What is Art?

Someone said my work for my degree show, came across with to much attitude. Rather id like to come across intelligent and someone who has captured elements in the art world that are not spoke about and ignored. In fact the person who said this was quit challenging and made me feel a bit silly, like I don’t know anything about art. This is exactly the problem with art. There is no fact, conversations around art can surely only be an opinion? So how I can I “fight” back?

He also said things like “ you need to be careful making statements like that” and “how do you know your addressing all elements in art?” as if to say, how do I know the elements I’m addressing are important enough in art.

I just sat and tried to answer these questions. My next paragraph was going to be my answer to these questions. However I deleted it because why am I as an “artist” going to answer these questions. As a viewer he has the right to ask questions and as an artist it’s my job to encourage questions. I don’t have to answer them.

This proves my work is effecting and is making people think and respond. Thank god! And I’v decided when viewers ask me to explain my work, (when they have seen it for themselves and physically been in its presence) I am not going to answer. They already have the answer by asking the question.

Changes and challenges I came across

Originally, I thought that I would fit all the quotes on the wall and I was worried about the size of my letters not being big enough. Turns out I have too many quotes and I can’t fit them all onto the wall. I have chosen carefully the quotes that mean the most and are the quirkiest as a priority to up first. For example, I went to put “Art about Art” on to the wall and that was the moment things became hard. I was starting to compromise my positioning and thinking about what else I had to put up. I decided not to put “Art about Art” up at this point. It is obvious my work is “Art about Art”.

I have adapted to this restrictedness by starting to put my quotes on my wall backwards. This consists of starting from the last letter, starting from were I want my quote to end.

“Do you Rli care” refer to images.

This was an important decision I came across. Do I leave it separate to the other quotes or fill in the gaps?

Originally, I thought leavening it on its own would be a good ending point. The reality I came across from speaking to people is that it was interfering with the rest of the work. By leaving it separated it posses questions like, is it a tittle?, is that the most important quote?. As I previously spoke about, having it separated is interfering with the interaction from the viewers. I fear they will spend to much time thinking about why it’s separated. Truth is it’s just as important as everything else. I think I am trying to hard. I just need to follow the same theme. As a result I blended it into the rest of my wall.

The time that I can have access to the laser leveler is very restricted, so I have been feeling a bit stressed ! as this means I can only work on my wall when I have the laser leveler. And I have to give it back on Thursday the 29^{th june} , so I decided to add my explanation marks and question marks last as this would be easy to add onto the end of my quotes without the laser leveler.

I started of putting my quotes up quite freely and as my wall has developed, my space has forced me to use more of a “puzzle strategy”. What that means is I had to start being more carful about what quotes I chose to put up and were. I had to start thinking about the sizes of the quotes in regards to what would lock in to the gaps and mold together as one nicely.

In my picture you can see ‘Just do it” in the center of the wall going diagonal. This is a perfect example of my quotes not locking into the gaps and molding with the other quotes. It looks extremely out of place and is distracting because of its individuality. I don’t want my viewers to just look at “just do it” because it looks out of place. This would distract them from interacting for the right reasons. This is one of the things I had to change and I took it down!

This also made me think how important the small things are in the art world. The “shallow” thing is, if one of my letters are a bit out of place the truth is, I believe the viewer would notice this. As a result they would think about how wonky it is in their head. I must make sure all my quotes are as equal as each other as a physical presents. Then the viewer will not be distracted with things that are not relevant to my practice.

22^nd May.

Today I started to put my quotes on to the wall. The first quote I decided to put up was “is this taking the piss?” I chose this one because this was one of my bigger quotes. I decided to start from the middle and work my way outwards. To work this way, I will not be restricting myself.

I started putting my first quote up using my own eye to judge distance and straightness between the letters. Because the letters are all different sizes and types, it does give me a little bit of an excuse not to have my letters starting from the same (invisible) line. When I stepped back, the letters on my first quote were going up into the air slightly. Yes, I do want to take a natural approach to constructing my wall but I cant have it looking tatty. That is just lazy and I have no motive / reason for it to have the letters heading to the sky.

So … a little bird told me about a Laser Level. Which is a laser line which projects on to the wall, as a temporary line. This is the best thing ever invented!!

So onwards and upwards having access to this product means I can be a little bit more expressive in filling my white wall space.