Artist Talk Part 6 Prague!

If I ever come into big money, I am going to set up a scholarship program for art students to go to Prague after graduation.  I can't imagine a better place to decompress.  Art school can be like a creativity butter churn (the student is the cream in this analogy), and after graduation, making art can seem so daunting.  Maybe because my Memphis College of Art is a school that tends to be more conceptual, but it made art feel a little heavy and serious.  I felt pressure to be making art about "issues".  But, being in Prague helped lighten things up a bit.

First off, Prague is beautiful. 

The roads are stone and go in circles, and you can't throw a rock without hitting some sort of ornamental sculpture.  There are no functional gutters, they all seem to be gargoyles, or spitting cherubs.

It feels like you are in a living, breathing fairy tale.  But, the fairy tale is more of the gothic variety instead of the Disney variety. Prague's beauty is breath-taking, but in a dark and twisty way.  I loved walking the streets and observing.  I don't know Czech, so I felt really isolated, in a way that was enjoyable.  I felt like my sense of observation was heightened because I couldn't understand what anyone was saying. 

I had cappuccinos and honey cake almost daily.  Look!  Even the cappuccinos are full of fun and whimsy.

This picture sums up Prague pretty nicely for me.  This is the Television Tower, which was built in the 80's and 90's when czechoslovakia was under communist rule.  The TV tower was resented by the people of Prague, who couldn't openly complain about such things.  

You can see how the tower is hideous compared to the rest of Prague's skyline.

But after the Velvet Revolution and in the year 2000, the city had this Czech artist do an installation involving the tower, so he added a bunch of solid black, shiny babies to it.  They are crawling all over it to this day.  Why?  Because.

Here is another sculpture by the same artist, David Černý, this is a sculpture of one of Prague's former presidents holding onto a pole above the street.

My main objective while in Prague was to take this intensive marionette building workshop taught by a Czech puppet master.  It was magical.  There were about 10 people in the class, all from different countries.  We spent 8 hours in the little workshop carving away at our designs and then in the evenings we would go see various puppet shows or puppetry museums.

In addition to making puppets, we also put on a performance so we could practice using the puppets.  This girl is playing the accordion while we practice singing. 

My puppet design was a three-headed evil business man demon.  My home-town at this point was one of the fastest growing cities in America.  All our farmland was being plowed over and turned into one giant beige strip-mall and this is who I imagined to be behind all the construction decisions. 

Here is my finished puppet.  I designed him to have a bunch of floppy legs, but Mirek, the puppet master helped me give him a unicycle instead.  It works, and the wheel is really squeaky in a way that makes him seem even more evil.

Puppet practice.

Here is our poster for out play, which was so strange that I have no memory of the plot.  I think we sang Witchy Woman, though.

This is a stage from a puppet performance we saw.  In Prague, people go to puppet shows like Americans go to movies.  It is not something strange, it is very common.  In America I mainly notice puppetry during protests and political rallies, which is fun, but I like that in Prague puppets can just be everywhere without reason.  This play was a Rocky-esque play.  Rocky was really huge in Prague while I was there.  One of the puppets was actually a slab of meat.

Here is a shot from a puppet animation studio.

Tiny furniture.

There were quite a few of these boxes outside of storefronts.  The crank on the bottom animated a scene inside.  This one showed a saint being martyred,

Weird window displays.

It snowed once while I was there.  Here is what they do with snow in Prague.

My absolute favorite place in Prague was the Divadlo Minor, Prague's children's puppet theater.  This was in their waiting area,  That room is full of pillows meant for pillow fighting.

Here is their logo.  So cute.

This picture is upside down, but here is another image of the waiting area.

My lesson from Prague was that art doesn't have to be heavy, you can and should make things just because you can.  Joy and whimsy are important.

All Dolled Up Artist Talk.... Part Five

This is a continuation of prep for my upcoming artist talk.
Part one is here
Part two here, and
Part three here
and Part four is here.

