I recently recalled an artist I stumbled across online a few years ago. Mariel Clayton is a photographer who works with a couple of well-known characters, Barbie and Ken. She has a playful outlook on her often dark and gruesome subject matter, as she subverts the bubbly portrayal of Barbie and her sometimes-boyfriend Ken(near-sociopathic in its detachment from reality). Clayton's work tells stories in single frames, and the stories are rarely pretty. I think perhaps the best way to explain her work is to show it:
In Clayton's photographs of the typically utopian world of Barbie and Ken, the viewer is treated to every day unpleasantness, abuse, murder, sexual depravity, suicide, and a host of other jarring themes. More than anything, I'm fascinated by her ability to imply such a thick and disturbed narrative in a single image, frequently with only one or two characters, and with distinct limitations of expression and pose. (Needless to say she has some other work too-- still with the dolls, but a little bit more typically aesthetic rather than the freakish stories she seems most interested in)
Here's the link to her website with a host of her work: Mariel Clayton
Our senior Art Thesis Prep class decided on a sort of "works in progress" theme for our group gallery show. It's fitting, since although I can't speak for my [incredibly talented] classmates, I know that I am still very much in the process of figuring out what direction I want my work to go.
I'm most interested in characters and storytelling. It's a broad subject matter, as I'm discovering more and more. To work through my interest in this area, I have been working on the type of drawings I've put up in the gallery. These are graphite on paper drawings based on the movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This particular movie is an over the top musical-horror-parody-comedy-scifi-mystery-burlesque-rock n' roll mishmosh with tons of flamboyant movement and theatrical framing-- so of course, it's perfect subject matter for these somewhat chaotic, overlapping drawings. Best of all, working from this movie brought the kind of lightness I like to maintain in my work; a certain fun, absurd and silly tone I try to be mindful of even in "serious" work.
It was strongly suggested that I start really moving in and making use of my studio space. I've never had that kind of space before, but I figured step one was laying claim to my wall with the theme song of my year.
The influences of my childhood are fairly obvious in my current work. Seriously, I draw comics. I first started getting really into drawing because I watched Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon on TV as a kid and thought it would be so cool to turn myself and my friends into characters like that. Some of my earliest memories are of getting yelled at in school for drawing under my desk instead of paying attention in school, and on at least one occasion, my drawing was taken, ripped up and thrown out then and there. I kept at it though, because when I showed my drawings to my friends who had helped me come up with these characters and ideas, they were always thrilled, and immediately we would be planning the next moment or adventure. Well, the more things change, the more the stay the same, as they say. Here's a little confession for those of you who maybe don't know me as well (and maybe this won't come as too much of a surprise): my friends and I play Dungeons and Dragons. Which of course means that, to this day, we are creating characters and telling stories together, constantly seeing how personalities interact, and working on creative solutions to fantastical problems. My favorite projects now are those which involve drawing characters and moments conceived of by my friends and brought to life on paper or screen.
Well, I suppose I'll leave it at that before I really start rambling. One more item, perhaps, before signing off for tonight:
This is a sheet of scrap paper I used to mix paints on last semester when I worked on a painting for a friend of mine. It was the most passionate I had been about an art piece in years, and all of the eagerness for a friend's excited reaction came rushing back, just like as a kid drawing under my desk. Now, I keep this tacked up in my room, because I want art to always feel like that, and it reminds me of why I decided to take a crack at making art to begin with. I just hope that I can incorporate that kind of passion into more "gallery" type work in the future.
Not too much to say this week-- just continuing with that Rocky Horror project.
This one spanned a good amount of the movie. There's another that's more of a work in progress as of now. I'm planning on just using the Time Warp scene for this one:
Quite frankly, this is going to be a difficult post for me. The idea is to examine artists and works which have influenced my own work, focusing in particular on modern and contemporary artists. The struggle is in that I'm fairly certain there are... two, maybe three modern/contemporary artists whom I could point out as having been inspirational or influential to me. I'll be honest-- this is pretty much my own fault. Up until recently, I'd largely dismissed contemporary work in particular for a number of reasons, namely, I figured there was little point getting hung up on that which history had yet to prove the importance of, I never considered myself a "gallery" type artist, more focused in on entertainment media, and I tend to ignore that which comes off to me as arrogant, high-brow work, too caught up in its own importance to stoop to the level of the common viewer. For those of you with fingers poised ready to learn me a thing or two and solve my abject ignorance, rest easy, I'm aware enough to know that my perceptions can be changed-- and changing they are. So, given that preface, here's what I did manage to scrounge up of modern and contemporary work which has influenced my own:
Alright, so let's go for the obvious one first.
Like I said, obvious. To the best of my knowledge, Roy Lichtenstein has been the most successful in drawing traditional comics into a gallery setting. His work emphasizes the importance of scale, turning comic panels into high art by painting them larger than life, and enhancing the (in my opinion) charming melodrama of pop culture fiction.
Damnit, obvious again. A little while back I posted a video of one of Miwa Matreyek's performances. I adore the playful way she mixes animation and performance, and my own recent doodles of silhouettes draw a lot from her work.
Okay, so imagine your favorite artist and your childhood hero getting together to chat and make something together. Now, once you're done cleaning up, since your mind has just been blown to bits, take a look at this: Destino, a collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney (officially completed later in 2003). Dali's dream-like and unsettling style combines beautifully with the child-like romance of a Disney film. This marriage of distinctive style with exploratory flexibility is something that I'm beginning to really strive for. Finally, I have to indulge myself and include this one: Okami is a 2006 video game developed by Clover Studios. The visual style is based in Japanese watercolor and ink paintings.
The game has gained a bit of a cult following of fans (and I suppose I have to confess to being one, huh...) due to stunning visuals and a plot which centers around characters who are truly passionate about what they do (also using a paintbrush to kill demons-- I guess there's that too).
I suppose the common theme here is that the work that appeals to me right now is that which combines "high" and "low" art influences and explores the possibilities in a playful and sincere way.
