carolinegao0629

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E - Art & (my) Life - Final Paper

Before taking Art 110 course, I never would imagine myself doing graffiti writings, plasters, remix, or any cool things outside my field. I’m a dull person who is reluctant to even go hanging out with friends, how would I expect that someday I will be a person who is so excited to do plasters on the beach or paint my name on a paper board. I always thought art is something I will never encounter in my life, I couldn’t even draw a stick figure character, how am I supposed to be a good artist. I kept this thought throughout my life until the day I stepped into this class. I admit I took this class because I need to fulfill my GE requirement, but this class became my favorite class ever since I started going to school. And I’m so glad that I have this class before going into nursing program and taking no class besides nursing courses. This class is not just an introduction to art, it’s an introduction to real life.

A class with an origami midterm, how often does that happen? But it did happen, and it’s going to be the only midterm that I will remember for the rest of my life, because it taught me that life doesn’t go with choices, it doesn’t give you choices A to E, it’s much more beyond that, and you don’t have to be restricted to the choices, you can always make your own answers. The question of life cannot be answered by multiple choices, there are things that couldn’t be explained with a simple answer. I’ve been living my life in a regular and typical way, follow the right track, do what others have done that made them succeed. But that doesn’t make myself me, that makes me become someone else. Life is art, and what makes an artwork special are differences.

Viewing the artworks of SOA artists and talking to them changed my perspectives for arts. Before, I thought only famous drawings can be arts, but after visiting many galleries, I realized that everything can be art. Art is not restricted, it doesn’t have to be too pretty or too special, it just has to be itself. Art can be made from drawing on a canvas to making something out of hair and plastic bottles. Some art doesn’t have a specific story behind it, it meant for you to incorporate your narratives when seeing it; just like life, everyone’s story is different.

Making artworks myself truly showed me a new world. It’s not like I’ve never thought of making a remix or plaster casting myself, I just never had something to push me to do them. And as a student who cares a lot about her grade, this class pushed me to do the things I always wanted to do, and I had so much fun doing all the projects in this course. This class provided me a platform to be an artist, I didn’t want to do finger paintings or graffiti writings because I thought no one would ever view them, what’s the point? But now I have a stage to show my work, to share my thoughts on arts, and to see how others think of an artwork from different perspectives. Although I was doing homework for this course, I didn’t feel tense or exhausted like doing homework for other classes; instead, I was happy, excited, and couldn’t wait to do the next assignment, because every assignment opens a new window to the world that I’ve never seen.

Although this course seems to have nothing to do with my pre-nursing major, I think it helps me to do better in this field. Learning from books and powerpoints is just the basics, practices and experiences are the best way to be successful. The more I practice and experience, the deeper understanding I have for this field, and the more obligated I feel in taking care of patients. And the better I got, the fewer mistakes I will make, which is good news for my future patients.

After taking this course, I’ve learned that everything in my life can be art, it just depends on how I see it. Everyone’s life is an artwork, and everyone is an artist of their lives, that’s what makes us special and original. Following others’ routines of life would not make your art of life original, try a different way, be your own creator of your life. Also, try to do the things that you’ve always wanted to do, it doesn’t take that long time to complete it, don’t leave yourself any regrets. Art is like life, you cannot be learned from a book, you have to experience it yourself, and when you do that, you will have a real understanding of it.

[carolinegao0629]

D7 - Remix Culture

The internet culture is empowering each day, the good thing is that we can see and learn many things without stepping out the door, but it’s also scary how fast the internet world is; a video can spread out to the whole world with just a 3-second upload. On internet, we own freedom, we can see and search whatever we want, which is a good thing for many people. We don’t have to look through books for answers, just ask Google. But I still have some fear toward internet because it’s too powerful and smart. It knows you, it knows your likes and dislikes, what you have searched up, and it keeps a record for that forever. The empowerment of internet is good for the most part because we can learn and share things more quickly, and for people who want to travel the world but are unable to, internet shows them the world. But we have to consider the risks, internet is taking over most of our time and I’m afraid I will be brainwashed by it some day. Internet is good because it gives freedom to everyone, it’s also bad because it gives freedom to everyone. So use the internet properly is the only way to control it.