For my very last semester at MCA all I took was my painting seminar class. With my previous semester away from the painting studio, I was anxious to start on my thesis work and I knew exactly what I wanted to be making. While doing research on how to construct my dioramas, I found a toy theater book at the library. It is called Toy Theaters of the World and in it, it had images like these:

I was instantly drawn to the pictures in the book, and I loved it so much I actually purchased it, which is huge for a cheap-o like me.  Especially since it is out of print.

I love the facade, the orchestra and all the layers.  I love that there is a pretend audience already there to watch your pretend play.  Also, it's so grandiose, with all the gold and important looking red curtains, but it is a silly object, made out of cardboard and meant to played with on kitchen counter tops.

The toy theater was the perfect medium for what I wanted to communicate about my dad.  Looking at them made me nostalgic for childhood in a similar way that thinking about my father does.  They are also self directed, literally in that the person who plays with the theater is acting as director, actor and audience all in one, which I thought made sense with my memories as well.  Plus they are just simply joyful, fun little things.

This is the picture that gave me the general idea for how I wanted to construct my theaters for my thesis show.

Here is the first one I did.  Again, this is based off of the story of my father "rescuing" my mother from flying out of the car door.  I liked that there was both actual space, with the spacing of the different layers of wood, and implied space with the effects of the paint.

This next one is based on a story my family told me about how I jumped into the public pool without my swimmies on and my dad had to jump in after me with his work clothes on.  The cherubs playing trumpets on the facade are my three brothers.  They have instruments to represent their role in telling me the stories that make up my memory of my dad.  They are also in the back of the pool standing on an inflatable alligator.  Our faces are all photocopies of photographs, and my dad's hands are actually xeroxes of my hands taken directly from the photocopier and then shrunk down.  I did that to show my role in creating my memory of my father.

This final theater is not about a story but rather about how everyone always told me that I had my father's cheeks (big, chubby, rosy).  I remember that being confusing as a child.  I didn't understand how I could have my dad's cheeks when they were on his face and I had my own.  On the facade of this theater, my mom is the statue on either side of the stage.  She has a harp and a scroll to represent how I hear about my father.

I loved making these theaters.  If there are such things as muses, then during my final semester mine was right there beside me, shouting in my ear instead of being coy.   I feel like my whole art school education is summed up nicely in them.  For my final critique, my painting professor brought in a guest from a nearby college, and the only advice he had for me was "eh...  funk it up".  I was so angry at the time, but after some reflection, I think the advice is pretty spot on.  I am still really proud of this work, but I think there was a certain level of control that I wasn't willing to sacrifice when I made them.  Maybe it is because I was too close to the subject matter.  I don't enjoy giving advice, but I will say this, when you are studying art in school, if you are comfortable with what you are doing, then you should throw a wrench in whatever it is.  It's hard and scary, but that is when you are really growing as an artist.  When I look at these theaters now, I want to travel back in time and have more fun with the paint and the composition.  There should be octopus tentacles in the water to give it a sense of danger and a quickly sketched cape around my fathers shoulders.

At graduation I was very fortunate to receive a traveling fellowship, so 6 months after I was done with school I went to Prague to take an intensive puppetry workshop taught by a Czech puppet master.

To be continued...

Billy Bob Boopkins

Here is little Billy walking his dog in the big city.  He is my last little dude for the All Dolled Up show taking place at Vincennes University's gallery.  The opening is February 22nd.  I'm really very excited about it, and I will share the process of setting up and take plenty of pictures for everyone to see. 

Forest Orphans Deer and Bear

Here are my last two forest orphans for the show.  I imagine them spending all day picking berries and herbs for tea.  Then they drink the tea while looking at the stars.  I have one more little person to show you, but I have to make him a furry friend first. 

