• Student Review: Carter Schwarberg, Washington University

Schmacke at SLAM

The Berlin-based artist Claudia Schmacke explores the questions of temporality and perception in Currents 103.  This exhibit, consisting of two videos and an installation, opened at the St. Louis Art Museum on April 2nd and will continue through the 5th of July. Although Currents 103 is a small exhibition, it brings substantial questions about the very nature of time and space to the forefront. All three of Schmacke’s works use the ephemeral nature of a moment in order to connect with the viewer. She uses subtle allusion to the human body as well as time as an organizing structure in order to induce self-awareness and self-reflection.

Primarily, Schmacke uses her work to subtly mimic the human body in order to investigate experiential and physical phenomena. Immediately upon entering the gallery space, her work hits a visceral nerve. I am first confronted with her twenty-five minute video Umbilicus, which consists of what seems to be water being sucked through a pipe. The water pressure makes loud, rude, and almost uncomfortable sounds. Though almost abstract, Schmacke’s video refers to physical experiences in the body, almost as if I am looking at an orifice. The large screen and dark room consumes me as I plunge into an awkward and mesmerizing trance. As the video continues, I search for a recognizable visual clue. Occasionally, Schmacke seems to present a reflection of a tree or possibly a human figure. However, the object disappears as quickly as it had come. When watched in entirety, Umbilicus becomes more like an experience than a visual object. I am forced to abandon the search for meaning and to consume what is presented.  Because I cannot recognize exactly what is being depicted, the video forces me to turn inward in order to find meaning. I become increasingly conscious of myself, my own body.  The sights and sounds around me are both awkward and provocative, and they start to reveal my self-consciousness and self-awareness.

Schmacke continues this exploration of the self in the installation Time Reel. The piece stands alone in a room across the walkway from the video pieces. Strands of plastic tubing penetrate the wall of the gallery. The tubing hangs limp, creating loops that exit and then reenter the wall. Green liquid appears to be pulsing through the hoses. Air bubbles shoot through the liquid, forcing their way through the twists and curves. The wall acts like a veil, concealing but also revealing just enough information for the viewer. The strange green dye seems to be sterilizing the vein-like strands as the liquid pulses through and is carried to and from an unknown source. We are again compelled to look towards our own materiality in order to connect with the work.

Secondly, Schmacke tries to communicate the fleeting nature of a moment in order to comment on the temporality of both time and space. Her second film, Dark Matters, reveal this new layer of viewing and thinking. The four-minute video consists of black tar and the movement of gas bubbles penetrating the tar’s membrane. The oozing and bursting black liquid immediately infiltrates my senses. It also presents an obvious tension between the ephemeral and the enduring.  The tar swells with each new gas bubble, expanding to a seemingly intimidating size. However, at its peak, the bubble simply pops, leaving only a subtle footprint in the surface.  That footprint is quickly consumed by another bubble. This process repeats throughout the video as the tar undulates only to disappear. In the glassy surface of each bubble, I can see a figure. The figure vanishes along with each “pop” only to reappear with the next resurgence. Schmacke uses this natural phenomenon as a clear metaphor for the fleeting nature of a moment.

She continues to explore this cyclical nature of life and death in Time Reel. The title seems to suggest that this piece refers to the storage of time. The liquid is constantly moving. Each instant is different from the one before. The work consists of a constant flow or a continuous rise and fall. The tubing protruding from the wall refers to a complex network that is partly visible and partly invisible. This blurs the line between the functions of the external world and those occurring internally within a system. Schmacke seems to be suggesting that both entities contain and store time in a similar way, thus connecting the self with the greater world.

Despite its size, Currents 103 brings substantial questions about the very nature of temporality and perception to the forefront. All three of Schmacke’s works use the ephemeral nature of a moment in order to connect with the viewer. Her subtle allusion to the human body as well as her use of time as an organizing structure induces self-awareness and self-reflection. Her honesty and poignant point of view forced me accept the difficult task of examining the truth about my own place within a greater context. Currents 103 is a valuable experience, even if it may be a little uncomfortable.

