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| Reality, no airbrushing required. |
My daily bathroom reading almost always includes excerpts from a bi-annual magazine called RISD XYZ (http://issuu.com/risd/docs/risdxyz_fall-winter_2014-15?e=0/10291099), produced, written, illustrated, and designed by my alma mater. It was no surprise to me when I saw a brief bit in the Spring/Summer issue about our commonly held attitudes toward the human body, which are analogous to those of a medical doctor. In fact, many RISD scholars also work in major scientific fields, or take coursework as students at Brown that strengthens their understanding of their core major, or serving as an important counterpoint to it.
What's key to every artist's/scientist's path is the formation of bridges between the disciplines. It's what every person, place, and thing on the planet depends on us to do: rigorous scholarship that expands to fit the spaces and gaps between the average person's understanding. "Seeing connections", as well call it in our verbal form that is Design Intelligence. It means that we are so far ahead of the curve, we often don't reflect the current dynamic in society, and why would we?
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| Studying the human form in every direction, light, and body type. |
The crew of the USS Enterprise boldly goes where no man (or woman) has gone before, and that's a bumpy, rocky road indeed. We go it alone, usually without support, or kinship, even within our degree departments, because we are not there to seek approval. We are there to learn and observe and do, in an environment so strict, I called it "Art Boot Camp", sometimes bordering on the abusive, like the music students' instructor depicted in the recent movie "Whiplash". It's really intense, and for some minds it is not survivable, because of the intensity and maturity required to create great art.
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| Bodies as they are: not by Hollywood, or television, or magazine ads. |
And so it is with our relationship to the human body. Our professors do not care what our "feelings" are regarding anatomy, but merely our ability to render it in whatever form we need to, so that we may accurately solve a problem. We drew bodies in space and motion that make the typical art school student have permanent night sweats: this large man has a hernia that has expanded his body in a unique way, requiring him to wear white compression tights while modeling (use your imagination); this woman had dreads, tattoos, and almost no body fat; this beautiful woman of 90 dozed as she sat half-naked in the slanting light of a tall studio window, while we struggled to capture just a bit of what made her "Pearl" in oils, an infamous painter's model who will live forever in our works.
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| Serving up reality in each and every century. |
Not bodies that would be considered by the warped weirdos of Hollywood as "perfect", or magazine-quality airbrushed photos, or body parts mangled and mutilated by multiple plastic surgeries, nor faked in any way, shape, or form. Here was a man "out of shape" due to an incurable and ongoing genetic condition, there a still-beautiful woman with limbs pulled down by the enduring weight of gravity: in short, I saw real bodies without interference or prejudice, for purely academic purposes, in a studio space that has nothing to do with sexuality or titillation, and everything to do with study. The human body is extremely complex and hard to draw, even more so when it is aged or infirm, which is exactly how our professors designed it to be.
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| Nudity in every medium and shade. |
One RISD-oid focuses on eyes to become an Oculist for wounded vets, another dissects flowers regularly at the nature lab to produce textbooks on Botany. This one designs swimwear for women who have recently undergone mastectomies, as this shoe designer works in service to people with orthopedic foot problems. In short, how you think you look is irrelevant to us, which flies directly in the face of most popular media today.
It is a public space rife with anorexia, eating disorders, and seriously untreated madness. Every day and/or night of the week, I can turn on the t.v. to see women so fundamentally sick, they have formed an unnatural human shape made for media called "The Bobblehead" (a.k.a The Lollipop, or The Q-tip): a woman with a very round, large head who has dieted to excess and illness, to create grotesquely thin stick arms and legs. It's disgusting and abnormal, but so is "Reality T.V."; a format specifically designed to exploit the drunk and deluded, and the mentally ill or alcoholic alike. Why would I ever count on such a population group to guide and/or inform me about the human form?!
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| Capturing kinetic energy in each brushstroke for "Gesture Drawing". |
I never would, because I'm half afraid that my old college mentor would ring my doorbell or knock on my front door someday in the future, to take away my hand-drawn calligraphic diploma from the most difficult school on Earth. I would never disrespect their faith in me, nor the hours we spent as a community honing our skills to lead each and every major conversation that exists in society, in whatever language we want to, or whatever format we choose, a thousand times all around the world (thanks to Lao Shir Cindy Ming for that opening phrase in her form of Tai Chi).
That's what a true master is about, and that's what you will always see from me; the work and the truth that I began in earnest as a teenager, with a foundation that existed way before my time. You can see the truth about who we are as a species here, because that's part of my eternal promise to you. Live on, humans.
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| Dark and light and "happy accidents" are part of the art-making process. |
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| Bodies of flesh, blood, and bone not owned by some t.v. exec. |
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| Who are you, really? |
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| Men and women scrutinized under the gaze of our study for hours. |
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| Bodies in motion, active and alive, moving through 3-dimensional space. |
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| As individuals, and in groups. |
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| Bodies that were both near and far, up close and also impersonal. |
Please note: All images shown here are from my portfolio and are original works of art. You do not have permission to reproduce any or all of them, in any portion. Thank you, Marie.
