Artist Lecture

On December 8th, I attended Joan Marie Kelly's artist lecture. She talked about the "Public Art" of South East Asia. Joan Marie Kelly is a professor at an art school in Singapore. The main thing Joan talked about in her artist lecture was what it was like to paint on the streets and to paint the sex workers. She found a spot down in the red district where she started going at night and painting the people there, she would give each person an hour and pay them the modeling fee. She mentioned how her students were shocked by this and then wanted her to bring them there. She said "Students are afraid to paint/draw 'Sexual' poses."

She talked a lot about her travels to Calcutta, India. She's been going there for about three years now, and painting the sex workers. The first year that she traveled to Calcutta she was supposed to travel with a friend whom she had met and arranged everything with, but he had to back out last minute. Everything ended up working out for her, and she got the chance to make the trip. During her first trip there she did head paintings of the sex workers. On her second trip she did four foot drawings, about four per day and gave each model or set of models 1 hour. These paintings were about six feet long, and in order to bring them home she had to take the nails out of the canvas and roll them.

She also talked about the work that she did with the monks and how she allowed them to write on their paintings. And when she painted a group of girls in Singapore she allowed the girls to paint on their own paintings. When she first started working with these girls she gave them sketch books and the immediately opened them and started drawing where they were from. She painted a handful of models wrapped up in technology, such as computers with headphones. And as a response to this she said "People are much more comfortable with technology rather than face to face."