“some of which weren’t meant to ever be seen, or are just pieces of the larger picture”
A really intriguing blog post with some quotes from Tim Burton, about his exhibit. Some cool photos of the exhibit too! The section I put here is from my favorite part. 
Click the image to visit where I got it from.
An amazing piece of art that absolutely moves me. I just have to wonder what was going through the artist’s mind as she sketched and painted this series. What do you think when you see this? I think of the suffering that women go through when they are bound by something. It doesn’t matter if they are bound by an outward source or an inward source, when something is holding a woman captive it is traumatic. It could be all sorts of little things, it could be secrets, it could be imperfections, or she could be bound by society’s expectations of her. This image, to me, serves as a reminder to actively pursue my freedom so that no one (including myself) can trick me into becoming bound. This is a modern piece of art, and I really recommend that you follow the link below to view some of the photographs of the artist creating these and of the live model.
See pictures from this live artist performance here.
via Life and Art
Currently art is physically moving me to sleep in my computer chair because the only place I have room for my paintings is on my bed.
Now that I got that horrible joke out of me, I must say I am exhausted. I am exhausted from all of this learning and growing and moving and shifting and changing that I have been doing lately. I’m like a life experience mover & shaker, or something… ha ha… I don’t even know what a “mover and shaker” is, really. Do you know? Would you care to enlighten me? 12:00 AM is not the appropriate hour for me to be doing research like this. Maybe I would be more likely to be sleeping if my own art wasn’t taking up all of the space on my bed.
After sitting in on an “extra” class tonight and eavesdropping on a conversation about writing something about an art piece after you finish it, I couldn’t help but think of what I wrote after I painted “Storms of Life“. I wrote it in my journal, and I decided I would share it with you. It’s really just a bunch of poetic mumbo jumbo, but it is what I felt flowing out of me and I needed to write it down. I even paraphrased it and added some of the words to the painting itself. You could say that I was writing and creating my art at the same time, and bouncing them off of each other.
Anyway, here is what I wrote:
5-23-2011 Rattling
In the lonely shelter of my basement I can hear the storm howling outside, trying to break in. All of my material possessions are rattling upstairs. Alone like me, but they are unprotected. I shiver. Thank goodness for friends and family. A kind warning, a caring hand.
Chaos is the word rushing around in my brain. The back door sounds like it will come undone any minute now. Maybe I am being dramatic. I am not really scared though, because I love storms. Maybe I will read a book because my painting was interrupted. I LOVE TO PAINT!!
Oh my, I hear more sirens now, cop cars and ambulances. Rain, pouring. In my mind I see imagery of glass shattering. I am desperate to go up and see what is going on out there. Maybe even in my house.
Maybe now I will be able to get some sleep. I feel as restless as a summer storm, waiting for my time to strike.
Inspiration does not have to come from the typical source of “beauty”. Oh wait, did I type that and forget to hit backspace? Yeah, I guess I did. GOOD NIGHT.
(P.S. I want another singing assignment… -wink, wink, nudge, nudge-) Ha ha ha ha ha… oh sheesh, I just need to turn this giant mechanical beast OFF.
Last night while the storm was raging outside, I contemplated storms raging on the inside. Ultimately I ended up with this combination of color and text to round out my craze over storms and how powerful they are. They can do incredible things, and bring forth rewarding change after difficult struggles.
I was partly inspired by the Turner video that we watched, and his art, but I have another painting about THAT… ;D
Some storms are harder to face than others, but the faster we learn to dance through them the stronger we will become.
I just felt like sharing it here, because I am definitely applying things I learn in class to my own art…
Here are some photographs from the field trip! 
Sorry I don’t have more… I was ALL over the place excited that day. Besides, most of the places we went technically didn’t allow you to take photographs (so I can’t share the ones that I ended up sneaking… hehe…) This was definitely the most incredible field trip in my world. We did so many amazing things, visited so many amazing places, had so much amazing food to eat, and finished it all off with Stomp! live. It was basically miraculous. I feel like I learned SO many things that just cannot be taught in a classroom that day.
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Before I started this inquiry question of “How does art move us?” or “What causes art to move us?” I already knew that art did in fact move us. I had learned that from many moments of awestruck physical reactions to art. I also feel like art can move us emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It can stretch us, shape us, color us, mold us, and reflect upon us (isn’t it funny that art can do to us the very same things that we do to art?).
