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Blog Post 2: The Meaning of Art

It’s quite fascinating that throughout the centuries, art has been a constant factor in bringing societies together. What do I mean when I say “art”? Art can be anything that allows the individual to completely express themselves without judgement or labels. This can include music, painting, drawing, or even singing. It doesn’t have to be anything in the sense of physicality, but rather something that moves the being from within. Ironically, the best art has come from the ones who were deemed as outcasts or mentally unstable. Take for example Vincent van Gogh.

He was an artist who cut his own ear off to give to a woman, and then in his later years, committed suicide. Even though, van Gogh went quite mad, he still created some of the best paintings known to man. Other terms that artists are familiar with being called are “outgoing” or “different.” These “outgoing” artists give the rest of society the opportunity and freedom to be themselves. Alot of people are fearful to be themselves due to certain labels society has created. With these labels, a once beautiful soul in someone can be pushed back into the dark, whilst manifesting a mask just to please current society. With the use of art, not only can it be therapy, but it can save lives as well. During times of hardship, the best stress reliever is the one where you can let it all out.

 

When I see or hear art, my hopes is to understand it and be able to communicate it. Much of art today, is abstract and has veered away from its fundamentals. Of course art is in the eye of the beholder, but to me a squiggly line on a canvas cannot be classified as art. When creating something beautiful, there has to be a story behind the chaos, no matter how vague. To me, art is something that connects people of all races, ethnicities, and cultures, resulting in a society brought together without prejudice. In 2018, that’s a difficult goal to achieve, but with time and effort it can be accomplished.

In my life, I have experienced art in its many forms. From the simplicity and swiftness of playing a sport to the technicalities of a high school choir. You might find it odd to consider playing a sport as art, but in the end it comes down to patterns, rythm, and dedication. In my childhood years, I used to play tennis. For eight years of my life, I trained three times a week for an hour a day. My trainer taught me to recognize the pattern of my opponents playing style and the rythm that I feel when hitting the ball. It was only recently that I knew I took it all for granted. I quit playing my freshman year of high school and didn’t think to look back, until recently. During my high school years, I joined a choir in school. We sang different kinds of musical pieces, from classical to modern, to appeal to everyone’s taste. Our main goal was to move the individual and show them that the classics have not yet faded from our generation. In Art1010, I am hoping to learn the affect art has had on generations before mine and what it meant to various cultures and societies. I want my mind to be opened to great possibilities, all drawn from the same root, which is art.

 

  Gustov Klimt’s “The Kiss”

My Art Story

Write up your art story: What do we mean when we say art? What is art to you? How does it fit in to your life? What do you want to learn about in this class?

When we say art, more often than not our minds are flooded with the many, many pictures, paintings, sculptures, etc. that we have seen throughout the years either in school or outside of it.  When we say art what we mean is something, a piece of work using various mediums by someone and labeled upon completion as a piece of artwork. For me, art is more than just the definition and studies of art I have done in previous school years.  Art is a way of life itself that comes in a bunch of shapes and forms, created by someone who has a passion for a particular form of expression.  To me art is the visual representation from hand to the final piece and all the work in between that it takes to get from the idea to the final piece.  Art is also, to me, music-singing or performing with instruments-, dancing and even things like cooking I find to be art as well. Also nature especially, nature is a beauty and plenty of art were based off of nature.

   

Growing up art had always surrounded me from friends, to just personal interests.  Even from a young age art has always been apart of my life a pretty big part in my development as well.  For both middle and high school, I ended up in art focused studies and by the time of reaching high school even got certifications in adobe photo-shop and passed my art regents giving me my CTE certification.  Although I may not always create often my passion for art has always been present and I suspect it will never go away!  From this class I hope to learn new interesting things that I didn’t explore or learn about during high school art history!

My Art Story

I would love to think of my art story as lavish and whimsical as fairytales, but honestly, it comes up short. A couple of years ago when I went to the MET, I was taken away by the art and the beauty of each painting. The hours of work that went into each picture, sculpture, or set. But I didn’t recognize art for what it was until the friend I was with, who just finished a semester of art history, had insight on every artist or drawing, explaining the emotions behind the piece of work.

I appreciate art for what it is, meaning I get excited about museums and I love seeing artwork made by friends, but I wouldn’t say I have a passion for art or it’s my chosen outlet.  When I think of art, the first thing that comes to mind is the typical form of art. Meaning, a paper with some form of ink used to express one’s imagination, beliefs, or thoughts. However, in a sense, each person finds their own form of art. It’s simply finding a passion and using it as a form expression.

Above is a picture a childhood friend made. She is passionate about teaching as well as art. She often uses her art to express the emotional experiences that happen as a teacher and in her classroom.

Blog Post #1: How To Post (Steps to Creating a Blog)

In order to create a Blog Post you must complete the following steps…

  1. Log in to you to your account.
  2. Once you’ve logged into your account click on the “Sites” tab
  3. After clicking the “Sites” tab you will click the “following” tab to see a list of the sites that you are currently following
  4. Choose the site in which you want to create the blog post and click on the link (ex. When creating this blog post I followed steps 1-3 and then for step 4 I clicked on the “Fall 2018 Art 1010 at Brooklyn College” link since I wanted post the blog on this site.
  5. Once you’ve selected the site in which you want to post a blog you will need to click on the tab label “+ New”
  6. After clicking the “+ New” tab you can then begin to write and create the blog that you want to post on the website.
  7. Once you have completed typing up the blog you can post it by clicking on the blue publish button that is located at the top right of the page.
  8. The final step after publishing you’re blog post is to sit back and relax because after completing the 7 easy steps listed above you have successfully created your blog post.