Student Reviews: Brett Cook

Recap and Reflection of Brett Cook’s “Dialogue for Community and Soul Collaborative Aesthetics: A Dialogue about Community and Soul”
Katie Lee Salis, Washington University

On Wednesday, March 19th, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, a wide-eyed, scruffy-bearded young man stood in the front of a large lecture hall and asked his audience to breathe with him. “In and out, in and out, in and out,” artist Brett Cook directed his eclectic audience of Washington University art students, professors and fans.  Cook, an unabashed teacher, activist, thinker, motivational speaker, photographer, artist, and self-proclaimed icon, discussed the importance of his “unique” and “groundbreaking” artistic endeavors.  Cook is the type of artist who believes that the process is more important than the product; the art is in the collaboration, the community and soul of the project, not in the painting or photograph itself.  His ideas are interesting and borderline inspiring, but his recent art seems forced and tired.

Cook began as a graffiti artist in San Francisco and produced evocative and meaningful pieces with his spray can in the dark of night. He grew into an art student at the University of California at Berkeley who took his large scale, socially conscious paintings inside and experimented with technique and subject. Cook showed slides of innovative, irreverent and important pieces he was rightfully proud of although made a point to never sign. His evolving art was exciting, different, and filled with potential, but not for long.  If you would like to take a look at some of Cook’s art, you can find it on his website.

It must have been the years of experience teaching in various public schools, but Cook articulately explained that he began to look at his art as a vehicle for education, for bringing people together, and for building communities.  As I would explain it, he began to take his already meaningful art and sacrificed the visual quality for the trite and hackneyed “sentimental” process behind it. Creating projects such as “block-parties” on the streets of Harlem in which residents were able to color in connect-the-dot images of their neighbors and listen to the latest hip-hop music was interesting and fun but not life-changing, as he often claimed it was.  Cook’s stories about making friends with those he has worked with and bringing communities together for a day were touching and heart-warming to say the least, but his purpose morphed from artist to ethnographer; Cook spent time writing essays and giving speeches about his experiences, explaining how certain communities worked and how individuals could relate to each other through these projects.

Today, it seems as if Cook has executed all of the collaborative projects he could possibly think of and is recycling some old ones. The artwork produced through these projects appears commercial, forced and unoriginal.  He even noted, in a brief question-answer period at the end of his preachy speech, that he does not simply paint when he feels like it anymore, or go to a community where he feels he is needed, he waits for someone to ask him to grace them with his presence; he waits for someone to come up with an idea bud so that he can bring his special magic formula and help it to grow.  I believe that Cook’s name-recognition and growing fame ended up acting as a detriment to the quality of his work.  He became so contented with the attention he was receiving that he stopped creating unique works.  If Cook didn’t settle on this artistic equation, he might be still creating inspiring pieces and contributing, in a very meaningful way, to the world of contemporary art.

Student Reviews: private (dis)play

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“private (dis)play” at COCA
Lisa Ito, Washington University

private(dis)play, an unusual exhibit focused not on finished art, but sketchbooks of contemporary American artists, opened February 6th, 2009 at COCA, the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis. Founded in 1896, COCA is an institution dedicated to the education and inspiration of the arts, offering a wide range of programs in a variety of disciplines for students aged six months to adulthood. Believing in teaching through example, COCA not only provides classes and educational camp programs, but it also hosts performances in its 400 seat theater and exhibitions in its galleries.

private(dis)play is an example of one such educational exhibit that teaches specifically about the process of creating art. As a collection of sketchbooks and journals, the exhibit acts as a portal into the private minds of artists, displaying their ideas, thought processes, and methods for creating the finished pieces that they are now renowned for. The artists of the show vary in aspects such as their interests, subject matter, and media, so it is unsurprising that their sketchbooks also exemplify great differences. Some artists are very gestural in their sketches, whereas others resolve their drafts to the point of a finished pencil rendering. Of the more unique works were one set of collages and a digital animatic, which served as a time-based “sketchbook” for developing a finished animated piece. Many sketchbook pages consisted of visual imagery, while others included artist’s writing.

Artists displayed in the show included Bo Bartlett, Roland Becerra, Vincent Desiderio, Ella Gant, Julie Heffernan, Catherine Howe, John Jacobsmeyer, Kurt Kauper, Tom Knechtle, Katharine Kuharic, and Jamie Adams, a current professor at Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design. Adams and Kuharic co-curated private(dis)play, and Adams spoke briefly at the gallery opening, introducing the show and expressing his hopes of revealing the unseen world of what artists go through before producing finished works.

