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The Art of Art

elahehia 1 Comment

The Art of Art

I have to find the time. When do I not have class? When am I not working? When do I not have any exams, essays, study groups, major events, panel discussions, semester project meetings, homework assignments, Pilates sessions, ballet classes, Italian lessons, bar nights, errands, parties, things to do, places to be, and people to meet? When will I be alone so that no eavesdropper can hear me speaking to my canvas and watch as it learns to speak to me? When will I be strong enough to lift a paintbrush and when will I be weak enough?

I have to find the thing. What will compel me to pick up a pencil, paintbrush, knife, marker, chalk, charcoal, pastels, spraypaint? What shall it be, the ephemeral gossamer that lands on my canvas, plucked from time and shaped and sculpted and suspended forevermore in mine own image? A glass of water, a bowl of fruit, a leaf, a vase, a ball? A kiss, a nightmare, a dream, a promise, a heartbreak?

I have to find the soul. What do I feel? What do I want to feel? Do I want the earnestness that permeates my very being to bleed onto the canvas, weigh it down with my Brobdingnagian sorrow? Or shall I buoy it instead and teach it how to fly? Will I set fire to it with rage or with equanimity? What shall I douse it with? Tenderness? Shall I caress it after?

I have to find the will. Do I have the motivation, inspiration, perspiration, dedication to make something? What do I make? How do I do it? Can I do it?

What is ‘it’?

The Ginger Who Sings Opera

Alexandria Strother Leave a comment

I have always prided myself on being a natural born redhead, containing the stereotypical fiery temper but lacking the freckles, and singing opera. These two characteristics have shaped and defined me since I was a child but have also labeled me as a dying breed. Recently, National Geographic printed an article stating that redheads are likely to be extinct within the century and BBC’s Hard Talk reporter Sarah Montague stated that “Opera is one of the least watched art forms in the world”. There is nothing I can do to remove myself from the gene pool steadily marching toward extinction, but why choose a career which seems doomed to the same fate?

Over the summer, I volunteered as a counselor at the Interlochen Center for the Arts assisting my old high school choir with the week long camp culminating in a concert after 4 days and a mere 20 hours of rehearsal. The kids were normal high schoolers, not a room of child prodigies awaiting their acceptance letters from Julliard, but students who genuinely cared about music and the creation of music in collaboration with their peers. The concert we presented was by no means perfect, “a work in progress” the audience was informed, but the sense of community which had been developed within the choir was well worth the trip. From strangers to friends in less than four days, music served as the medium for these relationships to grow. At the final campfire the normal high school cliques were nonexistent, replaced by groups of comingled freshmen and seniors defying the social standards which exist outside of choir camp. A clear example of the ability of singing to develop a community which defies social norms, experiences like this are why I sing and why I believe that music is fundamentally important for community development.

Perhaps opera and classical music are dying art forms and Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus will be revered as the Bach and Mozart of our time. Yet, I will continue to sing opera because I know that my voice is simply adding to a much larger chorus and I am part of a much larger musical community.

“Becoming-Art”

Taylor Leave a comment

Don’t get me wrong: I love art. But I don’t want to seek out art somedays. Currently it’s rainy and drab and nasty outside.
So.
I prefer to become art.
Now this isn’t some pseudo (or real) hipster montage of postmodern thought about how all of us are performing our identities and subjectivity at all times, even though we are (ba-zing!), but rather “becoming-art” is a lifestyle choice that I’m very conscious about. I’m very aware about how my body can be positioned as, wear, or become art itself.
For example, at no time do I walk around without performing. I am either:
1) Singing/”Rapping”/Humming/Whistling to music. Which isn’t, hopefully, me as a white man taking up more space than I need to, but me as a bored white queer man who is sick of listening to the buzz and hum of cars and cookie cutter robot-peers. I’d rather be listening to Azealia Banks. Music and sound and noise is beautiful and, especially, when I’m mid-travel I need a little extra inspiration to get where I’m heading (and to forget about the looming drones).
2) Wearing ridiculous clothing. I am a huge fan of monochromatic aesthetics and gray as a way of being; however, there comes a point when the seasons shift, or die, and the sun seems to fade away into a palate of only white/gray/black. THIS MAKES ME SAD. So I cope by wearing neon prints with other stripes with other fabrics with leather with hats and scarves and giant earrings, and rainbow umbrellas. Becoming the overwhelming stimulus I try to avoid or cling to is comforting. When I know that it is myself that is obnoxious–I can handle that. The trees no longer lay claim to being that beautiful shade of emerald, the sky can’t brag that its really that sky-blue, fire can’t embody all that is red, but I can: all in one outfit.
3) Reciting quotes from my favorite books. At no point are there not lines from books circulating in the vast cavernous hole that is my mind. Because I read for the majority of the time that I’m awake, I find it nice to recite lines and share literature with the world! From Toni Morrison to Jesus to James Joyce to bell hooks to Vladimir Nabokov to you name it (or rather I’m a snob so I’ll stick to the people that I know). People always get confused when I tell them that I study English and Philosophy, so it’s nice when I can actually share how cool these areas are. How beautiful they are. How “AHHHHH” they are.
Now I’m not trying to say that everyone needs to be art all the time but I find it’s the way I cope best with being in Ann Arbor. It gets boring looking at the same white, hetero, temporarily able-bodied men in their polos, boat shoes, and pastel shorts–so I say, “liven it up!”

