art without pretense

welcome to the new digs

2010-02-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

This post has been a long time coming! I have been working tirelessly (well ok, insome of my coveted free time) on a new layout for Art Without Pretense. There have been tears, screams, and moments of desperation (and that’s just from my fiancé, Jim, when he tried to help me). Needless to say, it has been a greuling process. There’s a reason I chose to study art history and not digital art/web design. I find it unbelievably frustrating. Had I only wanted to revamp the blogspot account, it would doubtlessly have been easier. But the learning curve involved in switching from blogspot (a user-friendly but limited and ready-made layout) to wordpress (a highly customizable system of endless layouts written in code that looks like something out of a Tolkein novel to me).* If you don’t know web design before using wordpress, you had best learn it! And fast! Fortunately for me, I have numerous capable techie friends who speak this alien language and have helped me wade through it. I have also received much support and cheerleading from my good friends at Inspired Taste, who just got their wordpress blog up and running last fall. So here I am, roughly 3 months after I decided to switch to my own domain and wordpress, finally ready to unveil it!**

So here it is *drumroll*… the new Art Without Pretense!

From now on, I will be posting only to www.artwithoutpretense.com and closing the .blogspot account. This post is being posted to both blogs so that you, my small but loyal group of followers, have the opportunity to bookmark the new address and make the switch with me! For those of you who find me through facebook, I will continue to post there when I update, but if you look for emails or use the Google blogroll, take note of the change! The new blog comes complete with RSS feed, so I highly encourage you to subscribe! And to leave comments! And to tell your friends!

OK, enough self-promotion. I will add though that if you have suggestions about layout improvements, things that don’t work, etc., please let me know. This blog is a work in progress. Much like my life.

Two new features on this blog I am particularly excited for (and the main reason I wasn’t happy with blogspot) are the About Me and Photo sections. The photos pull from my Flickr account and were a lot harder to get working than I’d like to admit. But my overall hope is to use this not just as a blog of my art-world experiences, but as a sort of portfolio of what I am capable of. So having a personal touch is important! Unfortunately, past comments from blogspot were impossible to bring over to wordpress. You can still read past posts (all in the archive), but the comments will remain forever a part of Google.

To wrap this up, I am so happy you are here, reading about me and my adventures in art. I hope you enjoy the new site and don’t mourn the old one too much!***

I do not love Tolkein and find his writing and made-up languages infuriating.
By ready, I mean tired of updating two blogs and feeling a little ashamed to be so slow at web design, but not really 100% happy with how things look.
There will be a memorial service TBA.

the first step to curating

2010-01-27T11:15:00.002-05:00

I was presented with an incredibly tempting offer last week. One which I feel is well worth sharing. Carmen, La Salle's Assistant Curator, and a person I have no doubt mentioned before, asked me if I would like to curate or co-curate a print exhibit for the La Salle Museum later this year. She and Madeleine (La Salle's Museum Director) have been reviewing the upcoming exhibit schedule and have two open exhibition periods coming up. Tomorrow we are installing a new print exhibit in conjunction with the Philly-wide Philagrafika print show. This is replacing the Economic Justice show I helped hang last fall and will be up through April. After that, there is nothing scheduled for the print hallway, and Carmen thought I might like to design the next show. They are also short of a summer exhibit, as Moe Brooker's show has been pushed back until next spring. Summer shows at La Salle tend to get less visitors because there are fewer students here and Moe's work deserves a larger audience, so they have given him the spring spot instead. Changing the schedule leaves this summer open and presents the museum staff with two options: close the gallery for the summer or quickly design something to go there. Carmen gave me the option of curating the summer gallery show if I have enough pieces to show. Otherwise, my exhibit will go in the print hallway.

Needless to say, I am very excited! It's a pretty big deal to say you curated or helped curate a show in a professional museum. It would be wonderful to add this to my resume. There is also a lot to be considered when putting together an exhibit. I have to look at prints that have not been exhibited recently, will fit nicely in the designated space, and have some unifying theme. It's almost like writing a research paper, except at the end I will not have 30 page document, but a three-dimensional testament to my efforts. There is some writing involved though: I will have to do research and be able to write an introduction to the exhibit for visitors to read. If you've ever been to an art museum, you will have seen these intros. They are placed near the entrance to the exhibit and provide a summary of the overlying theme of the show. I will also have to create wall labels for some or all of the images, discussing their specific relevance to the theme. These labels are something I can add, along with photos, to my portfolio for future job interviews.

So the big question is, what will I show? Everything has to come from La Salle's collection, rather than being loaned from other organizations. The museum has hundreds of prints in storage, so it becomes a matter of deciding which ones and how they fit together. One idea I am playing with World War I and II era prints. At first I was thinking specifically of German prints from this time. There are some really intriguing stories about artists who escaped Germany for artistic freedom or else stayed in hiding until the wars ended before openly displaying their work. Hitler was extremely hard-lined about abstract and modern art, holding an exhibit of so-called "Degenerate" art, or the entartete Kunst, as an example of radical thinking. If I were to look more broadly at artists between the two wars, I could examine what was sort of a heyday for German artists between the wars and the extreme censorship of artists during the Second World War. The problem is finding enough pieces to support this theme. I did a brief look yesterday and came up with about ten, which I don't feel is enough. I may have to expand my search a bit broader and maybe bring in artists from more European countries at the same time. In particular, France, other parts of northern Europe, Russia, and maybe Italy. Depends on what else I find. I am thinking I could expand my original idea to include a clear comparison of the between the war period and World War II.

Nothing is definite at this point. There is a lot of thinking and looking and researching to do before it all comes together. But you better believe I expect anyone who lives around here (and even those who don't) to come and see the show once it opens!

color, music, and abstraction: a meeting with Moe Brooker

2010-01-15T17:38:00.002-05:00

Moe Brooker - The Evidence of Things Unseen

Even though school isn't officially back yet, I've been back at the La Salle Art Museum the last two weeks. While it's quiet on campus during holidays, I'm really glad I went. On Wednesday the museum director and assistant curator were kind enough to include me in a lunch they had with the artist Moe Brooker. Moe is scheduled to have a show at La Salle from May though July this year and he was on campus to talk dates, see the gallery space, and get to know the staff a little. I was surprised and honored to be included in the lunch and ultimately so glad I was! Although I mostly sat back and listened, I found Moe one of the most fascinating people I've met in a while.