I think the copyright is working much better now because more people are learning the importance of it. But it should be strengthened because its the basic protection and respect for the original creators, they have the right to be protected, they worked really hard and their work doesn’t deserve to be stolen.

I chose public domain for my work because the clip and soundtrack I used was not my original work. The clip was from a Chinese drama Guardian, and the soundtrack was the song I chose from Spotify. Even though the video was created by me, the content was collected from others, and I think I should grant others the freedom to use my video.

The process of making this video was really fun for me. I played the video silently on my phone and played the soundtrack simultaneously, then I opened my screen recording on my phone and recorded the video. I couldn’t find the soundtrack on my video-making app so I chose to do it this way. It’s hard to work all three things together, I recorded many videos and this is the best one I got. The challenge was that I couldn’t match the video and soundtrack smoothly and the video came out a little weird. Making a remix is much harder than I expected. But overall I think I did okay on this project, but if I could do it again, I will definitely try a new app for better result.

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D7 - Artist Conversation - Tatiana Mata

Artist: Tatiana Mata Exhibition: Postures – The Less We Know Media: Camera Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Marilyn Werby Gallery Website: Not provided Instagram: tatianaamata

Tatiana Mata is a student who is currently pursuing her BFA degree at Long Beach State University School of Art’s Photography program. She is interested in photographing people and actions. Her work doesn’t explore the story behind the scene too much, and she doesn’t want her audience to think her work too in-depth. She prefers people to feel the emotions floating on the surface of a photo because once people bring in their narratives into the photo and think too in-depth, it would lose its original meaning and purpose.

Mata’s photos are mainly consisting of white, orange, and blue colors, the combination of these three colors are very new and interesting. The orange color sets the bright color tone and warm mood for this collection of photos. Blue and white greatly contrast and set off orange color, which gives the photos a clean and neat look. Her photos exhibited in this gallery is about postures of people, so the lines of the photos are various, mostly consist of curvy lines created by the folds of clothes. These curvy lines imply an active and flowing rhythm, which conveys a lively feeling toward the audience. Since Mata’s work is all photographed and two dimensional, the texture of her work is smooth, although the photos look very three dimensional. The scales of her photos are fairly large, I saw them from the gallery across. But when standing near the photos, you can feel the emotions coming out of them.

Mata’s purpose of photographing is different from most of the artists, she wanted her audience to only sense the primary emotions people get from seeing her work. Most artists would like the audience to take in their narratives into their work and understand the work from their own point of view. Mata believes that photos are meant to influence emotions instead of telling stories, everyone has their own life stories, and once people bring in their own stories into her work, the actual meaning and emotions of the photos will be ruptured. She stated that people always think if they bring their own stories into others’ work, they could have a better understanding of the work, but instead, they ignored the emotions of the author and the stories the author is trying to say behind it. Mata thinks if the photos are simple, people wouldn’t think too much in-depth and therefore could better understand the primary purposes of her work. And from her work, the audience is able to feel that active and vivid emotion floating on the surface of her photos; when people see the bright orange colors and calming white and blue colors, they feel active and happy, and that’s the ultimate purpose of Mata’s work.

Mata’s gallery made my day, I love her work. When I was wandering around in Gatov Gallery East, I saw that bright orange-blue combination photo across the hall. Her photos caught my eyes and I ran in there without hesitation. Her photos make me feel alive and happy, I think it’s the best collection I’ve seen so far in our university. Her work resonates with me at some point because I also love the combination of orange and blue, on sunny days, I like to wear a bright orange hoodie with a blue jean. And I agree with her opinion of how photos can change one’s mood, because when I visited her gallery, it was a rainy day and I always feel down when it rains, but when I saw her photos, my mood changed immediately, I feel happy and not at all depressed. Overall, Mata’s gallery is wonderful and I love it.

[carolinegao0629]

D6 - Storytelling (Photography)

Sitting on my couch and waiting for the sunset.

Why not take a walk on the beach and enjoy the sunset?

It’s chilling after sun goes down.

