Macie's Masterpieces

We need to talk about beauty

Art Ideas #7: Counterfactual Identity

So, I don’t ever wear make up other than a little bit of mascara here and there. It’s not that I don’t like wearing make up, it’s just that I find it to be too much work to put on every single day when I am simply satisfied with my natural look. For this activity, I put on something that I don’t normally wear and if you couldn’t tell by now, I put on a full face of makeup and put my hair in a slicked back ponytail.

Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of my encounters with people seeing me with a full face, but I did get a lot of compliments. It was actually pretty interesting to see who would say something and the others that noticed but didn’t really feel the need to say anything. Especially when it came to my friends, a lot of the girls noticed and complimented me while a lot of the guys noticed but didn’t really say anything out loud about it.

Personally, I felt like this was an enjoyable activity. I was able to step out of my ordinary look in the best way that made me feel good about myself. I still don’t think I’m going to be wearing make up everyday because just doing it for one day was sort of a hassle, but I did enjoy the compliments, and it was fun for the time being, but overall it was the confidence boost I think I needed.

Artist Conversation #2

Artist: Vale Fragoso, JP Gonzales, Alejandra Guardado, Gochez, Mark Hertzel, Dickson Janda, Vega Leonard, Dounya Mouzoon, Sara Pennington, Andy Phillips, Fengwan Qing, Roger Ramirez, Charlie Rosas, Heidi Fernandez Saavedra, Scarlet Sidwell, Jennifer Tejada, Quang Tran, Alejandra Uribe

Exhibition: Sculpture BFA Group Exhibition

Media: Sculptures

Gallery: Max L. Gatov Gallery

About The Artists: Afterburn is a group exhibition produced by both graduate and undergraduate students attending California State University, Long Beach. From my understanding, many of these students have their bachelors in Fine Arts (BFA).

Formal Analysis: This exhibition focuses on the pain and discomfort of life as well as trauma that we go through at learning experiences that tend to shape our lives. On of the pieces appears to be a corpse stuck to the wall will what seems to be a clear plastic cover going over the body. This piece is called “Drive” by JP Gonzales. Like many of the pieces in this exhibition, death is portrayed in different forms. A piece by Jennifer Tejada titled, “Self-portrait” seems as though it is meant to portray the dark side that an individual has for themself almost representing a demonic point of view.

Content Analysis: After speaking with some of the artists, I came to the realization that Afterburn is meant to represent the body and experience as individuals. Being how we eat, sleep, speak, move, and even breathe. It is meant to portray the discomfort we can develop over time and the pain we have experienced in the past that has shape the type of person we are today and we will be in the future. They are basically wanting us to accept the tings we encounter in life and learn from our mistakes and grow from them.

My Experience: At first, I was slightly weirded out by some of the sculptures I saw, especially “Drive” because I mean who wouldn’t freak out when seeing a corpse hanging from the wall? But overall, I think the meaning being the exhibition is very meaningful to us as individuals because we can’t change our past but we can learn from it and develop in the sense.

Art Can Be Shocking!

Art Idea #6: Shocking Art

For my Shocking Art piece, I chose to present breaking a promise. I chose this because I feel as though we too often make promises we can’t keep whether it be little or big. I find myself making pinky promises to many of my friends with intentions of keeping my promise, especially with how serious I take my pinky promises. However, I do find that promises are broken far too often leading to broken trust by close friends and sometimes even family members.

I hope to get across the idea that you don’t always have to make commitments to certain things in life, and you shouldn’t makes those commitments if you know that you cannot uphold those promises on your end. For many people, secrets are shared through promises with hopes of them remaining secrets, but that is not always the case, especially nowadays when people find it so easy to gossip and share stories that aren’t theirs to share.

Personally, I think my shocking art is successful. It represents something that is important to me in the sense of trust and security. Promises are sometimes unspoken and are meant to be that way, while others verbally kept by stating “I promise…”

If I did it again I think I would have just taken more pictures of better quality. I am not the best at capturing photos or even the most creative in that sense, but I do like the way I positioned my model to represent what I am trying to depict to my audience.

Another idea I might explore through “shocking art” would probably be racism. Now I am not a person of color, but I do come from a diverse community and there is little to no race discrimination. I just find it interesting how in so many different communities people find the nerve to act so harshly towards other individuals in their own community.

Cameras Tell Stories

Art idea #5: Storytelling (Photography)

Gabriel Gomez, 19, Current CSU-Long Beach Student At Korean BBQ Celebrating His Nineteenth Year Of Living.

Sophia LaRosa (Left),18, Mattias Franklin (Right),18, Getting Ready To Grill Some Brisket For Our Korean Dinner.

