Laetitia Sonami

In my senior seminar class the artist Latitia Sonami came in to talk about her work.  Lantitia Sonami is a French performance and sound artist.  She spoke about and demonstrated her project which she class the "Lady's Glove".  It is a glove that is wired with sensors that are feed into a processor that creates sound when she touches and moves her hand.  The glove she describes as her instrument in which she conducts her music and performance.  The performance felt graceful, organic, and natural because she was using her won body to create this piece.

I also found it amazing that as an artists Sonami can stick with this project for many years slowly altering, refining, and improving it.  She explain that when she first constructed the glove that it was large and bulky but with the improvements in technology her glove has become for refined and smaller.  I can admire her dedication because I feel that in my own work i tend to skitter from one idea to another.

Overall it was a very interesting lecture/performance.

UC Berkeley Anthropology Museum

I stumbled upon this museum one day while walking around the campus with a friend.  I was pleasantly surprised with the exhibits and general layout of the collection.  It was very informative and covered a wide range of cultures (ie. ancient Mediterranean, ancient Egypt, south America etc.) and topics (ie. religion, war, textiles ect.).  Their where some activities that where very hands on such as making fabric or using magnets to design a cloak.  Even though the museum is small (perhaps a bit bigger then the prieto lab) it was well designed and informative. 

Oakland 1946!

Here's the link to our show's blog, with the front page Tribune article. Photos coming in that spot soon.
http://www.oakland1946.blogspot.com/

Jason Hanasik

It was very easy to relate to Hanasik for me... I really felt like none of his art was going over my head. Which is kind of nice.

I loved his perspective on the portrayal of men and manliness. I found it interesting that his softer view of men was interpreted as some kind of "gay gaze", in which all images of men looking vulnerable are viewed through a lens of desire.

I also appreciated his conflict with not wanting to give away queer subculture to the masses. It's a fine line between keeping something sacred and exposing it to the public, and his project on cruising and dens really skirts that line in a beautifully subtle way.

Faviana Rodriguez

I was so inspired by Rodriguez's lecture. For one, I loved her views on the accessibility of art. It definitely made me reconsider an academic paper I was supposed to be writing for queer studies. Instead I chose to do a zine, for reasons of reproducibility, etc. Secondly, I loved the boldness of her graphics, and found some of her images to be picasso-esque. Thirdly, I didn't have any real grasp on what the Mexican government thought of art before, and was amazed to find out that art is views as a human right.

She covered a ton of ground in her talk, and I thought she was so well spoken and inspirational.

Ginger Wolfe Suarez

I watched the video for Wolfe-Suarez. But the audio was all kinds of messed up. Most of what I gathered was that she draws inspiration primarily from the work of her peers. She really didn't discuss her own work. But at the end of the lecture I came to the conclusion that one does not need to be skilled in a craft to be an artist. Only a fondness for art, good connections in the art community, and lots of ideas.

Hmmm...

Okay, so I'm looking over my meager posts and I don't see the one I thought I did about the Ginger Wolfe Suarez + Korean women artists exhibit that's been running all this fall at the art museum. I'm not sure where in cyber space it may have wound up. Sigh.
Anyway, I did go check it out way back in the early fall. I enjoyed seeing the work of the women artists, especially the ones with the tiny red beans that looked like pomegranate seeds and the flowing one in the center that looked like people moving. Originally I had all of the names of the artists, but I'm old and I've forgotten them by now.
The Suarez installation was moving, especially the old banners, but I'd have to say honestly that I didn't really "get" the telephone poles and sandbags.
Probably more later.
Lynn