AP 3D Art Studio at Seoul International School

Seoul chosen as 2010 World Design Capital

2009-05-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

Last Oct. 20, Seoul was chosen the ``2010 World Design Capital (WDC)'' during the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design's closing ceremony. The WDC is appointed to the city that holds great design value or is to develop their city into a design oriented one. In a bid to successfully meet expectations, Seoul Mayor Oh Sae-hoon announced the ``U-Seoul Design 2010'' plan, in which the city will promote a design campaign that is ``Universal, Unique, Ubiquitous'' and apply it to streets, buildings and homes.

No more cookie cutter apartments will be put up starting from 2008, instead cities will collaborate with architects and build homes that are not only desirable to live in, but also to look at. The designs will mostly be artistic, minimalized and environment friendly. Renowned architects, such as Daniel Libenskind for Busan's I-Park and Jean Michel Wilmotte for Yongin's Raemian Apartments, will work on the new buildings and homes. Report from Korea Times.
More...

Using the Flash Audio Player on Blogger

2009-04-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

I have figured out how to place this nifty flash audio player on Blogger but WordPress won't let me do it! GRRR... But check this out!

Also you can change your wav files to mp3 using ITunes. Here's how:
Go to Itunes menu> Preferences > Advanced and choose Import using MP3 encoder.

Now when you open a wav or aiff file in Itunes, select it, right click to convert to MP3.

Try it. If you still don't get it, come and do it with me.

Rome in a Day at the New Museum

2009-04-10T19:32:00.000-07:00

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Liz Glynn’s installation “The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project” before it was destroyed. A video of the project is part of the New Museum triennial.

The rat, the rabbit and Yves St Laurent

2009-04-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

"...two Qianlong bronze heads, of a rat and a rabbit, were looted from the Yuanming Yuan Summer Palace in Beijing by Franco-British forces in 1860 during the Opium Wars. They were two of 12 heads which adorned a Zodiac fountain, five of which have never resurfaced." more from Artworld Salon.
Have a look at the auction page from Christie's devoted to these sculptures.

Check this out. "Now Jackie Chan has added his two cents worth, according to Charles Bremner, the London Times’ Paris correspondent.

“ ‘They remain looted items, no matter whom they were sold to. Whoever took it out [of China] is himself a thief,’ he said in Hong Kong. ‘It was looting yesterday. It is still looting today.’
The star of Shanghai Knights and Rush Hour accused Western countries of stealing cultural relics from nations with ancient heritage such as China, Egypt and Cambodia and yet insisting they were doing so only to preserve them.
Chan said that he is planning a film about the search for and return of some of China’s stolen national treasures from the palace with filming scheduled to start next year.” From the National Post.

Jason Song Hats

2009-03-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

As a young man, Mr. Song, 36, had no intention of taking over the business his parents, Han and Jin Song, started after emigrating from South Korea in 1982. After studying biochemistry in college, he left one semester short of a degree to pursue art studies at Parsons the New School for Design in New York. . .
An early success came in a hat he designed from a chicken-wire base and covered with silk, chiffon and trimmings. Word of the creation, which cost $200 and up, flew through the hat world. More...

Nick Cave, Sound Suits

2009-03-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

YBCA presents the largest scale presentation of work by Chicago-based artist and former Alvin Ailey dancer, Nick Cave, featuring fifty of his "soundsuits"—multi-layered mixed-media, wearable sculptures named for the sounds made when the sculptures are worn. As reminiscent of African and religious ceremonial costumes as they are of haute couture, Cave's work explores issues of ceremony, ritual, myth and identity. He does this through a layering of concepts, highly-skilled techniques and varied traditions, using materials such as fabrics, beads, sequins, old bottle caps, rusted iron, sticks, twigs, leaves and hair. Mad, humorous, elaborate, grotesque, glamorous and unexpected, the soundsuits are created from scavenged ordinary materials—detritus from both nature and culture—that Cave re-contextualizes into visionary masterpieces.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Paik Nam June Art Center to Open in October

2008-10-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

"Three Elements" (1997-2000) by Paik Nam June

Korea Times Art exhibit listing

Using Old Materials to Put a New Face on a Museum

2008-10-18T02:34:00.000-07:00

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

The Museum of Arts and Design’s first exhibitions at 2 Columbus Circle, “Second Lives” (including Jean Shin’s “Sound Wave,” above), “Permanently Mad” and “Elegant Armor,” open Saturday. The shows, Roberta Smith writes, reflect an institution “wild with delight” at having a building of its own.
Art Review | 'Second Lives'

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: September 25, 2008

Bring on the T-shirts that read, “I survived the opening shows at the new Museum of Arts and Design.”

