Design and Art

What might be the difference between design and art?  I think the difference might be that the way the art is hung is a part of the art.  It is intentional.  It is hung in a way that adds meaning to the piece.  Whether that means it's hung in a way that doesn't distract from it's meaning.  Or whether that means it's hung next to another piece that changes the conversation.  For design it's entirely different.  The way that the design pieces are hung is a part of the design.  It is intentional.  It is hung in a way that adds to the design of the piece.  For design it seems like presentation is everything.  It's behind the creation and it's behind the arrangement and the presentation.  For art it feels like the presentation is part of the unit.  It's significant because it creates a way for you to interact with the work.  In design that interaction is meant to be seamless and pleasing.  In art that interaction is meant to be meaningful.

Marla

For those of you who were wondering... here is Marla now!
http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2015/12/27/catching-up-child-art-prodigy-marla-olmstead/77668896/

BORDERS and MODERNISM

Borders are an interesting thing.  For some reason the first thing I thought of in class when I read that was race.  I looked around the room when we were sharing our borders and I realized that I was the only person in the room who wasn't totally caucasian.  It was just one of those weird moments when I felt like "weird.  I'm different than everyone in this room."  I didn't think anyone else would probably write that on their sheet.  I wasn't thinking of race as so much of a border that keeps me from other people, but I admit, I think it probably does that for all of us at times.  I was more thinking that sometimes I feel like I'm sitting on the border.  I'm just as much White as I am Asian, but I think more people think of me as Asian than think of me as White.  It's just interesting sometimes to sit on that border.  It's strange to think that's something that people probably think about when they think about me.

I also thought of my fears.  I'm a really fearful person sometimes.  I get scared of making the wrong choice.  That one can be like an impassable wall for me.  I get scared of other more trivial things.  I don't like playing sports in front of other people.  I don't know how to swim.  The trivial and the significant have impacted what roads I've taken though.

I wonder if Modernism drew its own border.  In reading Greenberg's writing about Modernist Painting, I wondered if Modernism showed us that we were thinking about pictures the wrong way.  It drew a line between the representational and then realistic and the picture.  It created a new realm where 2D was emphasized and medium was emphasized.  There was no story and there weren't necessarily recognizable forms.  Modernism drew a border between what was thought about good art and what good art is.  Probably every art movement does that.  But they drew a border between the representational narrative and what they wanted to make, which was art for arts sake.  

Aesthetic vs. the Intellectual

Before I came to BYU I made art.  I loved painting, that's what I'd tell people that I did when they asked me.  "Oh, you're an artist?  What kind of stuff do you like to make?"  I'd tell them that I liked a lot of stuff and that I painted and then they would want to know "what kind of stuff"  I painted.  Do you like landscapes, portraits, still life...?" It's kind of a funny way of thinking about art.  I didn't really consider myself a landscape or portrait or still life painter but I knew what I liked to paint.  It was mostly representational but it all fell under the umbrella of "my aesthetic."

When I came to college and I was presented with contemporary art I really did feel like I was drowning.  I could barely wrap my mind around what my professors were saying.  I started to appreciate the work and I felt a pressure to make that kind of work but I didn't know how.  I remember my first attempts.  Eventually I realized that contemporary artists usually make work about issues that interest them.  I started finding weird patterns that I put into my art when I started making art about things.  It taught me a lot about the visual way that my mind processed information.  Art became more satisfying in an intellectual way to me.  I make a lot of art about language.  Some of it deals with the languages I do speak and the way those interact or oppose each other.  Some of it deals with the doors that are closed to me because I don't speak languages.  Chinese is an especially important one to me because I am half Taiwanese.  I don't speak Chinese.  That means one of the doors that is closed to me is an open conversation with my family members.  I've never really talked to my Grandma, I have a limited perspective on what my aunts and uncles and cousins are like.

For me that art was very intellectually satisfying, but I still feel like I struggle with the aesthetic side of art.  I feel almost embarrassed to admit it because I feel like I'm "not supposed to like" representational art, but there is something that I like about representing things.  I DO like digging into a color or a texture.  I do like having a vision for what I want to make and then being able to compare it with what I make.  Since my minds eye is a little blurry it does feel kind of satisfying to look at something that's physical and tactile and then represent it.  I think part of me struggles with my intellectual art because it doesn't do that for me.  Maybe it's that I don't have anything physical to compare it to.  Maybe it's that it isn't really representational.  It doesn't visually move me.  It intellectually does.  Part of me wonders why I can't do both.  I haven't quite figured out how to yet.

So much of what Mike Birbiglia says fits with what my experience has been in creativity and in art.  A lot of what he said also makes me feel like there is so much more that I want to do with my art practice, my teaching practice, and my life.  When I first started studying art at BYU I felt like I was drowning.  I kept telling my friends and my family that I didn't know "what they wanted me to make."  I worried a lot about failure, it's still kind of hard not to.  And I still sometimes find myself waiting to do things.  I often feel like I'm standing on the edge of things.  I feel like I have ideas that I'm passionate about but I also have this lingering feeling that I probably won't actually have time to make that work, or that it might not work.  I love that he says we need to be bold enough to make stuff that's small but great.  Maybe I won't have time to do EVERYTHING but I will have time to do somethings and I might as well make them great and learn from my failures.  

I think it's really important to take feedback from others.  It's something that I need to do more.  I definitely feel like our taste is better than our art sometimes.  That's how I feel about art and especially about design.  I know what good design is, and I know that I still don't know how to make it.

I really love this though.  I think I've come to realize that I want to push my students to do these things, but some of them aren't even things that I do!  I've realized this semester that that's the next step.