Ann Hamilton (Part 3 of 5, "Art:21")

Ann Hamilton - Not the typical artist most people think of. She does embroidery, sewing, knitting, and makes art with words. One of her philosophies I found attractive was the idea that cloth is made up of individual threads. The threads make up one big whole, but you can still see each tiny one, and without them, the cloth wouldn't exist. It's much like the world we live in. Shown below is Lineament, 1994. The objects are lines taken out of a book and spun together into a ball like thread. The purpose of this piece was to take two-dimensional objects, words on the page of a book, and turn it into an object with three dimensions, the ball of thread. It reminds me of how people would always say you can't touch words, you can only touch the ink and the paper, but it still seems like they are there. This project makes them all the more palpable.

Elizabeth Murray (Part 2 of 5, "Art:21")

The Sun and the Moon, 2005

Elizabeth Murray - For Murray, painting is an extremely physical exercise, like squeezing the paint out of the tubes. The paint is fluid and out of control, and it is her job as the artist to harness it via "my mind letting my arm make the decision." I found that she had many metaphors to describe art in a way that I could understand. Being an artist is like being a safebreaker listening for the click. She describes her cartoony work as shapes onto each other like a weird lattice with intense color. However, she takes each piece very seriously. She doesn't want her work to be too descriptive, rather, she wants to leave room for the viewer to interpret and reflect. That ideal is a key aspect of what art is. To me, she appears to be a fairly intense person. She relies on her children to help take her mind off herself. She works in isolation as many serious artists do. Art is about the self. It is an activity of intense reflection and often social isolation for many individuals.

Vija Celmins (Part 1 of 5, "Art:21")

Vija Celmins - My impression of her personality was that she seemed very abstract and scatterbrained. However, she seems to have a good work ethic. The painting of the stars is a project that she is determined to see through to the end until she is satsified with it. She has worked on it so many time, painting over it again and again, that she feels the work has its own memory. To Celmins, her job is building a painting. Every project is a significant undertaking. She seems to be guided by routine and repetetivity. She created several pieces that were inspired by waves, making the same general image, but with subtle differences in medium and finish. Featured below from the left are Untitled (Web 2), 2001, Web #1, 2001, and Untitled (Web), 2000. Note how she features the same topic in several images, while finding different ways to portray it each time.

Reading Images Group 1

Reading Images Group 1
It is difficult to summarize a relationship that all the images in the group share. The relationships appear to more web-like, with some images linked to others through intermediate images. To start, images 1, 5, and 6 are all signs. Their purpose is communication. Their appearance is intended to be universal, so they communicate the same desired meaning wherever they are placed. On the other hand, image 2 is less universal, since the general population does not know Latin (at least that's what I think the language is). The signs that are often placed on doors and around buildings relate to image 4, the footprints in the sand. We are a highly mobile people, always busy and on the go, and we need simple images to guide us. That's why the stop sign is so effective. It's not full of complex pictures and directions. If we had to read signs like image 2, we wouldn't get very far in our daily lives. A fingerprint (image 3) can also be interpreted as a sign or indicator. Each ridge and loop holds some significance, and the combination of the 34 grooves results in the truly unique finger print of one individual.

Torolab's "The Region of the Transborder Trousers"

Using GPS units attached to the clothing of five subjects, Torolab documented the travel of the individuals around Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California over a period of five days. The GPS plots and fuel consumption data from the subjects' cars was displayed digitally on a large grid representing a topographical map of the area. All the data of the movements are displayed in an eight minute loop.

This project has several interesting implications. First, one can visually see the daily movement of several average individuals. To me, it represents our "on the go" lifestyles. The area that was chosen for this project is a border crossing hot spot, representing the very politically charged issue of immigration in North America. Finally, it is also a statement of how practical technology can be used to make a stunning artistic presentation.

The presentation itself was very eye catching. The colors and intricacies grabbed my attention, and the concept behind the project reinforced my curiosity. One of my concepts of art is that it is something that conveys a message, which this clearly does. Its peculiarity, being a large square grid full of lights, colors, and movements, is also visually appealing.

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