating the sky. My idea at the time for these books was trying to make little clouds from the small white books and the bigger (blue-ish) books were the sky itself, but I scrapped the idea for something a bit more playful and interesting under “Update – Edited books”.
Update – Edited books
From a Blue sky with clouds to an idea of a flock of birds, above are 2 images: one with a lightened sky and another with a darkened sky of books in the form of a flock, but stacked together! (note: I need help with my images being blurry)
For the books above, I just played around for fun with colours and tried to experiment more with dust.
Nature Walk: Circles, The Sky & Weeds
Tim Knowles – Tree Drawings
Tim Knowles is an artist based from UK, London. He started a project series that he called “tree drawings” from 2007 – 2008 where he presented tree drawings on paper with ink. He said to have utilized “apparatuses, mechanisms, or systems beyond [his] control to introduce chance into the production of [his] art”. Below, are a few pictures, from the website:
which shows a series produced by trees, located in the Borrowdale and Buttermere areas of England’s Lake District. How Knowles created the project was by attaching sketching pens to the tree’s branches and then placing sheets of paper in the trees’ natural positions to capture the motions, in addition to the motion of stillness. I think wind had a huge aspect to his pieces and Tim probably selected a day of which the weather wasn’t as windy, but more steady, because of how clean and crisp the strokes were, that being always centered on his paper and not exceeding the boundaries, almost as if he still had intention into letting nature take its course where he was “the guiding hand”.
His drawings depicted, somewhat, signatures with each drawing having different qualities and characteristics through various sways in the breeze, that including: “the relaxed, fluid line of an oak; the delicate, tentative touch of a larch; a hawthorn’s stiff, slightly neurotic scratches”. Knowles also explains how “process” is important in his work, like how I’ve said before, where his canvases almost look purposely placed to get a centered penmanship. In the end, each of Knowles’ “Tree Drawings” are photographed or videoed, documenting the location as well as the manner of its creation.
Tim Knowles – The dynamics of drifting
Tim Knowles’ independent solo exhibit on “The dynamics of drifting” is ongoing. Knowles described this project as a journey or motion of drifting that includes inspirations through concepts of gravity and external forces that could also be influenced by people. The purpose of Knowles’ sailor boat project is to truly have no destination, where the wind takes the passenger on a journey of fate, through nature’s course. Below is just a prototype of his industrialized invention having “WTWB4” being an abbreviation for “where the wind blows”.
Knowles’ sailor boat reminds me of people who give in to fate and let mother nature or even destiny take her course, realizing we never had a choice for free will just the illusion that society gives us. The bare elements are what choose our fate, such as gravity, people, and other external forces. Although, Knowles somehow manages to create soothing works that seem to be very mellow and relaxing as his journey seems to be depicted as a slow steady stream, just like in his “Tree Drawings” series, having very manageable and “hand-guided” plans.
WTWB4 drw#93, Digital Drawing, 2017Prototype
“‘Dynamics of Drifting’ presents a series of works that forge and record passages through land and water. Light, ink, water, and wind all travel and pivot on the meeting of human will and forces beyond our control: the direction and force of the wind, the flow of the water, and the pull of gravity.”
Above we have the interpretation of a kitty-cat’s paws in the wild, with the act of aggression and playfulness through the movements and characteristics of a cat. The playfulness of nature and the feat of the complementary glove against the vibrant green grass adds to a questionable nature scene. In the end, the audience overall sees a human’s nicely gloved hands acting as a cat in public! Throughout the video, the acts of curiosity, touch, and aggressive shaking of a tree branch show the nature of a cat and the blissful notion of a cat’s day.
Softness Vs. Violence
Above are hands showing the contrasting movements of the soft touch of flowers and the roughness of concrete, rock, and wood. Here, there are two contrasting scenes showing the difference between the delicacy of nature and the harshness of stone and wood. A variety of movements are also shown throughout the video: punching, slapping, caressing/petting, and back-handing! Below are some snap-shoots of other playful videos that revolve around a ‘hand-shake’ and the game ‘rock, paper, scissors’.
As a group, we collectively produced our works together and decided to go with ASMR, but then slowly moved into the motive of playful hands! Below are examples of our past ASMR videos, but individually shown without editing:
Rock Touch Experiment: Process WorkMoth Touch Experiment: Process Work
Magazine – Birds
Experimenting with layouts and texts while specifically targeting the seagull bird species for this bird-based task!
