Online Artist #2: Marcel Dazma
Marcel Dazma’s work is very simplistic and yet complex. She’ll have a basic color scheme and at the same time have incredible depth within her content. She unites a great contrast between simplicity in color and complexity in her content. Even within her choice of content there lies a combination of two things normally kept apart like a child and the act of strangling in the second photo below. That one is actually one of my favorite drawings of hers that I found online. (the picture of a tree with a girl standing next to it and the girl is strangling a bat) I like how the red flowers add a pop of color and femininity. Her cute folk tale-like drawings are humorous and yet not too playful. Dazma’s lines are so light and soft pressed that the composition as a whole isn’t too dramatic. There’s a very bleak and pessimistic element that prevents her pieces from being too lighthearted with her style of drawing. Normally when one would think of a girl strangling a bat, the expectation is that the lines would be dark and hard pressed. I like that she doesn’t compose her work the way I expect and combines such human-like characteristics in her animals or plants. Perfect examples of that would be her drawing with a bear singing and playing an instrument for the children (the first picture below). Another example would be how the tree has eyes, a nose, a mouth, and human legs in the second picture below.
To check out more of her work, visit her Richard Heller Gallery collection at: http://www.richardhellergallery.com/dynamic/artwork_display.asp?ArtworkID=444
Online Artist #1: Noriko Ambe
Her attention to detail and ability to create such organic and distorted lines, is why I chose Noriko Ambe as an artist of inspiration. I was impressed by the idea of landscaping books. Most would think to trim the edges of the pages but she did the opposite and cut at the middle of the pages. I liked the way she drew parallels between human emotion and her work. The sense of imperfection and distorted lines creates such beautiful movement and flow.
Here is the link to her website: http://www.norikoambe.com/index.html
Mark Bradford
I can’t help but want to talk about Mark’s basketball video first off. The movie had a serious tagline but I couldn’t help but laugh at it. He had a skirt going four-feet out and when he fell over his skirt would go up and he would almost roll around in his attempt to get back up. His purpose was to represent social roadblocks such as cultural, gender, and racial issues. He wanted to convey the importance of getting back up from those knockdowns.
I enjoyed his large work using advertisements because he would take entirely random topics such as an indian hair advertisement and put it next to an advertisement about immigration papers in thirty days. Instead of complaining or considering the labor intensive factor as a setback, he said that the pace of his projects allowed him to think more. From now on I’ll probably consider more time consuming projects to be a plus rather than a negative. I also appreciated the largeness of his work .
Journal
I bought this cool journal from Anthropologie to start writing and harvesting my ideas for this semester. Each page of this journal has a different texture and thickness. I want my ideas to be as unique as the pages!
Barry McGee & Margaret Kilgallen
“I like things that are handmade” says Margaret Kilgallen. To see her paint such large floor to ceiling murals with a tiny brush is a testament to the need for hand made craft. The largeness of her works looked so painstaking. I could imagine all the patience and time it would take to draw such a large scale pieces of art. I kept looking to see if she was painting on a really large canvas because I couldn’t stand the thought of someone just painting over their work after their exhibit time is through. Being influenced by folk art was apparent through her choice of color in her paintings. Her works seemed mostly composed of red, white, blacks, and sometimes blues, a simple palette that I thought complimented her drawings. Below are two examples of her work:
Barry McGee had truly creative work and it was uniquely stylistic but it bothered me to see him drawing on public walls by the highways. I support art but I don’t support vandalism. Don’t get me wrong though, graffiti art is phenomenal and I understand that a free canvas and large space is appealing but it’s government property. When they were drawing on the train I kept thinking that someone owns that train. I strongly believe in “Do unto others as others would do unto you.” I wouldn’t want someone to be spray painting or drawing on a train that I owned. Below are two examples of his work:
short finger 
