Month: November 2011

Work of Art, Episode 7: La Dolce Arte

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Once again it is Wednesday, and once again it is time for another amazing Work of Art episode and a hopefully amazing Work of Art liveblog.  Just a refresher: TWO WEEKS AGO (Oh, Thanksgiving, wreaking havoc with my television schedule) we only had eight contestants, and we had a team-based challenge!   Each contestant was randomly paired with another and they were tasked to create a piece of street art.  Kymia and Sara J. and Young Sun and Dusty made fantastic, cohesive pieces of art.  Young Sun and Dusty won, and they also won $15,000 each!  Sucklord and Sarah K. and Michelle and Lola (who I hate), made less-good artwork, and unfortunately our dear the Sucklord was sent home.  This is a shame–he should have rocked the street art, but I think he was full of fear, which leads to anger, which leads to hatred, which leads to the Dark Side, etc.  We will miss you a lot, Sucklord, you brought quite a bit of personality and entertainment to this competition.  Also, nerd pride.

You shall not pass.

This week we come to our official product placement challenge (remember last season’s car-inspired challenge?  Ungh).   Our remaining artists must utilize a component from a Fiat 500 and turn it into art!  I am really bored by this challenge already, y’all.

9:00: ART ART ART.  The Sucklord, alas, is gone.  Everyone is sad, because the fun and slightly sexually offensive Sucklord is gone.  Who will have sex with all the girls?  Who will be loud and obnoxious.

9:01:  Lola still sees “potential romance” for her and Sucklord whaaaat?  Girl, he has a girlfriend, and you are terrible.  Oh, also, Dusty now has to wear Young Sun’s short shorts because they won the challenge.  This is awesome because Young Sun is a tiny Gaysian and Dusty is from Arkansas.  He takes the whole thing well, and puts on the shorts, because he is a man of his word.  That was fun, and probably the high point of the episode y’all.

9:02:  INTRO.  CHINA’S DRESS STILL HAS A HOLE IN IT.  THIS BOTHERS ME SO MUCH GUYS.

9:03:  Kymia voice-overs about what a bitch Lola is, which is totally true.  Lola is terrible guys.  In the meantime, everyone heads off to the challenge.  We head to the gallery and there is lots of Fiat stuff laid out everywhere.  Sarah K. calls it beautiful.  I’m not really a car person, so I am not that interested by this.  Evidently Sarah K.’s father owns an auto shop.  wel there you go.

9:04:  Some Italian words about Italian cars, and some French-accented words from Simon Pury about artists, like Richard Prince and John Chamberlain, who have used cars as an inspiration for art.  The artists’ challenge is to create a work of art using at least one part from the Fiat 500.  The artist with the best piece gets $25,000.  Damn, kids, they are throwing the money around in this competition.

9:05:  Running around collecting parts montage!!!  No one knows what they are making, so everyone is confused!

9:06:  Wow, they’ve cleaned out the place.  The artists roll their car parts up to the studio.  Hurr.  Many of the artists don’t know anything about cars.  This should be fun!  Michelle is super excited about it–i hope that she recovers her happiness and light and talent from the mess Lola made of it last week.

9:07:  Hahahaha, Sara J. doesn’t know how to drive.  Oi.  Lola once again is all: “I have so many ideas.  I don’t know what I am doing!  La la la la la.”  However, I sort of like her idea of fossilizing the objects.

9:08:  Kymia actually got the key to the car, hilarious.  She’s going to grind down the key and make it look like stardust–key to the car, key to the universe, etc.   Dusty is now going to put the lotion on his skin (or else he gets the hose again).  No, he’s doing lotion to make a mold of his face.

9:09:  Wow, Dusty….isn’t taking that many precautions with his facial mold.  Jesus this is scary.  Kymia helps him, thankfully.  Also he has a BEARD, wow that is going to HURT when it comes off y’all.  I’m mildly terrified, but we’re going to have to wait through the commercials to see what happens.

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Why I am Thankful This Thanksgiving: I HAVE AN ART JOB.