Now I seem to have journeyed into the realm of “Where do we go?” or “Where can art take us?” and I love it! I feel like using quotes from “Oh! The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss, but that is just what pops into my head when I think of those two questions. The possibilities are endless. Physically art can take artists around the globe and back again, as they explore new inspirations to paint. It can take viewers around the globe too, as they follow exciting exhibits or museum trails. Emotionally art can take us to places of healing, places of struggle, places of beauty or peace. Mentally art can teach us things that we may not have known before. Spiritually art can open us.
Art can move me from a solid stance of black and white, this is right/wrong/left/right/mine/yours/weird/normal and smack into a place of gray or color where anything is possible. A place where those words no longer exist. A place where we find ourselves asking, “What is right? What is wrong? What is left? What is right? What is mine? What is yours? What is weird? What is normal?” A place where we cannot seem to answer those questions. A place where we don’t seem to care that we can’t answer those questions.
Art can move us apart, and it can move us together.
Art has taken me to some very scary, and also very healing places. Previously I have shared about my relationship, and the fact that it is over. I also shared that I was not only struggling to allow myself to feel pain about it (trying so hard to be strong) but that I started to deny it ever even existed. I was going to pretend it never happened. I could NOT have a failed relationship. What would that say about me? Surely I wasn’t good enough, if I did not succeed in love the first time around.
This is a piece of my personal art that was a very pivotal point in my moving on. It allowed me to remember the wonderful moments, the bittersweet moments, and the sad moments. It allowed me to open up. It allowed me to breathe, cry, feel. I relived the emotions like a roller coaster, and I am surprised this doesn’t have water spots from tears on it. It allowed me to be honest, with myself. Yeah, I missed what we had. Yeah, I missed those bushy eyebrows. Yes, I was in love. Yes, it’s over. Yes, that hurt me. Yes, I felt ashamed. Yes, I grew stronger. Yes, I moved on. I am even stronger in myself now than I was just a short time ago.
I have moved into a new stage in my life. Seeing art, creating art, touching art, learning about art, finding out why the creators created their art, and reflecting on all of it has moved me from one emotional spot to another and I am going to keep moving. Art will always be a part of me, and when my art starts looking the same I know I will have a problem. I never want to be stagnant in my art, or in my life. And aren’t they reflecting each other?
(I have a collage to upload sometime too, reflecting on the field trip. There are also LOTS of photographs… ha ha, please be patient!)
Okay, so I just can’t seem to get this “History of Art III” class out of my head. Heck, I think I’m still amazed at how much of the FIRST Art History class that I took won’t leave me alone. I am always thinking about the class, or seeing things that make me think of it. I love it! I feel like I have had so much growth, not just as an art history student, but as a person.
Yesterday for Mother’s Day (I love you, Mom!) we all went to watch a movie that my mom has wanted to watch for a while. The movie we watched is Soul Surfer and it is about a young girl who loses her arm in a shark attack. All this girl has ever wanted to do is surf, and she feels like her world is shattered but she is trying to stay strong.
She can’t seem to get a perspective on her life, and she has no idea why this could have happened to her. In a beautifully touching scene where she confesses to her mother that she is afraid she will never look normal, or never be loved by a man, her mom uses ART to show her that SHE is beautiful.
“This woman was the pinnacle of beauty for centuries, and she has one less arm than you,” the young dreamer’s mother lovingly explains to her daughter.
I asked myself “What am I learning?” somewhere in the middle of the field trip and I did not have an answer. It was wonderful. I felt full, immersed, soaked, drenched in so much of it that I really did not have a solid answer. I tried. I could have told you some names and dates of paintings, what they were made of, and all those other things… but I didn’t want to. I didn’t learn about that, not really. I learned about art, and the power that it has. I learned about creativity, freedom, rules, passion, systems, trust, communities, struggle, triumph, glory, and shame. I learned about life, and that is something that just has to be learned. I learned to see beyond the black and white, into the colors of everytthing around me!
I am going to create something to better express the things that I learned. Look out, world!
(This is really short, because I still don’t have my own computer up, but I wanted to update a little bit!)
