Student Art Work Reception - Julio Art Gallery 12/8

On Friday, December 8th, I went to a Student Art Work Reception at the Julio Art Gallery. There were many artists who discussed their works. One of the artists photographed women and made the photographs appear to be from a magazine. She was attempting to poke-fun at the typical magazine pictures of women, similar to the Victoria Secret models, who appear to have the perfect bodies. The wording on the posters were, however, not the words you would expect to see on a magazine. The poster on the top said "VIXEN heavenly bodies. treacherous minds." From left to right, the posters below that said, "what are you looking at?" "not for sale." "piss off." "not yours" and "'Time to heal our women, be real to our women' -Tupac" These words show what the women in the photographs are actually thinking. The first poster says, "heavenly bodies. treacherous minds." which shows that these "beautiful women" who are being photographed have more to them then their bodies and the clothing they are wearing. 

 

This artist photographed some of her best friends. She wanted to represent each of her friends for who she was through color mostly. She surrounded each figure with flower pedals, which she described as the "fingerprints of nature." This was very interesting to me, because it meant that each woman being photographed then had nature's fingerprints surrounding her. Fingerprints are unique and individualized to each person, so by putting flower pedals around each person was interesting because it meant that each woman was her own person, showing another message of feminine power. 

Tis next artist attempted to show three different types of love. One of them had to do with an ex, one of them had to do with her witness of sexual violence, and one of them had to do with friendship (I believe). Each of these portrayals were very individualized to the experience of the artist herself. She wanted to make it something so she would never forget about the experiences she was involved in. She used the circles to represent the fact that everything goes around in a circle. This presentation was very interesting. 

Art Opening in Library 12/7

On December 7th at 5:30 pm, I went to an art opening in the library. This was about Fore-edge Painting of books. Fore-edge painting is when the author, or someone else, of a book paints the edge of the book something that has to do with the book itself. In an Art History class at Loyola, students worked all semester to work on this project. They each did research on books that already had fore-edge painting and learned about the history of fore-edge painting. They learned about how people would do this as an art. Often times, the paintings on the fore-edge of the books would be landscape paintings. These paintings had to be displayed in a very specific way. The book holders displayed the books in a way that allowed the fore-edge paintings to be shown and presented.

The students from Loyola worked alongside some people at John's Hopkins. One man from John's Hopkins volunteered to make individualized book holders for each of the fore edge painting books that the students at Loyola had. This took a lot of time because each book was a different size, and each book required the things holding the books up to be a different height, and in a different way. In some casings, the books are being held vertically, while others are being held horizontally.

Each student had to research one book, and through the research done on this book, they had to paint a fore-edge painting for that book. Their paintings had to relate to the book and what the book was about in some way. Many of the students did landscape paintings, and many of the students did paintings that related to them and their interests. Each student talked about how much detail had to go into each painting, and they recognized the artists of the old fore-edge painting books as talented and dedicated.