Moe is from Philadelphia and after moving around the country for much of his life, has resettled in the city. He has had a number of solo exhibits here and in Mississippi, where Moe lived for some time. He teaches at Moore College of Art and Design, which he admitted to loving even though he no longer needs the money. While there are a number of things I'd like to share about meeting Moe, the most important thing I can say is that he is a wonderful story-teller. Over the course of an hour and a half, I heard a half dozen fascinating stories. My favorite by far was about Moe's return to Philadelphia. He recalled having literally just driven into Philadelphia and driving past an old artist friend of his (I forget the name, but he was fairly big in Philly). His friend jumped in front of Moe's car, made him get out of the car, and gave Moe a big kiss on the mouth. He asked what Moe was doing back in Philly and almost immediately offered him a job teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts. If that's not the greatest way to get a job, I don't know what is!

An interesting side note to Moe's stories: about half-way through each tale, Moe would mention the person in question had passed away. It was both a testament to his longevity as an artist and also an amusing part of his story-telling process which I began looking for by the end of our lunch.

Something which surprised me about Moe was his willingness to discuss his methods, inspirations, and interests. While I haven't met a huge number of successful artists, the common understanding is that they don't like to share a lot of insight into their work. Or even that they are unable to articulate their process in words. Madeleine, the museum director, said as much, to which Moe effectively called them liars. He said that any artist who tells fans, museum personnel, or interviewers that they can't discuss what they do could be found later that night at a bar regaling anyone who might listen about their work. It was a refreshing perspective which I suspect has something to do with Moe's time teaching.

Prior to meeting Moe, I'll admit to never having seen his work. After lunch, I googled him to see some examples and found them exactly like what I imagined after our conversation. Moe said one of the most important elements of his work is color. He talked about experimenting with paint, pastels, oil pastels, and a wide variety of other mediums. Pastel seemed to be one of Moe's favorites, but one he had to abandon because the dust from the pastels was making him sick. The thing they had in common was the ability to produce brilliant colors which pop off canvases, paper, and a wide selection of other vehicles (that's the fancy art word for surfaces on which art materials are applied). When asked if he ever worked in black and white, Moe recalled a series of small drawings he had done which had a lot of personal meaning. He said he had never sold them, but kept them in his home. However, he might submit them as part of his show at La Salle. Something I would love to see!

Moe's work is, for the most part, highly abstracted. Although Moe is formally trained, with an incredible understanding of traditional techniques, he chooses to use them to create things in a new and abstracted way. Moe spoke highly of the recent Gorky show at the Philadelphia Museum. He never explained his interest in Gorky's work, but as he spoke, I could see why. The usual criticism of abstract art is that a child could do it. When this came up, Moe provided one of the best refutations of this claim I have ever heard. He told us about a man he'd met at one of his shows who made this exact claim to Moe. Instead of getting angry or providing a generic response, Moe broke down specific elements of his piece, explaining how his artistic process had made those decisions possible. For example, he asked the man if he knew what perspective was. The man had limited understanding and so Moe pointed out the manner in which perspective was used in the work. Some shapes were large and unfocused, indicating that they were close to the front of the scene, while smaller, more detailed shapes appeared further away. Moe said that just because something looks simple doesn't mean the process of creating it is. I loved hearing this because it is exactly what I try to tell my students. Obviously not everyone has to appreciate abstract art, but that is totally different from acknowledging the work which goes into it. Moe even addressed the issue of people liking or disliking his art. He said personal opinion and taste are irrelevant: all he wants to know if a piece works for a viewer. If it does, what works? And if it doesn't, why not?

Madeleine asked about Moe's well-known love of jazz and how it affects his work. He immediately launched into an intricate discussion of Charlie Parker's work. Moe is trained as a pianist and has a wonderful understanding of music. He hears notes, rhythms, tempos, ever detail which goes into a musical composition. He likened his artistic process to the composition of a jazz piece. Every element must work together. There can be discord, harmony, complication, anything can happen, as long as there is resolution in the end. The issues of an artwork must be resolved the same way a musical composition must have resolve. Listening to Moe made me think of well-known artists, Jackson Pollock, Basquiat, and others, who were similarly influenced by jazz. Moe made it very clear, however, that his work was not a visible expression of jazz. He doesn't paint Gershwin's music. He simply follows their process.

It would be impossible to recount every little thing Moe talked about, but I would love to listen to him again. Our lunch has me very excited for Moe's show and keen to learn more about his work. I think what appealed about his style is a throwback to the modern period. Moe said that a lot of contemporary art seems to lose a human connection. For him, that human connection is essential. His work has to ask questions, to keep building off of itself and push limits. This is my own opinion of art as well. It's the reason Rene Magritte, other Surrealists, and Dada are so fascinating to me. They push the limits of understanding without alienating the viewer. If you get the opportunity to see it, I highly recommend visiting the show when it opens!

full-time art historian...almost

2010-01-05T11:29:00.002-05:00

After a brief hiatus for what was an extremely hectic Christmas and New Year's, I am thankfully getting back to the grind of my daily life. That includes getting back to my blog, which has suffered of late, both from my inability to write and lack of interesting material. But as the spring semester looms ever nearer, a mere 14 days separate me from the closest to a full-time career I have yet to experience. With that comes three classes, roughly 80 students, a 5-day a week schedule, attempts at a partially online course, and continued volunteer time at La Salle's art museum. I think it was sometime last night, as I decided it was time to get my courses in order, that it dawned on me just how much I am taking on this semester.

In September I lobbied hard to get three classes for myself this spring, thus far only teaching 1 or 2 at a time. I have known for sometime that teaching three classes would very nearly eliminate the need for a second job (not that I've had one this fall anyway, but that's the theory). So I did everything I could to show I could handle it, both logistically and mentally. Due to my persistence and some fortunate circumstances with the full-time faculty, I was rewarded with three sections of the introductory survey course I taught last spring and summer. During the fall, while I juggled my one class, two days at the museum, and PhD applications, I mollified myself with the knowledge that I had already taught the course not once, not twice, but three times and that teaching three sections at once would be cake. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have prepared nothing for my courses until this morning. Not unusual, but suddenly, extremely daunting.

