HUNG LIU!!!

Posted on June 5, 2014January 8, 2018 by Monica

HUNG LIU!!!

I’ve been meaning to talk about Hung Liu for a while now (2 months?) and here we finally are. I was reminded of her when I got a paint box as a graduation gift today. My professor pointed out that I could do small paintings in it like Hung Liu, and that’s exactly where my mind already was.

First thing’s first: this expression makes no sense. Second thing (which is second):

Gaah!! I LOVE HER!!

Hung Liu recently came to DU – well, in April – and I had the pleasure of not only attending her lecture and having her visit one of my classes, but to speak with her one-on-one when I crashed a studio class that I wasn’t even taking. (It was a Hung monopoly.)

Of course her work is all beautiful, and I loved getting to hear about her process and progression over time. We also had the wonderful fortune to have this work displayed in the Myhren (art school) gallery as part of The Female Gaze exhibition:

Visage II, 2004, oil on canvas.

She was also so personable, which hasn’t been the case for all our visiting artists (as expected – I’m not trying to call out anyone in particular). Overall there were two main takeaways that I got from speaking with Hung that were very important for me. One, we discussed Hung’s philosophy on political art. Two, grieving through art.

I feel like I’d be cheating you if I didn’t show more of Hung Liu’s work, so I’ll mix them in throughout this post.

September, 2001, oil on canvas – done in response to 9/11

So political art. I’d been labeled a political artist in one class, and yes, I do love addressing current social issues. Really, I think it’s just where my interests lie and a function of studying sociology. Art can just be a form of personal expression and so, since these are the things I’m angry about in real life, they inevitably come out in my art. And for me, at this stage, they come out in very blatant ways. But I have been and will continue to think about how I want to communicate heavy or politically-loaded messages. There’s still a lot of experimenting for me to do, and I don’t think I’ll ever get to a stopping point. I don’t believe an artist should “settle down” in one particular style or medium or subject. Even if it takes years to get through a “phase,” great artists keep moving and discovering. But back to Hung Liu.

I talked with Hung about my struggle to balance political messages with aesthetics and subtlety. Her first lesson: no matter how political a piece is, it has to be art. If I want to be involved in politics, there are other things I can do – write, perform, and run for office are some of the things she listed. Or political cartoons (which I’m glad I’ve finally tried out). She’s right, and I felt both comfortable, since I have writing under my belt, and a little pushed back. It probably never feels good to be told that you don’t need to do art, but if I really wanted to make an actual change, I should go beyond art. Even if it’s spreading my art, or creating art for a cause. Catherine Morris from the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art said, “Activism can’t function well without art.”

Strange Fruit: Comfort Women, 2001 oil on canvas

Next lesson: this one even had an analogy. When Hung began describing this, I wasn’t sure where she was going at first, but I was content to sit and listen, and she was content to talk. I felt like I just sat with her and soaked up wisdom. I may have also been a little star struck.

She began with, if a teacher is always loud, students won’t listen. I tuned in, also thinking about how I could be teaching English in Korea next year, and wondering if she was passing on some teacherly wisdom. A teacher can yell and yell, but if the teacher always yells, eventually the students will stop paying attention. But if a teacher speaks very quietly, whispers even, students have to stop talking or being disruptive to listen. (And I think there was an element of, if they won’t listen, you don’t owe them anything.) But art is like that.

If the political message in an art piece is subtle or complex, it’s more effective. She suggests using duality and contradictions. In her 2009 series Apsaras, depicting the victims of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, Hung paints her subjects beautifully with aesthetically-pleasing colors, rather than making the paintings depressing and dark. If these paintings were dark, she says, they would be too much, too hard to look at.

Apsaras, Blue, 2009 & Apsaras, Red, 2009

Hung Liu lived through the Cultural Revolution in China; she’s been through a lot and led an incredible and resilient life. She taught herself to paint at this time, and was even in the military. Even in school, she and other art students were only allowed to paint propaganda, but she painted impressionist landscapes in secret…with her paintbox!

