Class Blog: Black & White

On December 12^th, an art exhibit will be held in the poolside café, where the students walk by to get from the E building to the M. This space is spacious enough to hold a number amount of art pieces as well as move to have viewers. The poolside café gets people in because it also has access to walk outside. I also would like it to be held in the E building because a lot of students who are taking art class go into this building. With the artwork all around the building that is displayed, they can easily find this exhibit to get some inspiration about some artists that they possibly never heard of before.

The theme of this show is to have black and white paintings and photographs by three artists. I chose different artists with their own unique styling showing the students who come and see the exhibit that they are each unique and that their artwork can be displayed the same way one day. Artists show their personalities or emotions through their artwork to get the viewers to try and understand how they are feeling and maybe the viewers feels the same way and feel connected to the artist. The theme of the show is to have black and white photographs, paintings and drawings that are of people but in different forms and they each give out a different type of emotion. I believe that these three artists show art in more then one way and show that art isn’t just a drawing or painting. Kiki Smith, Richard Avedon, and Leah Yerpe, are the three artists whose work I am going to show in the art exhibit.

The exhibit first starts with two pieces by Kiki Smith, Frontier and Clearing. She is an American artist who does a variety of work, such as printmaking, sculptures, drawing and many more. I chose these two pieces because they are images of people but she added her creativity in putting the lines and the stars in her work. In the work Frontier, she made the image right in the middle so that the focus is the face and there is not much negative space around her. In Clearing, it is more to the corner and it has more negative space, the star seem to be the focus in this piece because they look 3D. She also has similar art pieces as the two I chose, but each has something different about them. Next are the photographs of Richard Avedon, his work that I found were mostly black and white and of people such as The Beatles and Twiggy, who was a famous model in the mid 60’s. I chose the black and white photographs; The Beatles, London, and Twiggy, hair because I feel black and white photography captures the person or people in the image more. Since there are no other colors, nothing else is distracting the viewer from focusing on the person who is in the picture. The image of Twiggy can capture people’s attention because her hair is being blown upward to take up most of the space. Lastly, are the works of Leah Yerpe, who does amazing life like drawings of people.The two pieces I chose were Wing and Altair, which in Wing, the body are forming a wing like shape throughout the drawing and the blank spaces is the negative space. For her work Altair, which is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, where she also has an exhibit of the constellations. In her pieces, everything is recognizable, from the facial expressions to the lining of the pants. She also adds shading to make the people look real and look as if they are jumping out of the paper. In her work emotion plays a major part since you are able to see the facial expressions of the people in the drawing. Each piece is related because they are all black and white and show images of people in them. They each show that they can convey the human body in more then one unique way.

Kiki Smith