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.