My Secret Freedom No. 8, My Secret Freedom No.17, oil on paper, 1972-1975

I guess briefly I’ll touch on grief too. After our one-on-one conversation, Hung visited my art history class for a Q&A session. She was really wonderful. But maybe you’re sick of hearing that by now. I asked a question about ghosts, referring to the people from old photographs that she incorporates in her work (look up her show Summoning Ghosts). All these people were historical, so I asked if she had done anything like this for people she knew personally. She asked, you mean make portraits of them? I felt silly because that sounded so basic, but then she got at the heart of what I really wanted to know, which was, how do you address the death of a loved one through art? Hung Liu’s mother passed away a few years ago, and I felt bad afterwards, realizing how recent it was, and how those wounds were still healing. But throughout the whole thing, she was completely open and honest; I appreciated her sincerity so much.

In 2011, Hung did a series entitled To Live mourning her mother. The series had 51 small paintings (1’x1’ squares, I think), done over the course of 49 days. She painted little things in her mother’s apartment, as she went through the torturous process of packing her mother’s belongings. Some of her subjects were an IKEA chair, the kitchen sink, the light patch on the wall left when she removed a clock, and a piece of garlic that had begun to sprout – the first painting.

Toothbrush and Cup, 2012 from To Live

She never did a portrait of her mother, because she didn’t want the work to be too literal or direct. Hung talked about how objects often outlive humans, and tell stories. These objects told stories about her mother’s life. Even as her mother was sick and dying, she made an effort to live, cooking food (the dumplings) she couldn’t even eat. To Live became the title.

For Hung, To Live wasn’t meant to shown (but a curator convinced her and made space at her retrospective). They were just for her, and, Hung told us, she didn’t truly consider them art. But they’re beautiful, and I’m grateful that she has.

You can see more of these works in the preview here: http://www.blurb.com/b/4023524-hung-liu-to-live

That made a lot of sense and really helped me. Everyone grieves differently, hearing this took the pressure off me to create something great and in commemoration. Art is a form of expression, but sometimes that expression is just for you.

EDGE Gallery Exhibit

Posted on April 14, 2014January 8, 2018 by Monica

EDGE Gallery Exhibit

I was lucky to have three pieces in this show, my first exhibit! Eventually I’ll have all three in my gallery.

“Goal!”
Collage, watercolor
2014

“Campus Climate”
Oil on canvas
2013
Located under Gallery > Painting with an artist statement

“White Lines and Black Shapes”
Scratchboard installation
2014

Cut & Paste, part 2

Posted on April 13, 2014January 8, 2018 by Monica

Cut & Paste, Part 2

It’s finally part 2…and less than one month later. Not too bad.

We left off at my break-through moment about creating art intuitively…and then came winter break.

I don’t think I lifted a paintbrush once the entire time. Or a pencil that wasn’t mechanical. And we all know artists never work with mechanical pencils.

When I got back to school in January, it felt like I had to break through a wall. Kind of when you’re trying to work out after weeks of just sitting at home. (Not that I’ve experienced this, but I thought, you know, some people might be able to relate.) That quarter I was only taking one studio class that was mostly self-directed. Sometimes assignments are obnoxious, but they do force you to create. It’s like easing back in. Like going to Zumba classes and being able to just follow the crowd instead of having to plan your whole workout. (I halfheartedly apologize for all these gym metaphors. I promise I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone here.)

Anyway, my first piece in January was a collage. I did it because we were cutting and pasting paper in another class, and because I didn’t have to come into the studio to work on it. The amount of physical effort and technique that goes into a collage is almost nothing! Which was just what I needed when the assignment was due at the end of the week and I hadn’t started! Unfortunately there’s a lot of mental back-story to a collage.
One problem was that I had no baseline to work from. What makes a “good” collage, exactly? I didn’t know. But I was good at being analytical, remember? So I used a weird combination of intuition and analysis. I cut out images that interested me, just going off of the visual. It didn’t matter that pigs and swimmers’ legs and whipped cream off the top of a milkshake ad didn’t seem to relate. Except that they sort of did. Spread out on my couch and coffee table, I surrounded myself with cut-up bits of paper. A tip to aspiring collage-ists: Don’t make any sudden movements or else everything will blow away.

