How do artists and other professionals learn about new ideas, processes, and strategies? What kind of approaches do they take to build their own experiences and inquire about things they do not know?
To discover new ideas and processes, there are many things an artist can do. Looking out into the world to your environment and your experience with it can bring forth new ideas that you may not recognize when you only look at societal issues or group themes. On the other hand, most art pieces are also influenced by others and inspired by different ideas that have already been done. Being able to relate to experienced people by seeking your own experience in a certain field as well can help you form your own ideas for the same situations. Putting yourself in the place of something you want to make an art piece about always brings a new perspective that can help your pieces be more accurate to the human experience. For example, if you want to make an art piece about the environmental problems we have, going on a tree planting trip or beach clean-up gives you that first-hand experience that allows your art piece to have more emotion and personality than it would if you had no understanding of the actual problems the environment has. These methods allow more intense art experiences and increased diversity in the art world. When do exploration and experimentation become art? The moment you come to the “finish it or leave it” point on an art piece is when it turns from experimentation to art. This point is different for every piece you do, but there’s always that critical moment where any more time spent on it means you are finishing the piece. Personally, when I get to the point on a painting where I've done the planning, sketching, and started the background painting is typically when this decision comes along. Is it worth my time to spend on this to make it something beautiful? Or do I want to leave this as an idea that I can come back to later to make new pieces maybe based around the plans I originally made? Often these are the questions I ask myself before going into that second half of an art piece where I want to make sure i’m doing the best work I can possibly do instead of just finishing it for the sake of finishing it. It also comes down to whether the exploration piece is something that has really caught your attention or not. If researching an idea for a sculpture depicting humanity’s struggle against loneliness feels more like something you are doing because you feel like you must, rather than something you are passionate about, it hasn’t become art yet. You haven’t allowed it to become art by letting it be a burden instead of an interesting idea. There’s always a breaking point from experimentation to art, and I believe that is typically when you decide to allow yourself to be immersed in the idea fully and bring it to what you feel to be completion. How does the artist in this episode perform investigations? What do their investigations look like? This artist, Leonardo Drew, seems to investigate by feeling out the space he is working in. When he did the huge winding wall in an art studio, it came from him feeling out the emptiness of the room to see what it needed, so it could be filled with some of the many ideas that he had. It also seems to come from the actual materials he finds to use. His pieces made from cotton were created mainly because of the materials he had found to use. The investigative part of art making plays a key role in how the result looks. His artworks are all obviously influenced by his past works and you can see it in the use of similar materials, shape or size of the pieces he makes, though they all are unique as well. How do the materials used to make the sculptures influence the meaning of the work? For example, what do we associate with materials such as wood and cotton? The actual materials in this case are a huge part of the meaning of each piece, and what we associate with each type of material. Cotton for example, would have been for him as a Black man very symbolic of the past of the slavery Black people had to endure as a result of our society’s racist past (and present). Though it does display the wrongdoings of our society’s past, it also shows the endurance and strength of those who had to experience these terrible times. I believe strongly that this can be seen as a hopeful message for the future instead of a sad message about the past, though it does display and symbolize both. The wood he uses, seemingly burnt or scavenged even though he creates that look specifically from new materials, is very symbolic to me as a showcase of the destruction we have caused ourselves as a society. You can see in his pieces how dilapidated the wood is progresses as you go from one side to the other as well as from top to bottom. This portrays a decay of values and access that society has allowed for different groups of people. Another side of it can display the environmental issues we have caused the earth as a wasteful humanity, the slow burn and loss of viable forests, oceans, and clean air that is a direct result of our synthesized plastics and pollution. The materials always play a major role in the outcome of a piece, and Leonardo Drew is a perfect example of how influential they are. In what ways do artists work with restrictions and rules? How might restrictions or rules help you to form ideas? How does Leonardo Drew work with self-imposed restrictions? How have they influenced his process and artwork? Restrictions or rules on artworks are also a huge part of their final design. Deciding which mediums to use, how much space a piece will take up, how much time you are willing to devote to the piece, and what the piece will represent are all great examples of what having certain rules can do to the final design. They may limit you in some areas, but also help you create a meaningful piece that accurately displays an idea rather than combining too many things creating a confusing environment (unless that is exactly what you are going for). Leonardo Drew imposes restrictions for his pieces mainly through the materials he decides to use and the underlying message that he is trying to convey. You can see these displayed in the similarity in materials he uses, which are typically the same medium but variations of how they look and the size/ color. His wood pieces especially have no limit based on size except for what he can’t fit in his studio, but he uses wood pieces for the entire work. Though some of it is smaller or larger, more burnt, weathered or broken, they seem to all be made of the same type of wood. These rules help him convey the message he wants to, while still allowing him to be free and open with what he creates.
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AuthorHi! Me again. Thanks for taking a minute to look over my art and blog posts! Hopefully they mean something to you as well. ArchivesCategories |