Charles LeDray

Untitled (20x12x4")

Toy Chest (8x13x5")

Another artist that came up in conversation on Monday was Charles LeDray. A retrospective of his work is currently on view at the ICA in Boston, and will be traveling to the Whitney and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston next.  Formal matters, such as the materials he uses and the scale at which he works, contribute significantly to the way we understand and interpret the work.

"For over 20 years, New York-based artist Charles LeDray has created handmade sculptures in stitched fabric, carved bone, and wheel-thrown clay. LeDray painstakingly fashions smaller-than-life formal suits, embroidered patches, ties, and hats, as well as scaled-down chests of drawers, doors, thousands of unique, thimble-sized vessels, and even complex models of the solar system." from the ICA Boston website

Karen Yasinsky

Karen Yaskinsky is a Baltimore-based artist who has been nominated for the Sondheim Prize on several ocassions. I mentioned her stop-action animation work to Cornelia, but thought you all might be interested in seeing some of her work (more at Vimeo).



I Choose Darkness, 2009 from Karen Yasinsky on Vimeo.

MAJOR Cafe and Finding your Way

Major Cafe is coming up. Even if you feel relatively confident about your major, I encourage you to attend. It is a fun event, giving you the opportunity to meet upperclassmen and faculty from all of the majors, ask questions, and thus get a better sense of the various departments. Information about this event, and a more focused one for those completely undecided, follows:

Choosing Your Major 

Thursday, November 4th  |  5:30 -6:30 PM  |  Brown 320 

Part of Major Café program for Foundation students. Trying to decide which major is best for you? Thinking about having a minor 

or concentration?  If you are still weighing your options, come to this informative program to learn from a panel of students who 

went through this process not so long before you.  You will hear from students much like yourself on how they chose their own 

major with specific emphasis on decision making.  You will also learn more about majors, minors and concentrations. 

Major Café 

Friday, November 5th  |  3:30-5:30 PM  |   Brown Center Leidy Atrium & Lower Level Lobby 

Major Café is a program for all Foundation students who are exploring their options in majors and career choices at MICA. This 

program will provide an opportunity for you to meet faculty and upper division students in all majors, to view some work samples, 

and to find answers to your questions. 

Women for Women International and Kate Spade

Deborah Lloyd, creative director of Kate Spade, and Zainab Salbi, who founded Women for Women International (WfWI) have been collaborating to help female survivors of war rebuild their lives. "WfWI takes a holistic approach: educating women about their legal and reproductive rights and providing psychological counseling, job-skills training, and microcredit loans." Kate Spade, the accessory-and apparelmaker, contracted with a WfWI micro-credit and jobs program in Bosnia and Herzegovina to make mittens, hats, and scarves.

Visit this link for more information about this project.

Fellini's Dancing Doll

This segment made me think of Jennifer's presentation yesterday:
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ART 21

The website affiliated with the PBS series Art21 can be found at: www.pbs.org/art21/

Tim Hawkinson, Egg, 1997

Laylah Ali, Untitled, 2004

You can browse the list of artists here.

Jason Wu

After studying briefly at MICA, I was exposed to all kinds of abstract drawings, illustrations, paintings, and graphic posters. However, it was evident that outfit making was completely outnumbered. Being a future fashion design major, I wanted to shed some light on a very unique type of art - fashion design.

Jason Wu is one of the thousands of wonderful fashion designers that are working for the industry today. His dresses take on much more angular, simplistic shapes and sometimes unusual colors. His dresses have been displayed in many fashion shows, and Michelle Obama, first lady of the United States, wore a Jason Wu dress to the President's inaugural ball. Jason Wu's clothing greatly appeal to me, because of the distinct "Jason Wu taste" that he plants in each piece of clothing that he creates. It has the people looking at the wearer asking "where did that person get her clothes?"

-Jennifer Zhang

Maps of the Imagination

In the spirit of your Explorations and Expeditions of Baltimore, a mention of a book that comes to mind:

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi

"Maps of the Imagination takes us on a magic carpet ride over terrain both familiar and exotic. Using the map as a metaphor, fiction writer Peter Turchi considers writing as a combination of exploration and presentation, all the while serving as an erudite and charming guide. He compares the way a writer leads a reader through the imaginary world of a story, novel, or poem to the way a mapmaker charts the physical world." "The ancient Greeks, German globe makers, and British cartographers join forces with the Marx Brothers, NASA, and Roadrunner cartoons to shed light on the strategies of writers as diverse as Sappho, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Don DeLillo, and Heather McHugh." A unique combination of history, critical cartography, personal essay, and practical guide to writing, Maps of the Imagination is a book for writers, for readers, and for anyone interested in creativity." (from goodreads.com)

Other important events this week!

Town Hall Meeting: October 6 2:30-4pm (Main) The MICA Town Hall, brought to you by the Student Voice Association (MICA’s “student government:) is an open forum discussion for all students to discuss issues of concern about the college with MICA administrators.

Everyone is welcome; it’s your opportunity to directly address any concerns or issues at MICA with the people who can do something about it.

National Coming Out Day: Friday, October 8, 3:30-5pm, Main Building Lobby  Come out (pun intended) and celebrate National Coming Out Day with other LGBT students, faculty and staff as well as LGBT allies at MICA. There will be resources, food and fun for all!

OTHER EVENTS, such as Ann Fessler's lecture on Wednesday and Glady's Coggswell's lecture and workshop on Thursday can be found on the MICA Events calendar and in Cobalt Soup!

Documenting your Work!

Please remember that you are responsible for documenting ALL of your work in this class, and presenting a portfolio of images at the Midterm and end of the semester. This may be a gallery on our Picasa site, or a folder on your computer. One of the best workshop resources on this topic follows. Do not miss out!  

 

Discover how to make the most of your own digital camera. This workshop will be facilitated by Dan Meyers, a professional photographer with extensive experience photographing fine art. Join us for a overview of digital equipment, a demonstration of shooting situations designed to easily control light and some straight forward steps to work smart in Photoshop when editing your images. By the end of this session you will have some easy and effective techniques to make top quality digital files, using the camera equipment you already have. Wednesday, October 6th at 2:15-3:30pm in the Brown Center (no room listed yet.)

EVENTS calendar and other resources

The Events calendar on the MICA website is an amazing resource! Last year's foundation students did not have this available to them and thus had to scrounge and search and look out and listen up for a lot of the events that are no listed on this page.

Other blogs of note include:

Bmore Art Blog 
and
There Were Ten Tigers