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So, guys, after over two and a half years of searching and doubt and self-loathing and anger and sadness and misery at the state of the economy, I finally achieved my goal: I have attained a job in the art world.  I promised myself that this blog would not be a venting place for my fury at the universe during my job search, and I also promised myself that I could write a big, long, venty post chronicling my journey–but only when I achieved my goal of attaining a professional, full-time position in the art world.  So here’s my post.  I am glad to finally share it with you.

This is a big deal.  I have wanted to work in the arts since I was sixteen and I took Advanced Placement Art History with the amazing Pat Johnston at Pine View School for the Gifted.  I loved the course, excelled in the classwork, and got my well-earned 5 on my AP exam (I’m not still proud of that or anything).  After the class I decided that a job in the arts, preferably in a museum or gallery setting, would be my thing, and I behaved accordingly, so accordingly that I can summarize it in bullet points y’all:

-I majored in Art History and English at the University of Florida.  I wrote an honor’s thesis for my Art History major and graduated summa cum laude (I’m not still proud of that or anything either).

-I interned at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, the University of Florida’s art museum, for a good year and a half.  I spent one semester in the education department as part of a group initiative to plan programming for the undergraduate population at UF and I spent a year interning for the curator of contemporary art.

The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida, a great museum, you should go!

-I then launched myself straight into graduate school in Art History, heading to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue my Master’s and eventually (I hoped, back then) my Ph.D.

-While at UNC I interned at the North Carolina Museum of Art, co-curated an exhibit at UNC’s affiliate museum the Ackland Art Museum, and secured a summer internship at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  This was the spring of 2009 and this, guys, this is where the bullet points need to end, because things get messy.

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Work of Art Liveblog, Episode 6: Street Dealers

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Once again it is Wednesday, and once again it is time for another amazing Work of Art episode and a hopefully amazing Work of Art liveblog.  Just a refresher: last week we only had nine contestants, and there was another challenge!  The contestants went to the New York Times printing factory (which was amazing!) and they had to pick a headline and make a work of art based on said headline.  The art also had to incorporate newspaper.  Young Sun won (again) for his conceptual but ultimately boring piece about Ai Weiwei.  Dusty and, for some absurd reason, terrible Lola were also in the top two.  Sucklord was, once again, in the bottom two, as was Sarah K. who has never before had a critique.  Not a good start, Sarah K.  But ultimately Bayete went home; he botched a great concept (he picked an article about the Sister Act musical blergh!) an was eliminated due to his shoddy, misconstructed gold doors.

Bay bay, Bayete.

This week the artists will be making covert street art.  In DUMBO!  You know Tewz is kicking himself y’all.

9:00:  The girls are all sitting around in the loft, waiting for the winners and the losers to trickle in.  Young is all “YAY I WON” like, twinkly and stuff, he’s so twinkly.  Lola is jealous because young has won the two best prizes.  I hate her.

9:01:  But oh, a moment of sadness, Bayete has left us.  Bay bay Bayete (hee, that will never get old).  Dusty is bummed because he didn’t win.  He definitely needs $20,000 because he’s from Arkansas, and therefore, poor.  Sucklord crosses Bayete’s name off the board.

9:02:  8 artists remain, blah blah, Brooklyn Museum, blah blah. China’s stupid red dress with a HOLE IN IT SDJFLSDJWOERJ blah.  Title sequence, blah.  And we cut to Young Sun giving Sarah K. a massage, cute.  but oh, massage time over, off the artists go.  MYSTERY LOCATION.   The van stops in DUMB, or, under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.  We see Simon, in casual clothes, and China in this weird structural white dress that makes her hips look enormous.

9:03:  WELCOME TO BROOKLYN.  ALL THE WORLD IS A CANVAS Y’ALL.  Simon is all “Street art, blah blah, EXPRESSION, ILLEEEEEGAL.”  I love Simon.  So the artists have to do street art on two walls in DUMBO.  Sucklord is all “Street art is really broad y’all, but I guess this will work.”  The twist to the challenge is that the artists will be working in teams of two.

9:04:  Teams y’all!  Artists don’t work well in teams, this will be great.  To pick the teams the artists have to spray paint colors on China’s white dress.  China looks sort of, fake terrified.  Sara J. and Kymia are paired together.  Dusty and Young Sun are together (that’s a good team!)  Michelle and Lola are a team.  And Sucklord (who spray paints two green nipples on China, hahaha!) is paired with Sarah K.

