A Helping Hand

Hello there dear readers! Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate and Happy Eat-As-Many-Chocolate-Eggs-As-You-Can Day to those who don't.

So the first block of third year has already passed! And so quickly too. It has been a busy few weeks, and I have to say I am quite proud of some of the work I've already produced. If you haven't had a chance to look yet, you can check out some of my latest work here and here. I've also been trying to work on my online identity through Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook, posting more often and trying to have new work to post as well. But I will openly admit that it is a ton of work and a ton of effort that goes into doing these kinds of things.

And that brings me to the topic for today's post : Helping other people to succeed!

So, I can testify to the fact that building an identity for your own career is incredibly difficult. Especially when going into a creative field, such as the arts, music, drama, magic and the like. There are far fewer outlets to help young people make it in these fields as they aren't really seen as important or helpful to the economy. So unlike other careers that offer scholarships and internships (that actually pay), we are pretty much left to fend for ourselves.

Now I'm sure some of you are thinking, "But isn't that why you're going to university?". Ah yes, like most people who've gone the studying route, we choose to study in hopes that it will help us land a good job one day when we graduate. But as the unemployment rate of university graduates in South Africa alone, getting a degree isn't good enough anymore. So we have to find ways of making ourselves a career that we can be proud of.

This isn't easy to do alone however, With having to deal with access to specific materials, it can be almost impossible to help yourself with regards to your career. This is why I think it is so important that people, and not just budding creatives, actually make an effort to help each other out where they can. For example, I've been using social media and blogging to help market my work for a few years now, so while I wouldn't call myself a professional at it, I will say that I'm proficient at it. So my partner, Liam, is a budding magician. Writing is not his speciality as the the performing part of magic is his area of expertise. I know the blogging is a great form of exposure, so what did I do? I became a co-author of his blog so that I can help him on the advertising side while he is out there doing what he does best (P.S My Thoughts is the blog, check it out if you have a chance).

Another important part of helping your friends and family and people in general is being encouraging and supportive when things are going well.. and more importantly when they aren't. Help them with whatever resources and in whatever way you can. It could be as simple as lending someone a self-help book you have, or it could be helping them to print some business cards or pamphlets to give away. Any small thing helps, and it could be as simple as saying "I believe in you".

The world is a tough enough place as it is, but it doesn't mean that we can't do something to make it a little better, even if it's just for one person.

Until we meet again
Talia

Processes and Transparencies

Hello there dear readers

I apologise for missing out on a post last weekend. It was a ...turbulent time to say the least. But here I am and it's time for a new post.

So dear readers, let me share with you what I've been up to since I've gone back to varsity this year. So in third year, the second last year of the Fine Arts degree I am studying, we are considered to be "senior" art students, and therefore capable of setting our own projects and briefs to work with. This is a huge jump from first and second year, where the lecturers would decide upon the topic and the artwork we created was thus a response to this topic.

So let me share with you my thought process behind the project I've been working.

I have been interested in typography since a happy accident with typography in First Year. As regular readers of my blog will know (and if you're new, welcome to my blog and have a look here to see my work), I've worked extensively with the medium of typography over the last two years, and of course given the freedom of subject matter and medium, now I have full reigns to work with typography.

So for this particular project, I decided to relate typography to the idea of access. So when is writing accessible to people, and when is it not? I wanted to play around with ideas of English being perhaps a more accessible language to understand (within a university context) than the language of the artwork. And how I could refuse the viewer access, or certainly make it intentionally more difficult for the viewer to relate to and actually access or understand the work.

How I decided to go about this was to use transparency sheets to write on:

These sheets were my own personal feelings, thoughts and emotions, as well as opinions about how I feel being an art student at an art school is quite inaccessible and the frustrations of being in art school. 

After this process, I then wanted to suspend these sheets from the ceiling of my studio space:

As you can see... this was somewhat untidy and well... the sort of baby steps towards an actual installation. So after this I decided the bulldog clips and looked terrible, so I refined it a bit using beading crimps to tie the transparency sheets:

This looks a LOT better, but something was still bothering me about this format. After speaking to my lecturer, we kind of concluded that it was because they were at eye-level. It was too easy to engage with them on an artistic level and not to mention that the lighting wasn't as effective... so to combat this I decided to hang them differently...

