Barb Talkzzzzzz

For my final project, I wanted to use a video that I made for the drag show, featuring Marshall Cuffe as Barb and me as Pam.

The video is a mockumentary style short focused on Barb, a member of a small Midwestern church.  Oh, and we're both drag queens in our roles as church members.  The video is a tongue in cheek personification of what a typical religious midwestern person might be like.  It touches on social transparency, in that we did this video to open and create dialogue in areas where people tend to be hush-hush, especially where it concerns religion and gender norms, sexuality, etc.  This video is not intended to be offensive at all, because the that work that drag queens do is always out of love.  And lots of fake lash glue and lip gloss.

I'm still on the fence as to whether I should put up the video, mainly because we went to the church in the middle of the night and filmed it without anyone's permission, so we'd like to stay out of trouble.  However, I am considering uploading the video privately so that Julie may watch it.  I will post an update as soon as I make my decision... and find my fake lashes.

Thanks to everyone for a great year :)

The Makeup Artist is Present | Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I would like to take a spin on Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present, a phenomenal performance piece in which she sits across from a person and shares her energy and space to create an "energy dialogue" with her audience.  I don't think that I would like for my project to be quite as public as hers was, as I would like to create a dialogue with my audience to discuss their ideals concerning beauty and cosmetic, and how it impacts their own ideas of how they view and present themselves to the world. 

As a makeup artist and visual artist, I'm very interested in how beauty is perceived by women and men.  For the majority of cosmetics history, men have been largely ignored even though many of the pioneers in the makeup industry have been men.  With my project, I would like to film a "makeup application dialogue" in which I film another person applying makeup to me in a style that they would typically apply to themselves.  Throughout their application, I would like to create discourse in which they tell me of how ideals of beauty imposed on them throughout their life have impacted them, negatively or positively. 

This ideally would be presented in the form of a video, much like Marina's own documentary presentation of her retrospective and The Artist is Present performance.  Mine wouldn't be quite as long, though. ;) 

Beyoncé and the Maurizio Cattelan Experience

But of course you knew that.

I chose Maurizio Cattelan for my final project because I've always had an interest in him ever since I learned about him in the fall of 2013 in my sculpture class.  Partly because of his silver fox status, but mostly for his critical, ironic, and satirical portrayal of society through his sculptures.

But really, isn't he a babe?!

I chose to confuse my presentation audience with a reading of Beyoncé's biography and a series of images of her from my own personal collection, much like Cattelan's own personal style of interviewing.   He’s known for having ridiculous interviews where he actually sends in people for him that are prepared with absurd, evasive answers and non-sensical explanations that never directly answer the interviewer’s questions.  What a beautiful way to conduct an interview.  You’re able to evade this random ass stranger that’s wants to interrogate you and ask you all sorts of invasive questions about your life and what it all means and you just say "NOPE I’m not doing this.. here.. have an impostor instead. Thank you!"

What a beautiful art piece in and of itself.  I think it speaks to the artificiality of interviews and the wall that is created between the interview taking place and the audience intent on learning more about their favorite celebrity.  During an interview, we, as the audience, are trusting that the interviewee is being honest and trustworthy about what’s taking place in front of the cameras and microphones, but we have no idea.  We have no idea who’s coaching them, who’s feeding them the answers from the void, but Maurizio is letting you in on the sham.  He’s telling you exactly what’s going on.  And he’s being honest about it.  Isn’t he great?

Vivian Maier | De-mystifying the Photog

On Thursday, May 1st, we were fortunate enough to attend a lecture by Pamela Bannos concerning the found photos of Vivian Maier, French/American photographer and live-in nanny.  Bannos describes her not as a nanny photographer, but a photographer who happened to be a nanny.

Vivian Maier in her signature selfie style.

The mystery and herstory surrounding her photographs is one of intrigue, fascination, and excitement, much like those mystery shows one watches late at night when flipping through channels. Throughout the lecture,  I couldn't help but wonder if Bannos was going to pull a "Punk'd" and tell us that she was actually Vivian Maier in the flesh.

