Finding Your Voice
- Please have a voice with your work because everybody is depending on you
- You need to be courageous and being courageous, you’re just being courageous with yourself
- If you think somebody else is going to be doing it, they’re not
Turning Objects Into Art
- The idea of “Readymade” or bringing everyday objects out of their usual context to create art and give them meaning
- This recontextualisation can be done using linguistics, images, signs and different use of the senses
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt”. In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are “everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.”
Also see: Bill Watterson references Duchamp’s “Nude Descending A Staircase”
Approaching a blank canvas
- Everything in your life is source material.
The dialogue about art is when you are brushing your teeth [or] when you are speaking to your wife or when you are talking to a friend.
- The more idea you have, the more connections you have and the more actions you can take.
- Ideas come from interests, and if you act on your interests, ideas will come. If you follow your interests, your self is not going to fail you, because what can be more joyful than your interests?
Personal Iconography
- Your personal iconography can be the images, objects or symbols that that stimulate you and have meaning in your life and this Personal Iconography can be used to communicate your point of view to the viewer
- When starting a new project, create a notebook and start collecting information that could in some way incorporated into a final product
Art History
- Art is not something that should create pressure or anxiety when you come in contact with it - it should expand your life, make you more curious
- When we come into contact with art we don’t have to being anything to it except ourselves, our own experiences
- The art is never in the object you are looking at, or at the surface of the sculpture. The art is inside you!
- If you don’t make a connection with it, it’s inanimate, it is dead. It has no importance to your existence
- Art is about opening up to the artist, understand the artist’s perception of human values and taking something from it back to your life. It is something like trying to learn from your elders
- Alois Regal came up with the idea of the “beholder’s share”, the idea that the narrative of the artwork in finished within the viewer - the viewer always finished the narrative
Scale
- An idea does not have a scale.
- Everything defines what is wants to be by the basis of its idea. If something tells you this is comfortable and it feels pretty good, then that is where it should be.
Colours
- Colours give us a sense of our environment and affect our mood
- Your work can be communicated through the colours you choose
Sharing
- The idea of sharing your work or showing your work to someone is wonderful. You want to know if they see it in the same way tha you do or do they see something entirely different.
- This type of a shared dialogue, shared experience is communication and people do look forward to have such shared experiences
- The context within which you share your work also affects it. Putting something out in public is a very different feeling from having something at home for personal consumption
In short:
- Size, Scale, Form, Colour, Texture, Materials are all axes along which art can be experienced
- All of these influence how we communicate our ideas to other people