Nell Ruby’s sabbatical research talk was more like a story one might read about an American adventure than a lecture. She showed us an impressive map of the places she traveled around the United States. She revisited childhood inspiration as well as sites of artistic wonder, such as the Lighting Field. Her journey was exciting and inspiring to me because of how fearlessly and freely she traveled alone as a woman artist.

The way Ruby equipped her big green art van with solar panels seemed like something I would have dreamed of as a child. It was a charming and impressive way to travel. She mentioned that she was somewhat of a spectacle, as an older lady driving through towns alone in a weird green van, and that people would talk to her because of it. As Ruby spoke about how she stopped for everything beautiful, she showed countless pictures of clouds and sunsets along the road. She said she wanted to encounter nature directly and get away from her usual machines which we are so connected to daily.

The goals of this trip included escaping a static state, jogging new artistic inspiration, and working in different contexts and scales. She also joked about wanting to be a “real artist” who goes outside somewhere to draw nature, wear a beret and be stereotypical. I understand this feeling, like all of the modern art we do is fun but there is something so simply pleasing about depicting the world we see. I connected with this notion that we should do what our gut is telling us to do and figure out why later.

I saw parallels between Ruby’s journey and the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit I saw at the NCMA. O’Keefe was drawn to depicting her surroundings in huge and abstract softness. Ruby mentioned how rocks are profound, and I was intrigued by three paintings of rocks O’Keeffe had done. They obviously share a profound respect and interest in our natural world. I  also think that the way Ruby found such an interest in the repetitive visual quality of rundown houses and barns by the side of the road is similar to the way O’Keefe was obsessed with the things like skulls, and subverting their usual meaning.

I was surrounded by an audience of other faculty and staff who clearly admired and respected Professor Ruby, and I can easily understand why. The way Ruby discusses art is very accessible. Her journey examined the beauty of our world, something at the core of art however you look at it. She documented the trip with her iPhone camera and spoke about how framing creates meaning, and photography is a practice of looking. It doesn’t take a fancy camera to see like an artist, in Ruby’s view. She mentioned that drawing is just “looking harder.” I am so thankful I could hear her discuss her trip and I hope to maybe take on like it for myself someday.

It was even more exciting to hear Robin Lynch talk to us this time. She has harvested the fruits of her through investigation and begun considering what she wants to make. I was impressed with how deeply she has researched Uncle Tom’s cabin. She dove into it until she felt she fully understood it, or at least understood more than our cultural perception of it. She recommended that everyone actually read it, which I plan to do.

I think Lynch’s process of research is really interesting because it is so much more extensive than mine. She looked into exhibitions that were themed around Uncle Tom’s Cabin and read curators comments to gain their knowledge. She also read books that seemed less directly related but are still important to her goals, such as books about earlier graphic design and the Getty collection of posters advertising about Shakespeare. Lynch is trying to understand her subject from many different angles, from historical to visual.

Lynch found that the images which have been recreated most from Uncle Tom’s Cabin are of Topsy, Eliza running with her child across the ice, and of Uncle Tom and Eva. These depictions of characters are from neutral moments in the story, not ones that show the brutality of slavery that Lynch believes make the book so powerful, even to this day. The ubiquity of these images has led Lynch to many important questions. Of the whitewashed image of Eliza, she asked “do you have to look like that to get sympathy?” When examining the almost featureless or inhuman images of Topsy, Lynch is asking what it will take to undo the incredibly racist base of our culture. She is also thinking about the suggestive depictions of Uncle Tom and Eva’s relationship, and this is the part that intrigues me the most.  

