Artist Talk Reflection: Shelby Rodeffer

Shelby Rodeffer introduced us to the reviving art of sign painting and went into detail about her own process of becoming a professional in the field. I especially enjoyed her frank discussion of the challenges she has faced (and continues to face) in pursuing a creative career while also needing to give up a certain amount of that creativeness to make ends meet- Rodeffer talked about the frustrations of having so many creative ideas for sign art and typography, yet having to comply to the wishes of clients when being hired to paint store windows or signs. Rodeffer also had a certain humor throughout the presentation which I appreciated- one of my favorite pieces which Rodeffer showed was a notecard that sneers at the sudden popularity of generic phrases being aesthetically pasted onto household objects until they are almost meaningless. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate a picture of it, but the notecard is a simple blue one with a fancy cursive script which reads "A pithy phrase carefully printed on archival paper."

http://shelbyrodeffer.com/work/known-unknown/

Something which I appreciated in Rodeffer's talk as well was her honest admittance of sometimes "faking it til you make it." She told the story of her first real commission to paint a storefront window and how she had no idea how to use the materials but powered through until she had a finished product. As someone who always feels as though I'm flying by the seat of my pants, even when I have a plan, I appreciated knowing that other artists who are actually "out in the real world" feel the same way.

Compromise

In this short film, I reflect on our earlier reading and discussion of McLuhan's ideas regarding "seeing as believing" replacing "hearing as believing." I was particularly drawn to these ideas as hearing and seeing have always been compromised for me- I wear glasses and hearing aids, and have heavily relied on them since elementary school. Because of this, understanding what goes on around me is a constant balancing act. While my hearing aids allow me to amplify the world around me in order to understand speech, background noise of any kind compromises my ability to focus on one single conversation, video, or other auditory experience. Similarly when watching films, I always have to struggle between relying on my eyes or ears to understand- often, my ears are not up to the job of parsing out voices onscreen when there are usually other sounds, both onscreen and in my environment, which distract me. Yet if I am watching TV with live captions or movies which have been poorly captioned, my reliance on the words which flash at the bottom of the screen becomes a hindrance once gaps and misspellings create further misunderstanding. 

Because of this, I wanted to attempt to recreate that feeling of sensory overload and confusion in my video. I filmed various friends reading from the passage of the Medium is the Massage which inspired these ideas, but added in background noise from my own hearing aid feedback, muted some of the speech, and kept the running motor of my car as an undertone to the entire video. I chose to start and end the film with the actions of putting in my hearing aids/starting the motor and then turning off the motor and removing my hearing aids to signify the way the world's noises rush in at me whenever I put in my "ears." Finally, I added captioning after making the viewers rely on lip reading to show how much of a reliance can be developed on them, only to garble the text in the next shot so as to point out the frustration of being unable to follow in your chosen (or perhaps forced) way of comprehension.

Artist Talk Reflection: Xiaohong Zhang

Xiaohong Zhang's presentation, "Traversing medium and re-appropriating motifs in contemporary art" outlined the artist's personal inspiration and growth as a political artist and introduced the ways in which she makes use of multiple media to convey her messages. Zhang highlighted artists such as Zhao Wuji and Kara Walker in her talk, having developed her own style through a combination of sorts between Zhao's east-meets-west traditional style and Walker's tableaux paper cuttings. Zhang's own artwork mixes digital, 3-dimensional and physical media to put forth striking political messages. One of these included a beautifully complex series of paper cuttings depicting various family members preparing for school with their loved ones.

http://xiaohongzhang.com/3lastkiss.html

When looked at closer, newspaper clippings from around the world describing the atrocity of the Sandy Hook shooting can be seen pasted across the bodies of the family members. Taken into context with the work's title, "Last Kiss," this piece is a jarring reminder of the horrific loss of human life due to America's rampant gun violence. This work was just one of many examples in which Zhang makes use of both language and imagery to convey a message. McLuhan says, "the method of our time is to use not a single but multiple models for exploration," which Zhang certainly achieves through re-using traditional motifs in her work which often serve to starkly juxtapose western or current styles in order to point out the conflicts of this modern age. Zhang's presentation also touched again on the McLuhan quote which I spoke about in my previous blog post- by combining the traditional styles of different cultures as well as through exploring the use of multiple media, Zhang interposes elements which create thought provoking materials.

Explore!

As a child, fantastical creatures, fairies, and talking animals illustrated my imagination. I could hardly be found without a sketchbook and some new world spinning onto its pages. Once I began school, however, and started taking "serious" art classes, I began to lose touch with that imaginative side of myself. Daunted by the idea of needing to do art "correctly," I was too afraid to pursue what made me most happy until nearly halfway through college, when I finally switched into the studio art program. As a result, my personal mission as an aspiring artist and educator is to encourage others to create simply for the joy of creating. 

The following links describe how the arts can have positive impacts on health, both mental and physical:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/make-more-art-the-health-benefits-of-creativity_b_8868802.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804629/

I have found personally that I most enjoy using mixed materials for 3-dimensional projects. Throughout life I have played with making paper cuttings, working with ceramics, collaging with many different kinds of materials, creating fused glass art, and wood burning, to name some. In summary, my interests are eclectic. As McLuhan explains in his book The Medium is the Massage, "When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result." (10) It is my hope that through gaining an understanding of so many mediums of expression, I will be able to explore ways to combine them and make new meaning from them.

Hans Christian Andersen, usually known for his fairytales, also created paper cuttings which served as another form of storytelling.

Andersen also used his art to benefit others, as evidenced by the story of his "paper cut fairytale":

http://hotelmagazine.dk/articles/the-paper-cut-fairytale-by-hans-christian-andersen/

While art has often been an introspective activity for me, I also feel that it is when we use our art to reach other people that we make a real and positive difference in the world. Musician Ben Harper sums up some of the ways in which we can change the world around us, simply with our own two hands: https://youtu.be/aEnfy9qfdaU.