As I pulled up my class lists, I noticed the increased numbers since I last looked in mid-December. One class is filled, while the other two still hold the possibility of even more students, which often happens the week before the semester starts. My first reaction was to blanch at the number of names I have to memorize. It took me a shameful 12 weeks (out of 15) to learn all of my students' names this fall. And there were only 31 of them! I also knew four of them from previous classes. How will I ever know all 80 of my students?! I will have to get very creative to not let on that I don't know each and every one of them. On top of that, I don't have a single art student. There are a few "undecided liberal arts" freshmen, but most of my students are A) education B) nursing C) business or D) science majors. I think I saw one history major, a French/Italian major, a Spanish major, and 2-3 digital art students. Not that I'm prejudiced, but this usually means they are only filling a requirement and often their expectations for the difficulty of the class are low. Which in turn makes them (generally) less receptive to the information we cover.

My other dilemma is the amount of grading I will have to wade through. It is always overwhelming to bring home huge stacks of assignments with the knowledge that each one must be graded within a week. I am affectionately naming this the "end of the semester challenge". I have already decided it is suicidal to leave anything other than final exams until the last week of the semester. I have done it every semester so far, with a final paper due the same day as the exam, and struggled to get through. With 80 students, the feat is next to impossible. My plan is to even the coursework out over the semester, with four shorter exams rather than two large ones, and final papers due several weeks before the semester ends. In theory this will work, but it will still demand incredible diligence on my part. I think this might be why full time education (K-12) never really appealed to me. You have to stay on top of grading at all times and it's like trying to run up a waterfall.

I am now at the intimidating moment where I write my syllabi and begin creating a schedule. Times 3. While each course will essentially cover the same material, the three sections are on different days for different lengths of time and the syllabi must be tweaked to accommodate the individual time slots. I have a 50 minutes, three day a week class, an hour and 15 minute, two day a week class, and a 2 hour and 45 minute, one day a week, night class. I have taught both of the longer time slots before and gotten used to preparing for longer classes, but the 50 minute class is a new challenge. Having taken 50 minute art classes at La Salle as a student, I know the drill. But it means an entirely new way of dividing the material.

I am also taking on the additional challenge of adding an online component to the 50 minute course. Because of its inopportune time slot on Friday afternoons, I was told I could probably incorporate some sort of alternative learning resource which did not require me to be in class every single Friday. This appeals not because I mind the teaching, but because it's a long way for me to drive on a Friday, through Philly traffic, for 50 minutes. My tentative solution, which I am still formulating, is to have an online discussion every other week in lieu of class. So one week I come in and lecture, the next students respond to a course-related question. I have been told repeatedly I need to make sure my students are OK with this method, but I have trouble seeing how they will mind not being in class on Fridays. The real problem is having consistency between my other two classes: who wants to create an entirely different course structure for the same class? My solution is to have in-class discussions of the same questions every other week so that each class gets the same opportunity to think and explore ideas. I am nervous about this idea, however, and still may totally scrap it. Decision to come!

I end this post with cautious optimism about the upcoming semester. I know I can handle it, or else I wouldn't have tried so hard to get three classes. Nor would I be teaching at all, come to think of it. But it's unsettling all the same. Perhaps writing about my fears will make it easier to proceed. After all, it's a new year and new challenges are to be expected. And being a professional, working adult means pushing through the nerves.

Rosso Fiorentino - Challenge of the Pierides (Muses) (1524-27), Musee du Louvre

P.S. the image is symbolic of the post, if you care to look into it

chinese art and the digital age

2009-12-17T15:14:00.001-05:00

I apologize for the month-long hiatus. It's been a hectic month, what with Thanksgiving, finals, Christmas, oh and I got engaged. With all the other things going on, I have had little time to think about art and blogging. However, things have happened and are happening as we speak, so here goes.

Two weeks ago I participated in another Family Day program at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This one was in celebration of the new exhibit, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective. Gorky was a modern Armenian painter who pushed the rules of abstract art. He's one of those modern artists that the public tends to discredit, thinking their kids could have done what he did. I don't argue, but honestly, their kids might to do something visually similar, but they would never create for the same reasons as Gorky. Anyway, I shouldn't go there. Modern art isn't for everyone. The show has been generating some really great publicity, though, and the activities we did with the kids were easy enough to grasp. Two were entirely based on Gorky's work: one allowed kids to create their own abstract paintings while the other centered around Gorky's painting The Artist and His Mother. The third project was just wintry -- we had wooden snowflakes for the kids to decorate. I cannot say this was set of projects was as successful as the ones for Day of the Dead, but I oversaw the abstract painting and the kids had a blast. A messy, colorful blast.

Arshile Gorky. The Artist and His Mother. 1926-36. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The other big thing going on right now, more interesting really than my tiny job at the PMA, is helping set up for La Salle's next exhibit. On December 21, Chinese-American artist Li Qin Tan is opening a new exhibit here titled Cold Heart/Warm Tech. Tan is primarily a digital artist who works with a combination of media. While Tan's repertoire is greater than this, much of his work pulls from his Chinese heritage, often combining traditional Chinese elements (ink brush painting,ancient farming tools, etc.) with modern, digital elements. This new show will feature two pieces, Lava + 6 and Digitally Bloodless. I won't go into super detail with either because all that is on the La Salle Museum web page. But, I did want to post because Tan is here, at the museum as I write this. Earlier I helped him bring all the components of his installation into the museum. He has 6 computer monitors, which he is planning to attach to the wall. There is also a computer and a projector. These are for Lava + 6. Digitally Bloodless is composed of large four canvases which will have a collection of knives (cleavers I believe) stuck into them. Tan has to assemble all of this, inserting the cleavers, mounting the monitors, setting up the projector, etc. Tomorrow morning he will be back in with the museum's exhibit designer who will hang everything up and help with the wiring. This is a totally different kind of exhibit for La Salle. Most of the shows here are based in traditional mediums, i.e. painting, drawing, sculpture, photography. Tan's work is really something different and if you live near Philly, I would really recommend visiting. My hope is that more of La Salle's student population will be interested as well, since the school offers a Digital Art program. Anyway, it's really wonderful to get to see the behind the scenes side of exhibition installation. While I helped hang a print show awhile back, I have never been around when professional artists came to drop off their work. It helps make the show more real for me I think.

So that's all for now. Come see the show if you can! And Merry Christmas!

Erika De Vries: Dyeing at La Salle

2009-11-11T23:23:00.002-05:00

Today might just have been the most fun I have I had since I started working at La Salle. For the last couple of months, the art museum has been exhibiting a show by New York-based photographer, Erika De Vries. Erika came and spoke at La Salle while I was still a student there and I remember completely loving her work. A lot of her work is loosely based on her experiences as a woman as well as the collective experiences of women in general. For example, she did a series of photos while pregnant with her two sons, celebrating her body and the amazing things a woman can do. It's been a while, so I'm not totally clear on the details, but the photos were pretty brave.

