Wk 15 – Artist “Interview” – Jennifer Watanabe

Welp, this is my last week at the galleries (I’ll probably stop by to check them out in the future, though). This last Art 110 assignment ended with something that made me quite excited. Some animation majors gave us the opportunity to view their work. All of them were awesome. Animation is something that I’m very fond of. I suppose this stems from me watching a lot of cartoons in the past, and I’m also thinking of drawing my own animated music video for one of my favorite songs. Jennifer Watanabe’s work became a visualization of what it would look like if I go through with my idea. Unfortunately, I arrived at a time when the artist in question was nowhere in sight. I’ll still talk about her art, though!

I especially love the drawings of the frame by frame animations. Each still was excellently drawn. There were virtually no inconsistencies between each still. I thought they were done by a computer at first! Jennifer must have taken an incredible amount of time for each drawing, even though the characters in the drawings are pretty basic. I can’t imagine how long the hand-drawn Disney films took! You’d really have to be skilled in the craft of drawing the same thing over and over again.

I also appreciate the character designs in the middle of the picture. I’ve taken art lessons before, and I imagine these to be figure drawings (that is, drawings of nude models) with clothes drawn on, since the poses of the figures are similar to those a  model would take. I must say, she did a fantastic job of drawing clothes on their bodies, especially with these Old West kind of designs.

Overall, I greatly admire Jennifer’s art. As I’ve said before, it made me excited to see the things that go into animation. This has inspired to proceed with my own project. I hope all these artists will be where they expect to be in the near future.

Wk 15 – Classmate Interview – Hunter D.

This week, I met an interesting person at the galleries. His name is Hunter. I forget what his last name is. It definitely started with a D.

We were both gazing at the showings of the Werby gallery when I decided to talk. He told me he had already talked to someone, but he said it would be fine if we went ahead.

He asked me what I wanted to hear. Excuse me? What I want to hear? Yes, do you have any questions for me? Wait, wha… umm, no, not really….?

What are you supposed to say to that? I wonder if other Art 110 people assume a conversation would be a series of awkward back-and-forth questions and answers. Honestly, can no one just have a natural exchange of testimony on how our days are? But I digress. Once we got past that, I asked Hunter what he thought of the animation stuff. Surprisingly, he had a whole lot to say about it. He told me has a lot of respect for animators (of the more traditional type) because they have to draw the same thing except with slight differences each time over and over again. That’s a good point. Thank God we have computers now. But even then it’s still a pretty tedious job.

Around here, we were rather rudely interrupted by some other dude looking for someone to chat up. There he was, notebook and pen in hand. Excuse me, can I interview you? This other guy you’re talking to isn’t holding a notebook and pen, so he must not be interviewing you, right? I mean, I don’t want to tell this guy to sod off. Like me, he was just looking for a guy to talk to. That’s understandable. But can you at least wait until I finish a sentence? I digress.

Unfortunately, Hunter is the kind of guy to ramble on for a while, so I was waiting a long time for this other dude to finish up. He told us when his heart stopped, and had to get a pacemaker inside of him. That was wicked. I thought about asking if he saw anything beyond the barrier of mortality, but he must get asked that a lot, so I decided not to. The other dude didn’t have much to say either.

I took a picture of us with his phone (my phone was dead) and we parted ways. Hunter’s an interesting guy. He seems to have a lot to say in that mind of his.

Wk 13 – Artist Interview – Marty Knop

Werby Gallery always seems to deliver the more fascinating art pieces; ones that, to me, stick out amongst the ordinary pencils and acrylics. As I wandered into the gallery, my eyes began to hurt. I thought to myself, Ooh! This is going to be interesting.

The name of the exhibit alone was enough to catch my attention. It’s called Icosikaihenagon. Knop proves, with this exhibition, that data can indeed be a form of art, or at least called a form of art. He explains in his statement: “To program is to make, furthermore, to program is to make a thing that makes things (data).” He goes on to speak of significance of this relationship between his work and math, that it is “similar to how music is transcribed as musical notation; shapes are best described through mathematical notation.” Simply put, Knop uses computers and math to create his art.

