Feminism

Things I Love: Feminism

Feminism has opened my eyes to so many things that are happening around us that I was never aware of, or just took for granted as normal occurrences. It has made me aware of other systematic inequities and of my own taken-for-granted privileges.

I would like to start by explaining that feminism is not one opinion, but many conflicting opinions of what it means to achieve gender equality. Feminism is not a man-hating project that thinks women are better than men. It is just as concerned with the well-being of men as it is for women. The idea is to find a way for everyone to be treated fairly, regardless of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, ability, class, immigration status, visible minority, body type, or socioeconomic status. Because as much as we say that we live in an society where sexism or racism does not exist, and that we are all born with the same chances to succeed in life, that is not true. Some of us (and I include myself being born Canadian, white, middle-class, and having almost completed an undergrad degree) were born with less barriers in our way.

By looking at women, not as one united group, but as people from different backgrounds who have to face different obstacles and who are treated differently depending on how they look or where they are from, we can begin to realize that we are not all oppressed in the same ways. Some women even have more privilege than certain men, and it is important not to ignore these systemic inequities and resulting oppressions. 

Feminism for me is the ability to be whoever you want to be regardless of what others think is appropriate. It is also about respecting others as human beings regardless of how they chose to choose to express their identity.

This is a fun list I found online that outlines some relevant feminist issues:

 http://elitedaily.com/women/sorry-sorry-20-things-women-shouldnt-apologize/

And we could also make a similar list that would apply to men who should not have to apologize for liking to working out, watching musicals, following sports, getting pedicures, or for their sexual orientation, etc.

With regards to how feminism is relevant to my art practice, I would say that it has allowed me to look at things differently, to question what we think of as normal, and to try to reshape realities. I find meaning in working with “craft”; sewing and knitting being a typically feminine associated activity, and looked down on in comparison to “high art”. Clothing references the domestic sphere (that women were not too long ago confined to) that also alludes to the endless domestic labour of laundry, hand-sewing and knitting (along with cooking, cleaning, child raising, emotional support, etc.). These labour-intensive activities are for the most part invisible and taken for granted, as are our stereotypical and expected roles as mothers, wives, home-makers and care-takers.  Also, clothing shapes and reflects our daily lives; we are judged, approved, categorized, harassed, disrespected, etc. by what we wear and how we present ourselves and how others interpret that presentation.

With these projects I was trying to make visible certain feminist issues surrounding what roles we expect women to fill based on their gender.

Audrey D'Astous; Live to sleep to wash; Soft Sculpture; Pants (window washing, work on display), dishcloths (a lifetime of window dishes), bedsheets (a childhood of summer dreams), applesauce glass slippers (legs inactive); 94cm x 30cm; 2013.

This project shows the roles that women are typically cast as: homemaker and sexual object. The front of the pants are replaced with a patchwork of dishcloths so that it is more convenient when washing the dishes (a women is made for doing housework); the backsides of the pants are replaced with bedsheets, because she is also a sexual object (made for the bed); all the while, she is wearing applesauce glass slippers that are impossible to stand in, let alone walk in (reflecting how women force themselves to fit into various garments/shoes that put them at a disadvantage and that are uncomfortable) trapping her in between the two positions of standing in the kitchen and lying down on the bed.

Audrey D'Astous; Don’t pick up - hang up; Soft  Sculpture; Dish cloths, underskirts; 118cm x 55cm x 30 cm; 2013; Front

Audrey D'Astous; Don’t pick up - hang up; Soft  Sculpture; Dish cloths, underskirts; 118cm x 55cm x 30 cm; 2013; Back.

This piece is an accumulation of dishcloths and underskirts, all sewn together to create a figure that is heavy and evokes a pregnant body. By showing the underskirts and mixing and fusing them with the dishcloths, I wanted to show the weight of typically invisible “women’s responsibilities” such as cleaning, dressing “respectably” and childbearing. The complex structure of the figure (it is a maze of different interconnecting pouches and pockets) is meant to reflect the complicated but invisible structures, ideologies and inequities that underly and shape these activities as well as the difficulties of having a female identity. 

a Time to Reap, a Time to Sew.

Cabbage: there's more than boiling!  This fall and winter favourite is back in a big new way! Cabbage comes in a variety of stylish colours and styles, you're sure to find something that suits your taste. Whether it's the elegant savoy, refined red, and for those with simpler tastes the classic green, there's something for everyone! Cabbage is the perfect compromise for those that are bored with rutabaga, but find cauliflower too extravagant.

"A cool-weather crop that can be raised for spring or fall harvest.  Cabbage is a good source of vitamin C"
-The Reader's Digest: Back to Basics

Have you already tried cabbage? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

The vegetable that's boldly facing a new frontier.

