A trip to the AGO

Art Gallery of Ontario
January 25, 2011

This trip to the AGO was adventurous. I have definitely benefited from this trip. It was my first time taking the bus in downtown, and my first time going into the AGO. I have passed by it a couple times before, but have never been into the AGO. It was fascinating. I am not an artsy person, but I enjoy looking at arts. I love to see how creative other people are. The following picture might be very disgusting for some individual, please scroll right down if you don't want to see it.

The Service Station (1978)
by: Mary Pratt

  I found this picture very fascinating. I was walking down the gallery, passing by all the paintings. This picture especially catch my eyes. It made me stare at it for a while. My friends were walking around exploring, and I stood in front of the painting and stared at it. Within the room, they have paintings of dull colours. This is the one with the sharpest colour. RED. It's bright red. It stands out in the painting AND the room. When I first looked at it, I feel the violence and dark side of it. I didn't have much initial thought to it because I was admiring how she can make the meat look so real and 3D. As I look at this picture, I wonder why she would draw something like this. This is like a butcher's shop, where they cut the meat. Why would a woman draw such a picture? I believe the painting is done in canvas. The paint she put on was very thick, especially the part of the meat. I think that makes the meat pop out. Without touching it, I see how 3D the picture is. It's almost like the meat is hanging right in front of my eyes. I love how Mary uses very dark colour for the overall picture and the bright red for the meat where it stands out. It really captures people's eyes and would get the message across.

I read the label and it says, "Mary Pratt, The service station, 1978." I am not very familiar with history. Therefore, I decided to do some research. She is Canadian. I found that she is one of the few female painters at the time. She had studied fine art at university. I found that impressing cause it's not that easy to get into university in the 1950s. Another thing that surprises me was, she was brought up in a wealthy family in the 1950s. Why would she draw such a violent picture? I am assuming women back then who is in a wealthy family should be drawing landscapes and portraits. However, she is TOTALLY different. She likes drawing things that you find in the kitchen. She was known for painting things in the kitchen. Her early works involved food and things that can be found in the kitchen. She used her imagination to combine things together and create a painting, such as chicken on a coca-cola box. She then started to paint the darker side. She created these paintings to portray the image of men as "murder" and "rape." As I said above, this painting really caught my eyes in the room cause the other paintings have very dark colour or very low contrast. This painting has a very high contrast that really catch my eyes. I love this AGO experience. =)

Instant Sculpture

For my instant sculpture, I had thought about what to make for a few days. I went out to look for some different ideas and see if anything inspires me. Food popped up in my mind. I am often amazed by all the food creations out there. How food can be transformed into a piece of art in a creative way. I LOVE the picture from my fist blog, the butterfly on the apple. It was so cool. I sometimes wonder how people do it. Did they photoshop it? From that, I went to collect some food products to try to make it into an art piece. I first put food together and attempted to make a picture. It looked cool but I think it's not a sculpture, so I tried something else. I put straws into the pastas so I could hold them up. The following are my progress work.


My first attempt.

Looks like the traditional way to roast meat.



second attempt.

I turned it around and it kind of looks like pool/bowling.

final product.



I couldn't find anything to stick them together or hold them up. I couldn't find my glue gun to glue them together. So I chose to use straws to hold the pasta and staple the straws together. I thought this shape is kind of unique. I like this shape because it is multi-dimensional and it consist of 4 triangles and 1 diamond. It also looks like an hour glass too. Personally, this represents the different aspect of my life and how it is not perfect in all ways. Life is important. There isn't a lot of time in one's life. We need to treasure every moment that we have. We shouldn't let small problems bother us and take us apart.

This sculpture really emphasize on the lines. It is formed by many lines put together. Three lines to make a triangle and two triangles to make this shape. For young children, their first attempt in sculptures and art pieces are putting simple objects together. Some examples would be putting many pieces of paper together to see what it does, putting different colours of pom poms on a piece of paper, lining up Popsicle sticks, etc. They would try to create and explore through the experience of simple objects and then they will use more complex objects to create their artwork. That's their progress of learning.

Creativity

Since this is a creative arts class, I will start my portfolio with "creativity."

 

Creativity. Creativity is something really abstract. I might consider something very creative, but others might disagree.  Personally, I think that creativity is when you put two or more things together to create something new. And of course it has to be fun. Like how we started off our class with the game "this is a scarf, but it is not a scarf." Creating something from a simple object is sometimes quite hard. Ideas might not pop up in your mind at that moment. Creativity is a very important skill for ECE because as an educator, we do not get many different materials and resources. Our job is to create something new and fun everyday to entertain the children.

I have to admit that I am not a very artistic person. I can be creative with existing materials but if you were to ask me to create a drawing, I can't. I worked with the HighScope approach in my first year placement. It was a fun experience and it requires tons of creativity because children are able to explore freely with different materials. Their creativity surprises you sometimes. Don't underestimate children's creativity. They might be an inventor in the future.