Bank Robber and Super Hero

These are the only two that made it out of my "super heroes and villains" theme.  The bandit prefers prison garb to all black, and it makes it convenient when he gets thrown into the clinker because then he won't have to change his clothes.  His money bag can be attached and detached via a button.  Inevitably he will get thrown into the clinker because....   He shares the city with this super hero!  I don't know what his super power is.  He has a stormy looking cloud as his emblem, and his cape is silver.  Maybe he has the power to depress villains by making the weather gray and dreary, and then while they're distracted with yearning thoughts of sunnier weather, he swoops in and saves the day!  Yay!  If you have any thoughts on a better super power, please share with me, I'm at a bit of a loss.

Three Charming Fellows

These three are my charming fellows for the All Dolled Up show.  The one in the middle is a ventriloquist.  The top one is a flower salesman and the one on the bottom is about to profess his love to someone special.

All Dolled Up Artist Talk... Part 4

This is a continuation of prep for my upcoming artist talk.
Part one is here
Part two here, and
Part three here!

Back at Memphis College of Art, I let myself explore some non-painting classes that I always wondered about.  It turned out to be a really useful meander (is that word right to use?  I am sure my ruthless editor (husband Joseph) will not think so [I kid, I am super grateful for him, especially since at this rate, my 1 hour talk will be turning into an all night lock-in ((wait, that sounds awesome))]).  I took a fiber arts class, which was amazing.  We learned how to dye fabric, silk screen, embroider and batik.  It was my first time ever being exposed to the world of fiber, and I loved every minute of it.  It was nice to be out of the painting studio and forced to think about what I wanted to communicate artistically with another medium.

More helpful still was my Book Arts class.  I had always assumed that the class was meant for illustration majors who wanted to illustrate books.  But Book Arts is really about art making realized in the form of a book, which can be interpreted very broadly.  Now that I am trying to define it, I feel the words getting all congested in my brain.  In the class, we learned different ways of binding books, which was refreshingly exact and methodical, and we also had assignments of creating more personal artist books.  I think all art majors should be required to take the class, it was so useful in clarifying what I wanted to communicate.  It is unlike painting because things needed to be planned out; there is no getting lost in the material and waiting for happy mistakes. 

My work during this time was still about my father, but it was changing.  I was trying to convey what it is like to have memories of someone that you cherish, but can't trust.  Whenever I think of my father, a collection of stories come to mind, and before my mom got sick, I never questioned their authenticity.  But, after she got sick, we of course talked about my father a lot, and family came around to visit, so I could ask questions.  I realized that these stories I had were more like legends.  They were an amalgam of things I remembered, things others told me, things I replaced with photographs, and things I just made up.  Here is the first book I made during the class, it is called the Day The Door Flew Open, and it is based on a memory of my father driving my family in the car, and then my mom's door flying open, her inching out, and him pulling her in and shutting the door.  To hear it stated plainly, it maybe doesn't sound like much, but in my memory it is very dramatic:

The writing was done with a letter press, which MCA has, and is very fun to use.

I used a photo transfer process to show how my memories of my father are aided strongly by family photo albums.

Each page reveals more and more of the memory, like it is something that needs to be "chipped away" at.

The last page reveals my complete memory which is made using a linolium printing process and then watercoloring over it and photo-transferring on top of that.  Those are my three brothers in the back seat.

Here is another book I made, which is more like a diorama.  It is about a memory I have of grocery shopping with my parents.  I would always beg and plead for quarters for the vending machines to get gumballs, or tiny toys.  My mom would never want to give them to me because she didn't want me to be spoiled, but my father was more of a softie, and he would let coins fall through the holes in his pockets so that I could find them and reap my reward!

It is hard to tell from the image but we are in the "cereal aisle" of the grocery store.  That is probably every child's favorite aisle.  It is basically like watching cartoons.  The cereal boxes I used for the diorama were color photos of japanese cereal boxes.  I thought it would help make things seem more surreal and uncertain, like my memories.

For this last book, I was researching toy theaters, to learn how to construct the box.  That research led to my final thesis work.

To be continued.  Thanks again for reading!  I am tired and have been fueling myself with Twizzlers, which is odd combined with red wine, but at least they pair up color-wise.