After I got into the swing of things – not letting my cut-out eyes and hamburgers and lips fly away – I tried to group them. Some configurations were awkward and ugly – even I could see that – but others might be good? I couldn’t tell.

I based these first few collages loosely on gender – something I’ve been exploring lately. Plus a Buddha, since I just liked the picture. In a sense, I had to throw any conceptual intent out the window. I didn’t try to communicate any specific message. As a result, these collages felt completely random, but I hoped that visually they could work.

Here are my first two:

Pretty rough. But the bodybuilder image, titled “Goal!” ended up in my first exhibition. And it did look a little better in a frame.

From here I didn’t expect to be doing more collage, but to my surprise, I just felt like doing more. And so I did. While that sounds pretty simple, for me it was strange. How often do you get to act on your random impulses? Well, maybe you do this a lot, but I don’t. I’m type A, tightly organized, trying to keep my distractions at a minimum, but also an artist. Which is a pretty good excuse to do what I want. So I cautiously followed my artistic urges.

But I couldn’t start from scratch, nor did I need to. There have been plenty of artists who have done collage, but I hadn’t really been exposed to them. Time for research.

I had been looking at a lot of Max Ernst’s collages in my Dada and Surrealism class, and his approach was very different than what I had been doing. Rather than building the piece up from scratch, he used found images – which were often already visually interesting or bizarre – and changed only a few pieces.

He was into birds.

So this became the next stage in my collage-ing. Not the birds, but the use of found images. This is what I made next.

I ended up working in only black and white. I don’t know exactly why, but I liked working within this limit; if I were using color, my source material would be almost endless. I haven’t yet gone to the internet for material yet…that might be too much. And digital collage is completely different story.

At the same time, collage is limiting and requires extra effort. I can’t go to an art store and buy my materials like I would for scratchboard or oil paint. To really get going, I have to collect a lot of material, so there’s a greater range in what I can create.

All the while, I’d also been looking at Keith Haring’s work. While I enjoy his simplified, stylized figures, and see a lot of similarity to my own work, he also tried his hand at collage. The complete opposite of Ernst, Haring incorporated paints, ink and graphite into his collages, while also expressing overtly political messages.

These are his older collages, which are clear critiques. They remind me of a piece I started, but never finished, on media coverage of the Egyptian revolution in 2011.

These are Haring’s later collages, with the messages less overt and an incorporation of other media.

I’d like to try his mixed media approach too, but haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe I’m still not done with black and white, or maybe I just need a break from college.

That, and I don’t know where collage will fit into my gallery categories.

Cut & Paste, Part 1

Posted on March 27, 2014January 8, 2018 by Monica

Cut & Paste, part 1

“Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.” -Max Ernst

Recently, I’ve started doing collage. I don’t know about it being a “noble conquest” or “coupling of two realities,” but I suppose my perspective on collage has grown. In the beginning, my philosophy might have been something like this:

“Collage is the way in which art class deadlines may be met swiftly, with minimal effort on the part of the student artist.”
True, I was only trying to be practical when I started collage. But also true that I had been seeing a lot of Max Ernst collages in my Surrealism and Dada class, which helped get me into this new media.

While I can say that I wanted to get away with doing less work, I also know that I can’t help being sincere in the things that are important to me. Currently those would probably be my majors, art and sociology (among other, non-academic things). So collage also came about as both a new routine of art-making and an attempt to move beyond my artistic comfort zone, a process I had actually (accidentally) begun the previous November.

In my Intro to Oil Painting class, we were asked to create a “forgery” of another artist’s work for our final. Meaning we had to produce a painting in the style of another artist. I love street art, so I chose Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Unfortunately, liking an aesthetic and being able to reproduce it don’t go hand-in-hand.

Street art, and really any abstract art, is really REALLY difficult for me. Yes, it might look like a four-year-old drew it…but my version looks like an awkward adult’s stiff attempts at recreating her childhood. (Obviously she should have just glued popcorn to construction paper and called it a day.) I’m just not as attuned to what makes an abstract piece strong or visually pleasing. Or – yes, I’ll say it – successful.