Below are some of the final tests for the magazine, also having a bird influence. The final image can be seen fully and well cropped on a nice off-white background on the final product of the magazine.
Final Project: multiples – magazine
For this project, I decided to dedicate a magazine to rats. A magazine dedicated to glorifying and manifesting the notion of wanting a rat. The story behind the rat-influenced magazine is my past childhood memories and a slight rivalry against my mother for wanting/collecting rat statues. The magazine is also still in the process of arriving through the mail!
For my multiples project, I appropriated the format of a Ladies’ Guide to Etiquette from the late 1800s. I wanted to update it by removing out-of-date terms, rules, and expectations for how to perform femininity, while adding in queer undertones and conflicting directions. I’ve changed the original by editing each page – cutting out words, reworking phrases, moving sentences around and writing new sections in order to skew the original meaning. I’m still waiting for a printed copy to be delivered, but the modern update for the etiquette book will have 20 pages in all, which I have included above, and will be portable (a 5.5 x 8.5 inch pocket book printed on heavyweight ivory paper for an antique effect). I was only able to complete the first chapter, since the book is too long to fully makeover by the end of this semester, but it’s a project I would like to continue going forward. Here are some previews of the final product, which should arrive early-mid December:
Scans and Spreads
MY SPREADS:
EXTRAS:
Arboretum Pictures
Environmental Videos
Swamp Stuck:
We originally filmed this video to test how difficult it would be to walk in the swamp, but I think the struggle to balance and navigate a space in nature that I should not reasonably be a part of is powerful enough as it’s own piece. The mud sucks you in and you sink quickly and deeply with little time for preparation. Although I had my own expectations of what would happen, I was surprised by how unsteady and helpless stepping into this part of nature would make me feel. I think of this as a reflection to the turbulence of life and the power of nature, which are both things we take for granted and feel we can prepare to face, but it always exceeds our expectations and we end up having to be malleable and adaptable in our solutions. When walking in a swamp, I had to reorient myself at every second, and the struggle to stand still while sinking and tipping was difficult enough, so in my next video that we filmed where I am walking, I felt even more powerless to the environment around me.
Swamp Walk:
In these clips, I’ve pushed myself further to walk across the swamp, which ended up more as a crawl and a horizontal climb than anything graceful. There were moments that I tripped and disrupted the water around me more than I had intended to, but I appreciate the calm at the end of the video even more because of it (after I have left the frame and you can only see the ripples coming from the direction I had disappeared). I like the symmetry of this piece and the singular movement of going across the frame until I have left the same spot I disrupted, but that the “ripples” of my movement and my presence are still there. It’s inevitable that our presence in this world will affect it, though it may not be as apparent as literal ripples in the water, but we leave our mark on every environment we enter, and it is important to be considerate of that.
Testing the Grass:
FutureFarmers
Futurefarmers is an art collective based in San-Francisco founded in 1995 by Amy Franceschini. They work on collaborative and diverse pieces that range from zines to public performances, which cultivate an “ethos of play”, as Franceschini describes. The Futurefarmers design studio both supports artists in residence and community based art projects, which in some cases span internationally. The members of this collective describe themselves as “artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers, computer programmers and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of “not knowing“”. With their projects, they aim to deconstruct infrastructure systems as well as the concept of “certainty” by challenging their effectiveness in a playful, but almost scientific way. In doing this, much of the work that the Futurefarmers and Franceschini create bring attention to the conflict between humans and nature.
Founded in 2012 in Oslo, Norway, the Flatbread Society is a long-term project created by the Futurefarmers collective which grew internationally with a specific focus on the human relationship to the “grain”.
The Flatbread Society Bakehouse, Oslo, Norway. A public bakehouse built in 2017, housed in an experimental architectural structure and their “main hub”The bakehouse was built by the docks of Oslo with the help of local boat builders and emanates the hull of a ship as a reference to the once active port in the area.
“Soil Procession” was a Flatbread Society project in 2015 where members worked together to bring soil from over 50 Norwegian farms to the Oslo fiord for a “ground building” ceremony. The procession included a walking parade of soil transportation, taking over an hour to complete, in order to create a foundation for the society to build and grow off of. This transported land later became home to the Bakehouse as well as the Grain Field, where they grew their own crops using farming techniques passed through generations. One procession member described the journey as: “It is not a demonstration against anything, but rather for! We are bringing forth soil from Norwegian farms to Bjørvika.”
