Some more thoughts...basically need to write these down before I forget everything cause basically they came in a lightning blitz two weeks ago. This is more for me than anything, but I guess it also kind of gives access to my thought process I guess. Anyways, this post is about why monsters?
First my base idea about monsters and how I originally started on this monster hunt. So last February, I was kind of floundering in my advanced painting class, not really knowing what to paint or what to do. I was doodling a lot of these little monsters in class and so I was like "hrm, guess I'll paint those". I had a lot of dried up oils in my palette box which I never used and I love using texture in my paintings, so I just thought I'd make this mini paint monsters, using the materials that got wasted or were never used properly and now angry that they were never able to become art. Something like that. At first they were very illustrative like, but they I just threw sawdust down on one, it barely looked like anything. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, really bad (but musn't all artist go through doing both?). Anyways, quad ended and my painting prof approached me with a challenge, asking me the simple question "Why don't you try and make the canvas a monster?" I had no idea what to do but it seemed like the logical place to go.
It took me a little bit to wrap my mind around this-I had no idea how to make the canvas look like a monster. I was this animator, not a studio artist-I didn't really know how on earth to make the canvas look like a monster without being illustrative. When first trying to tackle this difficult challenge for me, I first thought through monsters and realized there's a huge range of monsters. You have monster like Mike and Sully in Monsters Inc. who are loveable and friendly and then you have monsters like dracula and werewolves that are more bestial, grotesque and we are fearful of them and then there are just monsterous people like Hitler and stuff-killers. I had no idea what type of monster I wanted to capture on canvas-there seemed to be nothing that unified all these together and yet I knew there must be something. So I went to the dictionary to see what the exact definition of a monster was. The main definitions when you look it up, I just didn't agree with because I could thing of examples that defied the definition and yet were still monsters, at least in my mind. Then I saw the word: unapproachable. Yes, that is the unifying element that ties all monsters together. There's just something unapproachable about them whether it be appearance of the fact they just want to kill you.
Anyways, then I made some unapproachable paintings-one where I covered it with all this junk like wax, egg, newprint, oatmeal ect. and then I burned it. It just didn't feel complete until I did that. The texture and junk was supposed to be gross and unapproachable and originally the smell with really repulsive. The second painting I made came from the idea of a monster coming out of the dark. In my mind, I saw a painting covered in faux fur up against a black wall. When I actually did this for my monster show I did with my friend Beth, it just looked too posh. Luckily, Heather Bren came in and suggest for me to put petroleum jelly all of it. Brilliant. So that's what I did, I put both petroleum jelly and also egg and as well covered it with fish sauce (bought it for $1 at Cub grocery store, basically it's anchovy liquid) because I was finding that smell is really what was going to make this painting unapproachable. And thus, that was my part of the Art is a Monster show: http://laurenkrieger.blogspot.com/2010/03/art-is-monster.html
So that's where I started and that is what all monsters are, unapproachable. That is the first and important unifying thing for all monsters whether they be friendly or just pure evil.
This first set of these turned out great. But then I just stuck with the idea of making these things unapproachable which just turned into grossness which I wasn't ever really going for, although the jelly paintings were fun to make. So I was stuck because just making unapproachable things was uninteresting to me. So I abandoned my monster hunt for a bit. Yes they were unapproachable but so what?
Come to senior seminar in art. Yes I made this crazy decision to double major last minute because I would be only 6 credits away. I found myself floundering again, not really knowing what on earth I was doing in the class. Was I even interested in studio art? Yes but I didn't know where on earth to go. Maybe I was interested in story? But that just left me doing animation stuff not really studio art. So I just kind of just quasi-worked in class not really happy with what I was making and what I was doing. Bleh. My prof wants me to experimental video and animation but I have no idea how to do so. Then I make this video in Art and Technology, drawing over the first sci fi film or at least part of it and I suddenly have an interest in this. So I look for more old films to draw over and of course it leads me back to the original monster movies, bringing up this thought of monster again. The ideas we can't escape. And the thoughts about this subject come back, but better than before, which I'll explain in my next post. So anyways, I'm back on my monster hunt, trying to catch and understand this thing called monster.
~Lauren
~Lauren
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