What is it that i want?

well....
i have a lot of disjointed thoughts...
and i feel a little dis illusioned at the moment

i went to Rotterdam, the city of modern architecture...
i found the buildings square, minimalistic, cold, too angular or harsh looking, unemotive.
too much glass. there's a fine line between this kind of design and design that although is formal and structured, actually looks cool, i think colour has a lot to do with that.

but still there's no expression in that kind of design, colours can be emotive, but it is impersonal because you take away the hand of the artist.

i like kandinsky's work, but the more expressive stuff, not so geometric. i don't want to be a designer even though there is the potential or it to look cool, there's too much structure, even more so with architecture

I wanna make a cool cathedral, but how can i avoid the structure of architecture?

ive already tried the design stuff, last year my work ended up being too 'try hard' because it was art trying to be design, but it didnt work cos it ended up looking like sloppy design work. What i need to do is use the hand of the artist, (where there simply cannot be precision), to my advantage.
As much as i want to make a really well made, elaborate and intricate architectural model of a cathedral, i think i should not even try because i know im not good at that kind of stuff. And anyway, to do so i think would take the life out of it.
So... The hand of the artist has to become important.

architecture is quite solid. in fact a lot of design, like the geometrical stuff (squares especially, not so much circles though) is really solid. And what i want to deal with is lightness and transparency, so why not push that as far as i can while using architectural conventions (if that is the right phrase??)

A lot of sculpture is quite solid. and peoples preconceptions of what scultpure is, i found is carving, and bronze etc and stuff like that.

Rotterdam had a lot of public sculpture... ugly... no apparent piont...
disgraces the name of sculpture. im not sure if im allowed to have this opinion but i wouldnt call it art, just a large object with no skill and no imagination.

i came across a quote
" skill without imagination is craft, imagination without skill is 'modern' art" this is hilarious and quite possibly the most truthful explanation of art vs craft. but when i see these sculptures that appear to have no skill or imagination, i dont know what to think...

Simone and i were talking about maybe there being a place for the term high art and low art.
this would definitely be what i would categorise as low art. I dunno if y'all can see this pic very well, (click on it to enlarge) i decided it was a marshmallow, Simone said it was a cow roasting a marshmallow!!! well anyway whatever the hell its supposed to be, the only distinguishable thing is a bucket (top left)

there was many many other examples of ugly and pointless sculpture.
the bad thing about public art, is it often doesnt get the ongoing maintenance it needs to stay cool. So where art is seen to be something that is beautiful, this kind of art just contaminates the beautiful landscape. Dunedin has better public sculpture than this... There was quite a lot of kinetic sculpture, which can be quite novel, but none of it was colourful, it was all boring...


Ok well this in comparison...
this was in a gallery (i dunno if that gave it more integrity... maybe) but i think it definitely held more weight as being higher art. The slap on technique appears to be similar to that of 'the marshmallow', but it is a more considered messiness. The materials are crude, maybe what some would call ugly, but i think there is a beauty about it. And i don't fully understand it, or rather didnt take enough time to understand it, but i think it is an image from a Bosch painting. There's something about this art work having a conversation with an older art work, a comment perhaps, that gives it more weight.

High art i think is something that makes a comment. That tries to make some kind of difference. High art should be different from elite art, where only art theorists understand what is going on. Good High art should speak to the 'commoners' on one level as well as the 'intellectuals' on another level. High art should give the fingers to commodity.
Low art perhaps at some point crosses into the area of craft, but this is a grey subject. Low art is 'pretty' it hangs on your wall, doesn't necessarily have some great proclaimation, maybe just some colour painted on a canvas, maybe its a nice landscape that you pay thousands of dollars for, (now im not completely bagging landscapes, a lot of people like them, thats why they pay ridiculous amounts of money for them, i can appreciate a landscape that is painted with a high degree of skill, but i wouldnt hang it on my wall, id take a photograph) Bad low art, perhaps is low art trying to be high art but not doing so well, haha, and ends up being only fit for the dump.

