Week 4

Idea #4: Drawing is also a Language

It was fun to draw whatever you wanted on the drink that you were using and because you got to be with your friends and share ideas with each other. It was also frustrating because you had to draw what you thought of in your head and in your head it looks really beautiful but when it came with you having to use your hand to try and copy what you had in mind it might come out not looking exactly as the image in your head. I always liked to draw but I knew that I was never in the same level as the ones that could draw professionally and trace the objects onto the papers so neatly and perfectly. If I was given the opportunity to try to draw again then yeah I would do it because it is a lot of fun when you can draw whatever you want and especially when you can draw alongside your friends.

In these three photos I tried to draw my friend Derek Zhang as precise as possible but I don’t know how to draw so I drew his face bad. If I practiced drawing for 100 or 1000 hours then I probably would have drew Derek more better and in the pictures it looks like he is just staring but he was smiling under his face mask.

My major is Chinese Studies B.A. Some ways that I think that simple sketches can be useful in my major is when I have to draw an object that I can’t remember the Chinese character of and another one can be where if I don’t remember how to pronounce a certain Chinese character but I remember how it looks like then I can I just write or sketch it.

Drawing can be a language because if you draw a cup for example then any person, it doesn’t matter what nation they are from, will know what the cup is even when if you can’t understand each other because of the language barrier.

Drawings can say things like feelings to the viewer that the artist finds hard to express with just words because in a drawing we can create it with feelings and those feelings reside within the painting when we finish the painting.

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Week 3

Idea #3: You can Find Art everywhere!

The form of my group’s Art at first was a rectangle but after discussing on what to do, we decided to frame our art in an octagon shape. The aesthetics of our art is that it is a window and when looking out of the window you can see almost the whole campus and it shows a very good view of how the campus looks from above. The content in our art is the window, campus, the campus pyramid, the mountains, and the sky.

Before we even put our picture frame around our art, our art was probably already art for some people that came and looked out of this window because to the people that already saw through the window they probably thought that the view was nice and in their minds they thought that the view itself was art.

I think that our art will still be art after the picture frame is gone because to some people the window shows a campus where a lot of dreams are becoming true and a lot of people from different backgrounds are going to school together and the people might see that as a form of art.

Art can reside in the body of the art but it might depend on the person because two people might look at an art piece and both of them will experience a different feeling, one of them might love how the art is and admire it while the other person might not feel anything and think that the art is dumb and has no value. People will know which object is and isn’t art to them because if they feel something from looking at the object then they will consider that as art while if they don’t feel anything then they see it as a normal thing.

Art can be something other than an object like an action, like for example when Mierle Laderman Ukeles washed the stairs of an art museum and she did it because she didn’t want to wait for the staff to clean it so she took matters into her own hands and cleaned the stairs herself and this is an art because it shows how she wanted to preserve the beauty of the art museum by cleaning the stairs.

Art can reside in the experience of the viewer like for example when a person goes to the window that we used as our art the person can kind of see his/her reflection of himself/herself and if he/she takes that into consideration then he/she might see themselves as a part of the campus and without them then the campus is incomplete or the person could see it as his/her future beginning with the campus.

Week 2

Idea #2: Maintenance Art

While I was performing Maintenance Art in the area around the USU, I felt like I was doing something that wouldn’t really catch anyone’s attention but then two random students told me and my group that we were doing a good job in keeping the campus clean and they thanked us too so that made me feel really good of what I was doing.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleaning the steps of an art museum and Richard Serra flinging molten lead against the walls of an art museum are different because Laderman’s choice of cleaning the steps seems passive while Serra’s action of flinging molten lead seems aggressive. They are the same in which they can both be considered art depending on someone’s view and they both portray a type of message. They are both “art” because Ukeles chose to clean the stairs, she wasn’t ordered to clean them and Serra’s way of flinging molten lead shows how even aggression can be an art because it is a human emotion.

I do believe that Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art performance at the Wadsworth Atheneum is “art” because she cleaned the stairs of an art museum without anyone telling her to do it. Her performance at an Art Museum made it art because a janitor could’ve just cleaned the stairs since it’s the janitor’s job but she didn’t want to wait for the stairs to be cleaned so she took matters in her own hands. If she had gotten hired as a janitor somewhere and performed that job for 6 months, it wouldn’t have been art because it would be her job to clean the stairs and she would be instructed to do it but since she wasn’t a janitor, she did it on her own which shows that she cares about the art museum and its appearance. The three things that makes an act “art” is when there is a deeper meaning behind that act, the emotion that is put into it, and the hidden message that it tries to show.

An object or an action can become art because of some intrinsic property of the medium because it is something that is relative to the object or action. An object or an action becomes art because of the intention of the person performing it because the person’s intention could have a hidden meaning or a story behind it. All paintings on canvas are considered art because they are exhibited in art museums but it can be the same case in the other paintings on canvas that don’t get exhibited in art museums because every painting is done with a sort of meaning to the artist or creator that was creating it and that in itself is a really beautiful thing and should be considered art. A house painting isn’t art not because we don’t exhibit painted houses in art museums but because we paint houses in a normal color to protect the outer layer of the house. A painting on canvas can sometimes not be considered art like for example the banana taped to the wall, I just don’t see a meaning behind it because the person, Maurizio Cattelan, just taped a banana to the wall. Painting a house can be considered an art depending on how it is painted like and how creative the painting on the house is like for example, making the house look like it’s upside-down or putting stripes on it or making it look like there is no house.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Jennifer Lopez made me think differently about “Women’s Work” because I saw how a woman is usually doing things for us dumb men and we take it for granted. “Women’s Work” is always art because they are always taking care of the children and clean the house and our clothes and when they give birth to new life, that is art. I would get on my hands and knees to clean Kobe Bryant’s Star because he was loved by everyone, he influenced a lot of people, and he will be missed by everyone.

Idea #2: Finger painting

It was a pretty confusing experience because I have never done finger painting before in my life and so when I was finger painting, it felt different than using a paintbrush because your fingers feel the paint touching the paper.

It was harder for me because at first my painting didn’t have that much color in the middle so I decided to add more blue and green to it but then it still didn’t have enough color so again I had to add more color. It was confusing & frustrating because I didn’t know how to draw it at first because I didn’t want to mess the painting up. Compared to other paintings, my painting is like a personal accomplishment to me because it was something that I created and put in effort in creating it.

My First Blog Post

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.