I'm so Sorry but I'm Addicted to TED

I'm seriously addicted to TED Talk videos.  I figured If I'm going to watch a video anyway while working on art, then I might as well watch something thought provoking and awesome.  It's either that or finding something on failblog.org to amuse myself with.  I was really impressed by 2 artists who gave talks about their work in the videos.

The first video is of contemporary artist Aparna Rao.  She works with technology to create amusing and sophisticated sculpture meant to provoke a reaction of some sort.  My favorite are the blank canvases with the little creatures who pop out from behind them when it's quiet. 

Ok that video should work, if not the link is here.

After that I continued to watch videos and work on the Whale.  I'm trying to fill in this 2 inch squared area and it's taking me a fairly long time.  So the next video is of an artist named Béatrice Coron.  She works with paper cutouts and creates these absolutely gorgeous and very elaborate scenes with nothing other than paper and an exacto knife. 




If the video doesn't work you can find it here.  Her work reminds me of Kara Walker's pieces.  Kara Walker is a well known artist for her paper cutout silhouettes and installations.  Where Béatrice's work is rather whimsical and fun, I feel Kara's pieces are more political and darker.  There's no pun there.  Kara Walker works with wall installations from what I've seen of her work.  I love it.  It's meticulously worked on and the themes are sort of like a sinister story time. 

From Artnews.org

She deals with stereotypes within the African American community in a style that is reminiscent of early American illustrations.  The graphic quality of the black shapes on the white background allows for far less distraction in the messages of her work.  I truly love the work and she exhibits all over the world, I'm sure the National Gallery and Metropolitan Museum of Art have her work in the permanent collections.  And if they don't they should cause it's incredible.   

Other than that it's been a quiet and pleasant day.  Except for my father's students.  It's always a challenge to listen to them.  I really wished I had gone outside and enjoyed the nice weather, but I really wanted to get more work done on the Whale.  Also the efforts to clean my room have been... slow.  I get distracted easily by shiny things.  And my room is full of them.  Something else I've been meaning to do is re purpose some canvases that I've taken the older paintings off of.  I don't really care for the paintings I previously made... they kind of sucked.  So I want to make more beaded pieces at some point so I need to stretch some fabric over them.  That way I'll have them ready to go when I need them.  It's not like I don't have plenty of fabric right? 
 
Well I guess that's it for today.  Not much else is happening recently, besides the day jobs coming up but that's not a topic for this blog.  So on that note:
See Ya'll Later!

P.S.- Yay for reaching over 200 page views!!!!!