It’s nice to live near the beach so I can catch the the moment of the beautiful night before it went completely dark.

It’s officially night time, let’s hangout with friends!

Cold days with warm food, best match!

I chose this story because it’s the weekend I always wanted, with no worry about deadlines or tests on Monday, having a peaceful time to enjoy the sunset and taking a little walk on the beach. Then meet with a friend that you can talk for hours without boring each other, and come home with a 80%+ battery phone.

I think I did fine on this project because my photos speaks for themselves, they tell my story in a satisfying way. I think the first image is the individual best image in my story because it sets the tone for the peaceful storyline. The second to last image was not a great picture by itself, but it leads out the story and makes it complete. Without it, the last picture of my dinner would look weird in the whole storyline.

If I would do this project again, I might do a story about preparing a family dinner because cooking for the ones I love is a happy thing to share. There was another photo story I was planning to tell, it’s a series of photos I took with my friend, starts with two serious faces (we were not comfortable with cameras at first) and ends with two laughing and happy faces. But since I only saved 3 pictures in that one, I didn’t post it here.

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D6 - Hijiri Takeuchi - Kalopsia

Artist: Hijiri Takeuchi

Exhibition: Kalopsia – BFA Senior Show 2019 Illustration & Animation

Media: Ink, graphite, fountain pen

Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Max L. Gatov Gallery West

Website: https://takeuchihijiri.wixsite.com/illust

Instagram: illustrobot

Hijiri Takeuchi is a student who is pursuing his BFA in Illustrations at California State University, Long Beach. He is an illustrator and designer with 2 years of freelance designing and transcribing experience. Takeuchi is very passionate about his major and he is always willing to reach out to different skills outside his field. Besides being an illustrator and designer, he also maintains skills in fields of photoshop, ceramics, aftereffects, thermal plastics, etc. During his free time, he likes to cook, play video games, making music, and doodling.

Takeuchi’s work is mostly animations and storyboards. The lines of his drawings can be straight, jagged, and round, every line was drawn with professionality. His drawings don’t contain any unnecessary lines or features, everything is drawn with no hesitation, which gives the audience a clean and fresh feeling when seeing them. The drawings are all 2 dimensional, including rectangular, triangular, and circular shapes, some are irregular organic shapes. Takeuchi uses ink and graphite for most of his drawings, so a lot of his work is monochrome; for the ones with colors, he chose to use light and non-vivid colors to set a calming tone. Even though his work is primarily animations, it is very lifelike, the audience is able to see the flow of rhythms in there. The drawings are very detail in every aspect, but the scales are fairly small, especially for the storyboard, so a close look would be recommended. Also, for the big drawing exhibited in the middle, although the scale is large, if people looked closely, they could literally feel the strong flow of every line.

Takeuchi’s animations are reflections of his life, some of his work was inspired by the Japanese animations he watched during childhood. His work is meant to convey emotions and tell stories. Since most of his work is black and white, it leaves the audience a lot of space for imagination. His drawings are full of imagination, the characters are unrealistic yet so vivid and realistic; when the audience see the people in the drawing, they can get this feeling of knowing every person in the drawing, it was like the characters from the drawing can walk right out. Takeuchi’s work expresses emotions in-depth, the monochrome style gives out a silent and calming feeling at first, but if stare at it for a little while, that scary death silence will slowly emerge out of the surface and give out this depressing feeling. There was a drawing of the internals of a house, which seems like describing the calmness before the storm. Unlike the monochrome drawings, the storyboard conveys brave and strong emotions to the audience, which is a reflection of the personalities of the author himself.

Takeuchi’s work really impressed me, I've never seen any drawing being so complicated, detail, and clean at the same time. viewing his art is truly enjoyable for me. I think his work resonates with me at some level because I feel connected to his drawings. The drawing of dark internals of the house really grabbed my attention when I first walk into the gallery, in my understandings, that house represents the dark times of the author’s life, and I stood there and stared at that drawing for almost five minutes because I could feel how he feels. I had some dark time when I was depressed and I believe most people had similar experience, and when I see that drawing, I recalled those memories, and I was so glad that I wasn’t in that place anymore because it was just like that house, with no light comes in and no light goes out.