Untethered

2008-10-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

A sculpture garden of readymades
September 25 - October 25, 2008
Opening: Thurs., Sept. 25, 6PM
540 W. 21st St.

Read the review on We Make Money Not Art

New Media Seoul

2008-10-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

I saw some great pieces of media art in Seoul and they put the emphasis on 'art' rather than 'media'. media_city Seoul is the only major biennial I've heard of that is entirely dedicated to media art. It doesn't take place in a gallery or in one of those ueber-trendy disused industrial spaces outside the city. It is located in a very official, big, and bright art institution: the Seoul Museum of Art.
from We Make Money Not Art
Read this blog and the follow-up blog and reflect on these questions: What is media art? Why is it different from conventional art?

The Changing Face of Beijing

2008-07-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China "...Critics have incessantly described these high-profile projects as bullish expressions of the nation’s budding global primacy. Yet these buildings are not simply blunt expressions of power. Like the great monuments of 16th-century Rome or 19th-century Paris, China’s new architecture exudes an aura that has as much to do with intellectual ferment as economic clout..."

See a multi-media slide show of 5 new architectural monuments in Beijing.

Composer Charles Ives on Beauty and Inspiration

2008-07-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep. "

"Every great inspiration is but an experiment."

Peter Plagens Reviews the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective

2008-06-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

'Seduction and Rejection': Bourgeois; an untitled watercolor from 1986; spider sculpture in London
If you are in New York after June 27th, go to the Guggenheim to see the works of one of the most important sculptors of our time! Read the review by art critic, Peter Plagens.
Watch the trailer for the new movie on Louise Bourgeois.
Seoul has one of her Spider sculptures too. Do you know where it is?

Jeff Koons Retrospective in Chicago

2008-06-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

As a contrast to the work of Annette Messager, please read the review
in the New Yorker of the Jeff Koons retrospective at the MOCA Chicago.
Koons is a contemporary Andy Warhol and has long been an 'art star'. I think you'll find that what the art critic Peter Schejeldahl, also an artworld 'star', says is quite bold.

Consider his opening statement: "Major artists X-ray the cultures that give rise to them."

Check out the Art is Alive blog, with a Jeff Koons spot.

Annette Messager Reviewed by Elli Park

2008-06-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

From March to June 2008, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea has hosted Annette Messager, a female artist’s exhibition, which we visited in June. In general, Messager’s works were very expressive. She mainly showed her feminist views using human bodies and parts of bodies. Born in 1943 in France, she decided to become an artist because she felt offended that only men were role model artists in the past. From 1962 to 1966, she attended Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and created surreal sculptures. Then from 1964, she started to travel around Asia, where she took great photos in Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia, India, and Israel. Later on, she traveled to more countries, eventually visiting the United States, too. To show that women are important and can be role models too, she viewed all aspects of life through a feminist lens and portrayed them in her artworks. She also portrayed her childhood a lot in her works, such as Children with Their Eyes Scratched Out, which is a part of her album collections created from 1971 to 1974. The work shows photos of babies with scribbles on their eyes, which imply that Messager had a bad childhood and that as a child, she was blinded by her father, who was an amateur painter and her boyfriend, Christian Boltanski, that men are the leading artists of the world. An example that shows her feminist views is Voluntary Tortures created in 1972, also a part of Messager’s album collections. This work shows pictures of women going through various treatments, even painful ones, to become beautiful. It implies the standard of beautiful women in society and that every woman strives to become the standard. Through this work, she wanted to show the corrupted side of society, how women give up their own uniqueness and beauty to become the standard and become just like other women. Another installation artist similar to Annette Messager is Eleanor Antin, who was born in 1935 in New York. Like Messager, Antin also worked with human bodies and explored the feminist concerns in society. In her Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, she shows her naked body when she went on a diet for a month. It shows how women want to be thin, as the media portrays ideal women to be thin and tiny. This shows that the media and society are corrupted, as not all women can be stick-thin and every woman has a different body structure. Another example of Antin’s works, The Eight Temptations, shows Antin posing to resist the temptations of junk food during her diet. Again, this implies the corrupted society and media, as women do anything to become skinny.