In Order From Left To Right, Macie Avila (Me), 18, Gabriel Gomez, 19, Sophia LaRosa, 18, And Mattias Franklin, 18, At Korean BBQ Getting Ready To Celebrate The Birthday Boy Himself

9 Others, Also At Korean BBQ to celebrate Gabriel Gomez Turing 19 Years Old

Korean BBQ, Raw Meat Waiting To Be Grilled And Enjoyed.

Samantha Plemmons, 18, Gabriel Gomez, 19, In The Car Getting Ready To Head Back To The Dorms After Enjoying A Korean BBQ Dinner

I chose to do this story because I feel as though a birthday in a way represents a big change in a persons life marking another year around the sun. Gabe is one of my close friends and the fact that he invited my to celebrate his birthday with him and so many of our other friends meant a lot.

I honestly think I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, just because I kept forgetting to take some pictures and then certain moments would pass and then my pictures would come out mediocre, so though they may have no meaning to you, they are actually really fun to me.

The “best” image in my story, I think would probably have to be the first one of just Gabe by himself. It was his reaction to us singing Happy Birthday to him in front of everyone in the restaurant.

I think the picture of the mean on the grill and the raw meat waiting to be cooked wasn’t necessarily a “great” picture, however it is still important to the story because it was the reason for going to the Korean BBQ place to begin with.

Next time I think I would try to take better candids rather than staged photos because those are always fun and simply happen to be my favorite. They also tend to show more emotion to viewers than a staged photo would in general.

I feel like there is always a story to tell when it comes to photography, and quite frankly I love it. Personally, I don’t know off the top of my head what other “photo stories” I could tell or would even try to tell in the sense that some things are meant to be more powerful than others.

Artist Conversation #1

About The Artist

Artist: Molly Champlin

Exhibition: Fog

Media: Watercolor and Oils

Gallery: Gatov Gallery, East

Website: http://mollychamplin.com

Instagram: @mollychamplinart

Molly Champlin is a graduate student in the School of Arts, Drawing and Painting program at California State University, Long Beach. This is her first year working towards getting her MFA for painting and drawing. She seems as though she is very dedicated to achieving this goal and being able to focus on her art to be able to take a break from the real world.

Analysis

After viewing Champlin’s gallery, it is fair to say that all her pieces were the same but different, and most of the pieces were actually quite small which in my case made them more interesting to look at.

Though many of her pieces were of similar content, they were all individually beautiful in their own ways. Her pieces contained variety, shape, and abstract. Though her pieces were very colorful and small, it was still seemingly easy to understand what the pieces contained within them with the lines and shapes they contained. Her paintings had very distinct lines to make figures obvious to the viewers but they all contained a variety of colors within them, especially with the color choice of pastels as well as blacks and whites; I am a sucker for pastels.

Content Analysis

After briefly speaking with Champlin about her beautiful art, it was easy to realize how invested in her work she truly is, with her process of creating these pieces and then some. She mentioned that her work had to do with the internet and how it affects real and imaginary pieces in this world. She went on to explain how she enjoys the combination of water color, oil and technology in nature. After getting into her processes, she says that it is systematic depending on whether she is starting with a sketch or going right into the painting.

My Experience

In my own experience, I was at first unsure about this whole “Artist Conversation” thing being that I’ve never been to the gallery here on campus. However, I was very intrigued by its contents. Champlin’s pieces were beautiful and in don’t know if it’s because of how small they were, or the color coordination, but I was most definitely pleased with what I saw. Overall, I can seem myself visiting another one of her galleries in the future.

Drawing is A Language

Art Idea #4: Drinking and Drawing

When it comes to drawing, I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the best. However, this activity was both fun and frustrating. Let me explain; it was fun in the aspect of being able to take some time and just draw for fun but it was frustrating because I don’t necessarily like drawing because I don’t like not being good at something and I’m not good at drawing. I think I would maybe try again when I have free time and just feel like putting something on paper.

Personally, I think practice makes perfect. So, regardless of how long I practice drawing, whether it be 100 hours or 1,000 hours, I think my outcome will still be better that what I am currently producing only pages.

I am a Pre-Business Management major, and want to eventually style hair for a living, so I don’t know in what ways drawing could potentially help me in my career choice other that to maybe create a business plan or maybe style a cut.

I believe that drawing is a language. Drawings can represent things that can be difficult to express to others verbally. However, it is all in the eyes of the beholder, therefore what the art may say depends on perspective of the piece.

You Can Find Art Anywhere!

Art Idea #3: Finding Art

The contents within the frame take a very geometric form in the sense that it captures both a sculpture as well as a building structure. The contents are quite aesthetic with the colors and contrasts that are taking place, and the sculpture itself is quite mesmerizing, as well as the windows on the building in the background, they add a sense of purity to the scene.