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D5 - Architecture & Urban Planning

In this project, I redesigned the USU wedge. Before, there was only one way for people to squeeze through, now there are two. I decided to cut out half of that black wall and make it into another wedge. The crowd at the original USU wedge is caused by the the conflict between people coming in and people going out, so if there is another wedge next to it, there will be two ways that can satisfy the needs for both sides. To make room for the second wedge, I chose to remove the bench that was placed at the entrance of the original wedge. But to satisfy students who do want to sit near the wedge, I placed a shorter bench right under the new black wall. The reason I didn’t choose to remove the whole black wall is because I know how much people enjoy squeezing through these small entrances, if I cut off the whole wall, there would be too much space and so less fun. With the traffic being cleared out, students could get to class earlier while saving the 10 steps from winding around the black wall.

If this design was carried out and they built the new route, a year from now, I believe people might think the new wedges are small or inefficient. Because not every design is perfect, there gotta be some disadvantages. But with more mistakes they find, the more people can improve on redesigning the USU wedge (or not change it at all because it’s so wonderful weird).

[carolinegao0629]

C1 – Artist Conversation – Laurie Lipton

Artist: Laurie Lipton Exhibition: Personal Effects, Default Setting Media: Charcoal, graphite Gallery: CSULB, Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum Website: https://www.laurielipton.com Instagram: laurieliptondrawings

Laurie Lipton was born in New York in 1953, she was the first person who received BFA from the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. She began her life as an artist at age 4 and was inspired by the religious paintings of the Flemish School. During her college life, she found drawings to be too restricted and conceptual, she was bored by drawing similar things repeatedly; she wanted to create something new, something that people have never seen before, something that just flashed in the back of her head. Therefore, after she graduated from college, she started her 36-year life of studying abroad. She has lived in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, and England; during the time in Europe, she developed her way of drawing technique. Her work is insanely detailed, every drawing has thousands of fine cross-hatching lines that create the tone, it’s like “an egg tempera painting”.

Lipton’s drawings takings a long time to be accomplished because her drawings are incredible in detailing every aspect. The lines of her drawing can be straight, round and jagged, every line was carefully drawn with clean and sharp edges. Her drawings are 2 dimensional, include regular shapes like rectangle, triangle, circles, and some irregular organic shapes. Lipton’s drawings are completed using charcoals and graphite, so her drawings are all monochrome, which leaves the audience a lot of space for imagination. Lipton’s drawings are very organized in aspects, some of her drawings have a rhythm of flow, for example, the Personal Effects shows a big wave in the ocean. Since her drawing is insanely detailed and was drawn in a regular-sized paper (17 x 21 inches), the audience needs to come closer to view the details.

Lipton’s drawings revealed the reality of people under different types of social media. She thinks that nowadays people are all hiding behind their phones and creating a new person to show in the illusionary online world. All the things people encountered on social media have created their own Belief Bubbles, makes them believe that everything in the bubble is the entire world. People are scrolling down their screens and living happily in their bubbles; eventually, people are becoming systemized, wired, and set. Lipton is trying to tell the audience that social media has restricted our thoughts and information, and when you thought you are controlling the internet, it’s actually the other way around. Therefore, Lipton is calling out to the audience to put down their phones and go out of the bubbles that have been surrounding them, because that’s the only way to see reality.

Lipton’s work truly resonates with my personal experience. I remember the time when I was faking my life on the internet. And not just my life, I also photoshopped lots of my photos before I post them on my social media and pretend that’s the real me. It was difficult to pretend to be someone I’m not, I was stressed and frustrated, I felt I was trapped in some default setting I set for myself. Eventually, I deleted those fake pictures and uninstalled many unnecessary apps. That was the time I finally relieved and went back to reality. Lipton’s exhibition Personal Effects resonates with me because I once felt the fake social media world is like a big wave that’s going to engulf me. And I agree with her ideas that people should not lose themselves in the artificial world, that people should go out of their comfort zones and see the reality.

