Anselm Kiefer

A German painter and sculptor, Anselm Kiefer has been influential to me over the past few years.  When I first saw his work I was impressed by the scale and the amount of spatial rendering in them.  Rather than his subject matter, which dealt with issues ranging from the impact of german nationalism and the third reich to mythology, I am particularly fond of the formal elements.  This includes the illusion of space in his paintings and the colors used and the feelings/emotions that they evoke in me.  

Paintings hung

Here are two pictures taken with my phone of them up. I am going to go in tomorrow morning with fresh eyes and finalize everything that needs to. I am very happy with how everything turned out.

Walls painted

Yesterday I got all of the walls in my space painted except for a few spots that need to be worked with a hand brush. I think the color came out very nice, I am pleased with it. I am excited to decide which pieces go where and play around with the lighting.

I plan on finishing the painting in Dowd today. Tonight I will paint the remaining edges on a few paintings and tomorrow hopefully I can get all of my paintings in Dowd and start to hang. Just in time to go home for the Easter weekend.

Maybe I'll post some pictures later.

Richard Serra

Last spring I visited the DIA Beacon and really admired what I saw.  For a while I had been interested in Minimalist Art and enjoyed reading/listening about it in class, but actually seeing it in person, which is the point of this art, was even better.  Walking through Serra's torqued spirals was a lovely experience, especially being the only one occupying it.  The giant walls tilted at an angle feel like they were enclosing me in this small space.  Not being able to see around the dark turn added to this sense of  calming uneasiness.  I use that word because I knew I was safe in this environment, yet I couldn't help to pretend that I would actually get trapped in here.  Walking in this enormous circle felt like I was in there for a long time, yet the walk was brief.  When I reached the center of the sculpture it opened up slightly and I was able to look up at the entirety of the piece.  

"Richard Serra has long been acclaimed for his challenging and innovative work, which emphasizes the process of its fabrication, characteristics of materials, and an engagement with viewer and site. In the early 1960s, Serra and the Minimalist artists of his generation turned to unconventional, industrial materials and began to accentuate the physical properties of their work. Relieved of its symbolic role, freed from the traditional pedestal, and introduced into the real space of the viewer, sculpture took on a new relationship to the spectator whose phenomenological experience of an object became crucial to its meaning. Viewers were encouraged to move around—and sometimes on, in, or through—the works, many of which cannot be fully understood without peripatetic examination. Over the years Serra has expanded his spatial and temporal approach to sculpture and has focused primarily on large-scale, site-specific works that create a dialogue with a particular architectural, urban, or landscape setting."

For Ji

As I read this book in January I marked certain passages that I found to resonate with my concept. This particular excerpt I found to be interesting for what Ji is working with.

Edited Painting

"Movement takes away the excess charge of psychic energy that disturbs our efforts to quiet our thought process."

-Rev. Lauren Artress

This painting was too dark and unfitting in my series so I worked on it a bit. The kwality is not the best.

Show postcard

And I realize 'EXIBITION' is spelled wrong, I caught this mistake yesterday. This was a screen shot I took before fixing it.