"lonesome valley"

When we first started this project, I was exploring the idea of building a tiny utopian world. The control over that environment that I would be building seemed like a perfect metaphor for the way life feels out of control and people feel the need to control the environments around us. I was looking forward to meticulously placing each detail into the world with love and care and precision. It seems to me that I am one of those people that when life is spinning out of control, that I grab onto the tangible world for comfort. It seems cathartic to me somehow.
So, I went to hobby lobby and purchased a plethora of tiny objects to put into my little world. On the way to school the next day that week I got a flat tire with no spare to back it up. The whole week we didn’t have class I was essentially without a car and was in dire need to simplify the project in order to make it plausible. I was literally transporting things to campus by shopping cart. I returned the tiny living room set I had bought for one of the houses in order to have money to buy a new tire. At this point I needed to simplify the idea of my project. I needed to cut off the fat and get to the meat of the idea. I was looking for a world that seemed safe and perfect and far away for the troubles of reality. I could get that same effect of soothing calm by simply going into a space that I could manipulate the tiny world around me. I found the space that I later did my piece in and hung out in there for about an hour to get to know the environment I was entering.
Next, I gathered cardboard boxes from my work to maker objects from. This quickly morphed from creating objects to painting everything in my little reality to be acceptable to me in that space. I am a self confessed painter at heart and I guess it truly came out in this piece. I seem to paint in my own style and every object in the space seemed to be a continuation of the canvas itself. People who look at my work tell me that the paintings seem to embody a specific reality that I create for myself and go to myself when I am in the process.
This piece is very much about finding a spot in the world where you feel safe. At this point in my life I feel very uprooted and nomadic. We as students are constantly changing and morphing and moving. I have lived in four different places in the past three years. My home in Texas no longer feels like the same place that I seeked comfort my whole life. It’s a very lonesome way to go though life and enclosed a few memories from my childhood in the space itself. One being the mockingbird painting as a symbol of the happy times I had out in the country as a child, and the other being the lyrics of the Carter Family song “Lonesome Valley,” which my mother used to sing to us as children. The lyrics of the song embody the human condition of restlessness and loneliness, which I seem to feel all of the time. The space I created truly made me feel at home. I think this result was a success in the end.

Amy-Beth Maran Installation Tie Dye Hair

(Sorry the pictures are out of order - if anyone knows how to change them, let me know. Thanks)

Amy-Beth Maran
November 6, 2008
Susan York
Site as Person: Hair as statement

The idea of a person being a "site" for an installation made me question what installation art was. After thinking for some time, I thought of several examples of how a person could be a site. The book, Installation Art in the New Millennium calls this a "non space" (107).For my project my roommate, Dara, graciously offered herself as my "space." We were both interested in the idea of what social reactions hair has on people. I was interested in the idea that I could "install" my project, but she would be a travelling installation without me. Hair art is becoming a real form of art, with contests such as Shops and Salons styling teams show in Dallas Texas. (http://www.shopsandsalons.com/hairshow.htm)
With a bleach kit, neon pink and neon blue hair dye I set out to in essence, tie dye Dara's hair. I used rubber bands and wrote out a set of directions for when to add which color at which time. Using hair and dye as my materials was new to me and I was excited to view the process as art. I saw bleaching her hair as gessoing her head like a canvas. Adding the rubber bands at particular times was similar to the reduction process in a printmaking wood cutting. Adding the hair dye was like painting - but it was painting a paint brush!
There were many obstacles for using a new material for the first time. Not only was I experimenting and therefore, expecting some type of failure (I don't view failure as negative, but part of the process). I had my roommate and her opinions and emotions to take into consideration. After the first round of tie dying her hair was pale pastels all around, but the tie dye effect was apparent. Dara was unhappy with not having the colors bright enough, and her opinion was important to me. I added more color in chunks and left it in for longer. The result is a blend of pale tie dye around the middle of her hair and bright pink around her crown and blue around the tips.
I had first had the intention to do this dye job earlier and then take her to several places (bank, restaurants, malls etc..) and catch people's reactions. I felt that having the class see the "site" new, before it fades was more important. As reactions come in, I will note them.