While it can be overwhelming being the art for the designated spaces I’m in, it is more comfortable to seek solace in groups.
Have nail painting parties–there is nothing more I enjoy than having sparkly middle fingers.

Have team shopping events or days where you swap clothing with your friends.

Have days where you and others can annoyingly match in terrifying ways.
Although I’m a broken record and constantly talking about how I’m art itself (. . .) I find it important to reemphasize that I’m glaringly semi-offensive to everyone’s eyes. The sensory overload that is myself is so important to who I am these days. I actively want to be a bit too much because being just enough is so banal.
As I come into senior year I realize more and more about how much I don’t care about most things in my day to day life. I care when and where and how I need and want to care. But other than that . . . I’m a canvas full of life ready to explode.


Its and Ots

Justin & Ersun Leave a comment

I am sitting in a tree, a tall maple, whose leaves are preparing to leave. They have on their winter jackets of red, gold, and orange, drained of the chlorophyll that gave them a green pigment. I step tenderly on the thinner branches as I approach the top, where the more flexible limbs are brushing against the telephone line cutting between them. The branches shake with my movements, the browned seeds releasing their grip beneath the leaves and cascading slowly around me. Their wide plumes, like propellers, allow them to slowly descend through the air, spinning like helicopters as they fall through the myriad of limbs. Landing in the carpet of early-departed leaves, they fall to the earth. My hands hold the hardened bark as my feet rest in the nook where the branches stems from the trunk. Leaves and helicopters descend around me, shaken from their fragile holds by my disruption. I am a razor, gliding close along the surface, trimming away the dying hairs. As the shaved beard leaves a beautiful mess over the forest floor, the tight dark branches hold up the shattered remains of skinless limbs. The dead boughs, stripped of bark, fell away from the body, gone to atrophy as they hollowed out along the inside. The tree was going to sleep. It, like me, like you, like the chipmunk living inside the trunk, is on a cycle. We are not so different.

Last spring, as I wandered through the woods, taking in the bounty of life that was sprouting up from the freshly-thawed earth, my mind was distracted with the pronouns surrounding gender inequality. How “he” was one letter short of “she” in English, how all ‘men’ were created equal, and how, in Romantic languages, the default gender of a plural pronoun was masculine unless the group it pertained to consisted of entirely females. I recollected my third grade teacher redefining the denotation of a noun for my class with Schoolhouse Rock. She, as supplemented by the video, referred to a noun as a person,place, or thing–with plants and animals falling under the “thing” category. As I walked through the woods, where the trees and flowers were beginning to grow new buds, people were walking with their dogs, their tails flailing, tongues lolling as they were excited by the freshness of spring, I could not pair these “things” in the same category as listless rocks and the stagnant park bench. To me, those were “its”–“things,” “objects,” not life. They did not contain the sort of life that resonated between us, trees, and our four-legged friends. We were something else, something organic. Perhaps the line between “people” and “things” needed to be blurred? We were not so different from these organic things. The inequalities of gender in the specification of language could be erased by joining the organic things together under one pronoun–“ot.” Organic thing vs. inorganic thing–“it.” Life was sacred and the endless diversity of it need not be segregated. It’s were non-life. Ot’s were life.

As I am sitting in this tree, this fellow ot, I wonder what ot feels. Is this empathy a mirror or a window? Does this tree look at me, standing on ots arms and see an equal being of life or simply a razor shaving away ots dead leaves?

Conversions and Conversations

Jeannie Marie Leave a comment

If you know the words “Good morning Hank!” and “Good morning John!” and where they come from, you’re probably part of the internet culture known collectively as Nerdfighteria. Brothers Hank and John Green have used internet vlogging as a medium to create things of awesome such as the Project for Awesome, an online charity event, and VidCon, a real life convention for YouTubers to meet with their fans on the other side of the screen.

However, it can be said that John Green is a much higher profile name. Known not only for his online hijinks, John Green is a New York Times Bestseller and a recipient of the Michael L. Printz award, the highest honor for authors of young adult literature. He has created such classics such as Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines that are loved by teens across the globe.

However, his most recent novel has been making more buzz than usual. In January 2012 John released his book The Fault in Our Stars, a realistic fiction about the joys and trials of teens with cancer. Inspired by his time as a chaplain straight out of college, The Fault in Our Stars was literally a project 10 years in the making. His hard work paid off – The Fault in Our Stars spent a year on the New York Times Bestseller list, and his publisher Penguin rented out Carnegie Hall for him to celebrate in January 2013.

