Week 1

This week’s guest presentation was by Laura Vandenburgh who talked about drawings specifically. She talked about many different ideas and one of the first things she said that caught my attention was that there is nothing that compares to drawing because of how straight up and immediate it is. Then she started showing examples of maps, diagrams, doodles, and a variety of other quick drawings that present information in a quick visual way. When I think about an artist who uses drawing as a media, I think of images of detailed portraits. Laura was stressing the point that drawing is a tool that everyone uses in their everyday lives, one of the most effective ways of describing something to others without using words. Laura later went on to say that “things can be visually worked out at the speed of thinking” which I couldn’t agree more. For example the other day at work my boss ended up making a quick sketch of directions to get to his house and he made sure to add small details a recognizable landmarks and it reminded me of what Laura was talking about a drawing being direct. Laura also had a good point about how drawing is the beginning to everything. I strongly believe that every time someone is going to create something that by drawing a quick sketch or outline is the best way no matter what type of media.

            The reading that was assigned for this in class was 46 pages long and had a lot of content that was thrown at you without getting that in depth with any topic it was a little hard to get into. In my opinion they should’ve called it Art Theory for dummies. One piece that really caught my attention was the American Art Export article on page 19, I really learned a lot about the post war period, for example during the Cold War the CIA arranged exhibitions across Europe of New American paintings, as propaganda to spread American values and ideals. It really makes me wonder if some artists have bad intentions to influence people with their art.

            During the week we saw a video of a unique artist named Margaret Kilgallen who does all of her art handmade. One of my favorite parts is she talked about street art she went into very good detail and explained how the idea of the art is made, she explains how the barrage of images we see everyday, especially in advertising how billboards are everywhere and no one takes the time to jus actually sit there and observe them. To wrap up everything I said I concluded that Laura’s presentation and ideas have impacted me more this week than the readings. I hope next week we have a just as good guest speaker if not better.