Works Cited

De Oliveira, Nicolas. Installation Art in the New Millennium : The Empire of the Senses. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.


Mac, Ronnie. "S & S Shops and Salons." World's Largest Hair Art and Fashion Show. 2008. Shops and Salons. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Time and narrative
1. The ideas of time and narrative almost blur. If a peice is long enough can it become narrative?
2. Can a fictional history make a piece of art historic, can history give it a story before its even shown? what is hype in reference to time and narrative?
3.If one does the same art pieces forever with the same ideas and stories, how many times in his lifetime will those stories or tales be relevant to current events?

Time and Narrative 3 Questions

1. In what ways does Christian Boltanski's "Les Abonne's Du Telephone" speak to the collective experience of human conciousness? Does this piece further ideas of individuality or of empty masses?

2. Juan Cruz, "Driving Back." This is art? True, it seems an expression of the human soul and yes the windows look really pretty with the light and how he situated the bench and the angular look of the speakers... but, this is art?

3. Hans Op de Beeck's "Location I" looks mesmerizing from the photo in the book and I wonder what sort of person creates this envisionment of art?

3 ?'s

1. How are the cacti gardens in Teresa Serrano's Vanishing City considered time or narrative? It was unclear to me. It seemed like she simply created some objects and put them in a space. Is it time oriented because of the growth of each cacti?

2. Does Amanda Wilson's Mirror explore her personal construction of individuality or the audiences?

3. It seems people find the library and interesting space to create installation art in. Why do you think this is?

Time and Narrative 3 questions AmyBeth

1)The author writes that archival techniques represent a desire to internalize and divert the narritive, rather then critique. What is the artist implying? Is there a problem with the system to archive artists, a problem with a lack of general art criticism, or an even more avant-garde suggestion of a new critique guided archive system?

2) Is focusing on "the everyday" a lack of historical perspective, social commentary, or both?

3) I thought Les Chaises de Traverse was an intriguing piece. However, there was very little information on it, and I wonder what the connection between the Synagogue in Delme and the Hotel Saint Livier in Metz have to do with eachother?

Textures of Fogelson Library

Public Art: The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that has been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. The term is especially significant within the art world, amongst curators, commissioning bodies and practitioners of public art, to whom it signifies a particular working practice, often with implications of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration. The term is sometimes also applied to include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings (Wikipedia).

For my installation located in the library, I created a book entitled “Textures of the Fogelson Library.” It is a very short book with illustrations of the various surfaces within and outside of the library (brick, carpet, etc.). I worked with Harriet Meikeljohn, the librarian who is responsible for cataloguing books. We inserted the book/author information within the libraries cataloguing system so that people can actually look the book up, or stumble upon it in their research. There is an actual call number and bar code, so that people are able to check the book out if they feel inclined.

I was interested in creating a fictitious guide for something so mundane (surface textures) it is not given any thought. By placing my book in the public sphere on the shelves with other illustration manuals and art books, I was hoping to legitimize the information. A goal of mine was to make the book seem very old and worn, as though it had traveled through the lives of a number of people. This historical presence is supposed to create a false narrative about the life of the book.

The project was somewhat inspired by the artist Mark Dion, who deals with different systems of classification. “By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society” (Art:21). Dion uses systems put in place by museums and galleries in order to classify and exhibit objects with ‘inherent import’ as dictated by those institutions. My installation is an observation on the validity that institutions assume when they give certain objects a presence and place for display. Dion also works with the different institutions that he is somewhat criticizing. I had to bring the work outside of my personal space by creating relations with the library staff who allowed for this project to exist. The librarian and I treated the book as though it were valid and true, despite its spelling errors, fabricated publisher and the misinformation of the copyright date. The process was important to me, as it involved communication with outside parties while allowing me to learn about the cataloguing system of the library.

Sources:

"Art in the Twenty-First Century: Mark Dion: Biography." PBS. 2007. Art21. 3 Nov 2008 .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_art