Her recent show at La Salle is called Your Mother is in the Basement. The title comes from a common answer Erika's kids get whenever they ask where she is: invariable her husband answers "Your mother is in the basement..." The exhibit is a combination of several different mediums. The most prominent is a collection of photos of her basement, which once housed a lot of junk and has recently been converted into Erika's studio. The photos have been blown up and placed around a square room to simulate the basement itself. In addition to the photos, a slide projector cycles through a number of emails Erika received while putting the show together, recounting her friends' experiences with mothers, basements, and other enclosed spaces. Finally, there is a collection of mason jars filled with silk scarves and natural dyes.

Despite all the fascinating aspects of the show, it is the jarred scarves which have inspired this particular post. In a collaborative effort with La Salle's chemistry department, the art museum sponsored a workshop with Erika today where students, faculty, and staff were given the opportunity to dye their own scarves. I was asked to take pictures for the museum, so be prepared for a lot of images in this post.

As part of her show, Erika explained the connection between dyeing and the other works in Your Mother is in the Basement. As one of the oldest arts and one typically associated with women, Erika has been able to question and explore dyeing in a way similar to her exploration of women's spaces. She has given fabric dyeing a new, contemporary context and a new relevance. To begin her demonstration, Erika explained the various natural materials she uses to dye fabrics. Above is a photo of crushed cochineal beetles, a powder which produces a bright red color. We also used turmeric (yellow), cloves (a pinkish-brown color), bark (purple), onion peel (yellow), and a few others I never learned the names of. We were each given a pre-treated silk scarf (they had been soaked in a stopping liquid to prevent the dye from washing out later on), a mason jar, and our choice of dyeing materials. To get different effects, people tried knotting their scarves, dipping them in a variety of colored liquids, and getting as creative as possible. I decided to make mine as simply as possible, so I'll explain my own process instead of what other people did.

I ended up making three different scarves, each a different color. I really loved the cochineal beetles, which made the most beautiful red, but I was curious about all the materials so I used a variety in each jar. Instead of knotting my scarves (I wanted even color throughout my scarves), I put them straight into my jars to make the silk as smooth as possible. Then I poured boiling water over the scarves and dyes and put the lids on. Erika recommended leaving the jars in a sunny window for about a week to get the best possible color and I am excited to see the end product. One jar is a rich purple color, another a deep orangey/red, while the third is a soft pink color. They look gorgeous already, and I'm sure the scarves will be even more beautiful.

I was fairly impressed with the turnout for this workshop. Often art museum events end up with a lot of professors and very few students in attendance. But we got lots of kids and they all seemed to have a lot of fun. While cleaning up later, we found that a few students had sneaked back into the lab to keep dyeing. Tomorrow, Erika is speaking at the museum and I hope some of the students from day come back to hear more!

kids and art: a winning combination

2009-11-04T14:30:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned last week, I had the opportunity to work with the Philadelphia Museum of Art's education department on Sunday. The museum does these family day activities the first weekend of every month, and this one coincided with a number of Day of the Dead festivities also happening in the museum. Dia de los Meurtos for those of you with an extensive beginner Spanish vocabulary like myself. There were Mexican dancers in full costume and makeup (there were tons of screaming children because of this), Latin dancers (this is different from Mexican dancing -- one is tribal with drums, the other involves salsa beats), and an altar designed to honor the Day of the Dead. There were skulls galore and a lot of people gathered around the two Diego Riveras in the museum foyer.

The family day activities were short, realtively simple projects designed for kids, but popular with just about everyone. At one table, really little kids could color a copy of a Diego River. This was ideal because there was very little mess involved. There was another station where kids were given an image of Frida Kahlo (left over from the exhibit last year) and got to decorate her picture. A kind of shrine to Frida Kahlo. And yes, shrines are apparently a theme of Day of the Dead. This was a fairly messy project as there was glue, scissors, tissue paper, glitter, et al. I was glad not to be in charge of it. There was another table where kids used brightly colored tissue paper, attached it a wooden dowel and a piece of string, and cut shapes like a paper snow flake. These were supposed to be Mexican flags of some sort. I'll admit to not fully understanding the connection...but the kids loved it.

The activity I helped with was instructing visitors on how to make tissue paper flowers. Basically, you take 6-7 square sheets of tissue paper (it was great explaining this to the kids who can't count yet), fold them like a paper fan, attach a pipe cleaner around the center, and separate the layers of tissue paper so they look flowerish. We used orange, gold, and yellow paper to look like marigolds. I was told by a visitor this is the official flower of the Day of the Dead, but really I don't know. I just went with it. I would say a majority of the people doing this activity were over the age of 10 and got it pretty quickly, but it was the kids between 4 and about 8 who were the most fun. They were able to pick out their paper and got the hang of the folding and separating once they were shown how. They also were more likely to stay and make several flowers. The really little kids were a bit trickier. Their parents seemed reluctant to help, so getting them to make a paper flower meant guiding their hands as I folded the paper (this made them feel involved) and then doing the separating myself. I didn't mind at all though, it was a blast. By the end of the day, the whole museum seemed to have paper flowers in their hair, around their wrists, or in their hands.

The activities seemed fairly successful and I am definitely glad I got to participate. I'm hoping to go back the first weekend in December and do it again!

I quickly want to mention the state of my new blog site. I am most of the way through redesigning it and have officially purchased my new domain. Once I launch the site, the address will be artwithoutpretense.com so look forward to that in the near future. It's going to be a more extensive site than this one, with a collection of my photos in addition to the blog itself. I've been using iWeb to try and put it together, which works relatively well but it takes time to personalize it. Like I said last week, if you're enjoying my blog, please follow me and feel free to comment!

updates of the new variety

2009-10-28T10:42:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed an upswing in postings lately. This is due to a variety of factors, the most important of which is that I have decided I really want to work on this blog. I wasn't sure at first, but the more I have to write about, the more I want to write. Funny, isn't it? And lately I have been doing a lot of art-related work, leading to more interesting topics of discussion. In order to make my blogging more significant and maybe get a higher number of readers, I have decided to get a proper domain name and make a real website to accompany the blog itself. I am the first to admit that I know next to nothing about web design, but I feel I am a creative person and that I can wing the technical side. Code schmode. I want a blog that reflects me, not the generic layouts blogger provides. So for those of you have been reading my blog with any kind of regularity, I thank you and ask for some patience while I work on my new layout and eventually get it up and running. In the meantime, I changed the layout of this blog since the green was starting to drive me a little crazy. Thoughts?

