Last Day: High Tea

     On Sunday, January 16th, we went to High Tea at the National Gallery Cafe in Trafalgar Square.  I loved how we all got our own teapots and a three-tiered stack of different finger sandwiches and desserts, which were delicious.  It was a nice, relaxing way to end our two weeks in London together as a group.  This whole trip was sometimes tiring, and we definitely got a lot of exercise, but I really learned a lot about some things I knew and some things I did not know.  I was sometimes surprised by what I liked or what I did not like, and I really want to incorporate what I have seen into my own work in the future and figure out what it is that I want to do through all of my new ideas.  This was overall a truly great experience and one that I am so glad I took.

Trafalgar Square: Fourth Plinth

    The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is available for commissioned public artwork.  Currently, it is inhabited by Nelson's Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare which has been there since May of 2010.  The ship is constructed inside of a huge glass bottle.  The sails are crafted from African textiles to represent different cultures.  This is the first historical piece placed in the square, relating to Admiral Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar, which is what the rest of the statues represent as well.  The artist was quoted as saying the ship will reflect "the relationship between the birth of the British Empire and Britain's present day multi-cultural context."  I like how the historical context of the piece is being related back to present-day British culture.  I also really enjoy the fact that the piece looks differently depending on the weather.  I saw it while it was sunny out and the glass was shinning brilliantly, but then I saw it later on when it was cloudy and it reminded me of a storm or being lost at sea.  While I like that the piece is raised above the viewer, I do wish that I could see more of the ship's detail because from what I can see it looks ornate and nicely made.
     The Fourth Plinth itself is used as a space where public art work can be displayed and invites debate about the space and the people.  I like works that vary depending on their surroundings and especially the weather, just like the piece Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor.  I therefore want my design for the Fourth Plinth to incorporate the idea of the people and their surroundings.  I thought I could take this idea more literally and create a huge ball constructed out of a reflective material such polished stainless steel.  I want it to be a sphere since circles are said to symbolize eternity and when I looked up the definition of sphere expecting to find something about a three-dimensional object, the first thing that I found was "a particular environment or walk of life, 'his social sphere is limited' or 'he's out of my orbit.'"  I thought it strange for that to be the first definition listed and so I want to use the Fourth Plinth to make a comment about different social spheres and their surroundings.  I therefore want my piece to be reflective of the sky, the buildings, the fountains and the people all together in one environment, in a single sphere, instead of being separated into different categories.  This idea is quite literal because one will be able to see his own reflection alongside everything else reflected back at him in one sphere.  Everything and everyone will be seen as equal.  Another definition of a sphere is every point along the surface is the same distance from the center.  I think this is an important comment on the awareness of equality in a community and incorporating everything together in order to have a healthy balance in life.

Question for Glenn Adamson

     My question for Glenn Adamson was about a quote from the reading "When Craft Gets Sloppy."  The line "this permissiveness has deeply penetrated art-school culture, blurring the line between hobbyism and professional endeavor" interested me.  I wanted to question Glenn Adamson what defines this line in the first place and therefore how are people "blurring" it.  Does being a professional just mean having a corporate sponsor, selling your work for a lot of money or being in a museum?  And what if someone sculpts for a hobby and then sells his or her work is that considered a professional transaction?  I just wanted to question him to see if his definition was targeting the craftsmanship of the piece or the money aspect of it.

Question for Ai Weiwei

     I looked on the website for my video where i posted a question for Ai Weiwei and I could not find it.  I know I saved it at 16:37 but for some reason it is not there so here is what I asked:
     I was wondering of there was any significance to the two specific walls the seeds were touching and why it only touched those two walls.  Why the audience could not walk around the entire piece once the decision was made that no one was allowed to walk into the seeds?

National Portrait Gallery

    On Friday, January 14th we went to the National Portrait Gallery.  For some reason I did not think I was going to enjoy this gallery and I assumed it was just going to have old portraits of all the monarchs of Britain, but I was very wrong.  There was a lot of contemporary work displayed as well, and I actually really liked the gallery, especially a lot of the photography.  I liked Jason Bell's exhibit, An Englishman in New York, which included photos of famous British people who live in New York.  I felt a lot of the statements were somehow related to me and my current experience between New York and London and the which I found really interesting.  My favorite was the one of Kate Winslet.  I felt his black and white photos really captured the aura of each person and how it related to their statements.
     I keep noticing that I am drawn to small pencil sketches.  I really liked John Partridge's drawings that were located in the British Artisan Room in his exhibit British Artists in Rome.  They were made of pencil, watercolors and engravings and appeared really simple until I noticed the fine detail.  I think it is hard to get such great definition with a pencil and I was amazed at how small his drawings were.  His exhibit was just composed of a bunch of his sketches of his British artist friends who went to Rome, which is actually a similar concept to Jason Bell's work.  My favorite sketch by Partridge was one of Richard James Wyatt (1825) because of the detail in the face and hair that were so tiny and well rendered.
     I also enjoyed the Taylor Wessing exhibit from the Photographic Portrait Prize.  I thought that a few of the pieces captured a strong emotion that I could feel sometimes without reading the wall statement.  I was struck by one of the first few I saw by Hadas Mualem called Yasna from a series called In Between.  It was a photo of a young woman sitting at a table in a simple kitchen, and I immediately felt a sadness and hopelessness aura about it by simply looking into her direct stare.  I was surprised by the two photos that won first and second prize.  The first place winner was called Huntress with Buck by David Chancellor.  It was a beautiful picture and the colors in the landscape were stunning, however I just liked it for the aesthetic reasons, no deeper meaning.  I don't always feel that art has to have a deeper meaning, but I felt a stronger photo should have been picked for first place.  I just liked this show because I have seen a lot of photography on this trip and it has been inspiring me and making me think I should take more photography classes in order to follow up on a lot of things that seem interesting to me.