As someone in an interracial relationship, I feel a lot of discomfort coming from the culture around me about what my relationship should and shouldn’t look like, in ways that feel just as indescribable as they are pressing. I asked Lynch how looking at these images made her feel and she said angry, but that the images are nowhere near as upsetting as the graphic nature of the brutality written about in the actual book. Then she asked me how the images made me feel and I said uncomfortable. The supposed child Eva, who has a pretty womanly figure, is shown in intimate poses with Uncle Tom, who in many of the images doesn’t look very old. You can do an easy google yourself, but this is a great example. Here is another. I don’t think the interpretation that these images are sexual in nature is at all off base. I wonder if our culture still views white women in love with black men as little girls playing with emasculated slaves. I just wonder why people created images of this sexual nature. What is it about the story and these characters that so entranced peoples romanticism? Why did people change so many key features of these characters to depict them this way? I am glad Lynch showed me these images because I think they will help me as I continue to consider my relationship’s place in our country today.

Lynch plans to create a visual collection of these images, in some type of book that subverts these images or makes them contemporary. She was also considering the format of an anti racism Alphabet book for children, or animation. First she has to create mind map so that she can see everything visually. I cannot wait to see what she makes, especially after I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  

Here are some pieces of advice that I will most likely follow:

• She suggested buying slow dry to make acrylic paints dry less quickly which I think is a really good idea.
• She said that adding medium is like adding water but better for holding the paint to the canvas, so I think I should invest because I like my paint to be really watery but it sometimes can mess with the paint already on the canvas.
• She mentioned that one can paint the canvas one base color that is common in the entire image before actually starting painting. I really wish I had done this for the Maya Nude, it would have been so easy to paint the whole thing pink to start off with!
• She also told us how she interned for free with an artist and how that experience was very influential for her. This is something I will definitely look into.

After giving the talk to our class she joined me in my workspace to look at the Maya nude and critique my progress. She said that I should fill up the huge white space that I had thus far neglected, and we agreed it was bad to leave so much white space on the canvas. I immediately colored in the space and I think psychologically it does make a difference that it isn’t just blank anymore.

I appreciated these nuggets of wisdom and will hopefully be able to explore them more in depth soon.

Here is what I have done so far:

• Dinnertime Happening (link)
• Water Talk video (link)
• Donut Game. I handed all of the control over to Maya and Julia, who set up the game. Gracie and I competed blindfolded and hands tied in a slightly more difficult version of this traditional children’s game which we had both played when we were younger. It was out of my comfort zone to give all of the artist control to someone else in an artistic concept that I engineered. I don’t usually buy that many sweets at once, and Gracie said that she liked the game when she was little because she got to eat more donuts that she is normally allowed to. It’s interesting that BDSM themes appeared in this piece, and that donuts have such an element of denial, pain and struggle attached to them for many.
• Blue Foods- This was a brief sketch I did to make myself more interested in the food I had to eat. Ruby suggested more iterations of this, with more colors.

• Watched the Amy Winehouse Documentary- She was a Jewish singer with bulimia and a drug addiction. It got me thinking about how we know so many intimate details of singers lives but don’t necessarily know the same about artists.

What I am working on/planning to do:

• Stomach punch painting and happening
• Maya Nude painting
• “Leave You” music video
• Bob for apples? Or another food.
• Maya and Julia want to play the donut game.
• Possibly paint with my mouth and food.
• And I also wanted to use the darkroom, not sure if I have time for that.

I have been feeling so forceful and full of creative energy which is very exciting. I think it’s because I have not been able to really make conceptual art in a supportive environment since high school and it feels very familiar, yet thrilling in its newness. It feels good to let myself make things without exactly knowing why then figuring the “why” out later. There is always a reason that I am driven to create. I am not sure if I have done exactly 12 hours of this but it feels like a lot and like I am pushing myself. 

Talking to Ruby has been an essential part of this brainstorming process. She suggested that I create this word-map that shows how expansive my conceptualization is of eating disorders so that I can see all of the space that exists for me to make art inside of.

