Category: Uncategorized

Some of you may have noticed that there is a new exhibition opened in the East Quad Gallery. The exhibition is called Genesis, and features the paintings by the artist Dan Hernandez. I went to the exhibition opening two weeks ago, but did not have enough time to scrutinize the works and think about the message the artist tries to convey. Today, the artist visited my drawing class and gave us a lecture. He talked about video games, classical and religious paintings, and how these two seemingly unrelated elements inspired him to create his current artworks.

His paintings, according to the artist, owe a great deal to the video games in the 1980s and the 1990s. Passionate about both the history of art and video games, he observes many connections and shared visual languages between the two. For example, early video games depict the space in a flat manner, which echoes the lack of pictorial space in many ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Nonetheless, there are hints about the spatial relationship—fighting games often have a small stage at the very bottom of the screen and simple backdrop, a trait that is also found in early Pompeiian friezes. Just like Egyptian manuscripts, video games usually simplify the figures or buildings as straightforward symbols. The picture frames of both are often divided into multiple tiers to render different scenarios/stages. Additionally, the scrolling narrative that is observed in Trajan’s column and many medieval Asian handscrolls, is also found in video games like Super Mario Brothers. Remember the Sistine Chapel ceiling—how each section depicts a scene from a larger scenario. The same happens in video games: the space sometimes breaks into different sections, and one needs to reach a certain level to enter certain spaces, but once you unlock the space, it becomes a part of the larger narrative.

The artist incorporates these parallels between the masterworks in the art history and the video games into his own works. He draws his inspiration from the religious scene of annunciation, borrows the renowned composition and represents the virgin and the angel as the characters in the video game, Street Fighter.  He also explores the resemblance between the façade of Gothic cathedrals and the spaceship in Galaga, and creates his Flying Cathedrals series. He finds the halos of the saints in the choir similar to the repetition of identical coins in the Super Mario Brothers, and visualizes this idea in his paintings as well.

The lecture was really interesting and inspiring. So, definitely stop by the gallery to check out this exhibition sometime. For more works by Dan Hernandez, please visit http://www.danhernandez.org/Art/Home.html

 

As a humanities and screenwriting student, I’m currently overwhelmed with a series of writing deadlines. Sometimes a good idea only gets you so far until the inertia kicks in and the inspiration stops flowing. Writer’s block provides a stiff barrier to inspiration and simultaneously sequesters self doubt into the writer. Writer’s block isn’t limited to writing. Any creative act reaches a dull point, a point where the ideas stop flowing and the artist isn’t sure how to proceed. As I am currently battling writer’s block in order to complete my creative assignments for the term, I thought it would be fun to share some thoughts I’ve had about this universal problem, and some strategies and philosophies I have developed to combat it.

To begin, I’d like to quote something a friend recently told me. Writer’s block isn’t a loss of inspiration, rather, it is a loss of willpower. How can you be uninspired when you have a whole lifetime of experiences, and an entire world to engage with? Inspiration is always waiting around the corner, but sometimes, taking those extra steps forward become daunting. So the next question to ask is, what causes us to lose our willpower? And what can we do to get it back?

I think the biggest thing that holds us back from our creative pursuits is fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear that the words I write on the page are flawed, that whatever I produce will not live up to the literary giants that I inspired me to follow in their footsteps. This fear is paralyzing. It is also, ultimately, quite foolish. No one got it right the first time. Many established authors say they weren’t proud of a draft they produced until the tenth rewrite. What does this tell us? Imperfection should not be feared or avoided, but instead accepted as inevitable. Because only through a wholehearted embrace of the imperfections in our work can we gain clarity, understand the flaws in our vision, and enhance our artistic shortcomings in order to become perfectly, uniquely imperfect.

I believe this mindset is essential to overcoming writer’s block. Knowing that I’m going to mess up takes alleviates the pressure to always be at the top of my game. I don’t wait for inspiration to find me, I find inspiration through uncompromising, persistent work. And I remember that first and foremost, I’m doing this because I enjoy it, not because there’s any pressure to be great. So I write every day for a couple of hours, I have a time of day I like best (for me, it’s either late night or early morning), designated spots to work at (my room, full of inspiring posters), and sometimes, a writing buddy – someone to stop me from packing up early when I feel like quitting early.

On a day when I don’t feel like writing, I trick myself into doing it anyway. I read over something I’ve already written or drawn, planning to revise rather than create. But revising is just another part of the creative process, and this inevitably leads to a couple of hours of work. So, the point is, don’t check out. Don’t give up. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to fail. Everyone fails. Everyone writes something bad. Writing something bad is the first step to writing something good.

The first Murakami novel I read was Kafka on the Shore. It was unlike anything I’d read before, and to my 9th-grade mind it was bogglingly fresh. I wasn’t quite sure I liked it, I wasn’t quite sure what I felt about it. The book, like so many of Murakami’s works, falls under the genre of magical realism, juxtaposing fantastical elements with the narrative. The plot (the central plot) follows a Japanese boy Kafka through a journey and traces the people he meets along the way.

I should probably insert a disclaimer here that I’m not a diehard, religious Murakami fanatic—I enjoy his works, I keep up with his new ones, but I have yet to read every single novel he’s published so far. And to be completely honest, his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was far from my liking. But Murakami’s writing has a strange way of drawing me back in time and time again, and I have yet to tire of it.

Over the summer I picked up a copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage as soon as it came out, and I loved it—I agreed with many of the reviews that mentioned how this may be his best work of date. Of the ones I’ve read so far, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki isn’t the most colorful (pun absolutely intended) of Murakami’s novels, but the subtlety in the way he utilizes all the tropes he’s known for makes the book succeed. And let’s face it, Murakami is famous for having tropes—so famous that the New York Times made a ‘Murakami Bingo’ when the new book came out.

Right now I’m working on After Dark with the Bingo board in hand, crossing off these elements whenever they appear. I don’t know where the story will lead, but that makes it even better.

To be continued.