"enthocentric" Westerners

Today in Cultural Anthropology we talked about how western societies created this idea that their (our) culture is superior to the so called "barbaric indigenous peoples". In 1993, two traveling performers, Guillermo Gómez -Peña and Coco Fusco, dressed in foreign clothes go to art museum to art museum acting as thought they are newly discovered savages off the coast of Mexico. This was meant as a Satirical art performance directed by Paula Heredia and Coco Fusco. It was shocking to see that some of the audience members actually responded as if they were actually from this island off the coast of Mexico and they were really being held captive for display. I thought this relative to our recent project in the sense of criticism of an idea. This art piece was meant as criticism to this western idea that we are superior to other countries and people that do not live the way we do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLX2Lk2tdcw
I could not find the actual video but this is a clip that gives a little more a visual then I talked about.

Getting there...

  

Mapping Project:

“Murder of Many”

By: Heather Behrendt

 2/22/2011

For the past five weeks I have been continuously reading of the continuing and growing destruction of the world. Most people would think economical or human destruction. Maybe even aliens taking over, but isn’t that what humans are doing? We waltz into any creatures’ home and take what we want. We have created this idea of superiority to nature when we really are a part of nature. Once we began to discuss mapping in class my ideas started to roll. They were rocky at first but began to turn into a political concept portraying the United States taking over the world. This may be the political side of the world but what about the world including all its factors. Natural vegetation is losing. I searched on Google for maps that distinguished what areas of the world contained lost forestry. I was shocked to see the results. Almost all of Canada, Japan, Europe, and Madagascar were completely destroyed. Large spots in the Middle East, Center of South America were missing, and the only large forest in Africa seemed to strategically being attacked surrounding its perimeters. The brown spots representing the lost forests gave me an idea. I wanted to draw a rough map of the world and burn holes in the spots that represented those lost forests. I think it is a strong statement and representational way of getting my point across. They are simply gone. How would this be presented was my next issue to tackle. I could not just simply hang this on the wall because it would lesson the effect of the wholes. I came up with the idea of mounting the art piece between two boards of plexiglass to allow the strong absence of the spots from the paper.  This ideology that we can fix anything is not truth. We are advanced creatures but as of now there is now technology that can replenish the world of it nature resources at the rate we are taking them. I want to expose more then just a simple map with wholes. I want to use black ink sketches to poke fun of this idea of forestation target at people. I began to think of surrounding the map with cartoon drawings of human forces destroying the world in fantasized ways.

            I can’t compare my artwork in a similar mirrored idea to any of the artist we talked about, but I did involve subtle ideas into my piece. I enjoyed Julie Menretu’s idea of no conclusion, but the complete abstract way of creating this idea seemed difficult for me. It did strike a thought; this idea of deforestation is not yet concluded in reality so how could I portray such an idea. I also enjoyed her bold mark making with the shapes. I had been seeing charts representing the growth of deforestation shown with a bright red jagged line; what a great incorporation that used a bold mark. How could I show this as inconclusive? I then thought of the idea of people keep taking. What happens when the two ideas meet? That is where the second line was invented. The first line represents the amount of forest existing and the second line represents how much forests humans are destroying. They do not quit meet but it is intriguing to thin of what would happen if they did. Arshile Gorky also caught my eye, but yet again my artwork was not completely influenced by such a style. His art is a step towards representational from Menretu’s but not quite a leap. His bold choice in colors and little white space is what I was focused on. I did not want to leave the blank spaces of the world blank. I enjoyed the bright colors of maps and the arbitrary lines. I decided to take those maps and make them the blank spots of my world. Also, I decided to make the water blue, and the tree areas green. I know that it seems uncreative and far from unique, but I am trying to represent something and my decision has a deeper meaning then those destination maps. Then it occurred to me; how is the water being destroyed? Well recently the big news was the oil spill. How often does this happen? I left it to Google to show me a map of the history of oil spills and so began the blank ink spots.

            Though my artwork did not completely inhabit the idea of abstract, it represents something strong I feel. I think its weakness is it’s simple and close to accurate appearance of the world.  I think it is a fare concept to point out as a fault. I think the next weakness is its materials. I think I like the materials I used but since some were new to me, I wish I played with them a bit before incorporating them. They seem to mesh just not in the right spots. In all honesty I am not 100% happy with this project. I think mostly because it is far from what I normally do. Also, I feel the water I applied extremely too strong. It is overwhelming to the piece. I would love to take another crack at this idea and be better at meshing the materials together and making it seem more cohesive.

Questions:

1.     Do you find the representation of the world too common?

2.     Do you feel that the cartoons are too much? Too big?

3.     What areas to you think is weak in relation to cohesiveness?

4.     Do you think the burning is an effective strong representation? 

EXTRA:
I am not entirely satisfied with this piece but I am enjoying where it is going. I am going to continuing working on it more and come up with a better way of displaying it for the best effect. Also, I did not mention an artist above who I seemed to connect with through this piece. I have always enjoyed Andy Ducett's play with sketched outlines with a cartoon feeling. My characters I had added in this piece definitely are comparable to his art work; maybe not accuracy of drawing but I think style wise. This is also a terrible picture. Once I am done I'll post this again. 