For the rest of the semester my work is going to focus on the transient nature of trends.  I'm going to show this by combining food and fashion and showing how they both go stale.  I'm working on three pieces each of which will be a piece of clothing popular in a different era, created from a food popular in that same time period.  The foods are french fries, bread and cabbage, but I'm currently most excited about the cabbage piece, a lot of this excitement comes from the thrill of putting the cabbage through a sewing machine.  The other part I'm really enjoying is the problem solving, particularly regarding constructing these pieces out of materials that get more fragile the more time passes.

 

Just Keep Swimming

Things We Love: A Recurring Theme

As mentioned in previous posts, art school is a journey. It is full of twists and turns, failures and successes and fresh starts and Blank Slates. We come out in the end having expanded many of our skills and having learned a lot about ourselves but the road there can certainly be rocky. Therefore, it feels great when a theme naturally reoccurs in your work that confirms that you really are coming into your own as an artist.

I have found Betty Goodwin to provide some of this direction to me over the years. I stumbled upon one of her works, Moving Towards Fire (1983) while still in high school. I didn't know the title of the work at the time, nor could I ever remember the name of the artist (I'm definitely a visual person- names are always a struggle!). Regardless, this image served as my computer background for many months simply for it's aesthetic and the eerie implications. This was one of my earliest encounters with contemporary artists.

In second year, as more individuality became allowed in our work I noticed my tendency towards the human form and the human condition in my work. While researching online, Betty Goodwin stood out to me again, this time through a quote.

"I deal with the human body..., other times it is like the memory of the body..... I used the sitz bath, the bed, I have used clothes. I guess these are the elements that I need to best express what I am thinking about. But it is true my concerns do take in the body and its various aspects, even in terms of time or passage. It''s all concerning humanity."1995

Yes Betty, exactly. It's all concerning humanity.

My work in third year continued on this trend of humanity, the body and the experience of existing within one. While I researched many other contemporary artist's during this year, Betty Goodwin's work never left my folder of inspirational images and was included in my sketch book for the term.

Now as we work through our theses and I find myself trying to convey the struggle of dealing with the possibility of death I turn again to the Swimmer series. The extensive series of figures that allude just as much to drowning as to swimming, provide insight into the creation of a body of work as well as to revisiting a traumatic experience in order to come to terms with it. As my own work confronts death, mourning and memory, Goodwin's work has continued to inspire me.

Betty Goodwin. Moving Towards Fire: Swimmer Series. 1983

Danielle Hoevenaars

Canadian Identity

This year I have been focusing on Canadian Identity and how other cultures perceive Canada.  I love to travel to other countries and learn about their culture.  This summer I spent 3 months in Europe visiting various countries.  I always found it surprising how other people perceived Canada.  Things that we do in Canada that seem normal to us are sometimes viewed as strange in other countries.  Also I have been living with international students and it has been an eye opener to see what they think of Canada and how we do things here.

In my art I would like to show all my findings about people’s perception of Canada and bind it in a book.  I have always loved the look of books and enjoy the hands on process of binding them yourself.  I am hoping to sew a group of signatures together to make the text block and then case it with a hard cover.  I like the idea of putting everything in a book so people can easily flip through the pages.

Here is a sample book that I bound last year.

Paper Galore

The other day i made a trip down to Queen St. W in Toronto to a tiny yet vibrant store called The Paper Place to buy a few sheets of paper. Little did i know that i’d be swept away for hours in a world filled with fabricated paper, origami art, and all the paper accessories one could ever need. I had gone to look for a very specific type of paper - Japanese washi and gampi. Something that was strong enough to withhold the warping of collaging and translucent enough to work with my layered tissue drawings - all part of a dream series i’m creating for my 4th year thesis exhibition. There were so many options to choose from and i didn’t want to make the wrong selection, as being a process-based artist, materials become as important as the final work itself. Due to this anxiety i asked for help and had personal assistance in selecting from books filled with samples, which was great. Since The Paper Place is known for having a large collection of Japanese papers, i knew i was in the right place. As i was flipping through a binder just for natural-toned papers, i came across the following that i ended up purchasing:

Gampi silk tissue, 12g

(Picture source: http://store.hiromipaper.com/hp 12sgampisilktissue.aspx) 

Gampi smooth #43 MM, 32g

(Picture source: https://www.currys.com/product.htmProduct=NAT1208&Source=Category&Category=A071B007004)

Gampi Udaban HM, 50g

(Picture source: http://www.pegasusart.co.uk/1486/Japanese-Paper-Place-Japanese-Paper---Mura-Udaban-B-Smooth-64g-16--x-56-.html)

Once i'd selected my papers, the nice lady there rolled em up for me and i brought them back to the studio. These papers were absolutely beautiful to look at and touch. In fact, once i brought them back with me to the studio, i was afraid to roll them out of the newsprint to prevent a single speck of dust or debris from landing on it. But eventually i had to get started and so here i am, cutting this beautiful paper into circles to use as a canvas for my collaging. Wish me luck!

