Week 3

I really enjoyed our guest speaker this week. Michael Salter is an art instructor here at the University of Oregon. One thing that really stood out to me was that he had a very unique way of talking to a class, he had a way of not saying much but at the same time saying a lot, (if that makes sense). I loved how he started off by showing us images that have caught his attention all around the world even here in Eugene, he also mixed in some of his work and designs in the slide show and asked us what we thought. When he told us that he designed for a number of brand name companies it caught me by surprise, I would have never thought that our guest speaker was a designer for such companies like Billabong and other name brands. When going through his slide show he would only say what he needed to say and just let the class ponder and stare at the images so we can take in what we felt about the images. Mike went into more detail about his work and explained to us how he felt about the industry, that one minute your work is the hot cool trend and the next minute your seeing your work being on clearance or getting shipped out to another country. I thought that was fascinating how someone that actually worked for the industry decided that he wasn't happy going through the corporate world and just stopped. My favorite piece from Mike was definitely the stryobots, just because i can relate and I too grew up playing with legos as a kid, and when he told the class that after every art show he would have them tossed out or destroyed it made me a little annoyed, but what can you do it's art.
As for the reading this week I thought it was interesting how the whole reading was in comic book form but I really didn't care much for it. As I'm used to reading some Dark Horse version of Star Wars usually packed with violence and excitement, as for this comic strip it was just another 36 pages of art and art and more art images. Sorry Ty but I'm still trying to get over the last 46 page reading from last week. There was one thing that caught my attention for a minute and that was the section when our little cartoon host explained how a painting of a pipe is not a pipe, than introduced us to the wonderful world of icons. Which by than the comic strip reading lost my attention. By far still a good week in my contemporary art class, know excited for next week’s guest speaker.