To say Elaine Bay is an eccentric artist would be an understatement of the highest order. Maybe I haven't been exposed to too many artists from a non-college setting, but she was quite the character either way.
Bay assumed the pseudonym Princess Die after she left grad school and joined the group "the Miracale Five" and began to create art with them. She would take topical pieces from the media, and add demonic horns, serpentine tongues and bloody vomit to a cast of characters from Brittany Spears (which she was immensely proud of) to George Washington. She would collage the images as well as draw on them. She also had a pension for making animated gifs of said demonized icons.
After her work with Miracle Five, she moved onto the group Sweat 2 Die (STD), where she, Sweatron, and two dancers both known as "dancer 2" would literally dance themselves to exhaustion to combat fatness. They are classified under the genre of Super Visual Ghetto Tech.*
After one of the dancers left the group to move to some country in Europe, Elaine bay started another group, Golden Jasmine Yeti Dancer. GJYD was almost entirely formed out of spite against said dancer, apparently, although I'm not clear on how that actually worked. I'm not sure if she was kidding or not but she did not retract that fact so I'm going to assume she meant it as the truth.
Later, Bay created the "burkini," a comment on... something? She didn't really explain, just showed us a pic and said she made it with GJYD. I'm guessing it had to do with critisim on the Iraq/Afganistan war(s) due to it being made around 2008. The group also created the Ameros, after a thought experiment about what if all dollars had no value anymore because of a Canada/US/Mexico alliance. GJYD even made fake Ameros (yes, they actually did) again for reasons that were not well explained.
Honestly this lecture made me more confused than anything, but some of her art looked pretty cool, if it lacked description on her part and comprehension on mine.
*I kinda started to lose her at around this point, as she could barely operate the gifs on the computer and had to stop every two minutes to fix it, and was interrupted by her daughter numerous times during the talk, so I appologize for anything that doesn't make much sense.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Artist Lecture: Residencies
On Thursday (Happy Halloween!), I went to the PCAC to hear the presentation from a number of professors about Residencies and their benefits to aspiring and established artists.
We were first introduced to a series of websites about residencies that would help anyone to find residencies, with the given example of Community Service residencies in New York City. The idea of a community service residence is intriguing to me, and if I decide to pursue this after school I might look into that.
The first professor to speak was Grant Drumheller, who spoke of his time spent in Rome. He specified that after school was the perfect time for a residency, and that they were typically more for single people. Surprisingly, almost every speaker brought up the fact that a lot of these residencies had a lot of parties and "socializing," and it was put about that subtly.
After Grant, Jenifer Moses talked about Roswell and Seratoga. I personally think I would go a little crazy if I lived a full year in the middle of the desert by myself, and no amount of judging alien dog contests would be able to reprieve my sanity. But the Seratoga Springs residency interested me, specifically because of the history of the program, with so many famous artists going through there, and the history of the manor itself.
Next was Julee Holcomb, who spoke mostly about Skowegan. I found that this presentation was the one I connected to most, because I am mainly a photographer, and she was the only professor there who went with that medium. Some of the other residencies couldn't even be done with photography, so this gave me at least an example of someone who was able to go through a residency in my medium.
Rick Fox was after Julee, and he talked about C-Scape, where he lived on the dunes for several weeks, alone and without any power or freshwater or food (besides what he brought with him). I would love to do this just for the experience (and the fact that I might go a little crazy), but it did not sound like I could do anything like that as a photographer, especially a digital one.
I don't think the second to last professor introduced himself? But he talked about wine and New England beauty a lot so that was cool.
Finally, Leah Woods talked about her residency in Africa where she carved ornate wooden coffins in crazy designs (like a twix wrapper). Her experience was pretty interesting, and I would love to go to Africa to do photography, especially when one of my future dream jobs is working as a Nat Geo photographer.
Despite the fact that I don't think I will ever be able to do a residency, be it for monetary reasons or lacking the artistic ability to do so, I think I learned a great deal about what one can do with art after college, considering I didn't really know what a residency was before. If I ever did want to pursue a more artistic career with my photography, a residency would be a great help and would be a lot of fun (probably).
We were first introduced to a series of websites about residencies that would help anyone to find residencies, with the given example of Community Service residencies in New York City. The idea of a community service residence is intriguing to me, and if I decide to pursue this after school I might look into that.
The first professor to speak was Grant Drumheller, who spoke of his time spent in Rome. He specified that after school was the perfect time for a residency, and that they were typically more for single people. Surprisingly, almost every speaker brought up the fact that a lot of these residencies had a lot of parties and "socializing," and it was put about that subtly.
After Grant, Jenifer Moses talked about Roswell and Seratoga. I personally think I would go a little crazy if I lived a full year in the middle of the desert by myself, and no amount of judging alien dog contests would be able to reprieve my sanity. But the Seratoga Springs residency interested me, specifically because of the history of the program, with so many famous artists going through there, and the history of the manor itself.
Next was Julee Holcomb, who spoke mostly about Skowegan. I found that this presentation was the one I connected to most, because I am mainly a photographer, and she was the only professor there who went with that medium. Some of the other residencies couldn't even be done with photography, so this gave me at least an example of someone who was able to go through a residency in my medium.
Rick Fox was after Julee, and he talked about C-Scape, where he lived on the dunes for several weeks, alone and without any power or freshwater or food (besides what he brought with him). I would love to do this just for the experience (and the fact that I might go a little crazy), but it did not sound like I could do anything like that as a photographer, especially a digital one.
I don't think the second to last professor introduced himself? But he talked about wine and New England beauty a lot so that was cool.
Finally, Leah Woods talked about her residency in Africa where she carved ornate wooden coffins in crazy designs (like a twix wrapper). Her experience was pretty interesting, and I would love to go to Africa to do photography, especially when one of my future dream jobs is working as a Nat Geo photographer.
Despite the fact that I don't think I will ever be able to do a residency, be it for monetary reasons or lacking the artistic ability to do so, I think I learned a great deal about what one can do with art after college, considering I didn't really know what a residency was before. If I ever did want to pursue a more artistic career with my photography, a residency would be a great help and would be a lot of fun (probably).
Friday, November 1, 2013
More Works In Progress
Decided to put the mask on myself for a bit. Its just as creepy from the inside. Also started playing Night of the Living Dead and put the mask in front of that, and the effect is disturbing at best.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
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