10/30, 4:30pm-5:10pm

My initial start to trying to make sense of what I wanted to research and how they all connected together.  I found that the artists I was interested in held common themes of subverting images, symbolic meaning, portrayals of blackness and black bodies.

10/31, 9:30am- 10:30am

I was trying to get a sense for Rashaad Newsome’s work because of his interesting use of baroque era aesthetic with elements associated with African-American culture/ pop culture through mixed media. I especially loved the idea of using imagery to oppose cultural essentialism in a way that challenges hegemonic control. I think that was a concept seen throughout the work of the artists I was interested in.

11/3, 12:45pm-2:00pm

At this stage I am researching the other artists I am interested in. I am interested in Firelei Baez’s work because it draws on her heritage as a Haitian Dominican woman. It speaks to a narrative and a duality of the self that gets encapsulated in her work and the names of her work. I am particularly focused on her works A Vessel of Genealogies and Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to The Fan Test for the Month of December. Omar Diop uses pattern and color in a layering effect that evokes historical African portraiture, again this use of historical imagery within contemporary art.

11/5, 3:00pm-4:15pm

I started really looking into Kehinde Wiley’s works. I love his use of color, but I was drawn in by his Lamentation series and the use of color with the depiction of the black body. The same can be said for the Ikire Jones brand as well. Both works appropriate classical Western styles in a way that positions the black body in a whole new context and relation.

11/10, 2:30pm-3:40pm

I am still trying to find other artists that fit within the theme/ questions I am trying to ask. My Pecha Kuch still seems all over the place and it seems to transition from one concept to another. I am just trying to fill in the blanks in the presentation in order to make a cohesive presentation.

11/11, 1:00pm-1:30pm

Even at this stage, I was still trying to make sense of how these artists fit together and the formal and thematic elements that connect them together in a certain order in my mind.

Years later, Katherine Smith is still delving deeper into artists and ideas sparked by Learning from Las Vegas. Professor Smith seems interested in understanding the how and why of the structure of a piece, particularly the physical world and its perception represented in a piece of work. Her interest in Claes Oldenburg falls within this line of thinking and the public spaces where some of his works stand. For the past 10 years, Professor Smith has been looking into sculpture in relation to the city, and writing a book about the works of Claes Oldenburg. In class we discussed the process of contextualizing a piece of work in relation to the overall body of art produced by an artist. The process of researching up to the time period when the artist produced the piece you are interested in to get a sense of the journey they took to create the piece–adding context to the overall meaning of the work. We also did an exercise using some resources from Professor Smith’s own collection and discussed when to use what sources when taking a closer look at a piece of art.

In general, it was really informative to hear how Professor Smith started her journey into scholarship and how that translated into her career as a professor now. How she started by figuring out what attracted to her a certain artist or genres of art, and then narrowing down to some key themes and artists that fit within the realm she wanted to explore. Learning how to balance and choose ideas to explore can be difficult in the process of scholarship. Professor Smith’s idea of keeping a list of all her interests is something that I will personally start doing because I have all of these ideas, but it seems like there is very little time for them.

Professor Smith’s insight is particularly important to this class when thinking about the research and scholarship we will have to delve into for our community hour talks and our research topics. Professor Smith’s lecture gave a look into what this process looks like from beginning to end: from a spark of curiosity to producing scholarly work on that subject. It is good to see a real life example and learning the steps I can take in my own research in this course.