some pictures i might use:

the words i think of when i was reading this book were:
colorful
beautiful
death
life
forgien
educated
poetic
inspiring
bright
calm
happy
celebrate
family
loalty
love


when i read the book i see:
a lot of bright colors, like reds and oranges but not in a fierce way. in a bright, happy way.
i also see calming neutrals because this book (aside from the invasion aspects) is very calm, tsung tsai is very calm and poetic.
i also see blue for this reason.

when i think of tsung tsai i am floored by how he looks at everything with such wisdom. all i could think about when i was reading this book was death, every time i saw the word i circled it but it never seemed to be very sad. i liked the fact that he looked at everything in life as nessicary and accepts it, even death. i think there is something so amazing about that. i love that he celebrates every aspect of life.


i loved this about the book because of what is going on in my personal life. i remember going to the hospital and sitting on the side of my grandfathers hospital bed while he was struggling to read and i asked "how are you?" and he said "wonderful." i thought there was something so incredibly beautiful about that. he had just accepted the fact that he was laying in a hopsital surrounded by his family just waiting to die. i have been thinking a lot about death lately, as you know from my other project. i want to stay with that (mostly because its all i can think about & i think there is more to be explored with it). this time, though, i want to CELEBRATE death. i want to take all of my writings, all my thoughts, and mix them together with the thoughts from the book that really spoke to me. sort of like how george and tsung tsai's worlds come together and bring a new understanding i want to mix my world with the book. i want to make a series of three collages using the writing and some old family photographs. i want to use obituaries, too, and celebrate the death of everyone. i'm not sure EXACTLY what it is going to look like because i want to experiment with materials. i have the general idea and layout figured out, though.

bones of the master-
due to problems with ordering the book online i am still awaitng it's arrival. i have read the first chaper which i have photo copied. i really responded to this one in particular quote from the book

"nothing more was said. nothing more needed t be said. nothing was missing. everything was as it should be. as it always was. as it always would be. even this dying. this goodbye"

especially because of my current situation with the illness of my grandfather, i've been stuck on the idea of loss. not only loss through death but even just from moving out and on to a new city and a new life. i've been having such a hard time with the transition of movig here and realizing what it means to grow up and what it means to have to accept all of the things life throws at you. i think there is some sort of beauty in accepting these things, especially death. i sat on my grandfathers hospital bed while he was struggling to breathe, with skin sunken in & somehow when someone asked "how are you?" he was able to smile and say "wonderful".


i thought that was beaautiful.

i want to do my project on loss. i like the mediums boltanski uses, and his work already reminds me a lot of my own. My grandfather is sitting in a nursing home dying and it's all i can ever think of, i just need to do some art work about it. i want to find some wood at a junk yard or something and build a small shack, i will scribble everything i've been keeping on papers in notebooks all over the inside walls.
i'm not entierly sure where to find the marerials i will need for this. i have a few ideas, this might not be the one i go through with. either way i really want to find some aged wood and build some sort of structure. i also want to incorporate names from obituaries and recent deaths somehow, to show how important everyones life was, not just my grandfathers.

CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI.

"The big problem when you're an artist is that the times of creation don't come often. Most of the time I stay here in my studio and groan, and after that I go to my room, look at the TV.One of the beauties of my life is that I never work. I'm lazy and I have no other way to work. I teach this to my students: you must wait and hope - there's nothing else you can do. And when you have an idea, you can do it in ten minutes.' "

Christain Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944 and spent his early years hiding from the Nazi's. His artwork is haunted by the problems of memory and loss. Boltanski's work seeks to memorialize the anonymous and those who have dissappeared. Many of Boltanski's projects have used actual lost property from public spaces. He has had exhibits all over the globe, including one in the MFA.




Flowers and Airman 1991


Monument Odessa 1944


Sans-Souci 1991



Faces 1996



L'École des Fans 2000



Gelebt



Archive Dead Swiss 1990


Boltanski does his art work in a room that serves as his studio. Most of the time he doesn't let people into his studio. "Nobody comes here - I don't like it when people come here. There is nothing to see - most of the time I give interviews at a cafe in Paris, and it's good." He says that his "studio" is a place for him to live, he says that the only useful thing about a studio is that after some time you can imagine something in the space, like a forrest. "I walk in it and today it is nothing for me, but perhaps in two weeks it will become something."

At age 12 Boltanski began his life as an artist, when he felt that his childhood was over and he had become an adult, "when i understood that my childhood was finished, and was dead." Boltanski says "I think we all have somebody who is dead inside of us. A dead child. I remember the little Christain that is dead inside of me." Boltanski stopped attending school and started to stay at home. "I was very crazy" he says. One day he made a small object out of plasticine and his parents and brother encouraged him by telling him how good it was. Boltanski then began to make large paintings in his room while his brother taught him english.