Annette Messager’s show in general was very interesting and unique. It had works that had thought and meaning behind them; they were not just works to please the viewers’ eyes. It was also very different from other artists’ shows, as Messager showed her beliefs strongly and did not follow nor copy other typical artists. I want to give my praise and respect to Messager’s bravery of showing her beliefs and views explicitly because she could have received many criticisms from viewers, created controversial issues, and also could have failed as an artist. But she took her chances and showed her extreme views about women and issues surrounding women, and became one of France’s leading artists with a big influence on the viewers around the world. Another thing that impressed me was the unity of Messager’s works. As many would know, she uses many different media for her works, sometimes in just one work. She utilizes random materials including photographs, embroidery, knitted things, everyday household objects, and stuffed animals, and yet manages to use these unrelated materials to create works that somehow unify and flow. Though her works aren’t the most aesthetic and pleasing to the eye in the world, I do not think that is one of her set-backs and weakness because she implies thought and meaning behind her work, which equalizes the outside appearances of her work. One weakness of her works is size and space. It is understandable that since she is an installation artist, she has works that are enormously large, but because some of her most famous works are very large, it can have a different view and thus portray a different meaning than what Messager intends to portray depending on how the work is displayed. If the gallery in which Messager’s works are displayed in is very small and not very spacious, her works would not be as successful as they can be if they are displayed in a much bigger gallery. But I think National Museum of Contemporary Art did a great job in displaying Messager’s works, clearly portraying the meanings that Messager intended to imply. Overall, it was a great experience for me to see Messager’s works, as it was my first time actually seeing an installation artist’s works in real life. (Though some moving parts of her works scared me from time to time)

Annette Messager Reviewed by Sohyae Lee

2008-06-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

The works in Annette Messager’s show were unusual and somewhat different from the three-dimensional art pieces I have seen before. Everything was unique—you would never see similar pieces in any other artist’s exhibit. The movement in most of her pieces created by the fans was new. Although it was a good experience to see her exhibit, I thought it was very confusing. The exhibit seemed like a mixture of totally different things and I did not understand the purpose behind her works. Throughout the show, I asked myself why she would do such things. The way in which she put knitted clothing on birds, covered animal heads with the heads of stuffed animals, and did other bizarre things confused me. Not only this, but I realized that there was a language barrier between artists. Despite the fact that we perceive art to be a topic that connects the world, Messager’s work proved me wrong. Some of her works incorporated language that I did not understand.

The work in the show was random and unusual. Messager once stated that the world has changed her, keeping her from creating a series of artworks. There was a large range of materials used. Not only this, but the materials were put together in unusual ways. In her interview, she states “Regarding what impedes my art work, I feel that because there are more and more wars, diseases, broken homes, that everything in the world today is totally pathetic and vulnerable, I am no longer able to make a series of works. I have always worked in bits and pieces, ripping, cutting, and pasting, but today I can no longer consider working in series and this is a dramatic change for me.”

The artist seemed to be telling her audience something though her pieces, but unfortunately, I was unable to understand what she was trying to say, most of the time. Messager stated that: “We must not try too show to much, to divulge everything, to unveil too much. We must give some small clues, even unnecessary clues. Art is a secret shared between the individual and the collective.”

At the exhibit, there was a bunch of dolls, stuffed animals, fabrics, animal statues, wire or string, inflatable animals, and so on. In an interview Messager states: “I have always used materials that were in the home, colored crayons, cloth, stockings, nets, sewing material, newspaper clippings, everything that arrives into the home and stays,” further stating “by using the kinds of timeless materials-cloth, paper, crayons-that are not directly linked to today's technologies, I am interested in transcending a certain temporality.”

Annette Messager is a French contemporary installation artist who uses various mediums to create pieces of art by modifying the way gallery or even public spaces are experienced by others. Messager incorporates various materials into her pieces like any other installation artist. Most of her three-dimensional pieces seemed to have incorporated dolls, animals (especially birds), movement (fans), fabrics, books, “photography (her's and others'), drawing, knitting, embroidery, sewing and objects she has collected. All of her pieces seem to deliver a message, making her works expressive pieces.