9:05:  Simon also spray paints China, but he also spray paints her skin which, oops.  Michelle calls Simon “The Sucklord with an Ascot.”  i love it!

9:06:  The winning artist (despite people being in teams, there will be only one winner) gets $30,000.  Damn yo.  Each team gets 44 feet of wall space, and the teams run off to plan.  Sarah K. is excited to be with Sucklord.  She’s an installation artist, and he has knowledge of street art.  Hopefully they will make a great team!

9:07:  Kymia and Sara J. are scared of the wall.  Because it is so big.  That’s what she said!  Dusty talks about his and Young’s differences.  Dusty has a WIFE and KID and is from ARKANSAS and Young Sun is a big gay bird, love him.

9:08:  Michelle is of course talking about dark and debauched thing, Lola just talks about how she used to throw glitter around in the streets when she was a kid.  i mean, I wish I had done that but, alas, I didn’t.  So Lola and Michelle decide to make a giant party scene.

9:09:   Sucklord says: “Lola is hot, but Sarah is a cutey with a booty.”  Aw.  Sucklord, appreciative of all shapes and sizes of ladies.

9:10:  Dusty and Young decide to build some staircases, but they aren’t sure where the staircases will lead.  Young’s just worried because he’s never done street art and it isn’t his thing, and he feels that he and Dusty are not connecting, just working.  Young, despite having won last week, does not have immunity, so he is worried.

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Work of Art, Jerry Saltz’s Recap of Episode 5

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Every week Jerry Saltz writes a recap of Work of Art for NYMagazine.  In case you forgot, Mr. Saltz is one of the judges on Work of Art and he is also the senior art critic for NYMagazine.  I enjoy the recaps almost more than I enjoy (or hate-enjoy) the show.  They help explain the reasoning and critiques of the judges and also de-mystify the reality show process.  For instance, the judging committee is told nothing about the contestants.  Everything they learn they learn via the critiques or by watching the television show.

I also love the recaps because of the comments section.  Mr. Saltz (okay, I’ll call him Jerry, because that’s how I talk to him in the comments), takes the time to read all of these comments and often responds to them.  He encourages his readers to talk about and write about and think about art; I love how he wants to make art and art criticism less scary and more popular.  I hope that he succeeds.

Each week I’ll be posting the link to Mr. Jerry’s recaps and I’ll also be quoting a selection from the article.  This week we had kids, and kid art that was better than most of the art that was made, and Tewz was eliminated (bye Tewz!  I didn’t like your name either).   You can read my thoughts on all of that in my liveblog.

So, here is the link to Jerry’s recap and here is some good stuff from it.  Not art-related this week, but still hilarious and awesome:

“Since artist vulnerabilities are coming out, I’ll share one of my own. An hour before taping, I’m standing in my underpants in front of the show’s gorgeous twentysomething stylist, Zoe, thinking to myself, Drink in the macho, baby! Zoe quietly looks me over and says, “Um, Jerry. Do you like spanks?” Wow! The old male magic is still sizzling! I heard this generation is kinky! She wants to spank me! Here. In a reality TV dressing room! With the door partly open! Then she holds up a teeny-weenie doll-sized elastic undershirt thingy. “This is a Spanx,” she says. A girdle. My ego retracts, turtlehead-like. Ditto my genitals. Reality TV isn’t just making me look fat. The free food I’ve been grazing on for weeks is showing! I ask Zoe if this garment is “a fat repressor.” Carefully not using terms like “muffin top” or “s’more,” she says, “Spanx are trimming.” I wedge myself into it. I had no idea what kind of constricting strangulation goes on under some women’s clothes.”

I told Jerry in the comments section that I wear some form of Spanx almost every day, and he said to me, and I quote: “WOW! You are God-like and string [sic]. I found it unbearable, like putting a tee-shirt on a cat…  ”

Aw, Jerry called me God-like and string.  I mean strong!  Thanks Jerry!