Also at this same gallery was some other intersting sculpture installations, i liked a lot of them. they first were interesting on a basic level, wether it was visual or auditory. my attention was held for a while, some slow understanding of what the work perhaps might be about followed but not necessarily completely. What is good about these works is that i will keep coming back to them and perhaps comprehending a little more each time, because i was grabbed by them on a basic level first.
There was also one work in particular that while could be, in my opinion, considered high art it wasn't good high art. It was making a comment on the iraq war and 'the man' having control over us, wether it be hollywood, or the government or big companies, labels etc. this work i understood as soon as i walked in, sure it was visually interesting, but it was too literal, and there was a mirror, bringing the viewer into the work, asking the question where are you in this? Oh dear, i have used this cliche device before... I have no need to revisit this work, and will forget it soon, because it spelt it out for me the first time i saw it.

But i really think sculpture is where it is at these days. its taking a little while for the rest of the population to catch on, to realise sculpture can be inclusive of installation and peformance and materials other than oamaru stone. I guess because in history sculpture was easily defined, it is taking a while for us to redefine it. Sculpture is where it is at because it has more potential to influence than painting or other mediums. I think it is a more powerful medium. I just hope people can see past the 'bad' sculpture.

I went to a forum last year where Malcolm McClaren was speaking, he said when he was in art school his lecturers told his class to be prepared to fail. He was talking about life as an artist. a real artist, wether it be a musician or writer or whatever, a real artist comments on society and often are not liked, a real artist would never produce work that anyone would buy.
To give into commodity is a disgrace.
To be a sculptor (in terms of being a 'real' artist), you really have to turn your back on commodity. nobody wants to buy sculpture anyway, so why not make really big controversial stuff that really makes a statement

Now to make a controversial statement... controversial doesnt necessarily mean loud, it can be subversive. all controversial art seems to be about Sex in one way or another, im sick of art being about sex, theres too much of it, its been overdone already.
Here is Santa Claus with a 'christmas tree' NOT
Bother... Art school has made me lose my innocence, my mind is perverted to see the phallic in everything. Why is it that artists have this fascination? beats me.
was it orginally to raise the issue of what is taboo? well its not really that taboo anymore, we even speak openly about it church!!! A homosexual santa claus??


so what do i want to be? well i dont know, when i see too much elite art, that i just dont understand, i kick the wall and say 'I HATE ART, I dont want to be an artist.' or too much ugly art. or art that is violent, and gruesome. When i see too much 'cold' design i say 'I dont want to be a designer' (of any kind).
you know art doesnt have to be pretty to be beautiful. it can be sad and beautiful at the same time.


well.... ive decided again what it is i want, ive gone around in circles to get back here to where i started from. I want to be an artist

Ive wanted to be an interior designer, an architect, a fashion designer
All through high school i wanted to go to art school, that is what i was working towards, but i didnt really have any vision of what would happen after that, and it didnt really matter to me, cos i like to go with the flow and see where it takes me. I dont think ive ever thought of being an artist, in fact ive always said i dont want to be an artist, well not the kind that is so isolated and works all day by themselves in their studio. and going to art school reinforced that a lot. If i was going to be an artist, id have to do it properly, work that actually meant stuff, and not just prettiness for someones wall.
So i thought maybe i could be a designer, furniture or product design, but not design just for commodity's sake, it would still have to mean something. Like Gaetano Pesce, he was an artist/designer and he designed some cool alternative furniture and architecture. Then for various reasons i didnt want that anymore.

So i want to be all these things, but how do you define it. Salvador Dali was an artist, but he was a painter, and a sculptor, and a furniture designer, and a fashion designer. Miro was a painter, but he also made ceramics and did some set design and costumes and even made huge tapestries in his old age.

But these descriptions aren't enough in themselves for example; If you describe yourself as a movie director, you get instant stereotype as making mainstream movies. i think anyway... you have to say 'i make art films...'
The term artist is broad and inclusive of many...

I want to be an artist:
a sculptor
a set designer
a costume designer
a film director
a songwriter
a singer
a rock star
a furniture designer
an interior architect

i don't want to do these things in isolation, collaboration excites me. i love the brainstorming that happens when you get different specialists together. The work ive been doing on the DCBC productions were great, to get the director and the sound engineer and the set designer and the make up and i, the costume designer. you can get everyones ideas and they're so much more developed, a group of brains is better than one.

but hey i'm only 21 years old, i have to keep telling myself that. ive got at least 50 good years of art making left in me... i hope that is long enough