Art Speak

Hello! Sorry, I know it's been a while since I last posted, so i'm just going to do a recap on all the things that have happened since. 
First off, I'd like to talk a bit about Korean Culture Day and how much fun i had. I spent most of the day with Nell helping with hair ornament making. Although it was a hectic and crazy with the abundance of children, I enjoyed helping people make their pieces. It was a really nice surprise to see some young children make such beautiful ornaments, it kind of made me think about how they could potentially grow up to become great artists. We also helped the public make their own buttons, which they could either color in or create themselves. There was also lantern making which Cami and Natalie handled beautifully. I'm honestly the worst at making lanterns so naturally i'm in awe of their ability to help people with that activity. The final activity at Korean culture day was paper making. We took water-soaked tissue paper and pounded it together to create new paper with designs. Personally, I thought it was an extremely cathartic experience and should be prescribed as a stress reliever by doctors. 

On Thursday, we had our third Mutiny Radio visit where we interviewed Leonidas aka the Balkan Vulcan. This was the first time that we got to do one on one interviews. At first, I was pretty nervous about messing up....and i was right to be for I had more blunders in my interview than anyone else. I stumbled across the very first sentence that I said, and I somehow managed to call Leonidas "old looking". Despite all of this, I think that the interview went pretty alright, and I feel that I will be more prepared for the next time. I think that I just need to accept that I am a goofy person that will make awkward mistakes without fail, but that's okay, it's charming (?) At the very least, I think that people found my interview humorous, and how bad can that be?

I did my art meditation on Sunday on the placenta jars, which are part of the In Grand Style exhibit. My assignment was to create an art activity surrounding them. My art activity was for visitors to create mini placenta jars out of modeling clay. They would then put a lock of hair inside with a wish written on a slip of paper and then bury the jar in their backyard or in the park. This parallels the Korean practice of burying the placenta full jars in tombs. The goal of this activity was to make the foreign, "strange", idea of placenta jars seem accessible and relatable  to the public. 

Hello all. It's been awhile since I've done this whole blog thing (or at least it feels like a while) so I'm sorry if I miss anything in my reflection on last Sunday and Thursday.

On Thursday night, we met at the museum early to talk about the radio show and to prepare over pizza and tea. We had a quick look through of the questions we had written and some feedback on those. It was a bit nerve-wracking knowing that we would be doing one-on-one interviews with Leonidas. However, I shouldn't have been worried: everyone did a lovely job and the entire hour went pretty smoothly. My favorite part of the show was when Marisa called Leonidas old. Marisa, thank you for making me laugh for a solid five minutes. Also, yay for Nell using the sound board. And Cami, you were great even though you weren't feeling so good. I honestly am just really proud of us because I think we're getting used to this whole radio thing.

Jumping forward, on Sunday we did a role-playing art meditation, we checked out the Chinese Tang Dynasty gallery, we tried out Karen's horse mobile project, and we met with Leonidas to discuss our future participation in the Balkan Vulcan Show. I actually really enjoyed the art meditation just because it was totally different from what I usually do for my reflections. I had the point of view of the curator and my prompt was: Write a letter to a museum requesting an object for exhibition. Here's the letter I wrote:

After, we made some pretty rad pipe cleaner horses and talked to Leonidas about possible future interviews. I'm excited that we'll have the chance to meet some other artists and interview them.

I hope everyone had good Thanksgivings.

-Natalie

Sunday was fun, tiring, and rewarding. There were ups and there were downs but I think we all handled the less-than-perfect situations well (and relatively calmly!) and ended the day on a satisfying note. Even though we weren't totally prepared in the crafting department, I'm glad that there were so many people at the event. And I was really amazed by some visitors' crafting powers. There was one boy who literally spent an hour working on his lantern and it was absolutely stunning (way to go, little boy!) I also saw a group of friends who made beautiful hair ornaments. I liked seeing people's creativity; this was probably my favorite aspect of the day. I also loved that most of the people who showed up were genuinely enthusiastic about the activities. Sometime during the day, two women came up to the lantern-making table and marveled over the mulberry paper. 

The only downsides to the day were the lack of lantern-making materials and having to turn people away from the activity after we ran out of cardboard. I also didn't like seeing that older woman who was mean to Holly during FilAm because she's rather intimidating.

I think Korean Culture Day was successful in that it connected to the In Grand Style exhibit. It was nice that the visitors could visit the galleries, learn more about the Joseon Dynasty, and engage in the activities we ran. I enjoyed being a part of the celebration.

Here are a few photos...

1) When Holly and I were manning (womanning) the button table, this little girl made a completely black button. Pretty adorable, I know.

2) Cami explaining the lantern activity to a visitor.

-Natalie

Sunday was Korean Culture Day which meant a lot of people, and a lot of activities. By the end of the shift my feet were so sore I felt like I was going to fall over. Nevertheless, the experience was really fun, I enjoyed working with the guests, and participating in the festivities. My favorite part of the day was teaching people how to make the lanterns. It was nice being able to explain to them what to do, and helping them create an art project that they would be able to take home, and (hopefully) keep forever!

Compared to the Filipino American History Celebration I felt like we were less organized. People didn't really understand what they were making and I even heard one man ask how these "dinky arts n crafts [were] part of Korean Culture." Besides him, people genuinely seemed like they were having a lot of fun, which made me happy. I really enjoyed working with the public. 