Contemporary American painter, John Jacobsmeyer was also present at the exhibit opening and was invited to speak about his submission which featured several highly rendered sketches for a concept based on a poem titled “Sheep Boy.” Jacobsmeyer combined his interest in the poem with his interest in American Sign Language by drawing stills of a model performing “Sheep Boy” in ASL.

Attending private(dis)play was a new experience, as it was the first exhibition opening I had ever been to. The atmosphere was somewhat sophisticated, the attendees dressed in formal clothing, but it was also very friendly and energized. A large variety of people attended, young and old, practicing artists, art professors and art students, but no matter what the age or status, everyone was clearly focused on the exhibition at hand, participating in lively conversation.

The exhibit itself was very inspiring, showing another side to artists, one that normally is not presented. To see the raw workings of these nationally acclaimed painters and animators showed that everyone must start somewhere, and maybe even the greatest artist has crude and undecipherable sketches. It was extremely interesting to see how each artist thought differently, and how emotions drove all of them.

private(dis)play is open until March 22, 2009, at the very accessible St. Louis COCA, and as a student of the arts, I highly recommend the show not only as a sight to see, but as a motivation to create art, even if it is just a handful of sketches.

Student Reviews: Yuko Shimizu

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Yuko Shimizu Lecture
Anna Hegarty, Washington University

Yuko Shimizu, a New York based illustrator originally hailing from Japan, gave a lecture in Steinberg Auditorium on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis on Wednesday February 18th at 6:30p.m. The lecture was part of the Sam Fox Public Lecture Series.

The turnout for the event was the largest so far this year for a Steinberg Auditorium lecture, exceeding seating capacity and causing audience members to take seats on the floor. The audience did not seem to mind and appeared to consist mostly of students from the university.

When she took the podium her way of speaking in short, incredibly blunt and very funny sentences made it immediately evident the lecture would be entertaining as well as informative. The lecture began with a short introduction to what the illustration industry is, followed by the history of Shimizu’s career.

She spent part of her childhood in New York and upon returning to Japan she never felt like she belonged there. Under pressure from her parents she studied Marketing and Advertising at Waseda University instead of pursuing a career in art like she thought she wanted to. She worked as a PR executive until her early thirties when she experienced a self-labeled mid life crisis and moved back to New York to pursue art. Once back in New York, she enrolled at the School for Visual Arts and graduated in 2003 with a MFA from the Illustration as Visual Essay Program. Since then she has been working as an illustrator.

Illustration is a very broad field that includes artwork for advertisements, magazine illustrations, book covers, posters, calendars, and many other types of two dimensional work. Shimizu has produced work in many of these venues. The progression of her work shows leaps and bounds in understanding of spacial relationships and ability to create atmosphere. Her style is influenced by her childhood in Japan, but she did not always let her Japanese past influence her. After arriving in New York she tried to forget her past and continue her life as an American Illustrator, but eventually her artistic growth hit a wall and she realized she had to embrace her artistic instincts. Through her personal work she developed a style that incorporates her childhood desire to draw cartoons and the influence of Japanese culture.

Currently, she is very comfortable creating work that is generalized as “Asian” due to its references to Japanese prints and Chinese and Japanese culture. One example of this is in her piece, “Panda Bear girl-The first Asian American Superheroine,” created for a calendar of her work that incorporated many incorrect Asian generalizations and references to both Japanese and Chinese culture. This piece shows a cartoonish, female character who is wearing traditional Japanese shoes with Mount Fiji in the background and incorrect Chinese characters on her shirt and in the upper left hand corner. This piece replicates the style of traditional Japanese prints, and the graphic style resembles an etching in certain places. The color pallet used is very limited, including only red, yellow and a pale greenish blue. Sexualization of Asian women is shown through the high cut white leotard and thigh high black socks this woman is wearing. As a relatively recent piece, from 2004, this is an example of Shimizu’s matured style.

Her personal work is much more explicit and sexual than her illustration work, and she showed the tamest pieces during the lecture. Some of the themes in her work are polka dots and stripes, the significance of which she cannot explain but both seem to have penetrated not only her work but also her personal style. She wore a black and white striped shirt to the lecture which seemed identical to multiple articles of clothing depicted in her work.

