Lecture 12

Only a few more lectures left for this semester!!! This week it was Melinda Stefy who came to talk to Tyler about using Etsy and other online stores to promote or sell our work.  Her personal artwork had a lot to do with remnant pieces, memory, and loss.  Then she started to talk to us about her online vending stores.  She talked about the vending she does.  She does her vending online through etsy, consignment, and in person.  Her etsy store is fabrik.etsy.com where she sells things like reusable bags.  Her other etsy store is julre.etsy.com which sells her handmade jewelry.  She told us how to get started on etsy and how to become successful with online vending.  She made it clear that online vending is very time consuming.  If we aren't committed to uploading new stuff, or constantly keeping tabs on the site, then it will not be successful.  you have to be very active with your site and it takes tons of time and commitment.  

Lecture 11

This week's lecture was a different time.  I went to the night lecture to se Brett Cook talk about his community art.  He has a balance between traditional exhibitions and in the streets and community.  He is continually pushing his understand of what and where art is.  This has been my favorite lecture so far.  He was really fun and a great speaker.  His work is really inspiring and touches tons of people.  First he started out by asking the audience to tell him what we thought community and soul was.  He wrote them on a large poster and throughout the lecture would come back to our answers.  He talked about his early work a lot.  He started off as a graffiti artist, with zero recognition.  He worked collaboratively with another more traditional artist.  They would address issues in their community or around the world and would translate those problems into artwork.  The pieces were huge and then displayed around the town, outside.  This made him question though what public art was.  He wanted his work to be able to reach the people on an emotional level.  He started doing more large scale outdoor artwork, but now he started painting the portraits of people from that town.  These people represented the community and their portraits were physically in the community.  He showed portraits of real people that were alive and happy.  He left was the thought that is artwork is more about the process that the outcome or the thing created.  By painting these portraits and interviewing people around his community and other communities he gained more from that process rather than painting their portrait and hanging it up in a gallery. 

Lecture 10

This week our presented was Doug Bucci.  He was a great speaker and definitely kept my attention the entire hour.  He was very charismatic and excited to be talking about his work and life.  He continued to tell us to take chances.  He started experimenting with jewelry while he was at school and decided to push his interest further.  He started making jewelry and became highly praised and recognized.  He worked on a medallion for Prince Andrew, he worked for Jackass, and then he went on to work with Jeff Koons and Stella McCartney on their collaboration.   He told us to think about who we want to associate ourselves with when we get jobs.  Where and with whom can we have fun with or Who do we want to meet?  These were things that he considered and considers before he accepts a job.  As his career went on he started becoming interested in studying diabetes because he has it.  He started studying what diabetes is and what it affects.  Then he used that information to make jewelry out of it.  His work looks like little blood cells that are formed together to create very graphic and beautiful jewelry pieces.