He justifies the existence of such a gallery in an interesting way. Knop says that because there are infinite solutions for infinite math problems, it becomes necessary to have a database for these. Regular patterns, such as the checkerboard pattern, are easy to make, and a little on the dull side. Random patterns are much more interesting. Knop has grouped these patterns together as he saw fit, and the resulting work was what our Art 110 class saw on Thursday.

Marty Knop loves math. It always seems like math and art would never go hand in hand with each other. But one day, Knop saw a fashion show that displayed a piece composed of different geometrical shapes. It intrigued him, and it lead him to pursue the aforementioned project. He informed us, “When you know a lot of math, you can turn it into a lot of different things and make new stuff using it as an element.” I definitely see his point.

Wk 13 – Classmate Interview – Brandon Hamada

This week I met a really chill guy by the name of Brandon Hamada. Brandon’s from some obscure place in California, some place that ends with “dale.” Now you know the place is obscure when it ends in “dale.”

I came really late to the galleries, because I wasn’t feeling too good about my life. Brandon was sitting on one of the rock benches, and I asked him if I could interview him. He said he had already done it with someone, but it was alright with him if we just talked. I gratefully accepted.

We talked about a lot of things. I don’t remember them all, but it was a good conversation. It wasn’t awkward at all. Brandon’s a pretty open dude. He’s a freshman, which you can’t tell by looking at him (it’s the beard), and an engineering major. He’s thinking about switching to either Computer Science or Creative Writing. He really likes English and writing, and is considering being a writer for video games. Doing something you love sounds awesome. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the future, but I hope it’s something I enjoy, even if what I study here at Long Beach doesn’t match up with it.

I really hope I meet this guy again. He’s a good guy to talk to. Especially when you’re trying to catch up with life, like me.

Wk 12 – Artist Interview – Piet Eppinga

This week, I found myself at the Werby Gallery yet again, but this time with Piet Eppinga gracing us with his intriguing artwork.

I am very grateful to Piet Eppinga because as soon as he arrived, he showed us around the room, talking about every single piece in great detail and taking questions. I could feel the passion and enthusiasm he had for his work. It was impossible not to appreciate his vigor, and to be pumped up as a result of this. I also became very fascinated with the meanings behind each piece as he explained each one.

The one that stood out to me most is the sculpture pictured above. It is difficult to see, but it depicts a man and a woman with their child below. I thought it was rather odd that their faces were stuck together. Eppinga explained that the reason why their faces were like that is because he wanted to depict the relationship a man and his wife has. According to him, the two become as one, and they are bound to each other also by their child. What he was talking about clicked with me because the Bible says a similar statement: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” – Genesis 2:24

Wk 12 – Activity – Algorithmic Art

A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay

Verse 1: Am C Em Am (x4)

Transition: F Em (x2)

Verse 2: Am C Em Am (x2)

Chorus: F D F D Bb F D Bb

Break: Am C Em Am

Verse 3: Am C Em Am (x2)

Break: Am C Em Am

Bridge: Am C Em Am (x2)

End: Am D (x4) Am

For this activity, I was aiming to inform the audience on how to play Coldplay’s song A Rush of Blood to the Head, off of their second album. To achieve this, I wrote the procedure for the song and the chords, as seen above. Because just the chords would not be enough to communicate how to do this, I also recorded myself playing the song and guiding the viewer through the steps.

Through all of this, I believe I have achieved this goal. The video was excellent not just for the chords, but for the timing of the strums of the guitar was well. I also stated in the video that this song is for guitar players that have mastered the basics of guitar playing.

Wk 12 – Classmate Interview – Maggie

I met a fellow freshman today. Her name is Maggie. I didn’t catch her last name. She’s a rather quiet person.

I noticed she was drawing mermaids on her index card. She told me she loves to draw mermaids, fish, and other colorful things. I took it that she enjoyed doing art, and all things associated with it. She agreed, and said to me that she enjoys Art 110. I don’t mean to cause grief to you, Glenn, but she’s the first person I’ve heard say that. So needless to say, I was pretty surprised. She also said that she played water polo in high school, which is sick. I think water polo would take much more stamina than football, which is what I did. Maaaad respect.