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D4 - Student Choice Activity

This drawing is a person sitting under a tree with no leaves, and it meant to express my feeling of wanted to be alone for a while. I chose to use black color pencils to draw this because I think color pencils are more edible and casual. Also, the monochrome drawing can truly convey the loneliness to the audience. I always think that the artworks are the expressions of emotions, and once you caught that moment of emotion, you could create some amazing work. So under the loud noises from my neighbors at midnight, I completed this drawing to describe my desire for having an alone and quite time. I think my end product can be considered successful because it did say my ideas and feelings. And I had a great time doing this project because it distracted me from the noises. This project was like a notepad that quickly took down my emotions at the moment, and when I look back at it, I may have different feelings toward it.

[carolinegao0629]

C1 - Artist Conversation - Yucen Liu

C1 – Artist Conversation – Yucen Liu

Artist: Yucen Liu Exhibition: Fill in the Blank Media: Metal, linen, gold foil Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery Website: Not provided Instagram: yucen_metalsmith

Yucen Liu is a graduate student from the Metal’s Jewelry program at California State University, Long Beach. She was born in China during the single-child policy with no brothers or sisters, so her childhood companies were the stuffed animals from her parents. She was raised with the love and security of both her parents, and in 2010, she left home and came to the United States to pursue her dream as an artist. She experienced loneliness in this foreign country and learned how to live by herself; during her life in America, her childhood toys – stuffed animals – becomes the love and security she has. Therefore, her work explores and recalls childhood memories from the audience.

In Liu’s gallery, except for some decorations, everything is made of metal. Her work of arts is all 3 dimensional, the lines of the arts are mostly smooth and round, with only a few sharp-edged. The shapes of her arts include circles, triangles, rectangles, and some are irregular organic shapes. Liu handled the colors of her work carefully, all her arts are shiny and colorful; she did not cover the metal with heavy paints, instead, she brushed on a light layer of paints so the glossy surface of the metal would be seen. Because the arts are mostly smooth with round edges, the rhythms are peaceful with warmth. Liu’s metalworks are very detailed, and they are the size of a regular toy; most of the work can be seen from a normal distance, but to view the fantastic details, a close look would be great. Since these artworks are made of metals, the textures are glossy and smooth.

Liu created her work based on her childhood memories and toys, which brings the audience a nostalgic feeling towards the warmth of childhood and hometown. Liu said that the name of the gallery “Fill in the Blank” means that the stuffed animals and the old memories of her hometown filled in her blank of being alone in America. When she was feeling lonely or unsecured, the old toys were her strength to continue down the road; these toys are like her brothers, sisters, and even parents, who would provide her love and security. Her work explores the warm childhood memories; Grandma’s Old House was a traditional doorknob of a Chinese house, and it recalls the audience what it was like to be in Grandma’s place, where there will always have snacks and TV. And the work Mom Said, If I Accidentally Eat Watermelon Seeds recalls the audience that their parents may have said similar things like “if you ate watermelon seeds, watermelons would grow from the top of your head” to scare them.

Liu’s gallery reminds me of so many good memories from childhood, I felt so warm inside during the whole time there. Her gallery really resonates with me because we have a lot in common; we were both born and raised in China, we both came here when we were young, and we were both the only child of our parents. I totally understood how she felt that childhood toys are filling in her blanks of not being with her parents because I know how hard it is to be alone in a foreign land. I had some time to talk to her alone in Mandarin and we had a pretty good time talking, and I felt so happy to talk to people from my country. And her work Grandma’s Old House reminds me of my grandma’s house, with the morning glory twining all over the doorknob, I felt like I was going to knock on that door. Overall, I had a great experience in Liu’s gallery and I felt really connected to every artwork.

[carolinegao0629]

D3 - Speech Actions

I chose to draw the human lungs that are slowly contaminated by the cigarettes. I related smoking and global warming because I think they are both the things that people know are terrible but still don’t care much about. The cigarettes are like the ignorance of human towards global warming, and it’s slowly affecting everyone’s life in this planet. I wish my drawing can tell people that smoking is the same as global warming, you may not see the consequences now, but once you see them, it’s already too late. From a scale of 1-10, I think my art result is a 7 in success and satisfaction. My art expressed what I wanted to say about the relationship between smoking and globing warming, so I’m happy about my end work. If I could do this project again, I would try to draw/paint a better picture with much more details to clearly express my speech. I would draw the lungs filling up by cigarettes and another drawing of ocean filling up by cans and plastic bottles.