"Art is Explosion!" - Fandoms, Remixed

As a English and Fine Arts student, it's sometimes hard to find a middle ground between the two aspects of my majors. As much as one is rooted in textual content, and the other, visual, it's not hard to see where they intersect and product a new form of communication. The early illuminated scripts of the Medieval period are as much about the illustrations as the meaning.

My area of interest is in the rise of fandom in the digital age. In texts like Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, the aspects of the rise of the prevalence of certain types of subcultures, accepted or not, have given birth to distinct identities. In a way, that subculture incorporates a different of values that encourages the sharing of content, remixing of original sources, or the way that amateurs can become creators as well.

There are obviously problematic or aesthetic matters that are tied to different fandoms: some might say that the "brony" (a rather inaccurate title for the fans of My Little Pony) label only serves to push female fans out of the space where they are supposedly safe. Otaku, as described in Little Boy by Takashi Murakami and Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, shows the far reaching power of "soft" culture exports that can influence generations of people, even so far as how we identify ourselves outside markers of gender, sex or ethnic background.

But enough of that...I'm really an illustrator at heart, and I am influenced by people like Ai Wei Wei, Yayoi Kusami, and Sandy Skoglund. I guess I might sound a bit stand-offish and stuffy, but this is the best way I can think of. My art gives off the feeling of childishness, and deals with cutouts that are larger than life. In a way it reflects how we perceive 2D versus 3D.

Visit my blog for more drawings, and hope to see you at the fourth-year show!

Bite, Photoshop. 2013

Further Readings:
Fandoms Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World - English and translated essays
Little Boy

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I'm in love with Colour

An abstracted/apocalyptic landscape in process

Through out the last couple of years, I have concentrated on the use of colour in my paintings.  Last term, my study was directed towards doing multiple little abstracted/apocalyptic landscapes and designs within a long rectangle.  They all followed the theme of colour, and I was able to explore the use of colour, and how the effect of the colour changed depending on the different paintbrush strokes.



This term is new.  For this term, I will be focusing less on landscapes, and more on the microscopic world.  The paintings will still be colourful, with some being trippy, due to the colour scheme.  The organic forms being depicted range from virus, flora, critters, and all things in between.  With the colour use, I am hoping to abstract the subject, so that it isn't easily distinguishable. 

One of the pages from Forms in Nature

After studying a couple books, such as Forms in Nature  by Ernst Haeckel, and numerous sketches later, I have started my microscopic series, and I am so excited to see how they will all turn out.

A Sketch of a Jellyfish

Artist Inspiration: Josh Keyes

I love the work of Josh Keyes. He is considered an environmental surrealist. His work often focusing on environmental issues such as wildlife encroachment and the destruction of habitat. His style is photo realistic representation but he puts his animal subjects in fragmented urban environments creating strange post-apocalyptic images. His work is impressive in his technical prowess, his interesting juxtaposition of wild animals in cities and the strong environmental messages. Keyes sometimes creates the layout for his paintings using figurines. He creates a 3D maquette of the scene he wants to create and then uses this as a reference for his painting. His is the kind of sketchbook and studio space I want to have. Though I have moved away from surrealist painting myself I find the way Keyes infuses his work with important meanings about the natural world and its importance very inspiring. You can follow his work on his Facebook page.

 

On Writing About My Art

One of the things that we have to learn as art students is how to talk about our own art. I don't just mean that we have to be able to point at something we've made and be able to say; “I made it, it's blue. I like blue, it's my favourite colour” but rather something a little more meaningful and substantial. That “I like blue” bit is going to you just fine if you're doing a world tour of kindergartens but by the time you get to fourth year you're pretty much expected to be able to talk about your work in a way that is both explanatory and insightful. The problem is sometimes talking about your own work can be very hard.

(Fig.1) "The Explication of The Old Man", Oil and Ink on
Wood, 99 cm x  130 cm, Dan Timmins, 2013

By definition being objective about your own work is difficult if not completely impossible. By the time you're done making something you often have quite a lot of labour invested in the piece and you've probably been staring at it for weeks or even months. Additionally the artwork that some artists create can be very personal which makes it even tougher to get the distance you need to rally think critically about what you have made. Talking about the work of someone else on the other hand is fairly easy. You've had no hand in making it and you are often seeing it for the first time so the perspective you have is fresh and new. Often when I'm not sure what's wrong with a painting or if I am trying to figure out if its done I will hide it away somewhere for a while in order to partially recreate that fresh viewing experience.