According to the research I did, Annette Messager dealt with “issues of sexual and physical abuse, fragmentation of the body, sin, obsession with appearances, fairy tales, children, symbols, effigies, disguise, distortion, repetition.” In short, issues surrounding women.
Annette Messager was born in Berck-sur-Mer, France, on November 30, 1943. She started art at a young age, encouraged by her father who was an amateur painter. Throughout her lifetime and to the present, she has created many installations such as My Little Effigies (1988), a piece in which she hung photographs of body parts around the necks of stuffed animals, and The Pikes (1991–93), a piece in which she impaled various objects on rods. She currently lives and works in Malakoff, Paris.

Like Ann Hamilton, a famous contemporary installation artist, Annette Messager was a female artist who worked with three dimensional objects. Annette, though, worked with dolls, nets, fabrics, and photos while Hamilton worked with textiles. Not only this, but Hamilton used the aid of many others while Messager favored working alone. Despite their differences, the two female artists created many complex installation pieces with deep meanings.

My personal favorite was the “Casino,” created in 2004. “Casino” won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in June 2005.
“Casino” is composed of red cloth, inflatable white translucent flower-shaped objects, light, wind, a wall with a rectangular hole, and many hanging black animal head cut-outs. When you first see “Casino”, all you see is red. Red cloth overflows out of the hole, pushed by air, creating a lavish mood.

The artist uses three colors; red for luxury, white for neatness and curiosity, and black for mystery, giving “Casino” depth. The soft, red cloth creates a feeling of luxury because red is usually related to celebrities and prosperity; teeming red is like teeming prosperity.
Light is incorporated in this work. When the pillows are inflated underneath the cloth, the cloth expands due to air, light shines the pillows, and the cutouts spin, a mysterious mood forms. The light reveals unknown things.

According to research, “Casino” was a tribute to the Italian fairy-tale character, Pinocchio, but I saw it in a different light. I believe that Messager wanted to show the world that people, although they look luxurious on the outside, can be mysterious and flawed on the inside when scrutinized. At first, I only saw the red and was amazed by how luxurious “Casino” looked, but when I looked closely, I saw the bizarre cutouts and as time passed I saw the inflating objects. This conveys the message that you have to look into things deeply. When you meet new people, you shouldn’t judge them by their appearances; instead, you should find out more about them. I suppose the artist created this work to change the way people see each other. We usually look at appearances, but good outsides do not always mean good insides.

I think this work has intrinsic value. Messager catches the attention of her viewers by using a bold color like red. She then conveys the message. This work lacks neither the use of the elements and principles of art nor personal expression and a major focus, and I believe it was effective in getting a message across. Although this was so, the fact that “Casino” used up continuous fanning and lighting made it a waste of energy and the fact that “Casino” was different from the rest of Messager’s exhibit confused me.

Crunch your images!

2008-06-16T13:58:00.001-07:00

Please use this guide to learn how to reduce the file size of your photos.

Annette Messager Reviewed by Eric Kim

2008-06-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, the National Museum of Contemporary Art housed various pieces by the famous artist, Annette Messager. It seems to me that Annette Messager is the type of artist who focuses more on the depth and the meaning behind her artworks, how they can be interpreted, etc. over the quality of her work in terms of aesthetic beauty. Of course, this does not, in any way, mean that Messager’s work is ugly. While to a young child, many of her works may not make sense and may resemble a big mess created by throwing random objects around, there is a lot more behind Messager’s works than its somewhat arguable physical attractiveness.
The true beauty within Messager’s pieces lie within its meaning, which is at times implicit and thus is given a greater breadth for interpretation by the viewer.
According to research, much of Messager’s work is based on issues that concern her, or women in general. Messager also incorporates many different kinds of techniques and materials in her work, and many of the materials that go within her work are made by herself as well.
Because Messager leaves so much room for interpretation in her work, she is unlike many other famous, historical artists. Famous artists like Da Vinci and his works mainly focused on the realistic nature and the aesthetic quality of their work, which often times costs its meaning and leeway for interpretation.