So the Basquiat piece started out as a disaster. It was a couple days before final critique and I was seriously ready to consider this painting a failure. Then my professor, feeling my pain, swooped in and miraculously guided me in the right direction so that I had an artistic epiphany-breakthrough moment and everything turned out alright. Basically. With some prompting, and new materials, I was able to finish the piece by messing it up. My breakthrough moment was learning to be loose and messy, and so I used oil pastels! On top of my painting!

I scribbled and scratched up the painting – this time being a little less analytical – and it was fun! The piece that had caused me so much misery was turning out to be fun. Plus it was loaded with all kinds of angry messages about my university (very street-like, don’t you think?) – even better! Actually, part of what had been so paralyzing to me was that I had lofty ambitions for the concept of this piece. It was, and still is, a very important message that I want to communicate, and so having it end in failure would have deeply upset me. But the moral of this story is that I got a taste of what it was like to create loose, intuitive art, which is something I see continuing through my collages.

I leave you here, because this post is getting long, and I’m getting tired. And by calling this post part one, I’m trying to trick myself into posting sooner.

Let’s end with a collage:

Read Part 2 here.

Writing a Blog is Difficult

Posted on March 21, 2014January 8, 2018 by Monica

Writing a Blog is Difficult

And since this isn’t Twitter, I guess I’ll expand.

I’ve been trying to write about my recent interest in collage – these posts should be art-related, right? – but it’s turning out to be pretty dull. Even with pictures.

Shoot.

So the obvious solution is to write about something completely unrelated. And besides, I seem to be good at writing about not knowing what to write about, or how to write. Probably otherwise known as complaining.

Let’s get started. Ahem.

Writing a Blog is Difficult because…

1.) I’m a perfectionist. (Am I supposed to say things like that here?)

2.) I like anonymity on the internet. ~~I don’t know why-~~ it’s liberating, okay? And fun.

At certain points in your life – starting college, moving to a new city – you get to reinvent yourself, but no matter what your intentions, it’s not so easy to change. Plus, there are probably all those human beings from your “old life”, the ones who know aaaall about your secrets.

But on the internet, you can be as many people as you have usernames. Or just be Ms. Anonymous. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Even if you don’t want to be someone new, you can display your best possible self – from that ducky selfie (not endorsing this in any way) to framing your eccentricities as cute and endearing. And you’ll never get caught in your white lies or exaggerations if you never even have to meet these people! Pretty great, right?

So, are you wondering about my secret lives yet?

3.) I don’t want to get into the technical stuff

…so I won’t. Bye!

A Brief Background – My Art Life Until Now

Posted on December 1, 2013January 8, 2018 by Monica

A Brief Background – My Art Life Until Now

Imagine…

…a strange rectangular-shaped chunk of fired clay with a miniature grotesque face on one end, and miniscule oval shapes in each bottom corner, three stubby lines carved into each. You remember that this was supposed to be a Chihuahua.

…a wrinkled watercolor filled with every color in a 5 year old child’s rainbow, and flying pinks, half-painted, half-penciled.

…a piece of pink construction paper with popcorn glued onto it in the shape of a heart. You’re a bit horrified that this has been in your closet for years.

This was a fraction of my childhood art, pieces that had been stuffed in the top shelf of my closet and left there for years. I grew up painting, drawing, and apparently gluing popcorn onto pieces of paper. From early finger paintings to children’s classes at the Bemis School of Art, I was in love with creating.

I am now an art major in my fourth year of college, but one who took quite the roundabout route to get here. In high school I immersed myself in art, for a month even spending all my lunch and free periods in the art room, painting a life-sized cow sculpture. But upon entering college, I forced myself to let go of art, believing it to be impractical. I became a sociology major (then a budding interest of mine, and now a passion) because at least there are no “starving sociologist” stereotypes.

At first I stayed out of the art school, but desperately sought other avenues for artistic expression. I entered informal art shows across campus, joined and left an inactive art club, and finally began taking art classes with an art minor as my excuse. That excuse, along with excellent classes, professors and persistent friends, led me to where I am today, preparing to graduate at the end of four years, instead of three, to complete an art major.