Boltanski goes to his studio every day at 10:30 "and I stay and do nothing. I go to Paris sometimes. I have a few ideas. To be very pretentious, sometimes I believe it is mystical. Sometimes you find nothing, and then you find some-thing you love to do. Sometimes you make mistakes, but some-times it's true. In two minutes, you understand what you must do for the next two years. Sometimes it's in the studio, but other times it's walking in the street or reading a magazine. It's a good life, being an artist, because you do what you want." Most of his artwork is destoryed after his shows, if it is not destoryed it is removed and recylced and used to put into another piece. "When I make a show it's like when you arrive at home and you open your fridge at night and there's two potatoes and one sausage and two eggs, and with all that you make something to eat. I try to make something with what is in my fridge".

When Boltanski makes a show he tries to make it so it has a begining and and end because "emotion comes from time." Boltanski says "t's a different kind of time than theatre or cinema. I mean, when you read a book, you have, say, a young girl who is happy on one page, and you turn the page and now she is dying. That quality of emotion comes when you have some kind of a shock.When I make a picture, I try to create different kinds of space, and even different kinds of shock, to have a beginning and to have a sweep of emotion. My work is a little like theatre, but it's also always so different. I'm like a musician, I can play my work and I can play my work better, or worse, depending on the place where I am showing. It's theatre without text, without spectacle. What I wish to do is something between theatre and installation.'"


'Being an artist does not make me happy. You have no reason to wake up in the morning. That's my big problem. Why don't I look at the TV all day? I've made no reason to come here. But if I stop totally, then nothing happens. I always hoped to open a bakery in Bratislava - with a very fat wife and ten children! - but I shall never do that. This is a lonely life. Some of my friends love to make gardens or have cars, and I understand that. But for me I want to do nothing, to have no distraction. I love to eat, I love to drink, I like to see friends. I'm not always alone. I am not a good cook, but I love to cook. I occasionally have this dream that I am a teacher, but I am a bad teacher and I don't go to my school very often! 'And what is very lonely is that nobody else can say anything useful to you about your work. Even Annette [Messager] never comes here. She never looks at my work. 'There is a beautiful story in Proust: A sad man whose wife has just died sees a friend going to commit suicide. They pass through a garden and he says to his friend, "Look at these flowers, so beautiful. Look at the blue sky." Seeing these things, the friend forgets to kill himself. He survives because he forgets. Sometimes we need to forget. For this reason, I do nothing, and I only wait to die. We must be friendly with dying. To be alive is to be honest.'-Boltanski

this painting is made up mosttly of local color, colors seen inthe natural world. to me the painting seems very organic and earthy. There are some areas, where the houses are that have pinkish colors that simultaneous contrast with the natural colors of the landscape. the colors in this painting, althought very earthy, seem to be very bold,. they really pop out at you.
I think that the use of these natural colors like blue and green really give this paiting a meditated feeling. Green is one of the calmest colors to the eye and that reflects in this painting. Blue is a tranquil color, helping give that relaxed meditative quality to the painting. when i look at this painting it makes me relax. the earthy tones let my eye calm down and move comfortably across the canvas, but the colors of the buildings and the pink that seems to pop out at my eye keep me intereested and excited to be looking at the painting.

museum drawings of rocks.

&&& my object is my polaroid camera.


words/assoctions:

memories
kelsey
christmas
bradley
birthday
beach
love
friendship
family
instant
childhood
square
yellow
blue
light
reflection
mirror
art
sisters


response to object:

one of my favorite possesions is my polaroid camera. i love the camera not only because of what it does and how it looks, but because of all the things it reminds me of. I like to use this camera to instantly snap photos and collect memories. The camera reminds me of christmas one year when i was little and i got a polaroid for christmas. I remember opening it up and taking a picture of my dog next to the christmas tree. i also remembering finding out how expensive film was and being super bummed about it. The camera mostly reminds me of my childhood and my family. IT reminds me of everyone i've taken pictures of with it. It reminds me a lot of my friend kelsey who was always capturing the most beautiful things and putting them into tha tlittle white frame. I miss her and a lot of things. Things have changed so much. I miss my family together, too. no one is around anymore. i miss being a kid.

abstract


actual line


weight and gravity


composition


containment


contrast


figure


gesture (i thought this rock had a lot of motion, and created the gesture of moving upward)


grid


implied line ( there are some actual lines in this too, but i took it to show the ones that were broken up as implied)


location (location of where the red objcet is corresponding with the rest of it)


negitive space


pattern


perspective ( two point)


positive shape/space


radial


representational


rhythm/movement


seperation


shadow


centrifual (circular shapes)


containment


contrast


asymetrical