art events

ok, so I thought the art events had to be tech related, which apparently isn't the case. easy peasy, i've been to quite a few things over the semester.


1. I'm gonna count this as one, but I went to the Asian Art Museum twice this semester. I was required to because of Asian Art History but I liked it anyway. You start on the third floor and travel though to the 2nd floor and you get a good scope of Asian Art and how it traveled through India, Korea, Japan, and China. You start at the Ganesha statues because they signify the start of something, as well as fertility which is like the start of something. I really liked the Buddhist stuff because the deities are cool. I always liked Ganesha images but it was interesting to learn that his parents were Shiva and Parvarti. When he was a child his head was cut off and they replaced it with an elephant head. Elephants represent wisdom as well as fertility. Fertility was a very common theme in all the Asian art I saw. Any fruit with a lot of seeds represents fertility, and are often seen in Chaek-kori (spelling?), which are korean book pile painting. Paintings of book cases, which often held lots of symbolic objects. It was also some of the first perspective art Korea practiced. The museum has a jade area full of amazing little detailed figurines and water jugs-type practical stuff. The museum is cool if your into Asian art, otherwise I think it could be really boring for some people.


2. I went to an art party about a month ago at a friends house. Everyone put painting and pictures up with price tags and we could buy each others art. There were about 100+ people there, it was really packed. I sold one picture for $25, not an exorbitant amount but you have to start somewhere. Other paintings sold for a few hundred dollars. I didn't buy anything because I don't have a ton of money but it was an older crowd who specifically went to purchase art. I liked that someone I knew threw the whole thing together and networked it. I think she might have used craigslist and other networking websites to help get a good crowd and artists together. I want to do the same and I encourage everyone to hold art parties, because they are really fun!

3. This one is actually tech related. I went with my friend Mike to his friends art thing. I'm not sure what something like that would be called... basically there was an entrance lobby area with some interactive exhibits and video stuff. There was a keyboard that when certain keys would press a song would play and a light show would go with the song. the lights went over this all white geometric sculpture. It was really fun to play with and to alternate keys really fast. There was a cube, which was the friend of a friend's piece. He projected video onto different parts of the cube and the cube is angled hanging from the wall. There was a video someone had set to music in processing. The video was of a train in Japan moving, and it moved in time to the music.

Then there was a show in another room of different videos, some original and some I think might have been a little older and I have no idea if the artist was there. It was so crowded it was hard to see. There was an electronic music band too that played synth and drum pads. I hope to go to more things like this in the future.