Business Card

Found: My house

This is not art, but it's a catchy thing. We give out business cards all the time and it helps to have one that looks good so people will remember they have it.

Tag

Found: My house

This another thing I found that alone, can not be art. It could be used as a symbol though. It could represent consumerism.

Of course, even though not art, price tags easily catch one's eye. We love to shop and look for sales, and the price tag for some of us can be the most important part of the garment.

Frog

Found: My house

This frog is representative of the multitude of stuffed animals I have. I decided that they are not art because they are made in a factory with machines and assembly lines. They aren't a labor of love. They aren't handmade. They aren't unique. They probably made over 1000 of these little frog key chains.

Also, I have not seen any stuffed animals as part of art exhibits. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't any, just that it's not art in the mainstream sense. To me, stuffed animals are toys and decoration. They are cuddly and make cute gifts. But, they are not works of art.

Shell

Found: My house

This could be a sequel to the coconut. It's one of those things we find on the beach. It's something we love to hunt for and collect. Plenty of people use shells to make craft and paint pictures of shells. But by itself, unmodified, in its natural context, the shell is not art.

From the Beach - Coconut

Found: Beach

This coconut was found on a beach in florida. It could have washed up on the beach, or fallen from a nearby tree. Who knows where it came from? All we know is that it is not art, because it has not yet been modified. There is plenty of art that has been made with coconuts, like party decorations and bikini tops. However, just by itself, it's just a coconut and that's all it can be until it is changed by human hands. It is neat to ponder where in the world it might have come from though. What if it came from all the way across the ocean?

From the Beach - Stump

Found: Beach

This stump was sticking out of the sand at a beach in Florida. It looks like driftwood, but obviously it's not going any where. But driftwood itself is another interesting item to consider when you're trying to figure out what is and isn't art. People certainly use things like this for decorations. They're great to make coffee table out of. As beautiful as the wood is though, it's not art to me, because I see art as something man made, something that was created for some artistic purpose. I would allow a sculpture made with driftwood to be art because the wood was the material the human used to make the art. It's a medium, but the art is the whole finished object. This stump sitting by itself on the beach is neat looking and has some potential, but it's not art.

Tie Strap

Found: My house

I found this downstairs in my basement. There is just no way I could see this as art. Someone please show me how this could be art. It's not art because it's a very simple piece of plastic. It's common. It's cheap. It can be used for just about everything. The cops use them as handcuffs! There is no way that can be artistic. The remarkable thing about this everyday object is not that it isn't art, but rather, like the zipper, how useful it is. Whoever invented the tie strap deserves a thumbs up.

Zipper

Found: My house

To me this zipper is one of those every day things we use that has been decorated a little to use for fashion. It's definately not a work of art in itself, but the color of the metal and the pattern of the string help make whatever it belonged on look more fashionable. I guess you could call it a helper. It's also something we use everyday without thinking about the genius of its invention. Seeing it seperated from whatever it was used on caught my attention. If it was part of the whole jacket or backpack, we wouldn't really notice it that much. But by itself, it's like an arm seperated from a body. It's in an unexpected place.

From the Beach - Seagull Wing

Location: Beach

This could be the second installment of my "dead creature on the beach" series. It's a seagull wing. It's not art itself, but it does remind me of it. It's like a piece that has a mystery about it. What happened to the seagull and why is it separated from it's wing? Where's the rest of it? Did a shark get it? Of course, I didn't get close enough to thoroughly investigate. The wing is similar to a piece you go up to in a museum. It makes you wonder what the artist was trying to convey, what story they were trying to tell.

From the Beach - Man of War

Location: Beach

I found a lot of these critters washed up on a beach in Florida. They are beautiful to see sailing over the water, but quite painful to bump in to. The Man of War has a pretty blue color made by nature. It's not art because basically it's just a dead organism washed ashore by a storm. However, as will be seen in later posts, we are drawn to strange things that show up on the beach. We stand there are gawk and poke and prod at them like they were some kind of art. I stood there for a good while studying the jellyfish because it was strange to see it out of its element. It's like artifacts from other cultures that have been taken and placed in a museum out of their intended context.

Shower

Location: My house

This is a photograph of my shower. It is not art because it is a plain standard design. However, it does have a sculpted look to it. Also, it is a very important aspect of my daily life.

This shower isn't particularly exciting because it's not one of those massive tiled walk-ins that you see in $3 million homes. Now that has to be some kind of art.

Beta Fish

Location: My house

This is my beta fish, Sangre. He is not art because he is a living creature. I'm going to take a stand right now and say pets are not art. The same goes for that lady that was trying to sell "gothic kittens" on eBay.