I have made two works recently that I think are both very successful beginnings of this investigation of how I can authentically but also curiously represent my eating disorder and recovery. The first project is my video Water Talk. I was more interested in the visuals and wrote the spoken word aspect in about 2 minutes because those words are a part of me they were easy to regurgitate. I think the most important part of this film is the end where I explode out of the water, hinting to recovery. Even more interesting is the idea of sexuality, and I wonder how does sexuality interact with ideas of eating disorders? They are obviously related but I want to mine deeper about how.

After much discussion with Ruby, I sat and thought deeply about how to challenge myself and be experiential. I thought about how trusting others in my art is something I have almost never done. I also do not usually explicitly include food in my work. Combining these elements, I had Maya feed me while we were both blindfolded to create my Dinnertime Happening. An important thing Maya brought up during our discussion after the happening is that I am not making art about spiraling deeper, I am making work about me trying to claw myself out of this hole and recover. The happening had a sense of play and mothering which was really positive for both of us.

The happening was messy and kind of gross which made it more interesting to me.

Going forward I want to create more happenings, as well as creating visceral and tactile pieces. I want to play and punch things and be wild in my art so that I can find out about how I make art and why I do. I think I need to look a little deeper inside of myself to see what is going on, but not let that prevent me from going with my gut. I am very excited.

I have been thinking about it literally all the time, and I have tried to record it with this chart but need to be mroe on top of it. I know I have done more than this.

Here are some other things I have been ruminating on

• Can an eating disorder be separated conceptually from its context (being a woman/ living in america/ the news)?
  • If no how can that be shown in art?
• What about typical/ therapeutic eating disorder art turns me off? Why is it so repetitive?
  • What is it about representing recovery is different from representing the spiral?
• Why is eating disorder art so hard to find? Is it actually more common than I think but just less explicit?

I was having trouble finding more sources in the same vein so I went to Mayra at the library. She was so helpful with my research, she already knew what I was looking for because I had talked to her about it previously. So we ignored all of the art therapy results and she showed me how to find and use specific words in Galileo. I found quite a few more interesting articles, some religious and some art based, that I am working on reading now.

After reading Sublime Hunger: A Consideration of Eating Disorders beyond Beauty, I decided that it was time for me to bring to life a project that had been percolating in my brain for a few months. I had Maya meet me on the third floor of the library where I asked her to pose in a square window-like space, asking her to model how her anxiety feels. She has a dance background thus was an incredible model and I loved the photos I was able to capture of her. I wish that we could have done this project nude, maybe next time. I put some of the photos into photoshop and I am very happy with the results I have achieved so far, but it also feels like just the beginning of this series. Photoshop is a good space for me to quickly get ideas together and experiment with no consequences, but I do miss painting. I think it was positive for me to take a break from consuming content for research, to research by creating content, as it gave me the time to consider some of my motivations.

I’m looking at eating disorders through both an in-depth anthropological and a personal lense. While researching this subject in this context, it has dawned on me that all of my art made recently (and possibly ever) had focused on my eating disorders in a subconscious way. I think it is time for me to acknowledge the hidden subject I have been working with, and I do truly feel like this research is the first step. I am fascinated by the religious and philosophical takes on eating disorders I have read so far and I think now is the time for me to absorb information to shape my understanding of my reality. Then I can keep making art, but better.

I wanted to know what art was out there about Eating Disorders to see what other people have done, to feel inspiration or catharsis. But everything I had found prior to this research was cliche and boring. I typed the phrase “eating disorder” into about every search engine that was suggested to our Methods class. There weren’t very many results, so I tried words like “fat” and “thin,” which also came up with limited results. So it was by way of a miracle that I decided to research Joel Peter Witkin for our art talks later in the Methods Class. Within the first page of the book Joel Peter Witkin by Eugenia Perry, there was a mention that he used anorexics as subjects and models in his art, along with other groups that are seen as deviant by society. The art he creates about the female body suggests disorder, drama, and mystery. His work is incredibly inspiring to me and will be in the back of my mind as I continue to create.