Now here I had caught onto something that really worked. I loved the way the light diffused the transparency sheets and the words themselves, and as you can see in the first picture, it was infinitely more successful than I would have guessed before. But alas it still needs a bit of tweaking, which I will share with you this coming weekend, dear readers.

Until we meet again
Talia

Exhibition Review: The Sound of Silence

Hello again dear readers.

So today I thought I would try something else new to help me to stay motivated to see exhibitions throughout the year. So to start off my own Exhibitions Review, I will talk about the newly opened The Sound Of Silence exhibition by New York based artist, Alfredo Jaar.

The Sound of Silence
2006
Wood structure, aluminum, fluorescent tubes, LED lights, flash lights, tripods, video projection
Software designed by Ravi Rajan
Installation view at école des Beaux Arts, Paris 2011
Photographer: Charles Duprat
Artist: Alfredo Jaar

On Tuesday night, in the heart of Braamfontein at Wits Art Museum (WAM), the much anticipated Sound of Silence exhibition was officially opened to the public. The curiosity in me for this exhibition definitely started when a prior visit to WAM revealed a massive black curtain concealing the sounds of machinery, an obviously large construction taking place behind the scenes but a secret to be kept until the opening of the exhibition.

As most exhibitions start off, there were speeches of thanks and gratitude to the museum and the artist and all the people involved in the organisation of the exhibition. There were free drinks and a surprisingly upbeat DJ present, and a large crowd of students, art-lovers, hipsters and the like hovering around the drinks tables. After the (thankfully) short speeches, we made our way into the gallery space.

We were met with a shockingly bright wall of light facing the entrance of the main gallery, made up of rows of vertical fluorescent light bulbs, Not only was this a shock to the senses of each visitor to the gallery, but it also heightened the intrigue surrounding this exhibition. This wall of light was part of a rectangular structure in the center of the gallery, and formed the exterior back wall of this room within a room. A queue was formed alongside the wall of the gallery for people to view this installation.

About 20 people were let into the room at once, and we were asked to switch off our cellphones.  We proceeded to walk around the room and walk in through a small entrance illuminated by a strip of green light. What was inside this room was essentially a small theatre, with both standing and room to sit. We positioned ourselves at the back corner. The lights, which were already dimmed, switched off completely as a small film began to play.

Now I am not going to ruin this artwork and explain every detail of the film, as it is best experienced within the artwork itself. But to simplify things, the film is about photographer Kevin Carter.

So now I will share with you some of my thoughts on this exhibition.

I felt like this was truly a remarkable piece and I would highly recommend that anyone who is able to get to the museum to view this work seizes the opportunity. While most of us are used to the shock appeal that most artworks generate, this installation is a refreshing depart from shock-appeal towards a more poignant need to create an impact on the audience. This impact is created from the moment the viewer enters the space and is affronted with this immediate bright, conflicting and intruding, wall of light. Viewers of the work are forced to face this light while waiting to view the artwork, and the light certainly creates an atmospheric tension surrounding the gallery.

The actual film is simple, poignant, tense and highly effective for the message it is trying to convey. I don't know about the other people who attended the exhibition, but I know that while watching this film I felt infuriated, and at the same time, hollowed by the content of the film. I left the exhibition with a profound sense of loss, and having experienced in the smallest of ways what it would have been like to be the "victim" of the photographer. This exhibition definitely made me consider photography as an act of violence and destruction, to both the photographed subject and the photographers themselves.

The exhibition closes on the 10th of April 2016 and the gallery hours are Wednesdays to Sundays from 10h00 until 16h00. The entrance to the gallery is free and the museum is situated on the corner of Jorissen Street and Jan Smuts.

Until we meet again
Talia

Get Up Again

Hi there again dear readers. I know, I went from a massive break from blog posts to a sudden flow of things to write about. I guess I've just had a ton on my mind lately, and I feel like talking about it with you, dear readers, is a good way to convey my thoughts and feel like someone out there is just listening to what I have to say. 

