Notable artists of the twenty-first century

I should mention that both of these art-related activities were done in the company of Jamie. We like to hold a make-your-own summer camp in which we seek out activities that help us nurture our mind, body, and souls.

Our most recent activity was seeing the Chihuly exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Dale Chihuly is an American- born artist that studied glass as a medium to create art and now creates sculpture and installations using the method of blowing glass. His work is in over 200 museum wordlwide, but some of his pieces are also temporary outdoor installations.

My only complaint about the exhibit is that, going into it, I had no understanding about the process of blowing glass, and I left the exhibit equally uninformed. I imagine I could find out more about this on You Tube ...Chihuly glass blowing at Iittala factory.

Besides that, this exhibit ended up being my heaven. The colors were amazing and enormity of the pieces blew my mind. Blew it like glass. I thank my friend Jamie for taking these pictures with her iPhone. She loves her iPhone.

This is called the Ikebana Boat. According to the sign, this idea was spawned spontaneously when Chihuly threw some glass into a river in Finland in 1995 to see if they'd float, sink or break. Most of them floated, so he had to get some Finnish people to row over and retrieve all his glass. When they returned with boats filled with glass he says, he says to himself, "I'ma make some art!" (-Not a direct quote).

Nex, Mille Fiori, means One Thousand Flowers. I like to call it "the marsh". According to the sign at the museum, while Chihuly has created many versions of this particular installation, the one at the MFA is the largest Mille Fiori to date. Well la-tee-da.

And finally, the Chandeliers, were enormous pieces hanging from the ceiling from metal poles and looked like they could murder you at any moment. They too were in colors that made my eyes sing. The also had organic, visceral shapes within them and I found them to be a quality projective test. That is: does it look like genitals or an animal or like your crappy childhood?

Definitely an octopus

Hehe, frog hands everywhere!

All in all, I went into this not knowing what to expect and ended up loving it. It was beautiful and interesting and it inspired me to come up with this little ditty: "Chihuly, Chihuly, Chihuly preformance fleece...Chihuly, ..."

Just about two weeks before seeing this exhibit, another artist was working equally as hard in her studio. Artist = me, studio = The Clayroom. As you may do not recall, I have been here once before with the same friend. You buy a pre-made piece of pottery and you paint it. Incidentally, when I showed my father he was stunned at my ability to create such a perfectly formed piece of pottery. Then I told him that I merely painted the design on it and hadn't actually physically created the canister.

Last time I painted a calico cat bank. This time I painted a mini-canister. My initial hope had been there'd be mini-planters, but there wasn't. So instead, I stuck to the same design plan, but now it will probably hold solo earring-backings, rather than flowers.

 

 

If you were interested in my artistic process, I have created a You Tube video to demonstrate: Jessie's Creative Process