I would describe my research process as curious wandering. I let myself move in whatever direction that excites me, but I try to be very deliberate about what I can find at each step. When I am interested in something I become very motivated and that passion is very helpful when the things I am researching seem hard to uncover. I think I am good at asking for help with my research but in the same vein, I may need to be more self-reliant and try harder to internalize better research methodologies. I want to continue tracking my research habits to try to get a better understanding of them. At the end of the day, it is very reassuring to me that I can spend so much time researching art; I know it is the right life work for me.

I took a couple practice photos before Julia helped me take my source photos. I used photoshop to create my actual source photo. I like this photo quite a lot even though I did a messy job of editing.

I did quite a few studies to figure out the composition and colors I wanted to use as well as get a better understanding of the image. To scale up the image Prof. Emerson suggested that I use a projector which was such a good move, I saved so much time that would have been spent stressing over proportions. I used that time instead to focus on color and my technique.

The studies excited me, but almost as soon as I started working on the final I knew I would be disappointed with it visually. The photoshopped source image actually felt like it could have been a final product to me, which I think caused the frustration I felt with the piece. I do not think the medium really added anything to the piece that could not have been achieved in photoshop. This realization was extremely productive for me though, and in the future, I will make sure to think more deeply about how the image I am choosing to portray relates to the medium.

My end product actually involves technology in a way that is as inescapable as it is. For such a long time I thought there was a right way to look because of the society I have been raised in. Now technology is inherent in perpetuating beauty ideals. This piece is titled “Instagram” as it meant to investigate the way we are pushed to create images of ourselves on social media that may conflict with our lived realities. My work also seems to deal with dysphoria whether I am thinking about it actively or not.

I had another idea in my mind for pairs that I am glad I was able to execute. I enjoy representations of romance and relationships, so originally I wanted to make a work of me and my boyfriend. But I realized I could not get a source picture of us without it being inauthentic. During my work on the first phase of Pairs, I saw this photo of my friend (Yen) and their boyfriend on Instagram and I was really drawn to it.

It is what I wanted to capture in my own relationship- an authentic, deep moment. It is actually unclear how Yen is feeling, their boyfriend seems protective, and there is an intense intimacy that attracted me.

The drawing is pretty simple but I think the charcoal gives the image an interesting equality of tone. I have difficulty with going darker and using more shadows so I tried to challenge myself to go darker when I could. I am glad that I included the motif of the weaving over their figures. It gives the drawing a darkness, it could indicate the fear of the outside world or the tangle within their relationship that exists because of the clashes of their personalities.

Overall this piece is a lot more satisfying to me. During the critique, everyone seemed to be quite attracted to it. I enjoyed working with this subject matter a lot so it is definitely something I would like to continue with.

Even though I have only completed two works for this class so far, I am feeling exciting changes in my process. In the past my artistic process was characterized by an uncontrollable impulsiveness. This was not much of an issue last semester when I was working with photoshop- if I happened to make a mistake or a decision I later regretted, it was extremely easy to fix the image. Working with physical drawing media that I had to purchase myself completely altered my perception of how I had to go about making my work. I felt a very specific pressure to do it right, I could not just go into the project and figure it out along the way. Instead of in the “Things We Carry” project where I introduced color last without thinking too much about it, I specifically planned out the color I was going to introduce and the mediums I was going to use before even touching the paper. I became pragmatic. During the various studies I did for Light Line Space I found myself being intentional about art in an academic way. Doing the studies reminded me of outlining for papers, and helped me feel more confident when I did begin working on the final product.

Concept-

The concept revealed itself to me as I was working on the piece. While developing the source images I was considering what we show and hide to others and ourselves about our own image. I think the element of overexposure (presented by me only wearing a bra) is present in society today because of how often we are supposed to interact with the world through pictures of ourselves. No other generation has been forced to look at themselves as often as mine is. Looking in the mirror suggests self judgement but taking a selfie suggests consumption by others, a picture on the phone is meant to be sent and shared. Overall this piece deals with how technology has warped my self perception. This obsessive self looking that is partly technology’s fault is communicated visually by the my repetition in the various mirrors, and the grimey smudging of the charcoal. The pastel colors are meant to represent the way phones seem so fun and harmless.

