Taking a Trip back to the Mystery Suitcase Theatre for the upcoming Tim Murphy Art Gallery Exhibition Entries.
Thematic Prompt Stomp
Artists will pick a theme from the suitcase. An artist can choose up to three times to find a theme they feel they can work with.
Engaging Pages
Students will research their theme in art within journal pages, answering questions such as:
What has been done? What hasn't?
Who works with that theme?
Where is that theme widely found in art?
Was there a specific time period wherein this theme was more prominent in art?
What did the art look like? (Find, print, and fix printed matter and reflect)
*Research could be in the form of notes, drawings, printed information, concept maps, brainstorms, or any other way students learn to decipher and store information.
To the Drawing and Painting Board
Three artworks based on chosen theme.
3 works 8x10 or larger, drawing, painting, or mixed media. The first artwork should be completed before you begin your research, the second will be done during your research, and your third piece will be worked after your research is complete. If you are submitting in another category please talk with Mrs. Downs-Doubrava before starting.
Artists will pick a theme from the suitcase. An artist can choose up to three times to find a theme they feel they can work with.
Engaging Pages
Students will research their theme in art within journal pages, answering questions such as:
What has been done? What hasn't?
Who works with that theme?
Where is that theme widely found in art?
Was there a specific time period wherein this theme was more prominent in art?
What did the art look like? (Find, print, and fix printed matter and reflect)
*Research could be in the form of notes, drawings, printed information, concept maps, brainstorms, or any other way students learn to decipher and store information.
To the Drawing and Painting Board
Three artworks based on chosen theme.
3 works 8x10 or larger, drawing, painting, or mixed media. The first artwork should be completed before you begin your research, the second will be done during your research, and your third piece will be worked after your research is complete. If you are submitting in another category please talk with Mrs. Downs-Doubrava before starting.
Mystery Artist Statement
Art is the most consistent element of my life. I believe I was born an artist. Unable to truly process or express anything without a visual language of some kind, I turn to imagery and always have. Imagery allows me to translate personal battles, memory, mind-body relationships, and the endless complexities of being human into a visual form. By mining personal responses to the world and by embracing my infatuation with life and the human condition, I gather and record, observing intensely my experiences as a human. These observations stimulate within me a constant artistic need to understand more completely the reality in which I exist. My art is myself, my memory, and my world. Making art is a comfort I relate directly to the feeling I remember of being a child and being with my family. I orchestrate my personal responses to the world by making images.
I draw and paint with a certain involuntary and instinctual response, letting marks flow directly from my current emotion, demeanor, and state of mind, both consciously and unconsciously. These images take on an organic life as they become drawings of energies and lines that intersect, move from thick to thin, and advance or recede within colors. I also incorporate representational drawings of myself and elements of other artists, specifically Hannah Wilke. I like comparing methods of abstraction and representation in this way, by putting two distinctive approaches in the same space and asserting their relationship to each other. I often enclose these drawings within a rectangle; doing so visually isolates them and creates a feeling of confinement. I constantly hunt and appropriate found items for mixed media artwork, such as saved pieces of paper, forgotten and discarded books, savory imagery from postcards, travels, and magazines. For me, anything is at risk of being swiped into the depths of my palette’s ample inventory.
The imagery of my work defines my visual language as an organic, abstract, soft, and often feminine rendition of internal spaces. My oil paintings are large and composed of intricate layers of paint. Shapes collide, surfaces intertwine, and the image radiates in a very particular space. My intent is to convey a sense of rawness and honesty and speak to complexities between the internal and the external relationships of the human condition. Experiences are in layers in our minds, bodies are constructed of living layers, our spirits radiate in layers through our experience, and the world manifests itself in layers.