I AM SO SORRY NATALIE. THIS IS THE ONLY PICTURE OF KOREAN CULTURE DAY I HAVE:

A picture of Natalie and her cool apron/"tool belt" containing a stapler.

i think the turnout on sunday was amazing. i wasn't expecting that many people at the activities! it was fun seeing the differences between teaching activities that we designed ourselves as opposed to ones that were designed by another artist. the hair ornaments were a little harder for me to explain than the printmaking because i didn't help come up with the idea, but that's a good learning experience for me.

i also practiced how to say no to people. it can be hard, but it sometimes just has to be done. i also gained experience about what to do if people are getting too much in your personal space. that was definitely a challenge.

overall, i think we all did really well. good job guys!

Hello! So this Sunday, we all got to explore the the special exhibition at the museum, In Grand Style, which focuses on the art of the Joseon Dynasty in Korea. We started out the day with an art meditation. I chose the first piece to catch my eye and it just so happened to be this screen painting of peonies. 

Hello all!

There were a couple of things we did on Sunday, it was such a busy day! I'll sum it up in a couple of bullet points.

• Art Meditation: The first thing we did when we got to the museum was choose something for our art meditation. I chose a video which seemed straight out of the Korean soap operas that my mom watches. I chose it mainly because it felt familiar, but I also appreciated the (what I'd guess) realistic portrayal of Korea during that time period. It was nice seeing something shown on video, it made things seem more conceivable. 
• Scavenger Hunt: Instead of viewing the museum from the eye of an intern, we participated in a scavenger hunt for the In Grand Style exhibition. In King Jeongjo's Procession to His Father's Tomb in Hwaseong, our group counted 2 umbrellas, 6 fans, 7 lanterns, 6 palanquins, and 19 women with covered heads.
  
• Preparing for Korean Culture Day: After our meditation we began to work on our project for Korean Culture Day! It mostly involved cutting out circles of fabric, which wasn't very labor intensive. It definitely did get me excited for Sunday.
  
• Tour: The tour was the best part of the day. I was shocked by my discovery of placenta jars! The placentas of noble babies were actually kept in jars! At first it seemed strange to me, but now I'm not really surprised. Kim Kardashian considered serving her placenta to her family, what's the difference really? 
  

Placenta Jars/ My Art Meditation

Greetings! I haven't done a blog post in a while so let's see how this goes...

On Sunday we gathered at the museum to do a plethora of activities. In the morning, we learned a bit about the Family Fun Days that start in January which sound like a lot of fun. I especially like the idea of the explorer packs. I mean, if I were a little kid I'd definitely want to do that. Since the day was jam packed with activities, we immediately went to do an art meditation down in the In Grand Style galleries after we took the survey about the internship.

I found myself in front of a beautiful embroidered headpiece in the gallery about women's roles in the Joseon Dynasty. I won't recount my full meditation but some key questions/comments that came up for me: Who wore this piece? Was embroidery a popular medium? Also, I liked the gradient of the thread, especially in the embroidered flowers. 

Our next activity was to check out the self-guided, family/kid oriented tour of the second room of the In Grand Style exhibition. I liked the tour but I also wished it was a bit longer and a little more interactive. My favorite part of the activity was the art making after the gallery treasure hunt-like guide. One of the prompts was to make a flag with an animal that represents us. I chose to do an owl.

After lunch (yay for our ramen adventure!), we worked a bit on cutting out felt circles for Korean Culture Day before going to take a docent tour of In Grand Style. I really liked the tour because the docent was really nice and passionate about the subject of the Joseon Dynasty. The first item that we learned about in depth were the placenta jars which were oddly fascinating and beautiful and unique. My favorite pieces of information that I learned were as follows: 1) the image of the five peaks and the sun and the moon represents the four cardinal directions (the fifth represents the center of the universe) and the king and queen 2) when a child turns one, there's a special ceremony where the baby chooses an item that supposedly is a sign of their future. 

I really enjoyed Sunday (I hope I included everything we did!) and I'll see everyone mañana.

-Natalie

Hey you guys, so i've been dying to see this exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum. They're featuring one of my favorite artists, Camille Rose Garcia with an alice in wonderland them. She's just the most radical person and i looooove her art and she's just a huge inspiration for me. Her work would be categorized as pop surrealism, which is MY FAVORITE (not to mention i love everything alice in wonderland). Sorry, that it's kind of far though, but i still think that it would be great to see her work in person. 
http://www.waltdisney.org/garcia Here's a link to the website, see you guys on sunday.

Hi, everyone! I did a bit of poking around and I stumbled across an exhibit that sounds fascinating. It's at Stanford (I know that's a bit far...sorry!) and shows pieces by a local, contemporary artist, Carrie Mae Weems. She is a photographer and a filmmaker who focuses on her experience as a black woman and how she's affected by her identity. On October 27th, in the exhibit, there's a showing of her film "Coming Up for Air" from 12:00-1:00 as well as a docent tour at 2:00. I think it could be super interesting to visit the exhibit, both from an artistic perspective and a social one. Plus, the majority of her work is photography, which we don't have a ton of in the Asian Art Museum so it might be nice to explore the medium.

If you want to check it out, here's the link to the exhibition page: http://museum.stanford.edu/news_room/weems.html

See y'all on Thursday!