Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Mentor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Mentors From The Past and What they Mean and how they influence my work/creative process.

The truth is most of my mentors do not influence my creative process. I have only used Francesca Woodman and Logan White for inspiration on my photo project from last year. Other than that I have been finding them to meet the requirements in this course. As of now there are only three mentors I hold in high regard to my work, but other than those few, the rest were found via internet randomly and are immediately disregarded after I have blogged about them for a few minutes.
Logan White and Francesca Woodman have not only been directly associated with me but they have shaped my methods to photography. Growing up, I would always look at pictures from my mom in college that her best friend Francesca took. The style in which they were taken inspired me to emulate that dark ora in my own work. It was when I met Logan that this really began to happen. Logan came to us to learn more about Francesca, her own personal mentor. Her professor had told her she took photos similar to Francesca's and recommended she come see Sloan Keck to talk about it. Logan did so and thats when I met her! I was in 6th grade. Her vintage wardrobe captivated me at first sight. She took my picture the first day and as time passed her visits became more regular. I was her model for her school assignments, and one of the photos even got into best college photography. Every visit she would bring her developed photos of me. I would see how she manipulated elements around her in order to get the best photo possible. Her methods and motivation inspired me and got me to buy my own camera and whenever I want to solve a project by means of photography, I instantly think of what would Logan or Francesca have done and my thinking is kick-started.
Another mentor I come back to is Christel Marott, a Danish cartoonist, painter, illustrator and multi-artist. She was only seventeen when she grabbed attention from magazines, hair salons, and other advertising companies that craved her illustrations. Christel was one of the first Danish artists who made the pin-up girls back in the 1940s. I really admire the style she draws in. Her line quality is fantastic and only makes me want to try drawing like her myself. Last year I drew cartoon girls similar to hers, but I could not master the fluidness her drawings have. I have trouble drawing without a reference. I think drawing someone from life, but then only translating certain parts of what you see into your drawing is more effective than making it up from your imagination. Christel is master of this skill and she inspires me to draw classic cartoons, because it was obvious she had a strong passion for it herself.
I have also posted about Chuck Close. I found him one time surfing the web... He is an American portrait artist. I think I choose him because I identified with his work as I have done a lot of portraits in the past. I thought it was interesting his work is photo realism because I have always wondered how an artist could paint something accurately enough so it could be mistaken for a photograph. My idea of how to do this was to measure the real object and then measure it exactly on your canvas. I learned this is not how Chuck Close depicts his photos. He grids his photos then translates the grid onto a large canvas where he will copy it and put color into each square. Chuck Close has not influenced my work thus far, and I suspect he won't anytime soon unless I pick up photo realism. However, it is beneficial to be aware of his techniques if I ever am in dire need to paint a photo with perfection.
Dale Chihuly is another mentor I admire greatly. He was one of the first people that saw blowing glass as an art form rather than for form and function. He created the glass department at the rhode island school of design and his work is featured all over the world. The drawings for Dale's glass ideas are an art themselves. He will loosely sketch or paint what he envisions the glass to look like, and that image alone is an art. Today he has a team of glass blowers working for him, this method initially introduced to him when he was studying in Venice, as he has an eyepatch and a bad shoulder. He directs the team to create the glass.
A lot of the mentors I post I more find their work interesting than inspiring. They usually do not help me create or mean much to me unless they are working similarly to how I work or unless they were suggested for me to look at.