a statement

When I was younger I was told that I was smart enough to do pretty much whatever I wanted. I forgot about that for a long time, or rather I mistook that piece of information as meaning that I was meant to take on the most difficult educational path and follow it to the end. Not quite halfway down that road I realized that I wasn't taking the path I wanted. I wanted to create, to produce things that make people feel something. I wanted to inspire. I wanted to use both sides of my brain. Art gives me the opportunity to do this and with a smile. When I was younger I was told that I was smart enough to do pretty much whatever I wanted...so I choose art.

a statement

As an artist I hope that my work achieves the ultimate goal of aesthetic viewing pleasure. In other words, I would like the people that are viewing my work to take something more than just a visual of the work being displayed. I want the audience to be shocked or surprised and I would like them to generate their own feelings about the work itself. I am a typical artist; I rarely think that my work is sufficient at all. With final cut pro being provided in this class, this will be the tool to make my works of art into hopeful masterpieces. I am a tireless worker and will stay up to the bitter end to accomplish what needs to be done to make the final piece. Hopefully, my hard work and the dedication to the audience will be enough for me to raise to some eyebrows.

Colin Lapasky

I continually search for new and unexplored software and technologies to learn. My training as an artist never ceases, and there is at all times, something new to study and apply to my works. The technology of art constantly advances, creating limitless possibilities and reason to be continually learning. I am compelled to seek mediums that I am not comfortable with, constantly pushing what I know to achieve innovative compositions. I have an infatuation with numerous mediums of technology, allowing me to capture precise, accurate moments in time, and through conceptually driven ideas, tools permit me to alter them. I use everyday scenarios and customs to reinterpret the common notions in what they represent.

Mary Anne Benson

I am an artist because I live in a world saturated with images and I want to create my own and contribute my own view to that world. I am far less concerned than I should be about finished products—to me they are just residue of the real art, which lies in the process. My process involves mostly experimentation and play. Accidents and mistakes often take me in exciting new directions. In video, this takes the form of the evolution of my ideas, which always morph into something completely different along the way. In photography, my process is finding new ways to see something—the beauty in trash, the grotesque side of what is considered beautiful, the humor and surreal nature of mundane things. I like to work in places I walk by everyday, breaking out of the beeline of routine to discover something new to connect with. I love when people see me making images, because they sometimes stop and look where I was looking. To me it doesn’t matter if they see the same thing I saw, it’s probably best if they see something else or nothing at all. What matters is that they took a brief moment to break out and look for themselves. Finished works of art invite someone to see your point of view, your story, your take on the world. I revel in encountering the art of others, and am so happy that with digital technologies many more people can explore this sort of looking and self- expression. The world needs more stories and more points of view.

Adam Frizzell

Art is a unique medium of communication. Unlike text, speech or physical interaction, art possesses the ability to hold a viewer’s attention before any translation has occurred. The visual dynamics offered by a piece of art intrigue or disgust the viewer, forcing them to continue their witnessing until their curiosity is appeased and they have came to some conclusion or other about the meaning behind the work.

Focusing on this ability I choose to make art which has something to inform the viewer about. Aesthetic beauty, in my opinion, is secondary (and occasionally involuntary) to the potential communicative powers of art. My intention is to create works that inform or enlighten the viewer. The subject matter often addresses issues that I feel the general population should be more aware of – making my artwork into a kind of mirror to society. I tend to focus on the habits and choices that our collective species make and illuminate them in a way that becomes entertaining or offensive with less hope to cause an instance of change and more hope that I can foster a contemplation of one’s own behavior.

a statement

Why do I make art? I don’t really know. It is something that I have always done. Even as a child, I had a compulsion to draw or otherwise make whatever image was swirling around in my mind. It is very personal to me, my works are like my children and I am reluctant to share them with the world. Maybe because I am afraid of what other people might say about them, that is mistreat my “children”. Or maybe I don’t really care how other people think, I just want to do what I want to do. As a young adult, I suppressed this compulsion to be “practical” and got a job in the business world so I could support myself, because everybody said nobody can support themselves as an artist. Recent life changing events have altered my thinking and I am pursuing what I want to do, not what is sensible or practical. Even if I have to go back into the business world, I will not give up making art again.

