Cindy Sherman

Lately I have been looking at the work of Cindy Sherman, particularly the retrospective exhibit at the MOMA. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/#/0/

Online at this web address you can view the exhibit in its entirety.  The exhibit really does take us through her entire career starting with work she did before Untitled Film Stills up to her most recent work in 2010 of Cindy ounce again dressed in ridiculous outfits in mural type arrangements with fake backgrounds.  The reason for my sparked interest in Cindy Sherman is that I needed to write a paper based around art criticism and Sherman happens to have an extremely large amount of feminist theory written about her work as well as psychoanalytical theory.  Most of this theory has been written about her Untitled Film Stills, which I find to be her least interesting body of work personally.  Through reading this theory and also reading interviews and watching videos of her talking about her work I have come to the conclusion that while these critical writing were important for Sherman’s career they really are not important for the viewer to understand her work. All feminist theory aside, Sherman really created her images because she wanted to create characters in a narrative that the viewer creates. If you watch the videos of her talking about her work on PBS 21^st artist series she talks about how and why she made some of her work and nothing that she says is based in art criticism.

 http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/segment-cindy-sherman-in-transformation

Personally, I really enjoy her latter work from the 2000s as she plays the part of different women sitting for their portrait.  These women are quite hilarious and sometimes I actually see a person I know within one of these portraits. I know I definitely see the woman who works at the gas station back home in Untitled #355.  One thing is for sure , I’m creating a narrative in my head, which was Sherman’s primary goal.

  Untitled #355

Castaldo/Dettmer

"Diseases of the Eye" Brain Dettmer

As I walked through the SCAD halls at Open Studio, I discovered multiple works that I found extremely interesting. Some of those works are by a printmaking graduate student by the name of Elizabeth Castaldo, who has a SCAD portfolio online that you can view through this link. http://portfolios.scad.edu/elizabethcastaldo

She creates collages with drawing and watercolor to create very interesting and seemingly symbolic imagery. She does not have an artist statement so I don’t know what her intention is however; personally I find the work to have feminist undertones.  Looking at her work motivates me to consider incorporating drawing and other mediums within my photo collages, but perhaps at a later date.  I also really enjoy her sketchbook project and am inspired to create my own art sketchbook.  This got me thinking about artists who use the sketchbook as their work of art. I specifically remember Forest telling me about Brain Dettmer who creates sculpture/collages out of books using intricate cutting that creates a dynamic layering technique much different than a sketchbook that one would flip through.  Although extremely different in technique, the one of the things both Castaldo and Dettmer have in common with their books are that they both started with a book already in existence.  This is a technique that greatly interests me that I plan on trying out in the future.  However, as much as I love artist’s sketchbooks and the work of these two artists I do have to think about how my work would sell if I chose to make books and even if I kept working in the same manner I have been with my collages, because although making art is something enjoyable I also need to make money with it.  Thus, I would need to figure out a way to reproduce my images to make them more easily sold without an outrageous price tag because of the unique quality of the handmade object. Then again Brain Dettmer is doing more that pretty well and he does not mass produce his work but he does make a lot of them which I think is the key.