Damned Sleep by Andres Arizaga Cordero

I found this print at the Museum of Latin American Art. The artists name is Andres Arizaga Codero and they are from Quito, Ecuador. The name of the print is “Damned Sleep” it is a color serigraph that is 16.5 x 24 inches and it was made in 2019. The print itself had a green, black, and white and it depicted nightmarish imagery. There were 3 flying heads with bat wings on the left, a voodoo doll looking figure on the right, and 5 flying ghosts in the top right. The flying heads looked like they were laughing in a evil and psychotic way and the doll looked very similar to the doll from the horror movie “trick or treat.” I think the figures were meant to represent a nightmarish and haunting feeling of dread and they were probably seen in a nightmare by the artist who made the print. They also had a very hand drawn pencil look to them which i appreciated. The background of the print is green and black. It had a sketchy and hazy look to it that adds to the atmosphere of the print. The size of the print was pretty big too and was most likely made in two parts, but printed on the same sheet of paper. The imagery immediately drew me in and became my favorite piece that i seen from that visit and it reminded me of some drawings that i have done in the past and of course of the horror movie “Trick or Treat”. I can relate to the ideas that were explored in this piece because i’ve had some pretty creepy nightmares too and i love the theme of horror and nightmares.

Memoirs of a Banana Girl

This last month, a friend and former classmate of mine named Lizzy Choi had her senior exhibition titled Memoirs of a Banana Girl at the Eduardo Carillo Gallery on the UCSC campus. Her works were mainly woodblock relief prints and paintings. Lizzy Choi is an LGBT+ Korean-American artist and expresses herself with imagery of her personal life, struggles with mental illness, and cultural experiences both traditionally and in the landscape of American culture as a minority.

Some of her more impressive print pieces were her reduction based woodblock relief prints. Lizzy’s art tend to either have a blue red color pallette, or bright neons yellows and pinks, in both her prints and paintings. The first print pictured below, “BLUE VIOLETS” is a 19x25 inch woodblock, printed as  4 layer reduction. This process is where with each layer of the print, the layer is carved and printed on one woodblock, and then carved more for the following layer (usually printed from the lightest to darkest color), until the last layer is completed. The second print pictured below, “JADE BRAINS,” is a 19x23 inch woodblock, also with a 4 layer reduction. The last print shown here is a 21x25 inch woodblock relief titled “토니학” and 5 layer reduction print.

Her pieces are consistent with colors and themes, usually subtle darker colors for imagery she creates of quieter scenes or still life pieces, and brighter eye catching colors for her more energetic prints and paintings like her piece “토니학.” What I love about Lizzy’s work, is the way she expresses different aspects of herself and her life experiences. Her prints shown here are more about her cultural experiences, but still show emotions such as excitement or comfort. Some of her other paintings in her gallery (and portfolio in general), she strongly expresses her personal struggles with depression and anxiety. I enjoy the way Lizzy places herself within her work, and it inspires me to want to create more personal pieces within my own work, as I have struggled expressing my emotions or personal opinions into pieces or having deeper meanings to my work other than what is on the surface.

Comics and Politics

Museum - MOLAA

Exhibit- Grafica America

Artist - Jose Revuelta

Jose Revuelta produced this piece as a college student at Pasadena City College. Jose used the Screen Printing department in his school to make this print which can be seen at Flea Market Comics where it is displayed for the public to view. Because of this print, Jose has earned a scholarship and his artwork has earned the place in the GRAFICA AMERICA museum exhibit at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA).

This piece is an 8 layer print on a 24 by an 18inch sheet of paper. Although not explicitly stated, it is very likely that the artist used photo emulsion to produce it.

This image is a political parody of DC’s action comics #1 cover art in which Superman is carrying a car and a man is fleeing in fear. Below is the image as provided by https://www.comixology.com/Action-Comics-1938-2011-1/digital-comic/12613.

He has replaced the superhero with an immigrant and the man in the suit is replaced with Donald Trump wearing a tie made in China.  Showing how contradictory he is.

Jose Revuelta’s work stuck with me because comic books are a huge part of my life. He is of Latin descent and you can see this piece relates to his identity as the title has a word in Spanish  and the farm worker, is dark skinned; someone often associated as being a day laborer

What I love the most about this piece is the analogy he incorporated into this piece. The way that he represented Superman by using the immigrants and the man representing  Donald Trump who is in sheer terror. The analogy he bestowed upon his audience was smart and that’s what stood out to me the most.