He is very pretty though, with a bright red body and shiny blue and silver scales. And, he lives in a very pretty fish bowl with glass sea creatures that could be considered art, but they are not the focus of this entry. I wish to change the saying to "Fish are friends, not art!" That's not to say that paintings of fish can't be art.

I like to argue that nature is not art because our perception of nature can be skewed by art, especially if we have not seen much of the natural world for ourselves. Some people go hiking and expect to see waterfalls that look like they do in paintings, but it should be the opposite way. We should expect the paintings to look like the real thing. Our perception of art is generally shaped by our culture, so why is this often not the case when nature is the theme of the piece?

Graphs of Functions

Location: Schaefer Hall


This is a graph of a piece-wise function from a calculus test. It is an image but not art. Especially to me because I am not very fond of math. However, someone who doesn't know math and doesn't know art might be confused about its identity. They might think its some kind of abstract drawing. It certainly looks strange enough.

Rock

Location: Parking Lot near the ARC

I found this rock on my way to class near the parking lot that is located beside the ARC. I was trying to think of ideas for this blog and I remembered something I had seen in the Art21 documentary. The first artist we viewed, Vija Celmins, had pieces that were photographs of arrangements of rocks and their cast duplicates. She had made this natural thing into art. However, in my opinion the rock alone is not art. Art has to be something that has been man made or at least modified by a human. Since the rock shown here is just something I picked up, it's still just a rock. The fact that I took a picture of it is only for demonstrative purposes. I didn't pose it with other objects or change the colors or lighting. It's just an example of an every day, often overlooked natural object.

The Mole

The moles have invaded Nana's House!

The picture on the left was actually taken at the location, but it did not turn out well, so I borrowed another picture from the web.

I don't know of anyone who would consider the work of these little pests to be art. However, they certainly capture our attention when they ruin our lawns. Personally, I delight in walking on top of them and feeling them squish down underneath my feet.

Another thing that caught my interest as I was thinking about these tunnels is how they kind of resemble the mounds that certain Native American tribes made hundreds of years ago. These artifacts are still around today, and can be conidered art because they are man made symbols.

Lab Sketches

Found: Schaefer Hall, the POB Lab

Several of my labs in Principles of Biology consist of looking at slides of organisms through a microscope and then sketching out the cells and structures. My work might be somewhat informative and funny to look at, but I would not call it art because in my opinion. it's not good enough. It really doesn't have to be, either. I just have to show that I made an effort to observe the organism. I think that if I really put a lot of work into it, and wanted to use the sketches for some purpose other than to get a good grade, they could possibly be art, but that is not why I made them. My opinion is that not all illustrations are art. For example, a parent would not likely consider a diagram of a toy they have to put together for their child to be art. The picture is not made to make the viewer think deeply about its meaning. In my case, you can read my notes and know that these are rough sketches of leaf sections. I think what I am trying to say is that context is so important in cases like these. The type or brand of context I'm referring to is purpose, the reason why a drawing was made.

Blank Paper

Found: Campus Center

Be environmentally friendly. Go buy a composition book made out of recycled paper. They're available at the bookstore.

To me, a blank sheet of paper is a reflection of potential. This paper has the potential to be a medium on which to create a work of art. However, the paper itself won't be the art, but the art can not exist without it. So, even though it is not art, it is still very much related to it.

You don't see great works of art on composition notebook paper, but this paper can represent a big sketch pad or a canvas. It is there, just ready for some creation to be wrought upon it.

Pink Fan

Found: Queen Anne

I keep this in my dorm on my desk. I turn it on at night to drown out the noise from out in the halls and that my other roommates make.

I decided that it was not art because I don't use it as a decoration. I use it as a fan. I'm not thrilled that it's pink either, but like I said, it does its job. That's not to say that no painted pieces of metal are art; just that this one isn't a metal sculpture.

Nail Polish

Found: Queen Anne

The medium is not the art. I haven't heard of an artist call their paint the artwork, even though it is what makes the art. It's a profound concept. This nail polish can represent finger paints, watercolors, or house paint. Before it's on the canvas (or nails), it's not art.

Coins

Found: Wintergreen Ski Resort. Change from the token machine in the locker room.

This is another question of functionality versus aesthetics. Even though the coins have these illustrations on them, I don't consider them to be art in the sense that they have any noteworthy merit. They aren't something you would stick in an art museum, but they might go in a history museum.

I also considered this point of view. Maybe the images themselves are art, but the coins they are on are not.