After multiple meetings, interventions, and workshops, members of the Futurefarmers created and installed a permanent, wind-powered printing press. The piece includes the installation, the creation of a unique font, a film about the work, a publication, and an exhibition. The work alone spans multiple practices and encourages the collaboration between disciplines, as well as the exploration of more sustainable printing techniques.
When this project was first announced, my immediate thought of what to base my stacks off of was a foggy night. I wanted to base my first stack after the dark gradation of what a dreary and foggy day looks like. The second idea I had was to create a stack off of a purple and orange sunset. I really just wanted to create a stack like this sunset is just so beautiful to look at.
The Process of Book Stacking and the Images
Here are a few of the images I took with the camera. I am no photographer, so getting used to using the camera was a learning curve for me! As you can see in the photos I was playing around with the lighting, the first few use the normal lighting in the library, and the second lighting was used under the “natural” lighting setting. The natural light setting gave the image a more yellow tone to it. It was a lot of fun to play around with the lighting, but I still have lots to learn about using a camera and all of its settings.
Also when stacking the books I decided to make poetry out of them and I really enjoyed doing that! Having such a broad topic allowed me to create interesting poems, but still sticking within the theme.
These images were taken with my phone. I personally think that these ones turned out better than the ones with the camera, but I think that is just because I am more comfortable and familiar with using my phones. I know what settings look good and how to properly use it. On my phone I was playing around with the regular camera mode, and also portrait mode which gave the blurry background.
This was an extremely fun assignment and has really allowed me to look at books differently. From now on when I am going to a place with books, whether it be a library or book store, I am going to start stacking them. It was a nice way to not only create art, but practice my photography skills!
NATURE WALK
Images from the Nature Walk.
Round Things, A Piece of Sky and Weed Noticing.
Also included a few that I just thought turned out well!
ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Ron Benner
Ron Benner is a Canadian artist who was born, and still resides, in London, Ontario. He studied at the University of Guelph in Agricultural Engineering, but then switched to Art. After switching his path in life, he went to develop a practice that combines photography, installation and gardening. Benner is a strong environmental activist whose work investigates the history and political economics of food.
In Digestion, Collection Museum London, London, Ontario
In Digestion, Collection Museum London, London, Ontario
This piece by Benner has Three components to it, (only two are shown). The first is a wall of red pepper boxes which leads to a wall. it is described as, “Entering the installation, viewers move past a 17th-century map representing Florida and Mexico (aspect that is not shown), and stacks of brightly coloured produce boxes, through a vertically spliced photographic curtain into the simulated shell of a transport truck,” Through that wall leads to a room which is described as, “Inside, viewers find tire shards, galvanized sheet metal, and more than 200 photographs that contrast contemporary transportation systems with the ancient trade routes of the Americas.” This piece is showing the trek of bell peppers sold at London Ontario’s Covent Garden Market and tracing the root of peppers to its origin.
I think this is a very interesting piece because most of the time when buying food we don’t think about where it came from, we just accept that it is now in a store. This piece is very important as it is showing where specific peppers history originated from. It allows viewers to think about where their food comes from, and how it gets to the shelves of the grocery store, or stall at a market.
Trans/mission: Barley – Corn – Maize, 2019 Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Bowmanville, Ontario
A closer look of image
This piece by Benner is a very important site specific piece. It resides in the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (VAC) which was once known as The Cream of Barley Mill. This piece is a mixed media piece where the main subject matter includes black beans, sunflower seeds, wild rice, potatoes, maize, amaranth, chili peppers, quinoa, pinto beans, lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, wheat, barleycorn, soya beans, sorghum, flax, and rice. The meaning of the piece, VAC curator, Sandy Saad writes is, “An exploration of the entangled relationships between place and history vis-à-vis food. It employs food to map history, bringing many new places into the site and offering a more complex and intertwined narrative… At the centre of the room lies a collection of various seeds, grains, and cultural deposits: objects from Iraq, Mexico, and Curve Lake First Nation, and London, Ontario. They are a combination of unlikely objects in juxtaposition, reflecting the vast displacement of food crops and culture through various imperial, colonial, and industrial efforts. Benner’s installation creates a room that is both united and divided. Benner suggests the dual nature of the power of food: to bring people together through social and communal gathering, and to separate communities through imperial and commercial enterprises”.