[carolinegao0629]

C1 – Artist Conversation – Charlie Roses

C1 – Artist Conversation – Charlie Roses

Artist: Charlie Roses Exhibition: Dead Man’s Party – Haunted Shelf From the Back Room of Your Local Public Library, Madame Leota, How to Build a Scarecrow the Old Fashioned Way, Funky Lil Forager. Media: Watercolors, ink, color pencils, pencils, linen. Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Gatov Gallery East Website: Not provided Instagram: charlieroses

Charlie Roses is a senior graduate student working towards her BFA degree in Sculpture at California State University, Long Beach. She is passionate about sculpting and thus chooses it as her major. Roses likes spooky things and everything that relates to Halloween, she finds them very interesting and inspiring; therefore, most of her work of arts are Halloween related and give out a terrifying feeling to the audience. Towards the end of her last semester in the School of Art, she decided to do a Halloween-theme group exhibition with 20 artists from the Sculpture, Photography, Painting, Printmaking, Metals, and Illustration programs.

Roses’ drawings are very imaginative, some of her drawings are monochrome, but some are vivid and colorful. She is very careful about the details of the drawing: for the parts that she wants to highlight, the lines are clean with sharp edges; for the parts that are used to set off the highlights, the lines are more casually drawn with round and irregular edges. The shapes of her work of arts are undulating instead of uniform, which gives a more life-like view. Even though Roses’ drawings are static, they show a chaotic, creepy, peaceful yet dangerous rhythm; and this rhythm sets the gallery with a spooky theme. The drawings are mostly done with watercolors and color pencils, thus the texture of these drawings is two-dimensional and flat. The sizes of the drawings are medium to small, to view the details in the drawing, a close observation would be recommended. Besides the drawings, Roses also dressed up as a library ghost to read the scary stories. She put on a white sheet and a black pointy hat, looked through the holes of the sheet and started reading books of scary stories. The white ghost with the black Halloween hat formed a spooky yet cute atmosphere in the gallery.

The exhibitions of Roses demonstrate her passion for spookiness and Halloween. She adds her own understanding and imagination to the traditional Halloween stuff, which makes the audience feel familiar and new at the same time. Her purpose is to let the audience feel connected to her work of arts by recalling the memories from Halloween and the scary bedtime stories. The monochrome drawings convey a depressing and creepy feeling; in contrast, the colorful drawings may give out a peaceful feeling at first, but if look deeply into them, the dangerous and spooky feeling will emerge out slowly. She dressed up as a library ghost who reads stories also satisfied the ideal ghost in many audience’s minds. Roses is trying to explore the deep emotions of the audience toward scary things, the exciting feelings like climbing under the sheet and reading ghost stories at the midnight, scared but still curious how things are going to turn out.

I had a great time in the gallery, Roses’ and other artists' exhibitions about Halloween is super attracting and fun. I love how they care so much about the details of the theme of the gallery, they even guard the door entrance with salt, “preventing” ghosts from coming into the gallery. Roses’ work resonates with me because I always find ghosts and Halloween spooky and fun. When Roses put on her white sheet and pretend to be a ghost, it reminds me of the times when I wrap myself in blankets and watch ghost movies at home, and the times when I couldn’t fall asleep because I kept having those scary movie flashbacks. Also, with Halloween coming up, the Dead Man’s Party gives me a lot of ideas for Halloween costumes. 

[carolinegao0629]

D2 - Zines

The goal of my zine is to explore the Chinese memes, they are a lot different from the American memes. Chinese people create their memes from combining the famous panda head with some celebrities’ faces, and they put some words on the bottom. These memes can replace texting and they convey more emotions than the sentences alone. I love the end product of my zine because it makes me laugh every time I look into it. If I were to do this zine again, I will try some colorful Chinese memes instead of the monochrome panda heads. In the future zines, I would like to explore some Japanese comics and maybe create my own comic zines.

