For my artist talk I went to the BFA talk on April 26th in the museum. I enjoyed hearing Katherine Blanchette, Annie Grace Couvillion, Kathryn Archambault, Monica Bancroft, and Margo Belisle talk about their struggles and successes in the BFA program. It was especially nice to hear about their struggles, because having been in class with a few of these girls, I would have thought that all of their work came easy to them.
The first person to talk was Katherine Blanchette, she talked about her struggle in printmaking with producing what she thought was museum worthy artwork. She told us how she was exploring new types of printmaking thinking that this would be her most successful way of getting what she thought she needed to put into the BFA show. Katherine produces soft, sketch-like images of things around her in her everyday life. In her work she captured things that she encountered around her everyday; such as a stack of dirty dishes, a ceiling fan and how the light interacted with it, an old dilapidated barn, and a cat on her lap. These are the moments in her life which she would generally take for granted, and she turned them into special moments in time to share with other people around her.
Monica Bancroft talked about how she started her BFA year focusing on painting, and she thought that in order have successful work in a museum that it needed to be paintings. She would spend tons of time pre mixing her paints to try and make the best paintings. She realized that she wasn't accomplishing what she wanted to with painting and and moved to charcoal drawings of figures. She talked about her struggle with working with the figure because she would ask them to pose for her and then be too nice to ask them to change their position because they looked to comfortable in the way they were posed. She struggled with this for a while, not getting drawings she was happy with; but she was happier with her drawings than she was with her paintings. But she knew she hadn't reached a point she was ready to settle for. Monica then decided that she would try using herself as a model for her drawings, by creating a fort of blankets around her while she posed in a tiny space in her studio where people couldn't see her. At about the time of her last drawing she realized she could incorporate the fabrics around her that were protecting her to be a part of her drawing. I'd say this was one of her most successful drawings, and I hope she continues to explore this idea because I think she just barely started to touch on the idea of using her surroundings in her drawings.
I enjoyed hearing Kathryn Archambault talk about her journey through creating the paintings for he BFA exhibit. Through having class with Kathryn I know that she works really hard at her paintings and always seems to come out with wonderful results. She talked about her process of creating a family everywhere she goes and that this is how she becomes comfortable in her spaces. She explained how for her oil paintings she brought plants into her studio to create a family for herself because everything can be a family. She painted her family of plants in her studio and then decided to move to watercolors. For her watercolor paintings she painted fruit, I thought her process of doing this was interesting because she did them at home so her family could interact with her while she was doing these paintings. So not only was she creating a family with her fruits/vegetables but she was surrounded by family, so she got a really home-like feeling in them. She also incorporated line work in her watercolor paintings, which she didn't do in her oil paintings. I think it would be good for her to explore the process of adding line work to her oil paintings.
Margo Belisle exhibited her stilt walker figures. I had never seen any of Margo's work before, so it was nice to hear her talk about her process of how she came to the idea of the stilt figures. I especially liked that in her gallery talk she mentioned how she worked from her own photographs which she took while studying abroad and she also worked from images she researched. She talked about how she would take certain parts from different photographs such as how a hand was posed or the motion that a figure had. She talked about the process of having to have people help her move her figures around because she was on crutches and it wasn't easy to move herself around. One of the hardest things she had to do was to carry the figures from her studio down to the kiln. I admire her ability to problem solve the her figures were top heavy so she needed a way to help balance them, so she added in the idea of using walking sticks. It was a great problem solving idea, and it also added a wonderful element to the figures themselves. I liked that she broke the stilt walkers up into two different series and put different textures and ideas into them including how she went about glazing them and the different types of glazes that she used on her figures. Reflecting back on how she talked about the five foot tall figure she was building, I hope that she goes back into this idea and continues to explore it. I hope that just because her tall figure collapsed she doesn't give up on the idea.
I especially enjoyed hearing Annie Grace Couvillion's artist talk. After having classes with Annie and getting to know her work throughout the years, it was nice to see where she went with her BFA exhibit. I think she made a great choice to use her willow tree photographs as a part of her exhibit, I think she really hit a point with this project where she realized what she really liked to photograph. After seeing her whole body of work I feel like she really went with where her heart was and her photographs came out amazing. It was also nice that there was meaning behind the trees that she was photographing and she took the time to explain that to us. I hope that she continues to explore the idea of taking more photographs like this and exploring nature more. She was asked a question about if she ever thought about playing with the sky being in focus and the trees being out of focus, and after hearing this idea, I hope that she chooses to pursue this at least a little bit.
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