So, because I was feeling pretty brazen today, I asked her if I could ask her a weird question. Maggie’s eyes widened alarmingly, and I got a little scared, but she said, “Sure.” I asked her if she knew where people went after they died. She immediately said, “Heaven.” She went on to say, “Good people go to heaven, and bad people go to Hell.” She realizes it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. I then talked to her about my beliefs, and I think I rubbed her the wrong way with the things I said. As a result, our conversation ended a little awkwardly. That’s totally okay, though.

Wk 11 – Activity – Sculpture

For this week, we tried something interesting: making sculptures out of plaster mix. This was a first time experience for me, so I was thinking constantly about what could go wrong with this, and how it would go wrong. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad.

Because of certain circumstances, I was unable to go to the beach all this weekend, so I decided to make the sculpture in my backyard. I thought the dirt would have the same consistency as sand, since nothing has grown there for a while. Boy, was I wrong! The dirt was hard and unyielding, so I had to work hard with my shovel to make a hole in the ground deep enough for my hand to fit in. I used a lot of water, as you can tell. The ground turned into mud, which made the experience a bit more unpleasant.

When I finally got my desired result, I filled the hole with dirt-turned mud and attempted to make my mark with my hand. The mud was extremely dense; almost putty-like. So my imprint wasn’t very clean, and I had doubts my plaster mix would work well with this, but I had no other choice. I poured it in, waited 30 minutes, and….

As you can see, it looks nothing like a hand, but I’m just glad it actually worked. Overall, this experience was a bit irksome, and I would have had less trouble if I actually used sand, but it worked out okay in the end. Digging out my sculpture was the fun part. I don’t think I’ll be taking plaster seriously anytime soon, but if I have the time to learn more about sculpture making, I think I would try it out.

Wk 11 – Artist Interview – Patricia E. Rangel

When I first walked into the Werby gallery, I saw these structures I thought were made of stone. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was all sand/dirt! That totally blew my mind. Truly, any medium of any kind can be worked into a piece of art. I was suddenly glad that I had decided not to touch the structures. They would have all crumbled down, and what a mess that would have been! There should have been a sign or two warning about that.

The one piece that caught my eye was the first one on the floor. Rangel stated that she gathers materials from various places, and it shows here.

What’s also interesting is that she composed this piece in a geometric, orderly fashion. Embedded within the structures are pieces of wood that looks like it came from a fence. She must have picked these up when she was visiting a farm, or someplace that implements agricultural practices. I admit this piece was far too abstract for me to make any interpretation about it, and as far as I could tell, there really was no hidden symbolic meaning or anything. I asked her about this, and she replied she didn’t have anything of the sort in mind when she made this. However, she does say in her artist’s statement that dirt has the ability to “present vulnerability, failure, strength, and potential” and to “promote change.” This is true. Dirt is… well, dirty, and it is often associated with things one may find undesirable, but plants and trees can also grow in dirt. She goes on to say, “They (the structures) are composed of dirt I reuse, each time rebuilt into a new form.” There’s already something really deep in that. Overall, I took away from this display something that may not have been what she was going for, but I’m still grateful to her for making me think.

Wk 11 – Classmate Interview – Angelica Palad

This week, I met Angelica Palad near the Gatov-West. She’s a freshman, just like myself. I thought she was a junior! I’ve got to stop making assumptions based on people’s appearances. I could end up offending someone someday.

Angelica is a nutrition major. She learns about dieting and telling people what to eat. I guessed that she wasn’t totally into art, but to my surprise, she told me she really liked it! She’s the first person in a while to tell me that she wasn’t just taking this class to fulfill a GE requirement. She used to play flute a while back. That’s pretty cool.

She dorms at Long Beach because her house is three hours away from school. I asked her if she goes home to visit on weekends, and she told me she doesn’t, since it’s a big waste of gas. Three hours to home plus three hours back to school totals up to six hours driving! I could see why she’s not so keen to visit. I sure hope she’s not too lonely.

To be honest, I don’t remember what else we talked about, since most of the time I was talking about myself, but I remember thoroughly enjoying the conversation we had. Overall, Angelica is a chill person. I hope we could perhaps meet and talk again.