University of Iowa Trip, Anthony Kascak

I got back from a 9 hour car ride yesterday, after being in tornado weather conditions in Kansas City, from Iowa City. When we first arrived in Iowa City, I could feel the creative [writing] energy in the air (haha) and it was a very beautiful place. It felt like it belonged in Minnesota and not Iowa. 
The program there is huge, they have 18 MFA's in painting alone, and a total of almost 100 MFA's within the art program. Their building basically looks like the Guggenheim (I forgot to take a picture, sorry!) but there are so many flaws in it that I hope that whatever building UArk makes in the future doesn't make the same mistakes. They aren't even allowed to hang up work on the walls and they get tickets if they do! They also built their water pipes too close to the wall in the gallery space so you can't use screws larger than 2 inches... weird right? 

Look, they have a bike building studio and a bike building class: I want to build a road bike... 

Anyways, some of us in the UArk ceramics department went to Iowa and installed a show as well as give lectures of our work/research. The other grads there said that they were intimidated by us because of how confident and smooth our lectures went, that's great news! I talked a lot with other graduate students there and attended critiques on Thursday night, and I will say that I think that we as graduate students at Arkansas are definitely more critical and sharp, despite the size of our program. (Sorry not sorry, Iowa!) 
We had an opening of our show on Friday night, and it was perfect timing because a lot of other students had little openings nearby and so we had a lot of people attend. Here are images of the advertisements and my work in the gallery: 

I had received a lot of questions and comments from the painters in the department, they were really drawn to my plastic work and they also loved the painted handle on the pot. It was really good for me to have this work installed outside of the UArk department and into a new space with fresh eyes to look at it. The drive and ride to and from Iowa City also helped me digest a lot of thoughts I've had since coming to graduate school, and I am now thinking about what was told to me in my midterm crits about objects as actors and how I look at identity within my work. 

I look forward to sharing more about this experience with you all next week! 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

conclusion

+ ask hard questions of yourself. answering them, you might need to sacrifice things which are hard to lose. + art production sometimes is just a labor. you work hard and think that it should be improved with practice. practice makes perfect. but, THINK more, do less sometimes is the answer. + you think that you think a lot. but the reality is that you are only an over-thinker. over-thinking means labor-thinking. no efficient result. a frustrating process. an obstacle. a hinder which prevents you from moving. + listen. think. learn. but simultaneously act. do them. do what you learned and what you heard. + trust your emotions. it is another motive existed in you. sometimes do something based on your emotion. + break the habits. forget. start.
Read more

Shelby Fleming Word Salad

Word Salad   This week I spent sometime compiling all my notes from this semester and organizing them. I plan to, over break, do some in depth research over these topics, articles, and artist. Notes: ·          Amorphous body forms ·          Community of structures ·          Devotion to labor ·          Jason Stopa: “body as a theme to carry the weight of concepts” o    Dana Schutz “bodies provocative deformed, dark undertones, slippage ·          Link art to community engagement ·          Tension between hand and digital fabrication ·          Vertuious space/puriton view of making ·          Mirror transforming viewer ...
Read more

Blog Post 09/17

Image
This week i meet with Marc Mitchell to go over the body of work I'm working on. I posted progress shots of the most current painting in progress. The canvas fabric is sewn together. Today I sewed together the next painting. I found the composition can be served by the channel created by the sewn line. It adds onto the effect of "pieced together." This piece seems to be more about personal placement within the home; my home. I feel this will only serve as a metaphor for disjointed gender. But in the context of a home, then traditional gender roles come into the forefront. That's not what this is about... This project is focused around my gender identity in and outside of a "living" space. Writing more about this will help me focus on what needs to happen for the works to be finished. Sharpie/Interior Latex First Layer of Paint More Paint
Read more