a statement

I am trying to show others the two halves of my duality. My two halves are made up of “things that I perceive as normal” and “things that I internally label as abnormal”. I usually accept my physical and emotional separation from other people and the existence of duality as normal. I have internally labeled my and other people’s malleable sexuality and gender as abnormal. I see this malleability as a “frightening impulse” which I usually react against (again internally) violently. Although I have conflicts with my duality, I create my artwork as part of a process that reflects my attempt to create a balance between my two halves.
I am exploring methods outside of making personal artwork to reflect the balance that I am trying to create between my two halves. To begin my search, I pose a question: “Do other people relate to the concepts that I am trying to show in my work?” I then create artwork in a variety of mediums based on people’s verbal and written responses to this question.
I am adjusting my work to help others respond to it more easily. Part of this process involves continuing to experiment with my artwork by looking at a person’s connection to art objects, and by exploring an individual’s connections to other people. I continue to build on my successful experiments by creating new works that exploit my artwork’s connections to others.

a statement

Emotionally driven conceptual art has always been something I have been interested in. Emotion is something I feel everyone can relate to so building a concept around it makes sense to me. Making art that will make the viewer think about what they are looking at or why it is made in the first place it usually the kind of result I am trying to achieve. Paying attention to the aesthetics is a very important characteristic when it comes to the overall appearance and presentation of the piece. Intentional detail is something I have constantly included in just about everything I have ever made. Details can range from a moth flying around a lamp in the background to the how well everything is rendered in the environment itself. This has always helped aesthetically improve the visual aspects of a particular piece. In addition, the aesthetics of the piece may also help with layering the work given that viewers might be interested only in the appearance, and must observe it once more to fully appreciate the meaning of the work. I am not normally against works that thrive purely on aesthetics, but including a well thought out concept can do nothing but strengthen the piece. Also, my concepts are typically not as direct or straight forward as they may appear. Keeping some of the narrative hidden along with trying to layer it with subplots can make for a very fascinating result. Viewers should be able to return to the piece and notice something entirely new when they view it yet again.