I really enjoy this piece because it is so well thought out and planned, and there is such a depth to it. To understand the full meaning of the piece you truly have to know the history behind it to understand what Benner really made. The grains, the location, everything is just so articulately weaved together that gives this piece many added layers to it.
All That Has Value (was then counted as nothing), Garden Installation, Harbourfront, Toronto, Ontario. 2015
This piece by Benner is an installation piece. This piece includes a small garden with a variety of flowers. The front of the box the garden sits in reads, All That Has Value. Sticking out from the garden is another plank of wood which reads, Was Then Counted As Nothing. I could not find much information on this piece (only its predecessor titled, All That Has Value, which looks very different). I think that this piece means that plants are one of the most important things we have on this planet, but we do not treat them as important as they are. Without plants we would not be able to survive, but we do not take care of them, or the planet to allow them to flourish.
ENVIRONMENTAL VIDEO
Caitlyn, Melyssa and Sam
Hand Battle
This video we decided to be a bit more playful and have a leaf and grass fight and put the two views side by side. I think that this video turned out very successful and it is a very comedic piece. The red of the gloves I especially enjoy as it contrasts the natural colours a lot and creates an interesting composition.
Music in the Outdoors
This video we decided to see the contrasting sounds from the gloves, and rings against a metal bench. I think this one holds an interesting composition due to the fact as one hand comes forward, the other goes back and it holds that sequence. I also really enjoy the sounds that both of them make, and I feel that they work very well together.
Serenade of Sounds
This one was more so a test for us to get the idea of what a 9 video grid would look like. There was some trouble in editing, but it was a good practice video to see what needed to be improved on and what worked well. This video was a good baseline for future videos and how they would look.
Sensations
This video we took what we learned from the previous video, and cleaned it up and made it more seamless. This one is my favourite video and I would love to see it displayed on a large gallery wall, with good surround-sound.
For this assignment my partners and I decided to touch different things in the environment to see the sounds they would make. We not only used our bare hands, but we adorned them with different items such as rings and various gloves. This was such an interesting experiment to conduct and I personally am very happy with the outcome of the videos. Each of the items we touched made such different sounds and all had such interesting textures to them!
Some screenshots from the videos (more to come)
PHOTOS
I did a trip to Elora and walked the Elora Gorge! Here are some photos from it.
BOOK/MAGAZINE
I really enjoyed having the opportunity to create an Artist Book with the class! I learned a lot and I know I definitely will make more books on my own time. This assignment allowed me to learn lots of new techniques (Courtesy of Nathan) which I will use to apply in my own art practice, and even in general when using design applications. I really appreciated the opportunity to be an editor for the magazine. It taught me many technical skills, and having that responsibility too! I am very excited to see the final piece, all of us worked very hard and it most definitely paid off!
For this assignment I had a few ideas how to go about it:
Create a Zine – Of my time here living in Guelph
Create a brand of my iconic face of me as a child – would put on shirts, or make a zine of this
Make a CD based on the weird dreams I had
After chatting with the class I decided to go forward with the CD but instead of just focusing on dreams, I also incorporated some weird experiences I have had. I would talk about both experiences in first person as if they all happened to me. I decided I would speak in a monotone voice so the tone told through all of the stories would give nothing away if it actually happened or not.
Below are the scripts for my stories:
Story One:
I was at my Uncle’s house and a man I have never seen before was there. He came over to me and told me he had a great business idea. I waited in anticipation and he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “let’s breed sea lions”.
We got the sea lions and the female sea lion sat in the middle of my uncle’s living room. She was grey, with large holes gouged deep throughout her body, and black ooze spilling from them. Littered around her on the floor were grey, gelatinous blobs that sporadically moved. The man and I took the blobs and shoved them in the holes. The blobs would spit back out of the holes as baby sea lions.
The sea lions were angry. We were overbreeding them and they wanted revenge. They started to close in on the man and I, before we ran to my uncle’s room. My uncle was putting clothes away when I said to him, “Uncle Darren the sea lions are after us! They’re mad at us breeding them!”
My uncle places the shirt on his hanger and looks at me, I’ve never seen him this serious. “I’ve dealt with this before,” he said, “what you’re going to need is a fly swatter and some good stomping boots.” My uncle, the man and I took the supplies we needed and went back out to the living room to face the horde of angry sea lions.
