Just chill and look around you.

Gunnar Neitzke
Kim Andersen
UH 440
April 24th 2009
The Masters of Fine Arts Thesis

When one is faced with the unique and rewarding job of both observing and critiquing art, that individual must try to understand not just the up front values that a piece can be observed under but that individual must also be able to look deeper and try to see if there is something trying to be said the artist about the bigger picture of the world. The pieces exhibited at the Mast of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, running from April 10th to May 9th, and the Washington State University Museum of Art, presented the viewer with not just very dramatic and visually stunning images but also a sense of a deeper hidden meaning that should be understood while the piece is being observed. One would be hard pressed to say that staring at the many of the pieces that something was supposed to be understood about them. A colleague that was admiring one such piece exclaimed, "I don't know what it is or what it is supposed to be, but I really like it". Many of the pieces seemed to speak directly to my other colleagues as they wandered through the exhibit, and interestingly not everyone got the same message from the same piece. Personally, the exhibit spoke on the concept of humanity and the individuality that goes along, and the two pieces that I felt characterized this sense were Brad Dinsmore's "Stuck here in the Middle (2008) and "Problems of Knowing" (2009) also by Dinsmore.
"Stuck here in the Middle" (see below for a link to the picture) created by Brad Dinsmore in 2008, displayed on a square canvas showed the large image of a what appeared to be a person with their back turned to the viewer. The possible person was hard to make out as they appeared very shadowy or ethereal and the canvas itself was painted almost in solid whites and grays with a sheen to it that made the actual image hard to make out. The person also possessed a sense of movement, such as possibly walking away from the viewer. This figure was not alone on the canvas though, as it was sandwiched between two smaller images that took up a space equivalent to a Polaroid photograph on the much larger four maybe five foot painting. These smaller images were different from each other. One appeared to be of a person looking at the viewer and the other seemed to be what looked to me like an angel. While their are different, they both share on the common trait of being almost impossible to figure out what the viewer is looking at. The paint on the two smaller images distorts whatever the original image was causing mass ambiguity.
For me, the painting conveyed a deep sense of sorrow and loss, while at the same time the feeling of motion. My interpretation of the image and with the help of the title was that the person in the center was stuck, like the title said in the middle of these two concepts displayed in the two smaller pictures. The turned back could imply that the individual in the picture has given up on the the concepts displayed in the Polaroids, despite still being trapped in between them. There are many interpretations of this picture that could be applied to further analyze it, but I feel that the artists intentional lack of clarity and definition in the picture speaks volumes for viewers to either simply take the piece at face value or to apply whatever concept best fits in their mind.
The second painting was "Problem of Knowing" (link also attached at the bottom), also by Brad Dinsmore, was the one piece in the entire exhibit that spoke directly to me. The image is of two two hands drawn in graphite and charcoal, with fingers outstretched, on facing the viewer and one turned away. But running through the hands are three very squiggly, for a lack of a better word, and convoluted lines drawn in pencil and light and dark green crayon. The image jumped out at me due to it contrast between the very simple hands and the bright intense colors of the crayons. Furthermore it reminded me of my days on the playground in elemental school playing a game we called "Cats Cradle" involved a piece of string that would be intertwined between the fingers and then manipulated.
Looking at the piece through a more philosophical lens, I felt that the artist was trying to make a statement about the, like the title implied, the problems that go along with knowledge. Many have experienced a concept such as this when they made the jump from High to University academics. In High School simply knowing that the Kreb's Citric Acid cyclic helped to provide 2 Adenosine Tri-Phosopate to the cell would have been sufficient but in college if one does not know ever protein involved in the cycle, including each protein's unique make up as well as how they all interact on a chemical level, then the likelihood of graduating is slim at best, let alone passing basic level bioscience. Furthermore, the piece spoke to me about the art world. Many academics throughout history have spent years if not lifetimes trying to understand what makes people appreciate art, or what can be define as good v.s . bad art, or for that mater, what is or is not art. As more and more knowledge as created on the subject, the strings of knowledge became more and more complexly twisted and tangled.
Overall I felt that exhibit carried a sense of the artists simply wanting onlookers to step back and just look. The second the observer started to try to give the piece a meaning or understand it, I feel only caused confusion. In terms of general humanity, the exhibit felt like it was saying, "Hey guys, just chill and look around you. There is lots to see. You just have to stop and look."




http://brad-dinsmore.com/artwork/305681.html
http://brad-dinsmore.com/artwork/689577.html

The Heidi Chronicles ~ Art and feminism.

It is hard for me as a male growing up in the period in which I have, to try and put myself in Heidi's shoes and see the world as a place that is overtly hostile to women. Where the patriarchal system of male dominance has essentially reduced women to having no say in their lives except for to "choose" to be a housewife or a suffer alone all their lives. Women have a lot to thank the women of the feminist era for the power and rights they have no for without them who knows where women would be today.

What to say about looking at those pictures. As a male and at first glance, they are terrifying. The paintings display two women holding down and decapitating a man. More than likely these images were supposed to mean something more than base line female gang violence against males. Consider the painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, by Artemesia Gentileschi. The women in the picture are showing a significant of struggle holding the male down as they remove his head. This is reminiscent of the struggle that Hiedi and the other women went through on the road to claiming their independence. Furthermore the women are using a sword, not unlike the sword that Lady Justice is known to carry. While these paintings more that likely were painted at the time to tell a story such as how some guy was beheaded, they have come to mean much more because of the actions of the Feminists in the 60s, 70s, and 80. Through a feminist perspective we could see the paintings to mean the up hill battle for women's rights and independence against the mail chauvinistic world. Or we could interpret the removing of the head, as seen in the paintings as the attempt by women to sever the male power base of the patriarchal world. Also interesting to note, like in the play despite Hiedi's efforts to be individual of forces that bound her to her female stereotype and ideologies, she was only semi-successful in achieving here goals. In these paintings the women have not succeeded in removing the male's heads but implying that women have not yet actually being able to free themselves from male tyranny but at least they are moving in the "right" direction.

As a gay male, I often have troubles understanding hardships that females have to go through. This is not to say that I do not know the statistic that males are much more likely to succeed in the work force and that a women who transgender to a male stand a substantially higher chance at making more money than his old female counterparts. But I also know that the gay community has yet to have its day, and I would like to believe that maybe we can take a tip from the feminists and actually make something happen.