ARTIST RESEARCH - Vojislav Jakic - Works on Paper

I couldn't find much info on Vojislav Jakic, just that he is Serbian and created large, large drawings. He drew from his life, and obsession with death and that he mixes abstraction into his works, and used ballpoint pens.

I envy people that can create large-scale works with ordinary writing tools like ball-point pens or sharpies, micron pens even. Jakic's work reminds me of the first artist i posted on my blog Don Kenn. If Kenn's works were more, patterned or layered they would be a very close style.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Andy Goldsworthy - Sculpture/Mixed Media/Installation

Andy Goldsworthy is an installation/mixed media artist who focuses in nature. He uses pieces of nature to sculpt large-scale monuments, often within nature itself. He is considered the father of Rock Balancing, which  i'm sure you've seen on beaches. His work is very spherical, or at least rounded, and he tends not to edit his materials. He works with what he finds, which i'm sure must become tedious, looking for that one perfectly cut leaf in a forest.

Goldsworthy could also be considered a photography artist, due to the important role the photographing of his works plays in their mood. The way the piece is placed, in the foreground, the background, off to the side, determines a lot of how it will be perceived.

Doing this artist actually reminded me that when i was in probably the 7th grade, my mom made us go down to this tiny theatre in Seattle and watch this documentary about a man who painted with rocks on other rocks in streams, and balanced rocks on one another, i didn't realize it til now that it was Andy Goldsworthy!

Untitled
Reconstructed Icicles
Red Leaf Patch

ARTIST RESEARCH - Yves Klein - Performance

Yves Klein is a very interesting artist. He had a series of painting works, called the Monochromes, as well as a Blue Epoch. It seems blue was his favorite thing to paint with, he was hired to paint murals in a German opera house, using only blue. He also once held a gallery called "The Void" where he removed everything from his room, placed a single cabinet, painted white, in the corner of the room and stated "My paintings are now invisible and I would like to show them in a clear and positive manner." 

He then began working on Performance art, most notably his piece Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). It depicts him leaping from atop a wall, onto the pavement below. It is an iconic piece, and the first thing i think of when i hear Performance Art.

  Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void)

 Great Blue Cannibalism


Yves Klein is obviously an influential artist to the movements of Abstraction and Performance art. He has one of the most iconic pieces of Performance art, and his style of painting only in blue (for a period) is something typical of great artists (picasso's blue period)

ARTIST RESEARCH - Wynn Bullock - Photography

Wynn Bullock is a 20th century photographer, born 1902 and living until the mid 70's. He worked mainly with black and white photographs, doing one collection in color called Color Light Abstractions. His work is based mostly in nature, there are very organic shapes in his pieces. Few have people in them, and when they do the person is often not the focus of the piece.

Erosion 1959

Woman and Dog in Forest 1953

 Child in Forest 1951


i really enjoy Bullock's work. I think his pieces are refreshing, so many nature photographs focus on some sort of message about preserving the rainforest, or recycling, which might just be related to the time period we live in. But in Bullock's work he uses nature as a canvas, or as a painter would use a color, it's more of just another tool he can use than a message.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Robert Rauschenberg - Painting/Drawing

Robert Rauschenberg is a painter who focuses on the abstract in everyday life. He "rejects the angst of the abstract expressionism" and focuses more on an almost installation style, using non-artistic objects to create his paintings.

He also had a series of works done in the Pop-art period done with magazine clippings, used to screen print. He would overlap the prints with paint to give the illusion of abstraction from far away.


Signs 1970
 Express (1990 ^)

these two pieces demonstrate his pop-art influences and his focus on abstract expression
Signs, shows important historical events of the 60's (moon landing, martin luther king jr's death, vetnam war etc.) and Express shows above all else, movement.


I enjoy Rauschenberg's works, i think that they are extremely well crafted, and it amazes me that he has stayed relevant for someone with such a long career. I believe he was making art up until his death in 2008.

Classwork - Clay Models

For our first project i decided to create a sea anemone. I made it along with a crab, and a sea-star. All of the sea creatures are smoking, because sea creatures get bored just like you and me. Ignoring the realism of being able to smoke underwater, or being able to smoke with gills for that matter, I enjoy the idea of animals with human attributes. Not so much personality traits, like "oh this giraffe is really jealous." No, it's not. It's a giraffe. But i like animals that do human things, like smoke.

I am not very good at sculpting. The sea anemones turned out okay, better than I expected, but the crab. The crab was just awful. He's got fat legs, he barely has a face, and his cigar so so big to begin with that it made him fall over. Luckily i went with the sea anemone for the paper maché portion of the project. Which admittedly has not turned out as well as i would have liked. But colored paint should be able to fix that.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Benji Whalen - Fiber/Craft

Benji Whalen is a craft artist who uses different mediums to create strange human works of art. He has a series of pieces that are recreations of human arms, made of fabric and stitched together, then covered in tattoos.

He also has series' that are constructions of a pile of different people, made of clay. The piles give off a horrible mass grave feeling, but the faces seem pretty happy, which actually just makes the mass grave thing even weirder.




- Ride the Tiger

  - A Thousand Blunders II

I don't particularly love these pieces, but they are interesting. The clay pieces seem a little childish, they remind me of an old computer game i had that was claymation (it was called Who Stole Hannukah? and it was awesome.)

I like the arms, the hands are a little sloppy looking, but the main focus of the pieces is the tattoos. The tattoos are done very well, and i'm sure the arms look a lot better when they're mounted on a wall in an exhibit.

Benji Whalen