This in itself is any authors dream, but fans clamored for more. And now, John is jumping from the small screen of the internet to the big screen. The Fault in Our Stars just wrapped up filming in Pittsburgh, briefly relocating to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, and is expecting a 2014 release. Yet again, John is making headlines with big names being attached to the project such as Golden Globe nominee Shaliene Woodley and seasoned actor Willam Dafoe.

On the TFIOS Movie Set

Currently, John is posting photos from the set, exciting fans and critics alike. And this is where I come in. A longtime fan of John’s work, I could not be more excited for this movie. But with every book to movie adaptation, I have met the news with a skeptical eye. I want the book to be represented well, as I saw with The Hunger Games, but I also want it to be an amazing standalone work, as with The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

But with all of the support from John and all of his pictures, tweets, and videos from the set, my mind has been put at ease. And I’m noticing a common trend. From the incorporation of real teen cancer survivors in the cast of prominent extras, to the recent wall of fan art that has been made for the book, I see the book mirrored in the filming. This time, I’m not talking about the fact that this is an adaptation – I’m seeing this duplication in the process of creating. John poured his soul into this book, and has said so on multiple occasions, and I see the same with the director and producers of the movie. They are incorporating what made the book so amazing – passion and realism mixed together to form something beautiful between producer and consumer. As encouraged by John, The Fault in Our Stars transcended the words on the page, becoming a conversation between the reader and author. And that’s what made this book so special, and what I think will be the defining characteristic for this adaptation.

I have never been more excited to dive back into this world again, and to have a new, fresh conversation as I sit in the theatre next year.

For more pictures from the set of TFIOS visit John’s twitter; for more about the Vlogbrothers and their various projects, visit their shared YouTube channel.

A Little Themed Tour in UMMA: What Clothes Tell Us

AgnesG Leave a comment

Exploring UMMA is one of my favorite things to do in my spare time. I enjoy wandering in the quiet and cozy museum, stopping by whichever painting that draws my attention, and trying to appreciate it by looking closely at it and reading the label. However recently, rather than try to learn more about each painting, I found a more interesting thing to do: to look at several paintings together, to compare them and to find the subtle similarities or underlying relationships among them. Today for my little themed tour, I picked four portaits in UMMA, in each of which the costumes of the figures can tell us the story behind the painting itself.

The first painting I’m gonna introduce is Portrait of a Lady by Johann Tischbein, which is located in the European Gallery on the first level. It is a portrait of a well-dressed lady. We can see her elegant blue silk dress with delicate lace cuffs, her resplendent earrings and necklace, her elaborately braided hair and the matching hair ornaments. Although we don’t know her exact identity, but from her costume we can infer that she is a lady from high social class. She is also holding a fan in her right hand, which may give us a clue of the fashion trends back the time she lived. Fans became fashionable decorations for women in 18 centuries and can be seen in many portraits in that period. Ladies used fans not only to cool themselves but also to enhance body languages.

Right next to this portrait is another portrait of a man. Like the lady in the former painting, he is also dressed in a sumptuous way. His red coat and waistcoat seem to be velvet, with rich gold embroideries on them. His powdered wig is also noteworthy. Pamela Reister, one of the curators in UMMA, once told me that the size of the wig could reflect the man’s rank to some extent. She said bigger wig would suggest higher social rank of the wearer, and was also considered to be more fashionable. The identity of the figure is indeed Pierre Bachelier, the director of customs at Lyon, according to the title of this painting. Therefore, the outfit of the figure in this painting can tell us much about his profession and also his social status.

One of the most eye-catching pieces in the apse is Portrait of Maximilien-Sébastien Foy by Baron François Gérard. Maximilien Foy was a French general and statesman. According to the label, Gérard painted this portrait after the death of General Foy, in other words, the painter didn’t have General Foy posing for him as a model but painted this portrait based on his memory. Thus, the choice of the painter to paint the general in French army uniform could be explained as an attempt to emphasize the figure’s identity as a former military leader. His cloak billowing to the wind reminds us of the famous portrait of Napoleon by David, who was shown as confident and ambitious. The medals on his uniform imply the honors he received as a general, who was severely wounded 15 times and eventually died on the battlefield.

Costumes could be deceptive sometimes, too. If you go upstairs and turn right, you would easily spot a portrait on the balcony of a woman in a blue dress. The lady is shown in a elegant position, with her head raised a little bit and his eyes confronting the viewer with confidence and dignity. Her dress doesn’t even look outdated now, which was probably of the highest fashion back the time the painting was made. However, if you are guessing she was a bourgeois woman, you would be surprised to find out that she was actually a working class widow who could find no other jobs but modeling for the painter. She was in poor health and could hardly pay for the medicine or support her two children. The discrepancy between her dress and her actual identity makes this painting more intriguing and thought provoking for the viewer.

Ok. Here ends my special tour of UMMA:) Btw, you are welcomed to come to UMMA After Hours this Friday (which is Oct.15 and I’m gonna be a volunteer, too!). And if you come, don’t forget to check these paintings out!