Vast

-adjective
1. of very great area or extent; immense
2. of very great size or proportions; huge; enormous

"I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile" (John Shelby Spong).

"There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness" (Emily Carr). 

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: Routledge and Paul, 1958. Print.

The idea of vastness goes with the work I'm creating now because my work has shifted from more abstract views of nature to landscapes. With the landscapes I'm shooting now I'm trying to capture the vastness of the environments I'm in. When I'm surrounded by an epic landscape I end up getting lost in it; I can just stare into the horizon forever, in awe. I'm hoping my images will do that for my viewers; that they can just stare and get lost in the images. I hope that my viewers will feel the same connection to these environments as I do. 

Roni Horn

Horn was born in New York in 1955. She received her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from Yale University. She works in many mediums including sculpture, photography, and drawings. Her work "embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror-like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image" (art21.org). Drawing is a key aspect of her work because it the act of drawing is all about composing relationships.
"Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls, in adjoining rooms, or throughout a series of buildings. She subverts the notion of ‘identical experience’, insisting that one’s sense of self is marked by a place in the here-and-there, and by time in the now-and-then" (art21.org). Horn has received a Guggenheim fellowship and has exhibited work at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

I chose Roni Horn for my blog because we share similar concepts with our work. In a way, the work I'm making feeds into her concepts. In a way I am remaking nature in my own image. I'm shooting the photographs in a documentary style but I'm choosing how to frame images and what to show and what not to show, so in my own way I'm photographing my environments how I want them to be seen or how I think would make them look the most beautiful. I also really enjoyed her methods of presenting work. I like the idea of having a piece in each room or in each building and having a separate experience in each environment. That is the same kind of experience I want to create for my viewers.

"So XII", 1998

"Some Thames", 2000

"Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)- Image J", 1999

"Untitled (Yes), Black", 2000

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/clip1.html

http://www.hauserwirth.com/

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/

Handmade

Last semester I had started experimenting with creating my own paper and printing on it using Liquid Light. I was very satisfied with the results and I'm confident that I can create  good prints using these materials. It's going to take a lot more experimenting to get the timing down right but I feel like I'm close to figuring it out. I really like the idea of using handmade paper. It makes me feel more connected to the images I'm showing, since I have imagery placed on paper made of entirely natural materials. I feel more of a connection to my work when I get to use my hands and create the materials I'm going to be using.

"He must approach nature directly and simply, with concentration that is absolute. He dissects only that particular fragment of nature which is before him, and that unconsciously. 'the precious sensation of closeness to nature is so fleeting and so fickle, so often not there at all, and so frightened, that it is easily scared away by the cold voice of the man with a rule to follow" (Beatty, John; The Relation of Art to Nature 1). 


"My purpose in writing this treatise is to establish, if this be found possible, a foundation for the belief that the art of the painter and sculptor is imitative, not creative; that the great masterpieces of art which have withstood the test of time rest firmly upon the supreme expression of character and beauty as these qualities are revealed in man and nature; that it is the mission of art to reveal and make plain these rare and lovely qualities" (Beatty, John; The Relation of Art to Nature 2).

Beatty, John Wesley. Relation of Art to Nature. [S.l.]: General, 2010. Print.

PDN Competition

Esoteric

"Taoism (or Daoism) may be regarded as the esoteric part of the Chinese tradition, and Confucianism as the exoteric. The exoteric is that which is open and available to everyone, whereas the esoteric is hidden and only for those who have the requisite spiritual aptitude" (Tzu, Lao viii).

“The Buddha was not a mystic. His awakening was not a shattering insight into a transcendental truth that revealed to him the mysteries of God. He did not claim to have had an experience that granted him privileged, esoteric knowledge of how the universe ticks" (thinkbuddha.org).

Tzu, Lao, Stephen Addiss, and Stanley Lombardo. Tao Te Ching. Boston: Shambhala, 2007. Print.

Part of what I love about Taoism is the mystery of it. Followers of this philosophy are expected to just go with the flow. If you fight nature and the Tao than you will struggle. The key is to become part of the Tao and than you will understand. It's compared to the flow of water, if you struggle against it you will make no progress. Once you go with the water, you will float gracefully down the stream. The ideas behind this philosophy are so simple yet there is so much you don't know, like what happened before and what is going to happen. I hope that with my work I can capture that feeling of mystery and the hidden. There is the outlying beauty of the images but if you really look at them and let yourself become part of the environment you will realize so much more.

Guo Xi

This artist is a little bit different from other artists I have researched in that he is an ancient Chinese painter. He was the preeminent landscape painter of the late eleventh century. He was revolutionary, using "innovative brushwork and ink [that] [was] rich, almost extravagant, in contrast to the earlier master's severe, spare style" (metmuseum.org). He would use layer upon layer of inks and water in order to make his paintings look misty and blurry, as if the mornings dew had just disappeared.

"Landscape forms simultaneously emerge from and recede into a dense moisture-laden atmosphere: rocks and distant mountains are suggested by outlines, texture strokes, and ink washes that run into one another to create an impression of wet blurry surfaces" (metmuseum.org).

I chose to research this artist because he works in the Taoist style, however I'm not sure if he was a Taoist himself. The way he paints is very reminiscent of the Taoist painters and their style. They were very reverential towards nature, often losing themselves in it and becoming completely immersed in their environment before even attempting to paint a single stroke. This is what I'm doing except I'm using my photography to convey the message of the beauty of immersing yourself in nature. I'm really drawn to the brushstrokes within the paintings because they do seem spontaneous and purposeful at the same time. I'm not quite sure how one would manage to do that but Guo Xi makes it happen.

metmuseum.org

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1981.276

http://www.artrealization.com/traditional_chinese_art/landscape_painting/northern_song/guo_xi.htm

Experience

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish." - Hermann Hesse

I heard this quote the other night in my Religions class as we were being lectured on Taoism. I think it goes along with what we talked about that night in class. It's one of the main points of Taoism. The Tao cannot be grasped using our normal vocabulary to convey it; trying to grasp it in words only spoils it. You have to be able to see it or experience it some other way, to feel it. That is what I would like to be able to present in the end. I want my final work to be installed in a way so that it is more than just the images, I want it to be an experience. I'm hoping to be able to fulfill that by using sound as well as projecting moving images on the wall. I didn't realize it until now but I am actually working a lot like the early Taoist artists. In his book, The Illustrated World Religions, Huston Smith states Taoists "teach that human beings are at their best when they are in harmony with their surroundings. It is no accident that the greatest periods of Chinese art have coincided with upsurges of Taoist influence. Before reaching for their brushes, painters would go to nature and lose themselves in it, to become, say, the bamboo that they would paint" (138). Again, this is what I've been practicing as I go out and photograph. I try to become part of nature in order to document my own experiences within it.

Smith, Huston. The Illustrated World's Religions: a Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions. [San Francisco]: HarperOne, 1994. Print.

"Clearing Autumn Skies" 

Kuo Hsi