Art Event Review - Diana Abells' SMP

I went the other SMP's, and of the other three, Diana Abells' interested me the most. She talked about wanting to show the connection between art and physics, through the human form. She started out drawing photos (in series' ) which were elaborately constructed to convey concepts of physics. During the midyear critique she realized that motion was too vital to her ideas for her still images to be right. She switched to film to capture the motion of the human body, and stopped trying to imitate physics concepts. She started creating videos of the human body's normal movements.

The drawings she did convey the natural extent of the body's range of motion. Some of the images look as though the joints are bent as far as they will go, suggesting a strain on the body. The strain implies that there is something stopping the body from moving farther, namely physics. This is a bit of a stretch, but I  already knew her purpose so it's a little hard to just look at the images.

Personally, I think her work connects more closely to movement than it does to the physics behind movement. I haven't actually taken an up close look at her work yet, but it doesn't look like it explicitly screams "physics!" It feels more like a study of the characteristics of motion than a connection between the artistic qualities of motion and the physical properties that cause it. I have no idea how she could fix that, since i'm assuming she doesn't want to explicitly express the concepts of physics she is working with.

Art Event Review - Tara's SMP

I went to the Saint Mary's Project studio art presentations on Tuesday. The second one, Tara Hutton's, was particularly interesting to me. She talked about her work with making dolls (both virtual and paper). She mentioned drawing inspiration from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who creates interactive sculptures out of various materials (including candy) by placing piles of the material in the gallery that weigh the same as his lover who died of AIDS, and invites the viewer to take the material. She said this interactivity spoke to her because it made the audience a necessary part of the work. She also talked a lot about the flash games she created, in that they make the audience much broader than just the gallery-going minority who can interact with her physical dolls.

The issues of class, race, body type, sexuality, and gender she presents in her work all point toward a very clear message: we are all essentially the same. The move to a broader audience is a step in this direction as well, but as she told us, it isn't quite universal yet. The use of a children's toy makes the message even clearer, bringing the participant back to a more innocent state of mind, in which they are more able to receive the message.

I hesitate to say anything bad about her project, mostly because i know she's going to read this, but there is one thing that bothers me a bit. Dolls in any form are so distinctly a girls' toy. I think this alienates boys to some degree, especially ones who aren't comfortable with the other issues involved. I'm not sure there is a way to avoid this, but i think it's worth thinking about. The only comparable thing i could imagine is having an action figure that moves, but that's stereotypical in the other direction. I'm interested to see where Tara takes this from here!