[carolinegao0629]

C1 – Artist Conversation – Hanjialin Bao

C1 – Artist Conversation – Hanjialin Bao

Artist: Hanjialin Bao Exhibition: MFA Advancement – Gui Media: Watercolors Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Max L. Gatov Gallery West Website: www.hanjialinbao.com Instagram: amber_baoo

Hanjialin Bao is a student who is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Fine Arts at California State University, Long Beach. She is a graphic designer, comic artist, and illustrator born in Hohhot, China. Bao started her artist career since she was a child, she was fascinated by traditional Chinese art and inspired by Chinese realism painting, costumes, and textiles from Peking opera, decorative elements on paper kites, and other forms of folk arts. After she graduated from Xiamen University, she came to the U.S. to further explore her ideas and pursue her dreams. Her work combines both traditional Chinese characters with modern American elements, shows a vivid contrast between aesthetic concepts and design approaches in China and the U.S.

Bao’s exhibition of Gui presents her digital arts of traditional Chinese cultures. The drawings have straight and round lines with beautiful clean edges; the lines are smooth with fluency, no unnecessary lines were drawn on there, so the drawing doesn’t look redundant. The clean lines made up these life-like people in the drawing, and the rhythms of the lines imply the movements, emotions, and characteristics of the people. Bao chooses the colors very carefully; in order to show the beauty of traditional Chinese clothes, all her drawings were painted with dull yet saturated watercolors, which also covers the drawings with a mysterious layer. The texture of the drawings is very smooth, and even if they are digital arts, Bao somehow made them have depths and transparencies. The drawings are the size of an A4 paper, which requires some close-distance observations to see the details, and a close look would be recommended because it is very impressive how she managed so well of every little detail of the drawings.

Bao’s drawings are the combination of elements from traditional Chinese and modern American cultures, her purpose is to apply these elegant Chinese arts to the American market. The people in her drawings were wearing old Chinese clothes and dresses with traditional accessories, some women were wearing giant green jade earrings to represents wealthiness. Her work conveys the Chinese cultures in a very directional way, the audience can easily feel the elegance and beauty of traditional Chinese elements. Furthermore, some people in her drawing had their lips pierced, which not only represents the casualness of the modern American culture, but also brings the American audience familiarities, so they could feel more intimate and connected to the Chinese cultures. Bao’s drawings are meant to provide people better understandings of the traditional Chinese culture. Her drawings include many characteristics that Americans were familiar with, for example, the Chinese Kungfu and Lion Dance; and the detailed and colorful drawings successfully convey the audience the emotions of the people who were doing Kungfu and Lion Dance – free and happy.

The exhibitions presented by Bao grabbed my attention when I first enter the gallery because they are super life-like and delicate in detail. These drawings resonate with me, an Asian American, who came here 5 years ago. For me, these drawings are very touching, and they make me recall my childhood; I grew up in China and I was also very fascinated by traditional Chinese arts. I remember the times when I sit with my grandparents in front of the TV and watch the Peking opera over and over again. With the fast growth of the internet world, people start to leave out the traditional stuff and only pursue new things, so I am really glad that there are still people in China that are trying their best to save these old cultures and arts, and willing to present them proudly to the world.

[carolinegao0629]

