Mapping an Artist

This is a little map on Victoria Burge that resembles maps we made in class. It is meant to help us connect art and the artist to their sociocultural ideologies.

Materials & Tools in the Arts (SPA2)

     In all forms of art, an artist must use tools and materials to create. Whether it's painting or writing music, there are certain tools that are necessary in the process. Although, not all tools are physical objects that someone can hold in their hand. Dale Chihuly, a world renowned glassblower, is a great example of this. After losing vision in one eye in an accident and then later dislocating his shoulder in another accident, he hired a team to blow his glass for him. Chihuly describes his role in creating his glass artwork as, "more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor."

     These are the tools Dale Chihuly needs to create his glass artwork...

• A kiln
• Torches
• A blowpipe
• Molten glass
• Jimmies
• Powdered glass
• A team of skilled glassblowers
• A large working space / studio 

Victoria Burge's Recycled Geographies (AR3)

     Victoria Burge creates prints and drawings that concentrate on the framework of 'line' in relation to mapping. She is greatly inspired by antique maps, diagrams, and chart. So much so that instead of using a blank sheet of paper as the surface she works on, she uses the antique blueprints that inspire her as the foundation of her art. By using patterns like rivers, railways, or repeating numbers and letters in United States cities and state maps from the late 1800's, she transforms a map of man-made boundaries on Earth's surface into a web of light that greatly resembles a map of astrological constellations in an expansive sky.

'Oregon'

     Maps are used to show the geographical aspects and differences between areas of the world but are also used to identify differences between people. Are you from this state or that state? This country or that country? Burge's reworked maps create a sense of connectedness, that there isn't really a separation between one place and another; just different pieces of a whole. She uses ink, acrylic, and pencil to rework many of her antique maps. A great example of this is her 'Oregon' print. The ink used over the map creates varying dark color tones while the acrylic white lines connecting at over a hundred points makes a brilliant geometric web. Burge also makes black and white map by using a method called photopolymer intaglio printmaking. To simply define it, it is when light-sensitive plastic is applied to it a hard surface with an engraved image to create a type of photograph. Her 'Montana Night' is one of her best photopolymer intaglio prints.

'Montana Night'

     Victoria Burge is living in Philadelphia, PA, where she is continuing to make art that denotes connection, but connotes the entanglement between a spiritual and a scientific view of space and boundaries.

     “These recycled landscapes represent an on going exploration between paper and print, typography and topography, history and imagination.” - Victoria Burge's artist statement for The Drawing Center's online portfolio.

Reading Response 1: The Social Production of Art

 In the first chapter of Janet Wolff's book, 'The Social Production of Art', she approaches the social nature of artistic creativity from a sociological standpoint. Wolff applies the social and economic viewpoints of Carl Marx to explain where creativity stands within Westernized society.

Chapter 1 Key Points:

• The generalized Western ideas and views of artists are that they are people who create art through divine inspiration; artists are glorified for their creative work and are treated like a separate entity of a society.
• A master painter of portraits is no more creative or brilliant than a scientific genius, both shaped by society and the 'capitalist mode of production'.
• The artist, like all people of a culture, are shaped by their culture which is reflected through their creativity.
• Creativity is bound by the artist's social norms, values, and ideological beliefs; therefore creativity is not a product of intellectual freedom because free will essentially does not exist.
• Although creativity of the human mind has it's limits, these limits are malleable, allowing the artist to creatively extend their art past social normalities.

Janet Wolff explains that creative nature is not just found within an artist. Creativity can be expressed through the creation and design of everything in our daily lives; advertisements, our cars, and architecture as examples. Even though artistic creativity is present in almost every aspect of society, general stereotypes of the artist and their work being divine or 'extra-human' creates an unrealistic social status. Wolf says, “I will argue that many other people are involved in producing the work, that social and ideological factors determine or affect the writer/painter's work, and that audiences and readers play an active and participatory role in creating the finished product.” The artist is not separate from society but rather tightly entwined within it. In our present day society, art is a means of economic growth by being mass produced and sold by the thousands. When an artist creates and sells their works of art, they are essentially creating a product, which is not different than a carpenter making a chair and selling it. When producing their product to make money, they create something that people will want which shapes their creativity. Who is to say that a computer software designer is not an artist. They are making something by having an idea, using tools and a method to create it, and then presenting it to the rest of society. This is exactly what an 'artist' does.