Starting Seminar

This category is new to my site, and is part of my current coursework in school. I will be documenting this semester's work as it progresses. As an art major, I am required to put together a body of work for my seminar. This work will be critiqued throughout the semester and sent to jury for exhibition on campus. Read on, my comrades!

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What a mess, right? Yesterday, I began my journey for the semester. Well, I say I began it there, but it really started last spring. My fascination with the human form mixed with an odd perspective gained through studying the Dada movement has brought me here. My work last semester raised many questions within myself, so I've decided to search for answers. A series of figure paintings sent me down a road which led to some odd discoveries about people, myself, and my work.

I like to paint bodies and play with the human form. People misinterpret the human form based on its posture or positioning. My intentions were easily misinterpreted.

Hey, isn't that what's so exciting about art? Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you get this reaction between yourself, your work, and how people view it. If that happens, you have a purpose.

Everything I've said so far may sound like total nonsense to some of you, but I swear I'm onto something. I discovered something really odd about the way people look at bodies last spring. If they see anything that leads them to believe the body is female, they jump to really odd conclusions. The same goes for male. I want to tap into that by really playing with our perceptions and why we have them. Why do we automatically sexually objectify something as non-sexual as a woman's knees? Her hands? her shoulder? I think it's all hardwired, and I'm not trying to make so much of a statement about that. This body of work is not sexual and I want to urge my viewers and readers to look beyond that.

Stop. Thinking. It's. About. Sexuality.

If you completely take away the sexual context of an image, what are you left with? Really think about it. Suddenly, the image becomes about the person rather than the body. You begin to look for something more. You begin to ask "why" instead of assuming the answers. So here's what I've done. I went to Target and I bought a doll (Monster High doll to be exact, but who's keeping track). After that, I took her hair out and I painted over her face. The doll is now nothing but the basic plastic form of something that looks semi-human. I've positioned the doll, taken pictures, and paired the images with something that I feel relates somehow. Throughout this process, I've learned a lot about my own perception of the body. Although this doll is nothing but a manufactured piece of plastic, I felt something when I was working on this. When I took the doll's clothes off, I felt like I was violating the doll. When I removed the hair, I felt like I was hurting the doll. When I painted over the face, I felt like I was making it ugly. Even now, I keep typing "her" instead of "the doll." Why can't we separate this idea of the human body and how it's supposed to feel from what we're actually looking at?

People couldn't look at a painting of a woman's shoulder next to the chest of a man without thinking the worst. I felt bitter about that. Now, I've realized that I'm no better. I can't turn a plastic doll into a mannequin for art without thinking it's in pain or being abused.

Now, stay with me, because this gets a little weird. That is not my main purpose for this body of work. That is simply what sparked it and some of the interpretations which I'm currently working through. Just like we can't separate our own perspective from what we're actually looking at, we also have these images swirling around in our heads that create our perspective. We look at things all day and we don't realize what impact that has on us. Advertising has taken its toll on us in that regard, but other things have as well. We can look at an image of a ceiling fan or blinds on a window and recognize what they are. These are commodities which we have been led to believe that we need. Most of our existence and our ideas about our existence are based on what we've been led to believe, as are our perspectives.

When you step back and re-examine things and throw out what we've been told they mean, what are you left with? What are you left with when you quit thinking of a body in a sexual manner? What are you left with when you quit thinking of window blinds as being essential to block out light and outside viewers?

Well, here's to a new semester of work that I'm desperately trying to make sense of!