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Yuko Shimizu Lecture
Brittany Mikottis, Washington University

On Wednesday February 18, the Japanese illustrator Yuko Shimizu visited Washington University to speak to students and staff about her work as part of a Sam Fox speaker series. She opened her presentation by describing how she started her career in the corporate world majoring in marketing and advertising because her parents would not let her study art. She grew up in a very traditional family in Japan for most of her childhood, except when her father got transferred to New York for three years during her adolescence. Shimizu never really felt she belonged in Japan, describing herself as a “black sheep” among the rest of her peers. When she was young she would stay inside at recess and draw in her sketchbook while all the other kids went out and played dodge ball. As an adult she moved back to New York and began fulfilling her dreams of becoming an illustrator.

An illustrator is an artist that creates images impossible to capture with a camera. They often, but are not limited to, do work for newspapers, magazines, album covers, and book covers that do not want or have a photograph to go along with them. Illustrations are everywhere, but people still do not really understand what an illustrator does. A big part of their focus is to create an image that will engage the audience and hint as to what the piece of writing or music is about. Illustrators generally draw in a more animated style. Shimizu’s style has a strong resemblance of Japanese cartoons. A large amount of the work she is hired to do has Asian related subject matter because of her Japanese culture. However, she really likes working outside of Asian subject matter; especially because it gives her the opportunity to read pieces that she probably never would have read otherwise. She gives an example of a piece she did on an article about oil under the ground in Israel.

She draws out all of her images by hand and then puts them onto the computer to fill them in with color. Many of her pieces involve a human figure along with many patterns and colors. Stripes and dots are present in numerous pieces of her work. She also tends to use a wide range of colors. Some of her works are very bright and vibrant and others incorporate more neutral and desaturated colors. Many of her works consist of portraits. Portraiture is a very important skill for illustrators because over fifty percent of jobs require portraits.

Shimizu used to get frustrated because she had a very hard time drawing people accurately. She originally thought it was just a hard skill to develop. However, she later found out that she has a brain dysfunction called face blind disorder, which makes her unable to recognize people’s faces. She did not let this stop her from continuing to pursue her dreams of being an illustrator. After much hard work put into learning how to draw portraits she is now able to draw them tremendously which is obvious in the piece she showed of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie from the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

It was eye opening when she spoke about the process of designing a magazine cover about the sluggish economy. She showed each step in altering the illustration as the editor of the magazine changed his mind as to what he wanted. Many drafts of different images finally led to the final product of a person flying on a snail over the New York Skyline. Shimizu did not express strong frustration when describing this process; she was able to laugh at some of the client’s ideas for their ridiculous qualities. Having a positive, cooperative attitude is very important when working in an industry such as illustrating because they work closely with clients.

Concluding the lecture, she made a special point to emphasize the importance of individuality. Embracing and expressing oneself should be a top priority in everyone’s life in order to be happy. She talks about how she feels she did not belong in Japan but it is still a big part of who she is. As a result Japanese culture is evident in much of her work. It was humbling to hear such an established artist talk about something that is often lost when people become very successful. Her presentation gives hope to many art students in the audience that they can make it doing something they love. The audience erupts in applause at the finish of her presentation. Shimizu’s shining personality and unique works captivated the audience’s attention and provided an exceptional experience.

Shimizu spoke mostly about the technical aspects of her work and very little about the symbolism within her personal work. The intent was to inform the audience about the career of an illustrator and not to focus on the actual work. This caused a lack of context for the personal piece Shimizu showed. The lecture was a jovial affair due to Shimizu’s sense of humor, and was also enlightening about the illustration field.

• Student Review: Sam Clapp, Washington University

A Reaction to “private (dis)play”

Walking with a group of friends to see the opening of the new exhibition at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), private (dis)play, I had no idea what to expect.  The concept sounded novel: exhibit pages from artists’ notebooks to gain an understanding of their inner lives, but I wondered how such an idea might be implemented effectively. After all, I thought as I jumped over the puddles of slush covering the unlit streets of University City, notebook pages alone are not very interesting.

As we entered the building and made our way to the exhibition room, I thought my worst fears were confirmed. The show was housed in a white exhibition space, and the nature of the art being shown made for a fairly drab appearance. Reluctantly I began to circle my way around the space, glancing at the notebooks and sheets of paper pinned and encased in plastic along the walls. Though the exhibit emphasized the sketchbook component of private work, the pieces took many forms. In addition to white sketchbook pages, the show housed larger sheets of paper with drawings done in pen, video monitors displaying digital animatics, lined sheets with watercolor, and even a few collages.

After I had perused through the gallery for a few minutes one of the curators, Jamie Adams, began to speak.

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