It was an Experiment
Last weekend, I thought I would try a new approach to the art group I started several years ago. We have not been meeting due to the pandemic and we all missed our time together. Our agenda included a brief lecture about art and an artist…I think it is important to know art terms and place ourselves in art history….then an assignment due at the next meeting, discussion and critique of the previous assignment, then works in progress–we then usually adjourned for lunch at a nearby restaurant for more chatter.
My thought/idea was to do the lecture part as a facebook live video and follow it with a zoom show and tell. Managing all the parts of a live video was more than I wanted to take on–and so it was going to be a video only with no audience participation.
Here is what I have learned.
It is very difficult to speak to a little blue light as though it is a real person.
I have not done mirrors in over ten years, so monitoring the image I could see on my laptop screen was not something I am accustomed to doing.
I speak fairly slowly; a hold-over from the days in which I had to dictate hospital summaries and the transcriptionists complained bitterly I spoke too fast and my accent was weird.
My husband viewed my video and said very kindly, it was informative.
Like I said, it was an experiment and I will do better next time.
For those who are interested; the topic was Anni Albers with a quote from Egbert Oldendag. Anni was married to Josef Albers who is known for his treatise on color, Anni worked on weaving–one of the only three artforms available to her at the Bauhaus, Oldendag was a Canadian painter.
The assignment is to choose an artist’s work as a starting point in both color and composition for our next piece….a self-portrait that is not representational.
One of my favorite pieces of sculptures in the sculpture garden in Houston was Giacometti’s. I called him Matchstick Man and he stood at the entrance to greet all the visitors. He has since been moved indoors and I have only seen him once standing at the foot of the stairs. Here is the link to some of his work at the Tate.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alberto-giacometti-1159
I find his work to be both intense and spare, an interesting and challenging dichotomy.
Sylvia Weir Art 