a statement

When Brewster from Brewster’s Millions was finally able to reveal that he had spent the $30 million in order to get the $300 million, I thought about art. Art is like that, you know—like spending $30 million to get $300 million. But did you ever wonder what Brewster did with the $300 million after he got it? And did the conspirators who tried to obstruct Brewster’s attempts to gain his full inheritance really go to jail? Or did they just have attorneys who got them off the hook? Seriously, maybe Brewster forgave them because he was a nice guy. He seemed like a nice guy, when he and John Candy weren’t out philandering. It doesn’t seem, however, like Brewster was ever going to get to play for the Yankees. But, just because the sun comes up today, doesn’t mean it will come up tomorrow, so perhaps he did play for the Yankees eventually. He could get anybody out for three innings. But that’s the thing that escapes us, I guess, is we just don’t know what Brewster did after the movie. Hell, we don’t even know what he was up to for much of the period in which the movie was set. It would be impossible to document every minute of Brewster’s life for a month. I mean, I’m talking about something a bunch of people made: they spliced it together from take after take, probably out of sequence, into what should seem like a random series of scenes, but it somehow adheres into a linear narrative. It’s nearly magic, and I’m still not satisfied. And I keep mixing in that scene from the first—or maybe the second—episode of Quantum Leap when Sam was a ball player, and he talks to his dad who, in Sam’s day, or in the linearality of his own life—I mean, it’s time travel, so it gets confusing—is dead. His dad is dead, you see, but Sam has gone back in time, so he gets his dad on the phone. It’s pretty neat. So when I fill the lacunae—the anti-narrative space—left after Brewster’s big game—following his team’s humiliating defeat and his big speech to the assembled crowd—I insert that scene from Quantum Leap. It’s poignant. Anyway, I draw from another piece of work altogether to craft my own story, and I somehow associate those scenes with my own feelings of loss, reminiscences about time with my folks, imaginings of how it will feel when they die, sympathy for all those people who have lost parents—in short, the experience of the scenes becomes interwoven with everything that has contributed to the constitution of the feelings that are mine, that feel so personal and spontaneous, even though they are an inheritance, simulacra of authenticity. It all gets mixed in together with a presentation that I make for myself from an amalgam of Quantum Leap and Brewster’s Millions—two programs to which I had access originally only because of a confluence of resources and materials available to the artists (if you’ll grant the makers of Brewster’s Millions and the Leap—my pet name for Quantum Leap—that status), the color TV I had in my own home growing up, and myriad other conditions within and beyond my control. But when I make art, when I’m called to make something that may or may not be constituted as art, or when I’m called by art to make it, or when I am called an artist (which has never happened), I can’t help but wonder what Brewster did with that $300 million and how he lived his life after he was awarded it. I don’t think it was the intention of the people who made that film to inspire speculations regarding Brewster’s dying words or to establish any desire within viewers to splice scenes from Quantum Leap into the narrative of the movie. So, in a way, it doesn’t matter what I intend with or for my "art." Furthermore, it doesn’t matter whether I think my stuff is art or artsy or artistic; attributions are, ultimately, beyond my control. Personally, I am not trying to participate in some field of power in which my specific investment in the term “art” has a bearing on the symbolic, social, and material resources that are available for the production, distribution, and interpretation of…whatever. I don’t have positive material or symbolic investments in the term “art”--I don't ascribe the label to my work. Doing so would be to appropriate a term with which I would prefer to have a minimal association. But, again, ultimately, I have little control over such attributions. Honestly, I just want to know what Brewster did with that $300 million.

a statement

I've always been fascinated by (and jealous of) artists. I have a lot of creativity in my mind, but translating it into reality has always been difficult for me. I never put much effort into finding the artist in me- until now. Going down this personal road less traveled has unveiled new insights for me. I'm enjoying finding new ways to channel my inner feelings without any pre-established boundaries or methodology. I'm going down this road not knowing where it's going, but enjoying myself nonetheless. I just stick my hands in art and make whatever I feel like making. Sometimes, I let other people take a look at the inner me.

a statement

“Great art picks up where nature ends” Marc Chagall

One could argue that all design is a copy of something done before. I
would argue that the source of all design originated in nature and
there began the plagiarism. The structure of a spider’s web or the
replicating pattern of a seashell are both examples of concentric
design tools found in art as are the triangular models used by Winslow
and the Renaissance artists. Where would we be without the rule of
thirds? What feels most natural, most organic and appeals to our
senses is that which originated from nature.

One morning years ago I was running very early in the morning in
southern Arizona. As I approached the top of the mountain the night
stars merged with daylight. Just then a meteor shower began. It was
truly the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed. How could I ever
replicate that? Why would I try? Yet the experience impacted me.

Great design and art does impact me the same way that a work of nature
does. I do believe I carry those images with me in the same way. As
these images stimulate me, interest me they also influence my art. I
plagiarize them without meaning to.. replicating art, replicating
nature.

a statement

My approach to creating artwork has gone through several changes in the past few years. Although this string of changes has in some way brought me to what I am working on in my current life, I have also begun to come to terms with the idea that my work is continually evolving. I will likely not find the answers I am looking for in my work; rather, I will continue to experiment with ideas and techniques, and evaluate my decisions as I work. Working with an intuitive approach, rather than a rigid, planned approach, has lent itself well to my concept of evolving artistic style.

Regarding subject, I am interested in sequencing events, be they personal histories, memories, stories, etc. I find perpetual curiosity in the way specific events relate to each other on an intimate and personal level.

Aesthetically, I am drawn toward abstract art and the ways in which some abstract artists are able to create moments of unique intimacy between the artwork and the viewer. For me, the absence of a direct narrative makes room for the viewer to contribute to the piece, thus enhancing its personal nature.