Monday, September 27, 2010

Judy Baca

Judith F. Baca is an incredible artist known for her murals involving political landscapes. “The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is Baca’s greatest work. It is 2,700 feet long and is created along a flood control channel in the San Fernando Valley. This immense landscape took Baca seven years to complete, and it displays a variety of different cultural, political, and racial pieces. Baca prefers to put her personal views on top of landscapes.
            Baca is one of the many artists who has helped to bring street art to the surface. She has  founded The Social and Public Art Resource Center, also known as SPARC. This center creates an environment for an artist to express his opinions of social issues, cultural references, and civic dialogues into public art. SPARC is a very successful center that has been involved in the creation of many different artistic works.
            Baca was born in Los Angeles in 1946 to a couple of Mexican Americans. As she grew up Baca got an education and soon learned to speak English. She got into art by trying to get the class that she was teaching to get along and work together. She had her class start a mural on the school wall, and before long the entire class was interested on working on it. Because it was such a big project everyone had to work together, and by the time that it was finished her class knew how to get along. A few years later Baca was fired from her teaching position due to being part of a school protest. The next job that she received was as an art teacher for the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department. From there Baca became very involved in painting murals and doing street art.
            Baca’s murals are extremely impressive, especially “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” which holds the record for being the world’s largest mural. She has changed countless numbers of lives through her artwork and continues to inspire artists from all over the world. Baca's role as an artist is definitely to give form to hidden or universal truths, spiritual forces, and personal feelings; and she does an outstanding job accoplishing her role. Although Baca still is working on her murals, she is also teaching art in the UC schools.   

Here are some links to more information about Judy Baca; as well as the links that I received my information from.

http://www.judybaca.com/now/index.php
http://www.chavez.ucla.edu/jb_bio.html

 Here are some pictures of Baca's "The Great Wall of Los Angeles"




flickriver.com

























Monday, September 20, 2010

Crooked Timber

            In the “Crooked Timber,” displayed in the Nevada Museum of Art, Chester Arnold paints a crooked tree that has fallen. It appears that this tree has fallen from means other than the human hand. There seems to be an old shed or house that has been destroyed; whether it was destroyed by the tree, a storm, or of old age is not made clear. The colors of the painting are very appealing to the eye, and the grand scale of the painting is incredible. This painting was one of Chester Arnold’s paintings that I continued to stop in front of while viewing his creations.
            It is evident from Arnold’s paintings that he is environmentally friendly. His artwork expresses anger in over consumption, cutting down trees, littering, and mining. Most of his works involving trees depict man chopping them down. The “Crooked Timber” painting did not however, and that is why I found this painting to be so intriguing. The fact that the tree in the “Crooked Timber” died by natural causes was so different from all of Arnold’s other art pieces.  
            In my opinion I believe that Chester Arnold’s intent of this particular painting was to show viewers that sometimes being different from everyone else can be a good thing and can give one a longer life. I thought that Arnold was possibly implying that because the tree was not straight like most of the other trees man did not want it, and therefore man did not cut the tree down. This then gave the tree a longer life than the trees surrounding it, as there weren’t many other trees is the painting. I wasn’t sure exactly what Arnold was trying to say with the debris of the shed lying near the tree. Possibly it was meaning that even though the tree was different people still liked it and lived near it. I wasn’t sure about what the shed meant, but I did appreciate the color that it added to the painting.
            My interpretation of the painting was that it is not always better to be just like everyone else. Being different and “crooked” in your own individual lives can make one more interesting, as it made this particular painting more interesting than the ones with the trees being chopped down. Being like the world and giving into the pressure of your peers to be like them can be very harmful to someone. It is much better to be your own individual with your own thoughts and ideas, and in the end living a little “crooked” can yield a longer and more fulfilling life.