East End Gallery Hunt

     On Saturday, January 14th we all met at the Borough Market for breakfast before the East End Gallery Hunt.  We ate these amazing cheese sandwiches with onions and garlic from one of the huge number of food stands.  I also bought a cup of fresh orange-pineapple juice and a chocolate croissant.  Everything there looked and smelled so good!  It was hard not to buy everything I saw that seemed amazing.  After we ate, we went on the East End Gallery Hunt where we walked around trying to locate all the small galleries that were listed on the map.  It was disappointing to find so many that were closed, and even some that I did see were not very impressive.  I was not drawn to the pieces in The Approach by Gary Webb, which I honestly just found boring, or the video From Here to Eternity by Oliver Pietsch, which I thought was a little gruesome.  I also thought some of the other galleries were just weird, such as White Cube.  This gallery consisted of two rooms of Rachel Kneebone's porcelain sculptures of twisted and disturbing body parts, mostly human genitalia.  Her work was apparently supposed to relate to grief and death in Lamentation (2010), but all I saw was unnecessary amounts of penis wars.  I was actually really drawn to her pencil drawings, as I have noticed the thread of what I like throughout this trip. I liked how they were drawn, as sketches almost where the process of erasing was very obvious and that is appealing to me.  But again I did not like the subject of her work at all.
     I did not dislike eveything I saw that Saturday.  I loved the Francesca Woodman show.  Another thing I have noticed about myself on this trip is that I have been really inspired by a lot of photography.  I think I should consider taking more photography courses to experiment with what I have seen and loved while here in London.  I felt a lot of Woodman's pieces were engaging and I was able to pick up on her techniques from the Basic Photography course I have just taken.  I loved her images of herself as a blur where she clearly used a low shutter speed to capture the movement in an almost ghostly fashion.  She uses a lot of motion along with mirrors and glass in her pieces; I find the reflections are just as interesting as the subject itself and shot together in one photograph makes it great.  There was this one where she was kneeling on top of a mirror and her upper body is a blur of motion but the image on the mirror is mostly still, creating a stunning disillusionment.  I liked the way she used her own body as a subject in most of the pieces, and I felt that while rachel Kneebone mutilated the human forms Woodman used the human form in a beautiful way.  I also liked the photo of her human form just crouching in a glass box and she appears to be a silhouette because of the lighting.  Her photos were she seemed to be just a black silhouette in motion reminded me of Floris Neususs's photograms in the V&A.  She also uses all natural lighting in her work which I think is amazing and hard to always work with.  I definitely want to find a way to incorporate some of these forms and concepts into my own work somehow because I really have been inspired by a lot I have seen on this trip.

Greenwich: Thames River Cruise and Royal Observatory

     On Friday, January 14 we took the Thames River Cruise to Greenwich which is where the Royal Observatory was located.  I sat on the top deck of the boat where I took pictures of everything along the shoreline.  It was interesting to see all the places we went in relation to each other and their distance from the river, however I felt this would have been a nice opening to our trip than a conclusion.  My favorite part was when we passed under the Tower London Bridge; we all got some great pictures out of that.  In Greenwich, we went to the Royal Observatory which is located up on a hill in a huge park near the National Maritime Museum.  I liked this sculpture of two dolphins outside the Observatory that turned out to be a sundial.  The line of the shadow from the sun that the tips of their tails make tell what time it is, and it is called The Dolphin Sundial.  Once inside, it was interesting to see all the old instruments that were used for navigation and time keeping, and some were interactive.  On a large pendulum there was a button that if you pushed it, it's steady sound changed to what it would be like on a moving ship and that is why it was inaccurate for sailing.  I most excited to stride the Prime Meridian that was right outside on the terrace.  I thought it was going to be more obvious because at first I walked right past it, but I couldn't believe I was standing on the line that measures all other longitudes and time zones.  I was even more excited to see New York's longitude listed along side the others!