I went to the Charles White: A Retrospective exhibition at LACMA. Charles White was an African American artist who showed an affinity for art at a young age. He was raised by a single mother who could not afford childcare, so she would leave him at the library while she worked. There, he read and learned about art. As he studied art, he realized that most fine art only featured white bodies, so as an artist, he strived to represent and celebrate blackness. He created art with a wide variety of media, from ink, pencil, tempura, and of course, printmaking.

My favorite print piece of his was a large lithograph print titled Love Letter III it is a large print of a face looking upwards with eyes closed, wearing a scarf over their head and shoulders. Floating above their face is a large, pink conch shell. The background is a blue to white blend. I think the color choice in this print is gorgeous, I love how the pink and blue contrast to give the image energy, but on their own are subdued colors. I also like how symmetrical this piece is, it gives a sense of balance. The part i found most interesting about this piece was the shell. I looked closely to see how many layers it was and I think it is only three, maybe even two. It's amazing how much depth, detail, and color range White was able to get in this shell using such a limited number of layers. The same goes for the figure at the bottom of the composition, which is only one layer. Even with one layer, White still manages to achieve a full range of values. White had several other linoleum cut prints but Love Letter III was definitely my favorite. 

Young Farmer, 1953

Micah, 1964

Solid as a Rock (My God Is Rock), 1958

KUSAMA INFINITY: Kiani Takes a Trip to the Art Theater

Hi again fellow printers,

Tonight's post is sponsored by Professor Ward's extra credit option.

This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to be in the company of a half-full independent theater in the heart of downtown Long Beach. Historic Fourth Street's Art Theater is the last of its kind, a rarity in the modern-day overabundance of corporate film. Since its birth in 1925, the theater has gone through several transitions in architecture, until ten years ago its facade was restored to the original blueprints. If you have not yet attended a screening at this theater, put it on your Winter break to-do list.
What sparked this visit to the theater I had not previously been to, was the limited showing of documentary director Heather Lenz' extended biopic on artist Yayoi Kusama: "Kusama Infinity". Lenz made a special appearance at the end of the film to explain the process that made the piece possible as well as take a short Q&A session before the next movie's crowd could spill in.

I felt a tangle of motivation, sympathy, and utmost appreciation after I exited the building. Before the film, Kusama's enigmatic aura and favorable presence that invited social-media influencers to photography themselves in nearly every major museum seemed like a perversion of modernist indulgence. It was soon realized that this wrong internalization of spite towards mainstream culture had been misunderstood without the context of Kusama's lifelong trajectory as an artist.

She started her journey in her youth, knowing that she wanted to become a painter and disobeying the strict traditions of her wealthy Japanese upbringing in her hometown, Matsumoto. She asked painter Georgia O'Keefe, whom she admired, for advice in letters and eventually moved out to New York on her own to pursue her goal. Although stricken by the unspoken traumas of her family and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Kusama was effective in her creative methods and stuck to what she set out to do. Her ideas permeated the New York art scene, as more-famous and Caucasian artists would visit her shows and adapt her methodologies into their own to plagiaristic extents. Kusama was inherently loving and embraced the ability to question and push her way through; performing gay marriages, retailing her art for the price of hot-dogs (at the time), and injecting herself into an environment that did not respect or validate her presence. This lack of recognition wore at her mentality and led her to several suicide attempts and a return to Japan. Against these odds, Kusama re-implemented herself into the art world and is now able to reside in a psychiatric hospital that takes care of her, two blocks away from her studio. She is the most successful living female artist today. 

The screening was well-needed to my limited understanding. While the themes of her work tie into her OCD with repeated motifs that aid the publicity factor and draw in curious viewers-- I did feel a bit compelled by the vague romanticization of mental illness. Neuroticism can be a hindrance or catalyst for creating work, and to see Kusama suffer the abuse of invalidation from the American art scene and still persevere left an impression that made me consider my own artistic choices. Anyhow, her dedication to her work has overthrown the defeats of her past into an infinite circulation of influence that continues to grow everyday. 