I draw and paint with a certain involuntary and instinctual response, letting marks flow directly from my current emotion, demeanor, and state of mind, both consciously and unconsciously. These images take on an organic life as they become drawings of energies and lines that intersect, move from thick to thin, and advance or recede within colors. I also incorporate representational drawings of myself and elements of other artists, specifically Hannah Wilke. I like comparing methods of abstraction and representation in this way, by putting two distinctive approaches in the same space and asserting their relationship to each other. I often enclose these drawings within a rectangle; doing so visually isolates them and creates a feeling of confinement. I constantly hunt and appropriate found items for mixed media artwork, such as saved pieces of paper, forgotten and discarded books, savory imagery from postcards, travels, and magazines. For me, anything is at risk of being swiped into the depths of my palette’s ample inventory.
The imagery of my work defines my visual language as an organic, abstract, soft, and often feminine rendition of internal spaces. My oil paintings are large and composed of intricate layers of paint. Shapes collide, surfaces intertwine, and the image radiates in a very particular space. My intent is to convey a sense of rawness and honesty and speak to complexities between the internal and the external relationships of the human condition. Experiences are in layers in our minds, bodies are constructed of living layers, our spirits radiate in layers through our experience, and the world manifests itself in layers.
MDB BLOG
Some powerful sustained investigations:
Barbara Kruger (installation artist, graphic designer), Mark Bradford (painter), Julie Mehretu (painter), Kehinde Wiley (painter), Jenny Saville (painter), Francis Bacon (painter), Robert Rauschenberg (collage artist), Louise Bourgoise (drawer, painter, sculptor), James Jean (digital artist), Eva Hesse (sculptor), Janine Antoni, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman (photographer), Nikki S. Lee (photographer), Kerry James Marshall (painter), Jenny Holzer (installation artist), Andy Goldsworthy (installation artist).
Series (sustained investigations) Reminders:
+Think of each artwork within the larger context of the series. Think of the series as an album and the artworks as the songs.
+Work on multiple pieces at a time so they can inform each other.
+Try not to “begin” and “end” pieces, rather work on them continuously.
+Think of the artworks as sentences of a paragraph - parts to/of a whole.
+Arrange individual artworks, but in a flexible order.
+Let your ideas evolve during the production of the artworks instead of turning them on and off. Let them move in and out of each other.
+Keep commonalities between works.
+Working on artworks over an extended period of time allows more insight, exploration, and consistency.
+You are ultimately introducing the element of time, the passage of time. Art is not made in a fragment of a moment, nor is it experienced that way.
Instigation List
1. Draw/paint/collage the opposite feeling then you are experiencing right now. What is it like to feel free?
2. Design a personal symbol and create a personal mantra.
3. Respond visually to any the following:
-Fuel in the fire.
-Underneath.
-Monochromatic garden.
-Bridges
4. Take a walk outside. Look for the following and capture in your visual journal:
-something tiny inside of something huge
-something confusing
-something organic merged with something mechanic
-an object shape cloud
-a sentence made of found words
5. Find an artist to collaborate with, make a scavenger hunt list or an instigation list for each other to investigate.
6. Draw/paint yourself, three styles in one sitting...Cubist, Minimalist, Impressionist.
7. Make an illustrated list of positives from this semester/this year.
Visually represent one of the following:
8. I'm in a jar.
9. Floating with despair.
10. Joint points.
11. Window v. mirror.
12. Reflex or reflection.
13. Lost not lost.
14. Hit the highway.
15. Start anywhere.
16. Paralyzed by fear.
17. Momentum.
18. Make marks with nature.
19. Visually describe your person of admiration.
20. What are you binging on? How can you interpret that into art?
21. Ball point pen hand studies.
Collaboratively Conceptual
Choose one idea or make combinations.
22. Expansion of self-acceptance
23. Fluidity of experience/the self
24. Forced energy
25. Basic needs to meet
26. The feeling of air
27. One day at a time
28. Parameters set
29. Parts to a whole
30. Measure up
31. I'm impenetrable now
32. Pressure points
33. Balance and chaos
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR ART HAS TO OFFER?
creativity
inspiration
understanding
communication
connection through barriers
narrative
expression
relating experiences
placing one's self in the world
education
subjectiveness
change
perspective
Below is an interview between Kerry James Marshall and ART 21. Please take a moment to read the article and browse the images.