I would consider the contents within the frame as art before we put the rectangle around it because, well stating the obvious, there’s a sculpture in the middle of the frame, and also the architecture as a whole is just beautiful and satisfying to look at, especially as a background to the sculpture itself.

After the frame is gone, I believe that the scenery is still considered art because of how aesthetic the greenery is surrounding the sculpture as well as the building, the sight in general is quite satisfying because of how clean it looks as a whole.

I believe that everything in the frame would be considered art to an extent, from the grass all the way to the clouds in the sky. The entire scenery as a whole is art because oh how quickly it all could change in accordance with the sky and the time of day or even the weather.

Art can be more than just objects, I find art in the sky everyday. Especially when it comes to clouds in the sunset, the colors and shapes and even the feeling I get from watching it is enchanting.

I think that art resides in the experience of the viewer for sure. Like my example with the sky, that’s all my opinion and my feelings towards the sunset and the way the sky looks, where in reality there could be many other people that could care less about the sunset and actually fall in love with the moon and the stars. It all depends on perspective and what the viewer takes in from the piece.

Abstraction is Freedom

Art Idea #2: Finger Painting

When starting this project I was a bit skittish because I do not like a mess, and this was a mess. However, it was very enjoyable. I did struggle with the fact that we had to kind of just go with the flow because I like structure and I like knowing what I’m doing but for this I was able to surprise myself with the outcome.

Overall, I think it was a little bit harder than expected, just because my slight sense of OCD was taking over because I pas particular about my colors and then I tried to cover the whole page and make it look good when really I should have just gone with the process.

Making a painting with no subject was actually quite enjoyable for me because there really is no “messing up” because you don’t have to mimic anything, you just get to do and make whatever you want, though I will say it was a but confusing because I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to go about the painting. How much paint do I put? Should I do one color at a time, or put all three at the same time? What direction do I swirl my fingers in to make this look decent? Regardless of my confusion with the process, I will say it was quite inspiring because I found it satisfying to mix the colors and create new ones and the outcome was actually pretty cool.

In comparison to other paintings I have seen, mine is quite bland. I feel like this is just the background to a bigger piece to come where as other paintings I have seen aren’t so messy or “wild” in a sense, but I think just like any other painting, it came from the heart and I am actually really proud of it, just as I would expect other artists to be of their own pieces of work.

Finger painting piece, colors used: Red, Blue, and Lilac.

Maintenance Art

Art Idea #1: Cleaning NOW

For this weeks idea of art, we cleaned Piotr Kowalski’s 1965 sculpture NOW. While performing this work of Maintenance Art it felt honestly quite weird to be cleaning a piece of art that normally I would probably never touch just because I’ve grown up thinking that art cannot be tampered with so this was definitely out of proportion for me.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleaning the steps of an art museum differs from that of Richard Serra flinging molten lead against the walls of an art museum based on their end results. Ukeles will finish with clean steps leading up the the art museum while Serra will finish with an intended mess, however these actions are similar in the fact that they are both forms of art. Art comes in many ways, shapes, and forms and though these two are physically different, they both are symbolical in the end.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art performance was a form of art, not in the sense that it was an action taking place in front of the art museum, but because regardless of where this action would have happened, it still held an underlying meaning behind it. Had she been hired as a janitor at a factory, this would still be considered a form of art because though a janitorial just is undermined, it still has a purpose and without it we would be working with a mess. In this sense, janitorial work is beautiful art.

Personally, I believe that an object or an action can be Art because of the intentions behind it. I don’t think that all paintings on canvas art are considered art just because of what they are on or the fact that they are in a museum, I think anything that is created is considered art whether it be on a piece of paper or a canvas. I don’t considered house paintings art because it’s not rare for a house to be painted and just about anyone can do it. A painting on a canvas can also be considered not art because it doesn’t matter what you paint on, it matters what you paint, which is why it’s rare for a house to be considered art.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Jennifer Lopez have both made me think differently about “Women’s Work” in the sense that it should be appreciated regardless of how or why it is being done. It is unfortunate that “Women’s Work” is stereotyped to be something along the lines of household chores, however it isn’t rare for a woman to be performing these things for the sake of their household.

When it comes to cleaning a Hollywood star on my hands and knees, I think I would probably clean Jennifer Anniston’s star just because I am such a huge fan of her, being that I’ve grown up watching her on Friends with my mom since I was little.

Art 110 class meeting to clean NOW sculpture in the middle of CSULB’s campus.

Wiping the metal sculpture to clean off as much dirt as possible.

My First Blog Post

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.