So dear readers, something I've had on my mind lately is the idea of strength and self-empowerment. To me, I've always had a deep rooted fear of appearing weak to other people. I hate crying, being sick, being injured, being too emotional. Anything that knocks me off my A-game. To be honest, it doesn't take much to knock someone off their A-game. It can be feeling under the weather. feeling over-worked, upset about relationship or personal problems, or just having a bad day. I have been off my A-game more often than not recently. For me, it's been because of relationship and personal problems. I've been so emotional in the last few months I think I've had my share of negative emotions for a lifetime. 

The problem with emotional turmoil is that I've developed the bad habit of moping over a negative situation. I can think of a lot of reasons why this has changed, but the biggest reason why it bugs me is that I feel excruciatingly weak. 

As said before, it is the one thing I am most afraid of.

So as of today, I am done with this crappy feeling of being weak. Yeah sure, things get crappy in life. We all make bad decisions and sometimes it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is just an illusion, 

Life is hard, 

We get knocked down.

We get winded.

We bleed.

We must get up again. 

I am so sick and tired of waking up and feeling like getting through another day is going to be tough on me. I am 20 for God's sake, I should be changing the world every day, not sitting and moping about things that WILL NOT matter in the grand scheme of things. Here is where the importance of self-empowerment comes in. See dear readers, this is something I have realised over the last few years. 

No one else will make your dreams come true for you. 

No one else will fight harder for you than yourself. 

No one else will ever be able to understand your life better than you,

Stop relying on other people to make things happen for you, they have their own lives to worry about. So at the start of every day, you are the one in charge of how it goes and how it ends. I won't lie, I've had a bit of a crappy day, and I have no one else to blame but myself (much as I would like to shift the blame I know I would be kidding myself), but here and now, typing this blog post - and listening to Pump It! by the Black Eyed Peas - I feel like I am doing something with my day. and something in me is stirring. A flicker of that inner strength that has been so stifled in the months past. 

I am not backing down from life anymore. I will fight until my last breath. I will make every day count this year, and I will be damned if I let anything and anyone get in my way.

Fight for your dreams dear readers, make your days count for more than yesterday-filled-regrets.

Until we meet again

Talia

P.S. This was the inspiration behind my latest art positivity typography pages, you can check them out under the Art & Other Creative Items Page.

Motivating the World, One Person at a Time

Well...

It certainly has been long enough hasn't it dear readers?

Well, shall we say that some turbulence in my life and general busyness and such has kept me away for far too long. But all is not lost, I have made some art in my time away and had a good reassessment of my life. The sun is still shining. The birds are still singing. And there is still plenty of art to be made! So here I am, with my first blog post since September.

So as cheesy and corny as it sounds to mention it, I turned 20 on Wednesday. No longer the teenager of the nineties but now a young adult. And since I have started working at my Christmas job, I realised something quite powerful.

Do you ever feel defeated by the world? By the people that are supposed to care about you? Have you ever wondered what you're doing with your life at the moment? Well, maybe if we all just started believing in one another's dreams a bit more, maybe the world would be a better place. On my birthday, I bumped into one of my old friends from High school. She didn't know it was my birthday but was an avid follower of the artwork I posted on Instagram. She told me that she thought I was really making something of my life and that I need to post so much more often. When I started my training for my new job, I had to do a quick sketch for a teamwork activity. My teammates and other trainees were so impressed that they started interrogating me as to why I don't draw more.

Why have I not been drawing more?

I stopped believing in my ability to create my own success.

But.

When people tell you out of the goodness of their hearts, that they think you are special, that you have something unique to bring to the world, it is probably one of the most inspiring forms of motivation I have yet to witness. Total strangers telling me they think I could change the world with my art, if that isn't good enough motivation, I don't know what is.

So dear readers, tell someone today, a stranger, a friend, your partner, tell them you believe in their dreams and their goals and watch the transformation.

Until we meet again
Talia