Inspiration From the Web-Su Blackwell

A friend of mine recently sent me the following website link to look at. http://www.sublackwell.co.uk/ What a cool website and artist. The work is interesting on many levels. As sculpture the pieces are intriguing as they play with the idea of what a book is. The words of a well written book make the images leap to life in your mind’s eye and imagination. In this artwork the images from the book’s page are realized right on the pages of the book. Using books as a form of art has become very popular with the dawning of the altered book craze and the hand made artist book community. These books are art objects themselves with the meaning of the pages and the stories serving as allusions for the artworks. The site also links to several films. http://www.sublackwell.co.uk/films.php Each is interesting as an animated piece. One illustrates the way that an ad campaign was developed utilizing the artists designs and a team of animators. It is intriguing to me especially as I push forward trying to learn the art of animation and pass it along to my students.

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Time To Make Art: Video Class

I’m excited and nervous about next week.  I am attending the Creative Educator Institute (CEI) workshops at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) http://www.miad.edu/.  Why I’m nervous I don’t know.  It is the old demons in my head:  “will I measure up to those in the class?” “am I good enough?” etc.  I am hoping it cures the artist block that I’ve been suffering from this summer.  Work in a new medium can sometimes do this.  That’s what I’m hoping for.  The course will feature a lot of new technology that I am hoping will help build my skills and give me the confidence to move in this direction with my artwork.  I love film and photography, so video seems a natural.  The professor teaching the course is James Barany, http://www.youtube.com/user/jamusbaranus whose work I greatly admire.  I hope to learn how to create the multi-layered effects that he uses in his video work.  The Artist Statement Project and My Most Important Self Portrait project http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C21A7AACC3F0CCAB
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I took a weekend workshop class with him and loved it.  I will also be learning animation techniques I believe, which will be pretty cool.  I hope to begin doing some of this with my own students.  The Mac computers and IMovie make it so easy to do this.  I am looking to increase my knowledge in this area.  I think video will be the art medium of the 21st century.  If you know of any amazing sites that I should see to increase my knowledge I’d love to hear about them.  I know about You Tube, but I’m looking for artistic video, not just the homemade quality.  I would like see more artists such as Ann Hamilton, whose work with both video, film and photography is incredible.  http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hamilton/index.html .  Check it out here:http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/  Her piece called “Ghost” is especially intriguing to me.  The process of what she did using fabric and stitching and then having the environment she set up are all fascinating.  I also greatly admire her pinhole photographs done with the her mouth camera.  Very poignant and revealing of the relationship between artist and subject.  I always think I am hiding behind my camera, but this project puts her right in the subjects face. BRAVE WORK!

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