A piece that pulled my attention in the gallery behind the cafe DORIS is a video calling “Chic Point(2003)” by Sharif Waked. In this piece, male models are cat-walking on the runway, wearing a clothes that has teared up in certain parts of the male’s body. These clothes are actually the garments designed for people use at Israeli security checkpoints. The first thing I saw in this piece was a bunch of models wearing weird clothes that some parts are missing. So I thought that this is just making fun of people in fashion show. However, when I got to the end of the video, some images were shown and struck in my head immediately. The images were about the people in Mideast who have to hold their shirts up to their head when they are searched by securities while traveling between Palestine and Islael. I really like the structure of the video that the artist’s major concept, which is the design of clothes, is shown first, and then the inspiration, which is the striking images. I also liked artist’s satirical response to the problem observed in the borderline between Islael and Palestine. It made me thinking about the problem seriously, and standing in front of the piece for a long time.
My life in Fiction by Kianga Ford October 17, 2008
I really enjoyed the exhibition in the Contemporary Art Museum. I liked the concept that make viewers to involve in each piece. Especially the piece called The story of This Place, which embodies some big rounded tubes with head phones on it, was very unusual. In this piece, I could just lay down on the fluffy tube and listen to the stories made by artist with background musics in it. When I first experienced it, I thought it’s very simple and meaningless. However, after I laid down on all the tubes in there and listened to the all stories, I found that each tube represent different location in the world, and the stories were also distinctive from one another. Lying on the cozy tube and listening to the stories with very moody background music gave me peaceful feelings that almost made me fell in a sleep. It soothe my mind very effectively(I was so eager to have that tube in my living room!). And there was a piece called “spa room“, which has five cushiony chairs in the small room. The whole mood of the room was very dreamy and calm because of the dark lightings, but the sounds heard in the room was quite disturbing. The sounds of crying woman, shouting man, and suspenseful music creates dramatic feelings inside the room. I was a little confused at first, but I started to assume that the artist put this dramatic sounds to make sort of ironic situation. Also, there was a video called “Brazilian” displayed in the small, dark room. Although it was hard to get the meaning, I really loved the peaceful and comfortable looks on people’s faces and their actions, and the whole tone of color in the video. The project that we had to walk around Baltimore city, and at the same time listening to the stories, confused me a lot because there was no detailed instructions for this project. I just did random walking in a very hot weather and got frustrated about it. I also didn’t think that the stories are interesting enough to attract my attention. Actually, I couldn’t focus on the stories that much due to street noises.
But I think that the overall exhibition was very eccentric and innovative, and I really enjoyed being involved in each piece! 
Assignment#5 October 15, 2008
‘No Food: don’t eat, can’t eat’
anorexia nervosa vs. starvation
Two of the most important issues for me has met in this picture.
Assignment #4 October 8, 2008
Jean Michelle Basquiat
When I was in high school, I watched the movie about Jean Michell Basquiat. It motivated me to look for Basquiat and an artworks of him. All the paintings he did totally changed my notion of art by introducing to a different artistic style. Various colors, lots of words and scribblings, simplified figures, harmonius composition, and the fantastic movement in his painting undoubtedly attracted my attention. It directly gives me the feelings of freedom, joyness, and sometimes sadness. After I knew about Basquiat, I could broke the typical artistic style of mine, which was more like a fine art. I started to draw and paint about what I think or care, and collaborated it with lots of words and various colors. I also wrote an essay about him for MICA scholorship program. I still admire him a lot, and he will gonna perform an important role in the rest of my life as an artist.
The Beatles
Anytime and anywhere, we could hear the song of Beatles. Even if we don’t know who the singer is, we could recognize it by a familiar sound of music. This shows that we are so familiar with the song of Beatles throughout our life. And that’s the reason why I think the Beatles are a great work of art. Usually, the great work of art transcend time and place. The song of Beatles does. People in various ages and from all over the world are all listening to the Beatles’ music. It exist at everywhere in everytime. Also, the song itself is very fascinating. Attracting and addicting sounds, heartful and meaningful lyrics of the songs surely catches our ears. Eventhough the Beatles are disbanded, their legendary music will be loved by many people from all over world forever.
assignment October 1, 2008
I went to the faculty exbition at Fox building, 1st floor.
Pieces that caught my eyes were ‘Dream Time’, by Ken Tisa. It’s consisted of three seperated pieces with distinctive style from each other. First one is handling with swirl shape of lines, second one with crossed lines, and the last one is handling with entangled lines which forms many circular shapes.
Generally, I like all three of them because each piece is connected with the other cohesively in terms of pattern, color, and lines. However, each piece still has it’s own unique style in them. And I also liked the graphical pattterns used in the pieces. Since I’m obsessed with the pattern things personally, I was so fascinated by the patterns in each pieces. Especially, the thread-like pattern in second piece amazed me a lot. And also the colors used in the pieces were surely pulled my attention. The colors in the pieces are various, but in some way, I felt that each color doesn’t match with others. However, she just mixed and combined those colors and it totally worked out really well. She actually made unsuitable colors to suitable.
After I observed these pieces, I became very willing to know about the artist, Ken Tisa. In fact, I don’t even know the gender of the artist. So I think it’ll be good for me to look for the information of the artist !