I am also really trying to broaden my readership, so if you have been reading my blog and enjoying it, I encourage you to follow me. This will help me analyze who's reading and how many of you there are. Perhaps this is shameless self-promotion, but isn't that what blogging is all about anyway? Oh and feel free to leave comments too!

As for what I'm up to. Well, I'm beginning a small job at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this Sunday. On weekends, their education department offers Family Day activities to try and get young children interested in the arts and museums. I'll be there this week for the Day of the Dead festivities. What this entails, I have yet to find out, but I'm hoping it's full of glitter, glue, and skeletons. I'll let you know how it turns out and try to post some pictures. (I'm working on getting better photos, but the ones from La Salle's Art Museum are from my phone, so I apologize about the quality).

I am also seriously considering taking a class in traditional glass blowing. I visited the Maryland Renaissance Festival this weekend, which I visit every year (it's just the right blend of tacky and ridiculous for my taste). Plus, who doesn't love paying an entrance fee to go spend more money on food?! Whenever I go, I make a point of watching the glass blowing demonstration. The master glass blower offers classes and I thought I might give it a try. I may be creative, but I often wish I was more artistic and how exciting would it be to learn a craft that so few people can do these days? It's also incredibly beautiful; I would love to be able to make custom glassware for my home. It might just be a pipe dream, but I may really be serious about this. Time will tell. As an added bonus, dressing like this guy would be spiffy. Cheers!

rare books, recovered

2009-10-21T17:18:00.005-04:00

I found something fairly intriguing while working in the museum today and I thought I'd share. La Salle's museum owns a pretty impressive painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner called "Mary". For anyone who knows Tanner (or even less likely, someone who's seen the La Salle piece), he was the first African American painter trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philly and is a pretty major artist these days. It was considered quite the "coup" when La Salle purchased this painting, or so the newspapers said.

Anyway, part of my database job is to go through all the files on record for each artist in the collection and make sure there is a reference to the materials in that file on the database entry. (That's a terrible sentence, but I don't care to rephrase, just read carefully) It can be fairly tedious, especially when you've just looked at the 300th letter in the file that begins "Dear M. so-and-so, I recently received your correspondence and am most pleased to assist you in your endeavor to research our latest acquisition, the (insert title here) by (insert artist here). It is by far one of the finest in our collection..." Tanner's file is very likely the largest we have on record (so big, it needs three file folders to contain everything) and it took me a good hour to sort through everything. Apart from verbose, antiquated correspondence, these files also hold pamphlets and promotions for exhibitions, press releases from museums, newspaper articles, etc. And today I found a gem.

There, wedged in between another "Dear M." and something from the Philadelphia Museum of Art was a fat little book from a show at the Pennsylvania Academy circa 1901.

Yes, that's right, a 107 year-old book just stuck in the folder as if it wasn't important. The catalogue contains information about Tanner, his contemporary John Singer Sargent (he's important too), and a variety of other former students of PAFA.

Now I'm no book expert, but this seemed to qualify as a rare book to me, so I showed it to the curator. She was totally shocked and had no idea the catalogue was there at all. We both felt a little odd about touching it, afraid it might start shredding in our hands. So she had me give the book to the museum assistant, Michele so it can be officially added (accessioned) into the museum's library. We also have to see about some sort of protective box or casing because it may be in decent condition now, but I doubt it will look this good in another hundred years. Anyway, imagine me discovering a rare book and adding to an official library! I thought it was pretty cool...as you might have guessed.

In other news, I will be working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art once again come November 1. Their education department has family day activities a few Sundays a month and they needed people to help out (paid for once!). The La Salle director of education, Miranda, sent my name over and things worked out in my favor. The first one is for the Day of the Dead and I will be introducing a variety of activities and information to kids and their families before they go exploring the museum. It's not much, but every little bit in the right direction helps!

working for my living...or volunteering for experience that is

2009-10-07T17:39:00.007-04:00

Judging by my last post, I'd say I've been having trouble sitting and writing this. Perhaps I'm not the motivated blogger I hoped to be. But tonight, as I wait for my class to start in a few minutes, I thought I would share what I've been up to for the last month plus.

At the end of August, I began volunteering at the La Salle Art Museum. Yes, that's right, I teach at the school but have to volunteer at the museum. It's the only viable option for a PhD-less 24 year-old who wants to curate. Them's the breaks though. I don't know why I didn't think to volunteer there sooner except that I just didn't know what I was doing with my life and it never occurred to me. Anyway, I'm getting some incredible opportunities which I would never have received at a bigger museum. Bigger museum's make you pick what you want do. My problem -- I don't know exactly. Nor am I terribly picky at this oh-so-early point in my professional life. So getting to do a little bit of everything suits me just fine. It seems to suit the curators too. Ostensibly I am maintaing/updating their online database (which has yet to go online), but in truth I am learning how a museum is run and getting some legitimate hands on experience. So let me give you the run-down.

A) Database maintainence/updating: ensuring that all paper documentation of every accessioned (offical piece in the collection) is properly added into the computer database. We use the incredibly poor Microsoft Access with a platform specifically for art museums. It's terrible -- slow, limited, and shuts down a lot inexplicably. But it works and it's all they could afford. I am also in the process of photographing any works of art without photos or whose photos are too large to upload. Amazingly, my Staples copy center experience has come in handy.

B) Registrar duties -- a museum registrar is the person in charge of accessioning new artworks (adding them to the official collection). They also keep track of when/where things go on loan, and basically employs all the info that I'm putting into the database. There is no official registrar at La Salle (they're grant-funded so they hire sparingly) and the Assistant Curator, Carmen, ends up doing it. Since she's the one I'm working for directly, I have been helping her. Just today, we added a new graphic drawing to the collection and I did the official record myself!

C) The first week of September, I got to work with a painting conservator, Stephen Erisoty, that the museum contracted to examine 34 works of art. He had to determine what work they might need and then wrote reports on what it would take to improve them (and how costly it would be!). He was incredibly open to my questions and I worked with him for about two weeks. I helped set up lighting for photos, examine how the canvases were attached to their frames, and learned how to look at paintings under ultra violet light. The ultra violet is incredible. It shows you things on the canvas and under the paint you could never see with the naked eye. For example, this painting revealed a teeny figure, totally invisible to the naked eye, but pretty clear under UV. If you look closely at the detail photo on the right, you might see it.