What struck me most from Bannos' lecture was how influential social media was in Maier's rise to posthumous fame.  Through the internet and her crazy mad researching skills, she was able to amass a vast amount of knowledge that aided her in piecing together not only Vivian Maier's history.  She was even able to study Maier's photographic thought process with Google Maps by tracking her movement while taking photos in the streets of NYC.  As a said, Bannos has some maaaaad researching skills, albeit she seems a tad bit obsessed.

Overall, Bannos' lecture was a refreshing change of pace from the normal lectures that we attend.  Thank you Pamela Bannos!

BLIND NO MIRROR 2 MIN MAKEUP CHALLENGE!!!!!!!!

For my in class video session, I decided to bring YouTube to the classroom and film a no mirror, two minute blind makeup challenge.

Challenge of all sorts are all the rave among the professional YouTube bloggers so I decided to film one of these challenges, but in front of an audience in class.   Most of the time, people spend their time watching this videos in the privacy of their room, usually alone or with a small group of friends, and without the blogger in the room physically.  But how many opportunities does the blogger ever have to film a video in front of an audience to see their live reactions? Probably hardly ever!

DO RE MI MI MI | A Musical Relational Art Exploration

As a musician, I'm almost always thinking in sounds, pitches, music notes, rhythms, etc.  So usually this translates into turning almost any pitch I hear in normal, everyday life into a song or pitch in my head. Seriously, it can get annoying and overbearing, especially when trying to sleep.  Remember that part in Shrek when Fiona outsings the bird and it explodes? That’s what it feels like sometimes, especially at bedtime, but you learn to cope and deal with it and move on with life.

This project is an attempt at explaining what it's like to be inside of my brain.  I'm kind of obsessed with how other people think, especially when their train of thought isn't focused on anything specific and it's just jumbling around.  To get into someone else's brain and have a lasting encounter (page 19) on it is extremely fascinating to me.  Consequently, my video is also attempting to prompt the audience to think like me, in song and pitch.  The conductor is a guide, much like a real musical situation, for the audience to sing the pitch either in their head or out loud.  I'd actually prefer the latter, especially if it was an unexpected reaction and gut instinct to sing aloud.  Due to my musical pursuits for the majority of my life, I don't know how to sit still still whenever a conductor gives a cue. It's a problem.

Ideally, this would be projected onto a much larger screen in a darker room, much like that of Christian Marclay's  The Clock, to isolate the audience from their own thoughts and ease them into mine.  This would also be much longer with more pitches and everyday sounds from my life, but I chose to only include the three sounds I hear most often for the purpose of saving class time. 

I hope you enjoy! You can view the video here on my YouTube account if the embedded video doesn't work.

Cosmogony 2.0 | A Carol Emmons Intergalactic Art Exploration

"Where do we come from?"

A question I'm sure we've all pondered and entertained at some point in our lifetime and one that will probably run through our mind at some point again while trying to go to bed.

"Hmm.. I wonder like where we come from.. is my mascara running?"

As light-hearted and cheerful as I try to be, I definitely have had my share of "existential" moments where I've endlessly let my mind run through the endless possibilities of how we as a human race have come into existence and where our future is headed.  For me, Carol Emmons was able to capture the sentiment of one of my bouts of existential pondering.  When I walked into the room, my eyes immediately started scanning the text spanning the entirety of the Kohler Gallery.  Being an installation artist, I feel that Carol successfully transformed the space into a zen-like meditation and reflection zone where one could contemplate not only the art pieces that Carol offered us, but also our own relationship to the individual and communal worlds that we experience every day.

I was particularly drawn to the idea of combining elements from various creation stories from around the globe.  Stemming from my childhood experiences with religion, I've always struggled with the Christian mentality of "we're right and everyone else is wrong" where it concerns stories of our earth's creation.  It made me extremely happy to see an artist being inclusive of all cosmogenic theories, not only the one King James wanted us to hear about.  

Thank you for an exceptional installation, Carol Emmons!