My Tie Dye Shirt

Traveling Across Public Art

"People thought I was crazy." Alice Ramsey

Originally I had a piece of public art in mind to take photos on,  until ... I hit the brakes and swerved into a parking lot to take a snap shot of a couple fancy ladies in a car.  Im not sure why but it really caught my eye.  I mean who really paints a mural of a bunch of ladies in a car running over some bushes in the desert. Not until I started taking pictures did I realize that this piece was representational to history.  I guess it takes a description to tell you that, because thats what it took me.  To me it was comical, there is my beautiful Nevada desert and in the midst of it are some dirty ladies in fancy get ups.  Apparently Alice Ramsey, the lady in the drivers seat, was the first woman to drive across that Untied States in an automobile.  When you get a real good look of all the bright and strong colors you can really feel the empowering message painted right on the wall of a bright future towards all women.  This car was placed in the middle of the desert with nothing around, showing that women were just as independent as a men.  Their faces are painted dirty to depict that they traveled across rural areas and got their hands dirty without any male help.  Comical before, but now inspirational. People may have called Alice crazy, but this shows that she was accomplished and made a place for herself in history and in art.       

Drift Project

This was a real neat experience for me.  I was adamant about it at first.  More like, "what the heck am I going to take pictures of?"  As I started to walk around the industrial-ness of downtown I was automatically drawn to the river.  Mostly because I like that there was some kind nature found in the city.  In the midst of all the traffic and people walking around it seemed to be the only part of the city that alluded to a serene, peaceful place in the middle of it all.  That sparked my interest in taking pictures of the natural environment in a modern place.  While I flashed away, I noticed that I was constantly drawn to the leaves and their place in the city.  I saw the leaves as a representation of the blank faces and forgotten people that go by unnoticed in such a busy world.  Anyways here are my pictures of the leaves I took in various settings from my iPhone4-I am actually very pleased with the quality. 

       

Treaty Signing at Medicine Creek Lodge

I find it interesting that a period in history was recorded by art in two different ways by two different people.  Taylor's version was more representational, depicted in black and white by pencil with vast detail.  Unlike Taylor's work, Wolf creates something that was more abstract in the fact that it was not as detailed and took the world and events that he saw and only included the main characteristics, essentially only throwing in what was important in his eyes.  The semiotics and iconography really go hand in hand with these two.  The language that Taylor uses is more organized and structured with all the detail versus the more primitive and colorful depiction in Wolf's version showing the differences in culture.  Wolf's work relies mostly on it's iconography showing a lot of detail in the attire that the characters wear and the different types of symbols and colors used on their tipi's, something that only someone of their culture can really understand.  Whereas Taylor portrays the Indians with some feathers and arrows, more or less creating an image with primitive savages instead of people who carry great meaning with them in what they wear.  Wolf's cultural image shows the value of their women by including them and Taylor takes an ethnocentric view by woman in formal attire and almost blended into the background, making them very difficult to pick out.  This also really shows the difference in cultures, Taylor's work illustrated the belief that men are the back bone in society and make all the decisions opposed to the Indian culture where women seem to be included equally with the men.  

Mariyln Manroe

Some of Andy Warhol's work, found on a google search.

Ana Mendieta - Silueta

Ana Mendieta's work on Silueta in Mexico is the perfect example of artists giving form to the immaterial, revealing hidden truths and speaking strongly on personal feelings.  The imprint of her body in the rough looking ground covered in red paint is striking Silueta Piece.  The red paint symbolizes the stain of oppression from her past in Havana, Cuba where she fled from the communist movement of Fidel Castro.  She is well known in performance and landscape art.  Many consider her works as feminist, as she uses her own body within her pieces.  Much of what she creates uses natural elements creating the theme of earth and body, showing her fascination of life and death.  Unfortunately her works in art was cut short by a fall from her New York apartment.

Paintings :  Silueta's  Empowerment  Fire Burial

Bios:  bio1 bio2    

Our Strength Alone

I found Chester Arnold’s work very moving and something that I could relate to and really understand the meanings he is trying to impose.  Even before I saw his image of the Tower of Babel at the Nevada Museum of Art, I knew right away that it was going to be the one I was going to write about.  His version is a cross between Pieter Brueghel’s Tower of Babel and the story line of Icarus called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.  This painting is very striking and beautifully painted, using dark colors giving you the feeling of destruction.  Your eye is directly drawn to the focus of the painting, a steep mountain shaped like a volcano that closely resembles the shape of the tower of Babel in Brueghel’s piece.  Like the tower, the mountain is desolate with no trees or any form of plant life on it.  In the Bible men were building the Tower of Babel so they could reach the Heavens, but when God saw this He was displeased and they where scattered upon the earth and their languages were confounded and made different.

  Human achievements are something that become natural to us each and everyday, much like the mountain in Arnold’s painting that was left there by nature, it’s just something that is part of the norm for us.  Along this mountain and winding all around it is road filled with cars that have their entire luggage and things strapped to the roof.  I saw the correlation to the Tower of Babel by everyone wanting to reach the heavens, but in our modern times it’s everyone wanting to make it as high as they can go.  Now we measure reaching the heavens by fame, fortune and success, always gathering more things as we go along to the top.  However a lot of our attempts end in failure and that is seen at the lower right hand side of the picture with the man who was climbing to the top all on his own, but then his rope snapped and he is left falling to the bottom.

 God wasn’t displeased with men because they were building a tower, He was displeased because they thought they could get to heaven on their own without Him.  Because of the motives behind their doings, their plans failed.  Just like the climber in Arnold’s painting.  Icarus was they same way, he abandoned all reason given to him by his father, that he went out and flew anyways only to end up in peril.  The plane crashing into the water at the bottom of the mountain is the modern representation of Icarus.  The rocks falling on the right side of the picture are a representation of everything falling apart in ruins and the light coming from the sky to the right of the painting is God watching from the heavens.  It is like everything is falling and if you take notice its one man and one plane falling all alone.  In his work everything is falling and there is nothing in mans power to stop it.

  I think Chester Arnold is trying to tell people through his works, that as people we cannot accomplish anything on our own and what we do accomplish it’s all going to fade away.  This is something that is evident through his other paintings where things are left in land fields, scattered everywhere. Like in his work Fate of Durable Goods, with the pile of ruble floating along in the sea.  He is trying to speak to a materialistic world through his art, that getting to the very top and accumulating the most things is not what matters.  It’s all only going to turn into junk and fall apart anyways.