Ben Cariens Artist Lecture

So on Wednesday the 3rd I went to Jennifer Moses's artist talk in the museum and had originally planned on writing my next blog post about her lecture and her art. But the whole time she was talking I was very distracted and spacey. I also couldn't stop looking at the amazing sculptures that surrounded me. After her lecture, I was looking around at the sculptures and found out that the artist was having an artist lecture the following week. So I planned on going to his artist talk to find out what these pieces meant. I found them all so interesting to look at and I really wanted to know what the artist meaning was behind each piece.
The following week I attended Ben's artist lecture and really enjoyed it a lot.  One of the main points that I loved about his talk was that he didn't know what half of his sculptures really meant to him. He had just started created them and this is what he came up with. I loved the fact that he had no plan and was just creating these sculptures around him, waiting for the meaning behind the pieces to come to him later. I really liked this style of working because I would always try to find meaning behind my work before I even started creating it. It was reassuring to know that I didn't need a concrete plan at the start of each project, and that I can still be successful and create great art. I also really liked the whole idea of just creating something without really knowing what it was going to become. In one of Ben's pieces there was a large ball of twigs and twin. When he was describing this ball, he mentioned that when he started creating it, he had no idea what it was supposed to be or what it meant to him. I liked that aspect of just creating art because something within him was telling him to do that. He also mentioned that later he discovered that this ball actually represented something in his life. That this ball was all his anxiety, stress, and fears that he feels he has been carrying around with him for a long time. That statement really made me see this piece differently. Now this messy ball of twine looked heaver to me and chaotic. I really liked how my image of his sculpture suddenly changed dramatically, once I heard his personal meaning behind it.
Another point that I really liked about his talk was that all of these pieces were very personal to him in some way. He spoke at the beginning of the lecture how he sometimes feels very exposed and nervous when showing these pieces because the meaning behind some of them were about something very serious in his life. For instance he brought up religion a lot during his lecture and how that plays a part in some of his work. He did not talk specifically of what role religion plays in his life, but gave the impression that it was a topic that he struggles with on a day to day basis. In one of his sculptures he had a bird cade hanging off a door. He described this bird cage as symbolizing religion because many religious people may feel sheltered and comforted by their religion, therefore seeing the cage as a home, while others may feel trapped by religion and see the cage as a prison. I found this very interesting and easy to relate to since I myself and struggling with what I believe and have been switching back and forth between these two concepts of seeing religion as a comforting place or a cage. After he talked about the meaning behind this bird cage, I saw the sculpture in a whole new way, because I could relate to it on a more personal level.
Over all I really loved all of his pieces. They all seemed to give me this strange feeling that made me feel uncomfortable at times, but stopped me from taking my eyes off of them. I loved his work and would love to see more of it in the future.

I was unable to find any pictures of his sculptures that were in the exhibition online, but I was able to find some of his other work, that I equally love. I will post them below.

Vandyke Images

I am having a hard time deciding which images to choose to print. But here are my favorite right now.

Collaboration Project

For the collaboration project I am working with Katie Bogosian and Leah. We planned on using a Medium Format camera for this project since none of us have ever used one before. I personally have always wanted to try a medium or large format camera and it is something that would be new and exciting for me to learn. For our photo project, we had the idea of playing with projections. We thought of getting a slide projector and project different images onto a blank wall, while there are figures placed in front of the projection. We do not really know what we are going to have the figures doing or what the projections will be, but we plan on having the figures and the projection connect in some way.

Cyanotype: Final Prints

        

Artist Lecture: Douglas Prince

I actually really liked this lecture and found it to be very interesting! I loved how he started off his lecture with talking about how he first got into photography and how photography was incorporated into his life at a young age. It made me feel more connected to the artist because we knew more about him personally before we saw his art. For me, it helped me better understand and appreciate his art because of his personal introduction. I also really liked how he talked about his inspirational teachers he had during collage. I have never seen another artist do that during their artist lecture and I thought it was really nice to see who inspired him. Again, it made me feel like I knew the artist more before we started to see his art.
I really liked when he started showing us his darkroom prints. I found them to be so interesting and his printing ability to be so amazing. I thought it was so cool how he could combine multiple images in the dark room by just burning and dodging. That seems so difficult to me. Especially to make the image look believable and like it actually is one shot instead of multiple images mushed together. I have a hard time doing that on photoshop so I can't imagine how long it would take him to do that in the darkroom. My favorite photo of this process was of his two sons playing in a river. The upper part of the image is a separate image of woods and below is another image of his sons playing on the roots of some trees. I like this image so much because the landscape did look weird to me, in good way, but I couldn't figure out why until he told us that it was 2 images. I couldn't find that image on the internet, but I did find another image of this process that I also really liked. I'll post it below.

Another thing I really liked about his lecture was that he showed his artistic process with certain images. For instance, he would show us an image and show us how he edited it and how it evolved into the final product. I really liked this because we got to see how he worked and developed each photo. It gave me a better understanding of his editing process which I thought was really cool. 

I think my favorite project that he did out of all his work was his photo sculptures. I thought they were so cool! Each photo was so interesting and had some strange aspect to it. There was something not right in each photo that just made me want to look at them longer. I also liked how each image was within a little box. It made me feel like I was looking into another world or into a private room where everything was distorted. I just loved them so much! I especially loved the photo of the desk next to a window, with two braids hanging down in front of the window. This gave me such a haunting feeling.

Here are some of his photo sculptures.

Cyanotype Prints

For my Cyanotype project, I took really contrasty pictures of myself and plan on printing them with other objects, such as tissue paper or leaves, on top of the negative while its printing. That is all I have for a plan right now, but I'm sure I will try many different objects once I start printing.

Amalgamation