Messager’s show was a decent one, but I would not say it was strikingly good. Of course, preference and style in art is quite subjective, and I cannot say that the rating I have given is not subjective. Yet, I will try to present my rationale in the most objective manner possible.
Messager’s work is interesting in the sense that a lot of thought can be derived from it, and is very meaningful and thought-inducing. Yet, much of this comes at the cost of the pieces’ physical beauty and aesthetic quality. Not many of her works are particularly “pleasing” to look at, and to some viewers whose value for aesthetic quality supersedes their value for meaning, her works may not seem very great. Nevertheless, Messager’s works does include a lot of artistic qualities to it. Messager seems to be adept at utilizing space and balance within her work, both of these qualities being used in different manners to different extents in her pieces. The use of space and balance plays a large role in conveying the meaning and significance behind her work, at times making it more explicit, making it more powerful, and sometimes even creates the meaning as a whole.
One thing that has left me thinking as I left the show was the museum’s presentation of Messager’s work. Because the National Museum of Contemporary Art is a very spacious museum, many of Messager’s pieces were displayed in large spaces, which may or may not have had an impact on how her works could have been taken. So I sit here now wondering just what kind of impact the museum’s presentation of her work could have had on viewers like me, whether it enhanced the experience or undermined other potential ways the pieces could have been looked at.
Overall, the show held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art was quite thought-compelling, to say the least. The show was interesting conceptually, though it could have looked better aesthetically. It’s definitely something a curious artist should check out, and for the cheap entrance fee, it’s really a bargain you wouldn’t want to miss.

Free 3D sketch software from Google!

2008-05-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Want to try working out a design on the computer? Download the free Google Sketchup program.

Art & Fear

2008-05-26T03:17:00.000-07:00

Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland
"This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists -- it's about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic. Word-of-mouth response alone-now enhanced by internet posting-has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity nationally." Amazon review

Free photo program

2008-05-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

If you don't have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, then get the freeware program that will allow you to shrink and crop images - http://www.irfanview.com/
You can download this on your home computers and laptops for free if Mom and Dad don't want to buy the expensive full version of Photoshop or the $100 Photoshop Elements. All you need for this class is the ability to crop, resize, shrink files and adjust light levels. Irfanview has all that, but it's for Windows only.

Collect your images of work from this year and begin posting them on your Breadth page.

Amazing Messager show!

2008-05-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

"We are all puppets, we manipulate and are manipulated." Annette Messager
I spent the afternoon at Seoul Grand Park where the National Museum of Contemporary Art is located, just past the giant roller coaster. The Annette Messager exhibit is a retrospective of her work from the 70's until now. Two of the large installations that were displayed at the Venice Biennale in 2005 are here, Inflated-Deflated and Casino. These are a must see!
Extra credit for the student who can name 10 common objects used in her work.

"I believe that the more individual you are, the more you enter the universal." Annette Messager

What if I'm traveling this summer?

2008-05-19T02:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone traveling more than two weeks this summer could have a problem getting the assignments done as they are scheduled. You can make a plan now and email me with your proposal for submitting summer work.
If you are going to be in New York City or another major US or European city, you may substitute the Seoul sculpture exhibition with one from a museum where you will be visiting.
You will be working with cheap, easily accessible materials for the Breadth project assignments. See how resourceful you can be in getting the work done. Take the basic tools with you- art knife, scissors, masking tape, ruler, paste glue.
Wiki Documentation and posting:
You must document with a digital camera your construction process. Post 5 process shots along with the two views of the finished piece.
Try to get the artwork home in one piece, if possible.
You must post your sketches or notes for the pieces on your wiki page or on a personal blog that you create just for this class. If you use a blog instead of pbwiki for your work, link to it from pbwiki.

AP 3D Summer Assignments

2008-05-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Find your summer assignments on the class wiki (best) or look for them on google docs, here:
Number 1
Number 2
Number 3
Number 4

French sculptor Annette Messager

2008-05-12T01:52:00.001-07:00

Go to see the works of French artist Annette Messager, who will be displaying some of the same sculpture shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris last year.
http://www.moca.go.kr/index.htm

AP 3D Studio Course Outline

2008-05-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

View the College Board approved AP 3D Studio Art Course Syllabus for important information about due dates and expectations.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddrfz52f_12cgw3wdff

What is a Trite List?

2008-05-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

Go here to view the Trite List: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddrfz52f_10tb6pv63v
What are some other words for trite?

AP 3D Studio Expectations

2008-05-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Go to http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddrfz52f_1ktgwmpd9&invite=gx6t8kf
to view the presentation full screen. Click "Start presentation" in upper right corner.
Post any comments here.