4 Papers

Artist Demonstration

I know absolutely nothing about clay or molding, to me it seemed like an art form that my generation might have skipped over. Walking into that room I feel I might have been right, most everyone in there doubled my age at least. But that’s not to knock the trade, just an observation. Anyways I had come in after my classes about half way through the hours long demonstration she was giving - and she was still just mixing the right blend of materials. As she mixed the clay together in giant buckets she described what exactly she was using and how adding different amounts of water would affect the final product. It all seemed like terribly tedious work. Once enough was mixed she began to pile it up and give it shape. She continued telling us how to layer it as to not get any bubbles in her mold as that would come back to ruin the piece  once you put in into bake. Carefully she spread layer after layer of the thick clay over her piece, saying how you had to go over it many times with thin layers to give its form thickness and strength. This tedious process was done over and over until more clay had to be made so she could do it some more. This took a painfully long time, until finally she told us it was time to bake. Since this was a demonstration she drew us up a helpful chart showing how long something would have to bake for depending on its weight and how much clay was used. This also depended on what you were making and the materials used. Since she was using the piece she made a mold, the bake time would be determined by what material you were putting inside. Over all I found this demonstration very informative, but not very interesting. Clay working simply doesn’t have that wow factor for a neophyte to walk in and leave overly impressed. But I was glad for the experience of learning what I did.

Artist Presentation

If watching the actual process of clay making lacked the wow factor then a presentation of the finished work certainly picked up the pace. The forms of some of her pieces were truly inspiring. While she talked us through her career, she showed pieces of her work that were made during the talked about period of her life and how the events happening influenced her work. This made for a very interesting presentation that showed her changing process as an artist from the start of her career until now. She talked about how she started her work using clay exclusively, but over time in order to help push her work to the next level she began incorporating other materials like metal. She learned to do this while at an artists retreat, a place where her and a few other artist would stay to solely focus on their craft day and night. A friend of hers she had met there worked almost exclusively with metals and was a master at molding it. In the time they spent there together he pushed her to bring her work to the next level by showing her how to effectively work with metals.

The Inspiration for a lot of her work came from her father who fell ill to cancer. Her sculptures were made to resembled cell bodies and the cell division process. Many of the forms she would make were things seen from a microscope looking at cancerous cells. These forms became increasingly complex as her career when on. Especially once she learned to work with and combine different materials. The strength of metal allowed her work to take shapes previously impossible to make by only using clay. Overall I really enjoyed her presentation and her work, more so then if I was to see a few pieces in a gallery. By having the artist’s life story as a backdrop for her work it made me look it in a different way than if I were to just see the finished product.

The Yes Men Fix the World

            I really liked this film. I’m also a little surprised that I had never even heard of the yes men before this. With all the high publicity stunts they had pulled over major world corporations, I would think that word might have reached me at some point. Anyways I found their unique way of approaching corporations about environmental and economic issues with humor to be strangely refreshing. Every issue addressed was no doubt a serious matter and when it came to talking to the victims themselves they were sensitive and sincere. But in the conferences, I think their semi-serious tone and ridiculous presentation ideas worked out perfectly. Just believable enough to get by, yet silly enough to get a laugh from those who knew what was really going on. Despite them concluding all their endeavors to be a failure, I think that they succeeded in restarting discussion over many of these issues that had previously been in the limelight, only to be pushed aside and forgotten without a solution. This form of activism, I think, is miles above the traditional protesting and rioting that have resulted from other similar matters. By fighting with humor instead of fire, the issue could be brought to the limelight without violence or hatred towards the companies responsible, which would only serve to derail the discussion from the issue at hand.

            Over the course of the movie, they connected each issue found all back to corporate greed, but didn’t stop there. They explained how, while these companies were responsible, they were trapped in a way by the market system into doing these things simply because it was the profitable thing to do. The end goal of a business is to make money, and with the way our current system is set up there are simply too many incentives to do the wrong thing.

Waste Land

            This film followed Vik Muniz on his journey through Jardim Gramacho (the world’s largest landfill) right outside of Rio de Janeiro. He examines what daily life is like for these people by focusing in on the personal stories of a handful out of the thousands of people who make a living in Jardim Granmacho by picking out and sorting the recyclable material. Many of them are there by unfortunate circumstance and make the best of a bad situation. Despite working among mountains of trash, many of them take pride in their work as “pickers” because they are making an honest living as opposed to getting involved in the extensive drug trade or prostitution. After taking pictures and videos of the pickers salvaging the trash, he brings a few back with him to his studio to help him complete his work. Picking out the best of the photos taken, he blows them up on the floor of his warehouse studio and helps direct the pickers in recreating the picture out of recyclable materials collected from Jardim Gramacho. Once complete, a professional quality overhead photo is taken and framed. These pictures are then auctioned off in London at an auction house with all the money going back to the pickers union to help improve quality of life for the workers.

            This film was a very moving story, for a well off artist to come back to where he grew up and not only help out the people still struggling there but to show them their worth by guiding them in creating art out of the materials they deal with every day. It was touched on briefly in the movie, that they feared bringing the pickers to the studio or London would open their eyes to how bad their life was back at the dump. That they were simply living in denial before and now they would not want to go back to Jardim Gramacho. But Muniz dismissed this idea and was right to do so. The pickers returned to their home with newfound resolution and the funds to finally begin making a change for the better. The $50,000 from the auction went to better equipment for the workers, a learning center for their children, and a proper library for all the books they had been collecting at the dump. Every one of their lives had been changed by this gracious act of Muniz.