Critique-

The thing that felt most important for me to take away from the critique was that formal elements are very useful to sway the viewer. This is something I think about a lot but it was interesting seeing it in play in everyone’s work. I am pretty proud of how my piece turned out. The extra color was a last minute touch but that was actually my favorite part of the piece. I was happy that others seemed to be visually attracted to my piece. In terms of what I can do better, I think I still have a long way to go in terms of realistic rendering and constructing an effective composition. I think I could have worked more within the shadows and created even less contrast, making the image seem dirtier would have been cool. I am used to critiques based on concept, so I found it hard to really give others feedback. I liked Emerson’s comment that I should think about extending these concepts in my next piece with more mirror play, and different versions of myself.

When I went back home for Thanksgiving break, I was able to have my mom (a professional photographer) take pictures for me. This was, I realize now, essential to my project. These pictures are beautiful by themselves because of the quality, which makes my current play works much more attractive. My mom also gave me a few photoshop tips which I am extremely grateful for, including but not limited to- spot healer, curves, and blending layers. I am glad i got to see her process and how different it is from mine. It reminded me that there are infinite possibilities with Photoshop, and I need to continue expanding my repertoire of tools. I have been playing with the curves and changing colors, as well as learning more about masks (how to flatten mask layers!!). 

My process is a lot faster now that I have developed a method.

I haven’t been thinking too deeply about concept or defining my motives because I can feel that the concepts are there lurking under the surface, waiting for whenever I want to discover them. I enjoy simply losing myself in the process. A few things I have considered conceptually involve emotional states, and how I can represent the feelings of isolation/inner emptiness I can feel at times. Because my last works deal with gender, I also feel like these pieces illustrate that unlike other people I have nothing/ no gender inside me where it is expected. I am also thinking about, in my works like Twins and Forest, what it means for me to support myself. I am glad Prof. Ruby told me to just keep making as many collages as I could, without worrying too much about the meaning. She also told me to continue to complicate the images and consider the “rules” of the worlds I am creating within my art. I think I took that advice to heart pretty well.

These are relatively in the order I made them. They definitely became more playful.

I have to mention Bunny Michael, a queer artist who I follow on instagram. Their inspirational works deal with them and their “higher self” and after making my images I saw that there was a visual (maybe conceptual) connection between our art. Check them out here. http://bunnymichael.com/

Sandy Skoglund’s work instantly captivated me. She uses color and live/unalive forms to create strong juxtapositions that draw in and confound the viewer. I enjoyed all of her work but found these two examples especially interesting. In “Palm Trees in Suspense” Skoglund uses photoshop in a collage method similar to ours! She focuses on high resolution photos and color to create a scene that draws the viewer in and makes the eye tumble around the image, trying to make sense of it. The picture has this sense of movement and action, as though it is a candid snapshot. That idea is contrasted with the obvious unrealistic color.

In “Fresh Hybrid” Skoglund uses both live humans and humanoid sculpture which is extremely surreal. Although color continues to be important in this work, to me texture and form are more essential. They make the space seem real, although we know it is not entirely. She warps our perception.

The more I think about Sandy Skoglund, the more I am inspired by her work. What was fun about my last series was the warping of perception, but I like the way she achieves that effect seamlessly. Color is so vital to her work, it really helps pull the viewer in. I want my works to play with color and perception in the way hers do. I am going to work with my body to continue the theme of my last series. I need to find the factor, however, that will create dissonance and interest. Right now in my play stage I have created images with interest but without the discomfort I desire. I want to continue thinking about my body and perceptions of it, possibly thinking of gender as well.

Here are two slightly different versions of today’s play.