Kiani Wish

Chinese Calligraphy

The pair of Chinese Calligraphy Paintings was done during the year 1950 by artist  Yu Youren. Although this necessarily a print it shows a style of writing that has been done for hundreds of years by artisans. There is a flow to the lettering, even though they are not all connected they still seem attached. These two paintings read Only with high aspirations can one discover the truth of all things and Only with a peaceful mind can one find the essence of nature. The brushstrokes show a human quality to the art the same way that printmaking allows for human error to had another dimension that digital artwork won't.

NICOLAS PARTY: Kiani Wish Visits the Marciano Art Foundation

Hello fellow printers,

On a fairly recent trip up to the west side of Hollywood, I stumbled upon the glamoured remains of an old Masonic-temple-turned-gallery that is now home to the beloved Marciano Art Foundation. The museum has been in service for about thirty-five years and houses a multitude of exciting experimental contemporary works. During my visit, Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei held the floor for his solo exhibition which featured a new large installation, “Life Cycle,” which was composed of elaborate linear bamboo and twine sculpture, on display alongside his famous “Sunflower Seeds” and “Spouts”. Brilliant work continued to permeate every space of the museum’s three accessible floors. Many of my favorites there were the few different avant-garde digitally-altercated performance videos. There was even a painting-sculpture duality piece which allowed you to scratch and sniff the sculpture to know what “fear” smells like. A strange addition to the museum was the invitation to photograph the work and yourself with it; a usual prohibition for most traditional art spaces. All of which added to the “experimental” manifesto the foundation intends for.
However, out of all the brilliant pieces, I took immediate intrigue to the soft illustrative works by Swiss-born artist, Nicolas Party. Party had two pieces on display, one painting and the other a 2-D marble arrangement (pictured below).

 Unknown title that I cannot remember, left. "Portrait", right.

Both works are equally haunting, depicted in stiff portraits with dead gazes that bore into the viewer's skull as they walk through the Foundation's windowed halls in the third floor's "Mad World" exhibition. First, I will formally analyze the painting to the right, then, the left, and try to dig at their intrinsic meaning overall afterwards. With delicate modeling to the sullen pink skin and organic shapes that rot over the head of the subject, Party illuminates a dim and dark narrative to the context of his piece. The lips are a dark red, its eyes sunken-in and alert, the background a cold neutral gray, a golden strip along the shirt collar ties in the wilted fruit-shapes into harmony. 
As for the marble "Portrait", a similar display is presented in a different medium and subject. The portrait's subject is dark-skinned, wearing a striped V-neck (possibly a jersey?), and looks on more sternly than the other. A beautiful mismatch of colored marble are lain together in perfect shapes.
Perhaps the wide-eyed strangers fit into the overall theme of "Mad World" in that they are both impenetrable beings; the two leave very little distinct clues as to who or what they mean. The audience is trapped within their disillusioned worlds. In some ways, they remind me of the ancient Sumerian's votive figure statues that acted as placeholders in temples to always look attentive under the watch of a divine being. However, it is unknown if Party intended to make religious reference, which would open the (maybe) unnecessary Pandora's Box of theological readings. 

In both the work's placard descriptions there is a lack of contextual apprehension, instead we are given a biography about the artist. To sum up the blurb and further research I conducted about the artist:

Nicolas Party has formal training in several artistic mediums including, but not limited to: painting, mural-work, charcoal, and marble. He was born in 1980 in Switzerland, lives and works in Brussels and New York, and was formerly a graffiti-artist. Each of his works tend to evoke some surrealist nature while tying together a formidable style with his use of vibrant colors and flat graphic style. Party states that he derives his inspiration from references to the medieval styles and late nineteenth century painters such as Félix Vallotton and Ferdinand Hodler. The selected works apart of the Foundation's display seem only to dip into Party's ideal art-setting which would prefer to occupy the walls with paint. 

Party's work struck me instantly in the gallery (hence my inclination to snap a photo) as I am drawn to flat design and portraiture, hence the reason why printmaking has its alluring qualities. Combining the two pulled at my desire for calming aesthetics, even though the work I saw at the Foundation was somewhat bleak. I do believe if Party began a project with the focus on making reproductions of a piece, his style would resonate heavily with the printmaking medium and be a seamless addition to his oeuvre.

Sources:

Hammer Projects: Nicolas Party - Hammer Museum. (2017, June 12). Retrieved from https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2016/hammer-projects-nicolas-party/

Nicolas Party. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://frieze.com/article/nicolas-party