How to Post – Easy as 1,2,3

How to make a blog post on your commons account:

  1. Log on to your commons account using the following link commons.gc.cuny/edu.
  2. Along the websites bookmark bar, click the link titled “sites”.
  3. The page takes you to a list of different class sites, select the site corresponding to your class by clicking, “follow.” For our, Art class its, Fall 2018 Art 1010 at Brooklyn College
  4. Then follow the link to the class page by clicking the class title (listed in point 3).
  5. Run your cursor over, “+New” in the websites bookmark bar. Continue by clicking on the word “post” that will take you to another site.
  6. Create a title about the blog post being discussed and check off the category being discussed.
  7. Respond to the prompt in the text body and upload an optional photo.
  8. Create a tag a for the post depending on the assignment.
  9. Post!

Blog post 1: How to make a post!

With the way that the this site is organized, making a post on here may feel confusing at first glance.  But that’s what I am here to help with! Here are the steps to take in order to start making posts!

  1. First off, if not the most important step of them all, sign-up/ login to CUNY Academic Commons website.
  2. Upon completion go and become apart of the course group you are trying to make the post in, this case being “Fall 2018 Art 1010 at Brooklyn College.” This can be found by searching for the “sites” option, clicking on it and searching the class course that you are trying to join as previously stated.
  3. After that on the top left of your screen you should see a toolbar with various options to click on, the one to look for is the button that says “New.”
  4. After pressing new there it should bring you the page showing the template for making a post.
  5. Type in a heading for the post you will be publishing onto the group.
  6. Fill in the body of part of the template with the information that you’re going to talk about in said post.  Don’t forget to utilize the various tools to organize your writing however you see fit, or is required of you.
  7. Select the category, meaning the class course that you will be uploading the post too, check off all boxes necessary.
  8. check for any spelling and grammatical errors and once you are ready to post, put in any pictures and make sure to add in any necessary tags for the post and then hit the blue “publish” button.

Hope this post helped!

My Art Story

The word “art” is such a simple word, but without its textbook definition, I believe that its definition becomes more complex. Everyone has their own definition of art and stumbling upon two people who can give an identical definition would not be easy, in my opinion. I believe this because I believe one important aspect of art reflects what each individual person sees in the world and their perspective on their own life. At the end of the day, I believe art can be anything, depending on how each individual views it. To me, when I think of art I instantly imagine paintings and drawings, but at a macro view for myself, I think art is anywhere I can show my creative side and imagination to make something that is meaningful to myself and hopefully others. For example, when I cook and bake different cuisines and add my own personality to the dish, I think of that as my artwork because when it comes to drawing and paintings I was never good at that nor did I take an interest. To go back to my original idea of what art is, my view of artwork is different than that of my brother who is an artist. For him, he personally thinks of art as drawings, paintings, and even video games because these are all woven into his life and how he expresses himself (picture shown).

To continue with the idea of art, I believe it fits into my ever day life and soon my career. As mentioned before my art and appreciation of art is in cooking and baking, these are two art forms that truly resonate with me and for that reason they have been my hobby since I was about 5 years old. I love that in these two art forms, there really never is a wrong way to make something, every recipe has the personality of the person who made it. I say that this will fit into my career because I am studying to be a Dietitian and in my opinion there is a certain art form to this career. When you’re putting together a diet therapy, each one has a “default”, but then each therapy needs to get customized to each individual and you have to be creative and imaginative with dish and food options. This also intertwines with my interest of food and baking, where to make things “healthy” you have to really think outside of the box and present food in a way that makes people want to eat it and take an interest in it.

In this class I hope to learn more about art in general. I have definitely learned to appreciate all types of art since I was younger and wish expand my knowledge on the history behind them. Everything has a story and I believe I am at the age where I want to learn the story to not only gain knowledge, but also develop an opinion on it and comprehend the real meaning.

Blog Post 1:

How to make a post on Cuny Academic Commons:

  1. Go to commons.gc.cuny/edu and login into your account
  2. Click on the “Sites” tab and select a specific site (In our case Fall 2018 Art 1010 at 11 AM)
  3. If you aren’t already added then, add yourself to the website (by pressing on a button on the left side of the screen that says “Add Me”)
  4. If you were already added to the group then just, click on the “+New” button on the top of the screen.
  5. Create a title (Usually about whatever is being discussed).
  6. Fill in the body with what you want to say.
  7. Select a category and add a tag (if you want). The category and tag section can be found on the bottom right side of the page. 
  8. If you want you can attach a file!
  9.  Hit the blue “Publish” button on the right when you are done.

My Art Story

I think of art as a way of expressing yourself to the world. Art can release a person’s true feelings, without any words coming out of their mouths. Art can also be used as a very successful therapy technique where clients can draw or paint their emotions instead of talking about them.

On a broad level, art to me is creativity and uniqueness. There are no two paintings that are exactly the same or have the same meaning. It is inconceivable to see all the different types and genres of art. On a personal level, the art I prefer is music. Performing arts is the kind of art I listen to daily. Whether I need to focus and drown other people out or listen to a genre of music based on what I am feeling, I will just plug in my earphones and listen to music. Plus, it is a method of expression. Typically, people will listen to a specific type of genre based on how their feeling or who they are as a person.

What I would like to gain from this art class is an in-depth analysis of paintings. I am extremely interested in why painters painted a work of art and what they were feeling at the time. Additionally, I would love to compare art from past to present day to see the major or minor differences between them. Overall, I am exceedingly enthusiastic to begin learning the types of art that are included in different cultures.