Blog #10

I’ve gone to a few on campus events. I recently went to was an Artist Talk at the University Galleries last Thursday which is free for all students unless otherwise noted. I had to go there for a my 3D Art class as part of my sketchbook assignments; in total we have to attend three of Artist Talks throughout the semester, so I went to get my second one out of the way. There weren’t that many people there, but for a talk at the galleries, I guess you could say there were a lot of people. Surprisingly I saw only one person from my art class and she was the girl that I had come with.

The atmosphere was similar to that of a lecture because essentially that’s what an Artist Talk is. A speaker will come in and talk about his or her artwork. They often mention influences, events in their lives that lead them to be an artist, their work environment, the process to make certain pieces, and the ideas behind some of their work. I consider myself to be an artist for the most part, so I find this stuff to be a bit interesting. I’m not sure what the purpose is of having visiting artists is, but I could definitely guess. In my opinion artists are always influenced or inspired by something or someone, so by having other artists visit and talk about their work, artists within the ISU area have a chance to potentially take away something that they can apply to their artwork.

An example of this would be with one of my pieces I created way back during the beginning of the semester. Although I absolutely hated it because of the circumstances in which I had to make it (one project got ruined last minute, so I had to scramble to finish on time), I was still influenced by something I learned during one of the other Artist Talks I had gone to. The first artist I listened to was Joan Hall. She did a lot of work that dealt with water and the environment. At some point she was talking about her one of her works and how jellyfish influenced her ideas behind this specific piece. I learned that Jellyfish could thrive in polluted water. This was something I was able to tie to my 3D Art assignment because I was working with packaging peanuts. Apparently, according to my teacher, packaging peanuts have a negative side to their pointless and light weight structure because they are often thrown out and help pollute the world more. So, out of packaging peanuts, I sewed a jellyfish that was completed by 3am the morning it was due.

Overall I think the visiting artists are very interesting, but you need to be open to art as a whole.