There was another piece from the 17th century where we discovered that a hand (which originally made a supposedly rude gesture) had been painted over, very carefully so that no one could tell, sometime in the 1940s or 50s to make the painting more appropriate. We would never have caught it except that a scholar on the painter sent us photograph from that time which showed us the original hand gesture. I was duly impressed and pleased to have been there.

D) While working with the conservator, I learned about the proper way to secure canvases to frames. I have since become the resident frame handler, fixing anything that needs a little work. Today, I put together all the frames for a new print exhibit we are hanging tomorrow. There was also a piece which fell from its storage facility and I was the one who repaired it.

I'm only in the museum two days a week, but I find I'm learning so much in those days that it's enough. I'm seriously loving and know for certain I want to be in museums permanently. If I could just convince a museum to pay me for my time...

walking through france

2009-08-07T15:36:00.002-04:00

Last week I spent the best dollar I've used in a while. I was in the public library (yes they still exist and they're actually quite excellent) and stumbled across a pile of old books the library was selling. Every book for a dollar. And there, right on top, was a book called "Walking Through France" by Bruce LeFavour. I'll be honest, I only picked it up because it said France on the cover. In all of about 2 seconds I decided to buy it. The librarian asked if I was planning a trip to France. "No, I just love the French." "Oh...that's...nice," replied the librarian. When I got home, I started flipping through the book, thinking it was just any old tour guidebook. Turns out, this book offers an entirely new way to vacation in France which I am now totally obsessed with.

While anyone can book a hotel room, a tour bus, buy a eurorail pass, etc., LeFavour advises a slower, more relaxed way to see France. It turns out there is an extremely extensive set of well-marked walking trails which cover the entire French countryside. The book divides the country into sections, discussing the merits and drawbacks of walking through each area, but the overall idea is that walking through France is a much more personal and unique way of seeing the country. I'll admit, at first I thought it sounded completely ridiculous. Why would anyone want to spend their entire vacation walking? I've never gotten into the idea of backpacking through Europe. Flea-ridden hostels, meals on the cheap. Not a lot of fun. But the more I read this book, the more intrigued I became. The entire appeal of this way of vacationing is that you have all the comforts of a luxurious guided vacation, but you forgo traditional travel. You stay in hotels or bed and breakfasts, you eat in good restaurants, you just get from one place to the next by walking and you carry your things in a backpack. This means that instead of quickly passing through France and only seeing the tourist destinations everyone else visits, you get to really see France, to meet the people, and see things that most people miss.

The book talks about all the things you need to make a walking vacation feasible and enjoying. Unlike a regular vacation, it takes a lot of advanced planning. You have to examine every aspect of your route so that you're never without a place to stay or eat and you know the relative costs ahead of time. On the other hand, everything is spontaneous and flexible once you get there. There are no guides structuring your day. No travel restrictions. If you feel like stopping somewhere, there's nothing to stop you. What makes this possible is that, unlike the U.S., France is composed of small town after small town so that you're never more than a kilometer or two away from a place to eat and sleep. And they're usually charming and inexpensive places to stay. More-so than fancy hotels and big cities.

If you haven't figured out by now, I am dead-set on planning on walking vacation now. I've been dying for A) a proper vacation and B) to revisit France for ages now and this seems to completely suit the things I like in a vacation. I broached the subject with my boyfriend Jim, thinking he would hate the idea. Turns out he's totally into it. So we are now in training for our very first walking vacation, although we have yet to figure out how to make it happen. We have decided on the Loire Valley since I'd really like to see the chateaux and LeFavour says it is one of the best trails for beginners. We've got a long way to go before this happens, but I'm already feeling this book was an incredible investment. So be ready for more posts about my forthcoming trip and eventually I'll let you know how it works out!

Art Crime

2009-07-31T16:24:00.002-04:00

Clearly it's been awhile since I've written anything here. Mostly due to a summer-long sense of ennui with my daily activities. But with the end of summer in sight and exciting activities looming, I'm feeling the writing vibe once more. (Bizarre that I'm ready for the summer to end, I suppose, but I've never been much of a fan.)

It has occurred to me of late that I am probably pursuing the correct career path in life as I've been having a blast researching and planning the course I'm teaching this fall. I've long loved 19th century art, probably because so much of it is French and I have an ever-present love affair with the French. This, of course, is the subject of my upcoming course and it's like reconnecting with an old friend prepping for it. I have some unique ideas to share with my students (including recreating a 19th century exhibit right in the classroom) that I hope they enjoy...or at least don't hate. I was also thrilled to hear that I might have a total of 3-4 courses in the spring due to another professor's probable sabbatical.

I will also be working at the La Salle art museum starting mid-August, putting together an online database of their works and hopefully getting a little curatorial and conservation experience! Anything to pad the resume. Unpaid, naturally, but I'm taking what I can get.

In my abundant free time since classes ended at La Salle and before this museum gig begins, I've been reading at record pace to fill my days. I just finished a phenomenal novel called the Art Thief by professor on art crimes, Noah Charney. Charney is the founding director of ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes against Art), the world's only organization dedicated to art and culture crimes. After finishing the book, I did some research on Charney and ARCA and learned that far from being the glamorous invention of the film industry, art crime is actually the third largest criminal field in the world (after drugs and arms). According to Charney, it is largely funded by organized crime, particularly in Italy where something like 30,000 art thefts are reported per year. I found my little sojourn into the world of art theft fascinating and am tempted to shell out the $40 for a subscription to ARCA's biannual journal on the subject. Charney is also speaking at the University of New Haven in November and I'm seriously considering attending (even though it would mean canceling one of my weekly classes). For the inflated price of $100 I could hear first-hand about the very real world of crimes against art. Steep fee...but perhaps worth it. If you're curious about art crime, here's the ARCA website. http://www.artcrime.info/index.htm

And I suppose that's all I've got for now. A bien tot!

update for lisa

2009-06-09T12:49:00.004-04:00

Time for a new blog I think. My good friend Lisa actually wanted to post, but hasn't had the time, so I posting in her place. We would like to bring to your attention two internet gems you should enjoy at your leisure.

The first is probably the more artsy of the two. For those of you with Flickr accounts, you may or may not have seen this. Either way you can enjoy this page.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/lookingintothepast/pool/show/

This particular Flickr group collects a combination of old and new photos people have taken. These photos are made into composite images so that the old photo fills in a section of the new photo. The end result is kind of like a secret glimpse into the past from the modern world. It's an incredible idea and each image has an old world charm to it no matter what the location looks like now. I wish I'd thought of it!

