Summer is finally almost-kind-of-here and I am preparing in every way possible for camp and BUGS. Apparently.. the ticks are horrible this year. So I have that to look forward to! Lots of hats.. and maybe a haircut in the future?
In all seriousness there has been a LOT going on in this neck of the suburbs. I left Marquette for a family engagement. My dad had surgery earlier this week and is now home and on the mend. Which brings me to my next update: I know what I am going to do for my fall semester!
At NMU we have a class called Individual Art Review, or 303, for short. Each art student goes through this class which is basically a progress report for, oh, our entire concentration degree!? A board of Art and Design professors sits on a board to review a series or selection of work we have developed in the past year or semester. The work should explore our Art and Design structures: Physical Structure, Visual Structure, and Social Structure. I have a big idea for my work.
My concentration is Painting and Drawing and I want to go out on a limb. In the past few years my family, friends, and I have had a lot of health issues and big life changes. Family and friends have lived with and beat cancer and illnesses, addictions and personal struggles. As an artist, I want to find the beauty and some personal connection to my work - that's what makes me want to explore the media and compositions the most. I will be meeting with my advisers to discuss the work (12 pieces in all) and they highly encourage social structures and content...this is about as social and personal as it gets.
My plan is to create a breadth of work that explores each of these experiences (and sometimes traumas) that occurred to various people in my life. I have been gathering x-rays, MRI scans, test results, photographs, and personal correspondences with the figures involved to better recall and understand the issues we lived (or did not live) through.
Pursuing a Drawing and Painting certification definitely has its perks.. but one of the main downfalls I have discovered is the innate need and unspoken requirement to be a representational artist - grounded in the rules of proportion, realism, and fact. We are pushed to draw the human form, to paint the still life objects, or to duplicate surface textures. The reality of these personal situations was I did often not have clear and present answers. Much of the information I was given was hearsay, because I lived so far from my hometown and family. I felt very isolated and I became a spectator to the lives of my friends and family. And to myself, in some respects. My concept is to utilize these findings, these scans and photographs of ailments and results, in an abstract form of expression. I want to use the lines, shapes, colors, and possibly even the numbers to create abstract landscapes wrought with experience and story. Each line and brushstroke will contain days and hours of memory and thought. An x-ray of a damaged pelvic bone will be transformed into a winding and wandering tunnel or cave. A photograph of a foot-long blood clot found in the lungs (yes, this was a thing!) will be twisted and molded into something beautiful and sinewy with texture and life.
Again, as an artist I have a need to find the beauty and value in situations that bring me pain and fear. But also joy and relief. Though not every found object or artifact used in this series leads to a happy end or story, the catharsis of creating the works will far outweigh the emotional effects and releases. This will be a series of healing and acceptance after months and years of denial and hurt. In a way the series will also be a tribute to those who were taken by these ailments and illnesses.
I will seek to remove the negative connotations from the artifacts and the very real hard science truths of the matter to make room for my visions and interpretations of emotion, memory, and response.. I want the viewer to become engaged with the work as an objective observer; they will not know my stories, the stories of those around me, unless I choose to share it with them through titles. That brings up another appealing aspect to the work! Creating a juxtaposition between the fact of the image and the abstraction/transformation will also remove the power from what once brought someone to their knees... can you tell I've been pondering this?
This series of 10-12 paintings will be my big project for fall semester and I have tentative plans for each composition. As more artifacts and findings come to me by mail or by hand, I begin sketching and planning images in my mind's eye and try to devise arrangements of space. I have very little to work with as of right now but I have put out the word to those involved and I look forward to the challenges that lie ahead. I have never attempted a series like this before. It's time to throw away the mannequins and fruit and really dig deep into what has hit me the hardest: the lives of others.
AND SO CONCLUDES another Ms. Kanak late-night rant! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. I will be posting updates on this series of work as I go.... Unfortunately I do not think I will be able to accomplish much of it over the summer seeing as I have been hired on again as the Arts and Crafts Director at Camp Michigamme. No complaints here! It's just very much a full-time job ;)
Happy weekend,
(!!!!GO BLACKHAWKS!!!)
Ms. Kanak
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