Mapping

I was having issues creating my second post so I wrote it down to post when I figured the problem out.

Real Post Date: 2 / 11 / 2011

The whole concept of creating a map as art was strange to me and seemed a bit cliche at first. Then, after we watched the video of Julie Mehretu, it became more clear to me. Before the beginning of this week my ideas for this project were leaning towards cliche. My first idea was to recreate my childhood neighborhood with my memories as landmarks and in a cartoon childish manner. Other then this, the rest of my ideas involved portraying the USA as the bully of the world. I am not one to bash my own country or have considerable hatred towards it, but it does seem to be a well known idea that is controversial.  My sketch of Uncle Sam swallowing the world made me think of mankind as a whole destroying the world. I am in a sustainable design course which I find affecting the way I think and approach certain things. After the beginning of this week I began to think deeper. Deforestation has been effecting the world since mankind began domesticating animals and since the invention of agriculture. It has been a snowball effect. People continued to keep destroying more and more of the forests with giving little to nothing back. It has become more aware to us as we become more educated about the world. However it is not something that is a high priority of the world yet it is one of the most important. In my piece I want to capture the history, effects, and physical impact on the world deforestation has had. I enjoy mixed media and want to continue exploring the materials I could use. I love using ink because of the limited control and the unique bold markings that come from it. I also love the feel of maps with the bold solid lines that seem to mean something important and supposedly are accurate. I plan on somehow incorporating these aspects strongly into my project. I also enjoyed the Question related to an art piece not having an ending or conclusion. This is going to be something I want to take into consideration. It creates a nice concept for the artist and the viewer. The artist is given the opportunity to put down personal things but not so others are able to know what it is. It is if you are writing in code that you only know how to decipher. It also creates a mystery intriguing viewers and allowing them to interpret the piece in a way that relates to them. My most recent idea is to create a piece representing the deforestation of the world. I am not entirely sure how I am going to create something without an end or conclusion, but I want it to come off progressively but never reaching climax. I want it to make people think what will happen if it continues and hopefully they are thinking of only negative conclusions. It is funny because we talked about Utopia at the very beginning All but one of my ideas is contrasting to such an idea. I guess it is easy for me to think negative about the world, yet I never find myself saying I do not like my life. I think it is because I do not know what I want out of life but I know what things I want to change. As a more difficult exploration of mapping, I could challenge myself to get to understand what my utopia would be.

Here are some mapping examples that caught my eye browsing for ideas...

By Students at Don Mills Collegiate Institute    
This picture I thought was a unique way of using mapping, the anatomy, and also contrasting two different mappings.

I

By Benjamin Edwards

This one caught my eye because of the bold colors and bold lines. Also the digital feel alone gives the mapping sense to this picture.

 

Taken in Stockholm. Photo By: Nicholas Claude
This would be my favorite picture I came across. It appears so simple and effortless and it brings into the childhood feeling that I explored in my mind. The red markings also makes me thing of the children book about the little boy and his magic crayon that brings things to life.

My Introduction

Hello, my name is Heather Behrendt. Like all the fellow students that are pursuing an education in art, I was always told I was a fantastic artist. I spent my school days doodling and striving to be like my grandpa. Though my grandpa is not a professional artist, he has and still is active in creating pieces for his own home decor or as a presents for family and friends. He paints classical landscapes and gardens, which I believe is where obtained the taste for detail and realism. I have always been reserved about my art, like most of us as we discussed in class. This caused me to stray from art in my middle school days. For high school I attended Hill-Murray. For those of you who don't know, it is a private catholic school, and one of the most important decisions I made in life so far. During my required art class the teacher encourage me to pursue art as a career. I told her I wanted to be an architect not realizing that the two could go hand and hand. From then on I concentrated on getting into an art school which brought me here, to UW-Stout. Since my first day, now halfway done with my sophomore year, I have played with many different ways of shaping my education. I am in the process of switching from art studios into interior design and I have just been accepted into the sustainable design minor. With this, my most recent plan is to renovate homes and save the environment one leap at a time. Though two months prior I was convinced I was going to be a botanist, so it is not set in stone.

The piece to the left is my first attempt of using colored chalk in drawing II. I think it is a great representation of what my style is like. Like I mention above, I tended to be strictly a realist. After my first couple years here at stout, teachers have challenged me to get out of my comfort zone and I'm liking the results. I have always been please with my work but I always admired the students who had the unique mark makings and strong styles. It was a challenge for me, and though I hated it at times, I am very thankful to those teachers and am always up to challenge myself more.

The picture about is my final for drawing I. The assignment was to address the mid line of the dip-dick and I used it as a chance to attempt using my realistic approach and trying out the abstract style. We also had to come up with a story line. Unfortunately mine ended up being cliche as the girl is struggling with her brother having a substance abuse. There are things I would change about this piece but I think it shows my struggle with abstract.


One thing I love about art is exploring new mediums. I find it completely challenging but refreshing creating art from nontraditional materials. The original image of the piece about was of a homeless guy and man's best friend. We had to take the photo and recreate it using pieces of black and white paper. I used all newspaper, more specifically the Stoutonia. I am excited for drawing III and look forward to the challenges to come!