Work of Art Liveblog, Episode 5: Ripped from the Headlines

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Once again it is Wednesday, and once again it is time for another amazing Work of Art episode and a hopefully amazing Work of Art liveblog.  Just a refresher: last week we our contestants had been reduced to ten, and the contestants had their fourth challenge.   This challenge required the contestants to team up with kids and to make works of art inspired by works by their kid-partners.  Sarah Jessica Parker was the judge.  We discovered much about our contestants: Sucklord has a soft spot for kids, Sara J. had a post traumatic stress disorder experience, and Dusty and Kymia proved to be awesome.  Kymia won with her lovely, grotesque drawing, and Tewz’s weird, conceptual growth piece got him eliminated.    Michelle also did a piece with EYES y’all, EYES.  Jerry Saltz thinks she is going to win.  Anyways, you can read my thoughts on last week’s episode here.

Bye Tewz, your name was also stupid.

This week the artists will be headng to the New York Times headquarters  to search for inspiration-providing headlines.  This will be fun!

9:00:  Everyone’s in a huddle, waiting to see who comes back.  Kymia and Dusty and Sara J. wander back in, and Sucklord’s trailing behind makes everyone freak out but oh, Sucklord is there!  And Sucklord also declares that he is tough like a cockroach.  Yep, that sounds about right.

9:01:  Kymia is thrilled that she won and that Simon is auctioning off her piece.  Lola, for some reason, really has it out for Kymia?  I mean, why?  Lola, you’re terrible, you aren’t on her level at all.  Anyways, title sequence time, complete with China’s terrible holy underboob-showing dress lord who let her wear that disaster?

9:02:  5:30am and Simon barges in all “WAKE UP YOU SLEEPY HEADS TIME TO BE INVIGORATED CHALLENGES.”  Young Sun gets all uppity about it because his gay gene makes him feel sad that Simon looks better than he does at 5:30 in the morning.

9:03:  Simon piles them all into a van.  To make matters worse it is RAINING at 5:30 in the morning, terrible.  They’re driving through New York and Dusty is freaked out because he doesn’t know New York at all because, in case you forgot, he’s from Arkansas!  Anyways, their destination is the building where The New York Times gets printed and it looks like a magical awesome place.

9:04:  No really it is magical.  There are self-propeling robots and crazy like, roller coasters conveying papers, and it is awesome.  And oh also China is there, in front of a pile of newspapers, and she is wearing a red dress that doesn’t have a hole in it and it is a lot better than the travesty they have her in for the title sequence.  China provides the challenge (find a headline that inspires your work of art!) and also tells a nervous Sucklord to “Use the Force!”  Sigh.

9:05:  Kymia reveals that she is one of those annoying people who doesn’t read the paper or keep abreast of current events at all.  That’s just lazy guys.  A few more things:  the artists have to use the newspaper in their work, the winner gets $20,000 (Dusty really wants it because he is from ARKANSAS and also he is poor, he tells us), and the winner also gets his or her work exhibited in the NYTimes building near Times Square.  Oh but after this challenge there is no immunity ever again ever.

9:06:  Anyways, now we get a ten minute montage of people tearing through the pile of newspapers looking for their headlines.  People choose articles on serial killers, the B.P. oil spill, and Ai WeiWei’s imprisonment (that’s Young Sun of course).

9:07:  Times up!  Off to Utrecht, with Simon in the lead!  For some reason the artists are wheeling out barrels of newspaper but, whatever.  At Utrecht Lola, as usual, is all “I do not have a clear idea of what i am going to make.”  Lola, you never know what you are going to make.  Your “suffering artist” persona, as Sara J. calls it, is totally old.  And stupid.  I hope you get eliminated, even if you do look like Eliza Dushku.

9:08:  And off to the studio they go!  Sarah K. is doing an article on Alexander Styron, about depression and madness.  Bayete has chosen an article that reviews the musical Sister Act which is AWESOME, he’s going to be some piece about religion and how he doesn’t like it which is only mildly cliche.   Dusty’s article is on the failing economy (because he is from Arkansas and according to him people in Arkansas are poor).

9:09:  Young Sun’s Ai WeiWei article is about censorship, so he’s trying to bleach the ink from his paper but he’s only succeeding in ruining the paper.  He’s afraid he’s going home.  And last week’s photograph of Young Sun hopping about like a big gaysian bird takes us into the commercial break.

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