Story Two:
Tessa and I still hadn’t eaten even though it was close to 9 PM. We decided to head out to the grocery store to get some food. We lived close so we decided to walk. As we were walking, what looked to be a police car slowed down next to us and parked. The man could tell we were startled and flashed us his badge. “Good evening ladies,” he said, even though it was nighttime, “There is a suspicious individual running around with no shoes on, have you seen him?”. Tessa and I looked at each other then back to the officer.
“No, sorry we haven’t seen anyone”, I replied. The officer sent us a smile, “Well, be careful ok, have a good night.” and he drove away. Against our better judgement, Tessa and I still headed for the grocery store. The fear started setting in that there was a suspicious person running around, wearing no shoes. We quickly grabbed the rest of our groceries and headed back home. We decided to cut through our backyard to be safe. We usually went up through the side of the house but it was pitch black. What if we were to go up there and the shoeless man was standing there? Instead we knocked on the basement door for our roommate, Alan to let us in. We didn’t have the best relationship with him, but thankfully he opened the door. We stepped inside and I looked at him. “Thank you Alan, we heard there was a suspicious person running around and wanted to get in as fast as possible.”
“That’s wild” he said, and that’s when I noticed it.
Alan wasn’t wearing any shoes.
Story Three:
had a dream. In this dream a woman who had pale, wrinkly skin, creepy eyes, and a huge smile spoke to me. She resembled the person in the Russian Sleep Experiment. She looked at me and said, “You need to make the brownies.” Then I woke up.
I started freaking out. Brownies,I thought, I need to make brownies. So I spent my morning making brownies. I made a good batch of brownies and decided I would bring them to Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, but make sure they don’t eat them all. I got to my friend’s house and put down the plate and then we played our session. When the session was over I realised all of the brownies had been eaten!
“Oh no!” I cried, “These brownies were meant for the Smiling Woman!”. I headed home still worried about what would happen if I didn’t have the brownies. Though it was a dream I was still nervous.
I headed up to my room to get ready to go to sleep when I heard, “Don’t look under the bed.” I froze. I cautiously did what the voice told me not to do and looked under my bed. I was frightened. What if it was the Smiling Woman? I put my head to the ground and looked under my bed and saw…a guy? He was pressed between the floor and the mattress and looked at me and said “I told you not to look” I was silent then said, “Boy you fiiiiiiine”
Story Four:
It was late. Tessa and I had a bad day. It was our first year at university and we both had received a 65 on our first art assignment. We were both so upset. It was 2 AM and we opened the fridge to grab cheese. We started eating it then she slapped my arm with cheese. I slapped her back. We continued slapping each other. We laughed hysterically.
Story Five:
Alan came over to Tessa and I holding a jar of fettuccine Alfredo sauce.
“Does this smell expired to you?” he asked while smelling it. The jar did not expire until next year. The Jar had never been opened. And cheese does smell.
We repeated this to him and then he walked away. A few minutes later he came back to us and asked us for a wrench.
“Why do you need a wrench? I asked
“I cant open the sauce jar” He replied holding a marinara jar now
“You can’t open a sauce jar with a wrench,” I said. I asked him if I could try opening it. He didn’t think I could, but then after a few seconds the lid managed to pop off and I walked away.
He looked enraged. I heard him murmur, “I’m feeling very emasculated right now.”
I tried to lighten the situation to spare him of his fragile ego and said, “its because Im such a girl boss”
He looked madder after that.
More time passed and Tessa and I heard “Ow” come from the kitchen. The Ow kept repeating.
Ow
Ow
Ow
Ow
We looked over and saw Alan sticking his finger in the burning hot pasta water over and over. He then left the water and picked up a three month old banana, which had fruit flies swarming it off of his shelf. We thought he would throw it out, but instead he ate it.
I felt ill.
Story Six:
I was at summer camp and I was eating chicken.
After having the critique, it gave me a lot to think about in terms of packaging design for my piece. I really enjoyed the suggestion someone gave of the cover being a sea lion in a living room to add to the dream aspect! I’d like to think of more ideas for packaging to play between truth and dreams.
I decided to take photos of my CD up against a background of other CD’s to add to the physicality of the object. I did have a difficult time getting images as the plastic case of the CD was very reflective.
This assignment allowed me to create something I have never done before. I don’t usually make audio pieces, but it is something I would like to explore further in my practice!