The next thing is the video below. It's an interview between Jimmy Fallon and Mark-Paul Gosselaar aka Zach Morris. Mark comes out in full Zach Morris disguise and keeps of the act the entire interview without breaking character once. For those of you who lived in the 90s, enjoy!

recycling is not always a good policy

2009-05-27T12:00:00.002-04:00

It appears increasingly clear to me that we live in the age of the remake. Judging by the overwhelming amount of material in bookstores and libraries, I would go out on a limb and say there is no shortage of creativity in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the people with the good ideas are not the ones in charge of movies and tv programming. In the last few years I have noticed an ever-growing number of recycled ideas, producing remake after sequel after prequel. Movies long-considered classics are being desecrated as if the work and acting that went into them meant nothing. For example, I'm not much of a Rocky fan but I can respect them. The plots are interesting, the acting quality. But really, how long are we supposed to accept new Rocky films for? Stalone is aging, and none too gracefully, if that's not being too unkind. The more attempts at new movies there are, the poorer the quality becomes. Now I'm not saying reusing ideas is always a bad thing. I am personally a very big fan of the new Batman movies. They are actually supremely better than the original series from the 90's. I think a little more care is necessary though. Do we really need a re-make of the Karate Kid? If it's good to begin with, what does remaking it accomplish? More money? Not much, I'm sure. Especially when the remake is about a kid (Will Smith's son) who goes to China and learns kung-fu (from Jacki Chan no less) rather than Karate in southern California. Does no one involved with the movie see the irony there?? Just recently, I was completely offended to find that ABC Family is making a television show out of the 90's cult film 10 Things I Hate About You. I would never dare put this movie up there with say, Forest Gump or the Maltese Falcon, but it's a wonderful movie and not particularly old. I can see that its continued popularity would be a tempting offer for money-grubbing producers. But to do it SO badly is just a crime. The acting looks abominable and they're even re-using the scene when Heath Ledger sings Frankie Valley's "Can't Take my Eyes off of You". Why? I have to ask. Of course, 10 Thing I Hate About You was already a remake of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew". Does anyone realize that they're remaking a remake? How far can this go before someone finally wises up and finds some new ideas?

As I said before, there are plenty of new ideas out there. It's a shame that a) Hollywood isn't paying enough attention to them and b) when they do they screw it up royally. The disaster made out of Harry Potter is completely upsetting. That's one series I hope gets remade, but carefully and obviously better. The problem, as I see it, is a serious unwillingness to take the time and money necessary to create movies and television worth producing and significant ineptitude on the part of producers and writers. They get caught up with the provocation of quick money from old ideas and forget that it's the new, creative, and carefully executed ideas that people remember and pay to see.

ending on an up-note

2009-05-20T09:42:00.002-04:00

This past semester I taught two sections of the same introductory art class. For the most part, I did the same things in both classes, but they each had a totally different personality. One class was just totally silent, refusing to laugh at anything and hardly ever answering direct questions. All irritation aside, their silence made me all the more grateful for my other class. Not that I think I'm funny or anything of the sort, but this class had a good sense of humor. I showed both classes the French New Wave film Breathless by Jean-Luc Goddard a few months ago. The reactions in the two classes were pretty distinct. Watching this film was the first moment I clearly saw the differences between the two classes. For those of you who haven't seen Breathless, it's a black and white film set in Paris in the 1960's. The main character is basically a petty criminal who flits from woman to woman, carelessly stealing and killing people throughout Paris. The final scene of the film is one of the greatest endings I've ever seen. The main character, Michel, gets shot in his stomach while running from the cops. Rather than falling and dying instantly, Michel continues to run away. He clutches his back, although he was obviously shot in the front, stumbling from one side of the street to the other. Michel alternates which hand he holds his back with depending on which way he is running. The entire scene is highly comical. It ends with Michel falling on his back, staring up at the two cops and his girlfriend who have followed him down the street. Every time I watch Breathless, I can't help laughing uncontrollably here. And right on cue, my easy-going class found the end of Breathless completely hilarious. My other class...absolute silence. I might as well have told them I was holding them hostage and making them eat worms. Or something equally offensive. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed.

A few weeks ago another opportunity to share a great film with my classes presented itself. Fearing the pin-dropping silence of the Breathless incident, I decided not to show the film in my serious class, just to the kids with a sense of humor. Call that unfair if you like, but that's the decision I made. Anyway, the film I chose to show was Pollock which stars Ed Harris playing Jackson Pollock. I remember watching it at some point while an undergrad and it's an excellent movie. None of my students knew a thing about Pollock and had no idea what to expect. The movie is basically a biopic which does an excellent job exploring Jackson Pollock's tragic genius. I spaced it out over two classes so the movie would be the last thing we did before the final exam. Clever me never saw the irony behind this. At the end of the second class, kids were clearly getting a little antsy. They had not disappointed me so far, finding the movie both compelling and humorous, but it is long and they could see the sunny freedom of summer looming. As one kid stood up to leave I asked him why he didn't want to stay til the end, there were only five minutes left. He looked at me and said "Well...what happens?" Knowing full-well the end of Pollock is the end of Jackson Pollock's life, i replied "Just watch." He sat back down and a few minutes later an extremely drunken Jackson Pollock came careening across the screen, rolling his car, killing himself and one of his two passengers. That's the last scene of the movie. As the credits started, the kid anxious to leave and few others all looked up at me with looks of amused horror. "You really like to end things on an up-note don't you?" "Positive reinforcement," I responded. In hind site, it probably wasn't the best way to end the semester. But on the other hand, those kids will never forget my class. So mission accomplished, I think.

This week I started teaching the same class for a summer section. I haven't decided if we're going to watch both films, but I'm hoping to have some equally memorable moments. I'll let you know what happens.

top 4 exhibits

2009-05-13T06:33:00.007-04:00

Within the last two years or so, I have really begun to pay close attention to the way museum exhibits are designed. With a significant interest in museum education and curating it has occurred to me (obviously) that the layout of an exhibit is what makes or breaks it. Not in terms of popularity, but in terms of how much visitors gain from it. You can fill a room of the most popular art around...say Impressionism (gag)...and still not produce a worthwhile exhibit. Just because people like the subject matter, doesn't mean they'll get a thing out of the show. However, there are a few exhibits I have had the chance to visit that really struck me as informative, visually pleasing, and not overwhelming to anyone with little art historical knowledge (which is something like 95% of museum visitors). Of course, I have not been to every show in the last 2 years plus. But I've been going to an ever-increasing number of them. So here I have ranked and commented on the top 5 shows I have attended since I began taking notice of museum exhibit design.

4. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), NY - Jeff Wall, 2007

Jeff Wall is a contemporary Canadian artist who specializes in photography. Rather than just printing his photos, however, he transforms them into elaborate light boxes which are backlit so that the image glows. Most of them are massive and totally confrontational. He addresses a grungyer side of life in his work, using the homeless, druggies, trash, contruction, etc. in his pieces. The pieces aren't snapshots of the dirtier side of life, though. They're all composed to affect us a certain way. Many of his pieces are references to major works of art. A lot of the pieces are strangely sad although why they are sad can be difficult to determine.

MOMA's retrospective on Jeff Wall in 2007 was my first introduction to his work. I happened to be at the museum when the show was on and figured I'd take a look. I had no idea what to expect, but was completely thrilled with what I found. The exhibit started out small. There were pieces of dirty construction sites, seedy alleys, and rather frightening portraits. As the show progressed, the pieces got bigger and more impressive. My favorite was one I recognized as a modernized version of a Japanese ukiyo-e print I'd seen in one of my art classes and on tons of postcards. The original is called "A Sudden Gust of Wind" by Hokusai, one of the most famous ukiyo-e artists. Wall's update makes the scene dirty, moving it to a more industrial setting. The desolate

feeling he captures there was a theme I began to see throughout the exhibit. By the time I got to the last few pieces, I was curious to learn more and also a little down. Wall's work can be a little depressing but totally captivating at the same time. If you have a chance to see something of his, I would thoroughly recommend going.

3. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia - Cezanne & Beyond, 2009

For those of you living in or around Philly who haven't been to see the Cezanne show at the Phila Museum of Art, you are definitely missing out. It's been some time since I went, but this was probably one of the most effectively designed exhibits I've been to. They strategically placed significant pieces by Cezanne next to 2-3 pieces by artists influenced directly by Cezanne. They also linked the audio tour to these pieces so that anyone trying to learn a bit more about Cezanne's work then learned about his influences in art. The show was not just about Cezanne (a man whose importance is pushed by art historians but who not everyone appreciates). By spreading the focus of the show onto Cezanne's influence rather than the beauty of his work, the show suddenly took on a much more effective role. Even a visitor with zero interest or knowledge in modern painting could find something to appreciate in the show. Even a little Jeff Wall. If you've been thinking of going and haven't...GO. There's still two weeks before it ends. You won't regret the $20. It's the first really impressive show the Phila Museum has put on since Dali in 2005. It follows a string of less-than-exciting shows (Wyeth, Tesoros, Renoir landscapes...) and shows a turn in the museum's awareness of how to present works of art to the public.

2. Phila Museum of Art, Philadelphia - Dali, 2005

This is what those of us who like to think they know about museums refer to as a "blockbuster" show. Museums have to put these on every few years to make up for the less popular shows they've done in between. Often they end up being really forced, playing up art that people think is pretty and therefore will bring in large crowds (again Impressionists - shudder). Dali is one of those big name artists that lots of people know and instantly attracts fans. This show was nothing short of a blockbuster, sold out every day and extended several weeks longer than its intended run to accommodate the massive crowds. What made the show special was how valid the popularity was. The collection of Dali's work they exhibited was endlessly impressive. Visitors got a glimpse at Dali's weirdness and the extent of work. They saw his early dream images, learning about his life in Spain. Then they saw the older Dali, a star of the art world, loved for his spontaneity. The show provided an overall appreciation of Salvador Dali and his importance to the art world. The museum also succeeded in getting a huge number of people interested in art -- no easy feat judging by their other shows since Dali.

1. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. - DADA, 2006

This is by far the best exhibit I have visited to date. DADA is another one of those topics that is sure to bring in crowds but could easily be a failure as a show. This particular exhibit was thoroughly unique in its approach to DADA. Rather than highlighting a few artists or displaying things chronologically, they split the collection up by the cities involved in DADA. Zurich, Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, Paris, and New York. Each city had a unique style of DADA and to explore this, each room of the exhibit took on a unique persona. The show also included far more than just DADA art. DADA was also a literary and theatrical movement and the show included elements of all three. The best piece I saw was Tristan Tzara's poem "How to make a Dadaist poem". It was split up line by line and placed on the edges of steps leading from the first floor of the exhibit to the second. The staircase wound in circle and as visitors climbed, they could read the poem. It was a fitting way to take DADA in -- full of randomness and disconnect. By the time I got to the end of the show, I had almost experienced six totally different shows connected by their Dadaist goals but separated by the manifestation of these goals. It was the first time I really felt awed by a trip to a museum.

Take a newspaper.

Take a pair of scissors.

Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.

Cut out the article.

Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.

Shake it gently.

Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.

Copy conscientiously.

The poem will be like you.

And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

-Tristan Tzara

testing the water

2009-05-12T00:49:00.002-04:00

As the first posting here at art without pretense, I thought it important to share what this page is all about. As an aspiring art historian slash contributing member of the art world, I'm constantly looking for new ways to get myself involved in the arts. It's crucial to stay up-to-date with all the latest and greatest in exhibits, articles, and trends. And frankly, it's exhausting. In the last two years I've gone from undergraduate student in Philadelphia to master's student in Toronto to adjunct professor back in Philadelphia. I'm a member of the College Art Association, the American Association of Museums, and I read as many issues of major art publications as I can stomach. But somehow, it's not enough to feel like a success in the stuffy world of art. There's a disconnect between those who practice art and those who study its history. You have to be young and trendy and edgy to make it as an artist but you have to be willing to bide by the old rules to make it in art history. My hope is to eventually bridge this gap and make a place for a young wannabe-trendy and edgy art historian. To start this mystical journey, I will be writing here, sharing my latest interests in art. My goal is to get some of my young, trendy and edgy friends on here as well to keep this thing from getting boring. I have plenty of ideas just itching to be explored, but I'll stockpile them for now and keep any potential readers on pins and needles until I'm good and ready to share them. Of course, I'll probably sound a bit pretentious from time to time. After all, this blog is for my own artistic self-indulgence. But I've got an open mind to new things...unless it's about your musical tastes, in which case, I'll pass.