C1 – Artist Conversation – Sienna Browne & Sylvan Streightiff

C1 - Artist Conversation - Sienna Browne & Sylvan Streightiff

Artists: Sienna Browne & Sylvan Streightiff

Exhibition: You Are You’re Your

Media: Oil paints, steel, fabric, stuffing, concrete, sand

Gallery: CSULB, Max L. Gatov Gallery West

Website: www.siennabrowneart.com & no website for Sylvan Streightiff

Instagram: www.instagram.com/siennabrowne & www.instagram.com/learning_center 

Sienna Browne is a fourth-year undergraduate student of the Drawing and Painting BFA program at California State University, Long Beach. Besides the identity of being an artist, Sienna is also a beach lifeguard, middle school youth leader at Rock Harbor Church and Instructional Student Assistant for the art department at Long Beach State. Sienna started her artistic life as a child, and she spent lots of time creating artworks while homeschooling. However, her middle school and high school lives were not easy, she went through social pressures, bullying, her father’s death and multiple eating disorders. So art is her way of working through her past obstacles, she faces and reexperiences her past pain while creating her work of art, and her work conveys her feelings and messages to the audience. Sylvan Streightiff is an artist and an ASI commissioner for environmental justice in California State University, Long Beach. According to her Instagram, she is also the spokesperson of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) that helps people with Type I diabetes. Sylvan describes herself as a “Jesus freak” who meets a paintbrush. And her works are reflections of herself, her feelings, emotions, and understandings for life.

Sienna and Sylvan chose colorful oil paints as their main media during the exhibition, all the work looks amazingly shiny. Some of the work is made with oil paint dots, and the dots arrange and overlap each other to form some shapes. The shapes of the work are undulating, with nice and smooth edges; the lines are sinuous and yet uniform, give a clean outlook. Their work focused on putting bright vivid colors in the middle and dark muted colors on the surrounding, it’s like a rhythm or story with a main thesis, so the audience knows where to focus on the paintings. The texture of the painting is a combination of smooth and rough, some paints soaked into the canvas, and some paints stayed on solidly. The paintings in the exhibition are large in sizes, people can view and enjoy the arts from a comfortable distance, but to see the details and feel the rhythms, a close look is necessary.

The contents of the two artists’ work are reflections of their lives, their past and their understanding of life; they use colors, shapes to describe the way they see this world. In their work The Diptychs, Sienna and Sylvan painted their psychological states of mind in love, the two pieces of work have great contrasts. The one on the left, Self – Restriction, used black background to set the theme, and all the colored shapes and figures seem like sinking into the darkness, which creates a depressing and powerless feeling. And that corresponds with artists’ ideas of fearful love, with traps and untrusting. As a contrast, the painting on the right, A Utopian Love, used all vivid and bright colors to create this happy, worry less environment; as the name suggests, it’s a perfect love. Sienna and Sylvan use their work of art to explore the audience’s feelings and own understanding of certain things, their work is meant to arouse emotions, recall memories, and send out messages to comfort people who are going through obstacles.

Sylvan and Sienna’s exhibition gives me great pleasures and I can feel myself connecting to their work and their thesis. I was impressed by how their arts resonate with my perception of life. I always think that a good and meaningful life should be colorful and bright, just like the paintings shown. When I see the painting The Image of the Invisible God, I was fascinated by how the artists can paint out this ideal world I have in mind, it’s peaceful, hopeful and gorgeous. When I stand closely to the paintings, I feel myself sinking into the paints and becoming a part of their work. It is amazing how they can use only small materials to describe such large quantities of complicated emotions.

[carolinegao0629]

D1 - Finger Painting

The finger painting activity is so fun! It’s easier than I expected and the work turned out pretty well. The paint felt super smooth and I felt much more inspired to paint with my fingers. I never tried using my fingers as painting tools before, but when I press onto the paint and spread them out on the paper, I feel so liberated. It was like I was finally able to connect with the paint and draw whatever I want. And the rough paper and smooth paint gives out an amazing contrast of textures. I love painting with no specific subject because it gives me space to come up with my own stuff. I have painted before and I always feel restricted when I pick up the brush; finger painting is definitely more free and fun. The painting came out the way I wanted, it’s abstract and pure emotional; compare to the painting I’ve seen before, it’s more imaginative because there’s not a subject to it. It’s just a reflection of my mood when I paint it.

[carolinegao0629]

I didn’t have time to go to Venice beach, so I just did the graffiti painting in my front yard. It did not turn out the way I wanted, I guess I shouldn’t spray on another layer of paint when the first layer wasn’t even dried yet, or maybe I bought the wrong paint. The paint was dripping all over when I lift it to take a picture, so it did not look good on there. Anyway, the activity was fun and I wish I could do it again with better paint.

[carolinegao0629]

This plaster activity is so much fun! I made a fist and a footprint because I had some extra plasters after filling up the fist model. I’m very satisfied with my overall results :)