The format in which an artist usually writes about his work is often called an artist's statement. For me there are three different kinds of artist statements; the kind an artist makes for himself, the kind that an artist makes if he is applying for a residency or a show, and the kind an artist makes to be put next to his work as some kind of public explanation. Each of these types serves a different purpose and at least for me is couched in quite different language.

When I make an artist's statement for myself it is usually in the form of a list of questions about the ideas that I'm working with. I will refer to specific figures and themes within the work by names of explanations that aren't really part of any final explanation. There will also be all kinds of notes about process experiments and the like. That's just how I work through my process. A statement that I would send out in a professional capacity would be a lot more formal and would probably go into more detail about the processes being used and how those processes both express the ideas that I am trying to wrestle with as well as how they result in the final work. A statement that I would put with my work for a show would be different than either of these two: it would contain some information on the materials used and perhaps the barest hint at the ideas being addressed but little more than that.

(Fig.2) "The Old Man With Ham Drill, Buzz-saw, and
Quasi-Semi-Mysterious Hatch Window
or
I Can't Believe She is Still Here Even After All
This Time"
Oil and Ink on Wood, 46 cm x 61 cm
Dan Timmins, 2013

When it comes to someone viewing my work it's not that I am seeking to be evasive or enigmatic or that I want my work to defy explanation, rather the opposite; I want my work to be interesting and engaging. Part of making work that is engaging is not giving too much of it away. If I were to post a statement explaining every last figure or elucidating every last motivation what would the viewer have left to do? Part of what my paintings are about is my trying to successfully communicate what I can of an interior artistic world that seems to have its own rules and iconography. Some of the figures in these paintings can carry specific meanings, but since these meanings are personal I see no point in explaining their specific significance. Instead I must find ways to communicate visually that there is a significance of some kind. I must also find a way to create in the viewer a desire to probe and investigate the paintings and to wonder at the meanings within, even if the exact nature of the meaning is unknown.

Another way in which an artist must write about his work is through the use of titles. For me titles are very important and I tend to favour titles that either label a thing directly (“The Orange” or “Man With Pink Cannon”) or much more commonly that are slightly arcane but nevertheless inviting; “The Old Man with Ham Drill, Buzzsaw, and Quasi Semi-Mysterious Hatch Window or I can't Believe She is Still Here Even After All This Time”.(fig.2) While on the surface the title appears to be gibberish it provides a viewer with an entrance into the world of the painting. It points out objects to find, indicates that there are relationships between objects and finally indicates that there is some amount of choice in interpretation. These are all themes which the painting is attempting to address. Even if the title is just gibberish, then that gibberish serves as the ultimate invitation for a viewer to make up her own meaning.

(Fig. 3) "The Old Man with Microscope, Discount
Irish Castle, and Intestinal Complaint
or
The Tyranny of the Olive"
Oil and Ink on Wood, 46 cm x 61 cm
Dan Timmins, 2013

I am a student of art and as such I spend most of my time learning how to use pigments suspended in seed oil to create images on sheets of cellulose. I also spend a lot of time thinking about how and why I make art things and how I go about communicating this to other people. There is a level on which I think every artist thinks that “the art should speak for itself” and in an ideal world that might be true but in a world of students and critics and interested art novices we will always have to learn how to better use our words.

Dan Timmins

My artistic focus: fabrics, gender roles, and print.

I am starting out the semester fresh. I will be sticking with the same concepts and interests as last term, but using a different medium. Unfortunately my last-term endeavours have not been successes, but this term I will be going "back to my roots" and will be working with a print medium, on paper, as well as on fabric. An artist that has recently come to my attention is Yinka Shonibare and his traditional historical and formal fashions, which are done in post-modern-patterened fabrics. 

Yinka Shonibare How to Blow up Two Heads at Once, (Ladies), 2006.

I like how Shonibare mixes traditional roles, materials, methods, or subjects, with modern ideals with the roles of masculinity and femininity. Clint Neufeld doesn't use the same materials or subjects that I do, but he does work with concepts of masculine identity through satirical sculptures. This is done through his use of feminine patterns and bases of his works, counterbalanced by the engines and machine parts that traditionally only males were exposed to. 

Clint Neufeld
http://www.artnau.com/2012/04/clint-neufeld/

Clint Neufeld (detail)
http://www.artnau.com/2012/04/clint-neufeld/

Using my own preferred methods and related interests, my pieces will explore gender identity, societal roles, and fashion. 

Lauren J